Before the Warsaw trial began, the twelve OUN members involved in Pieracki’s assassination had been interrogated for about a year. For the first time since his arrest, Bandera was interrogated on 16 June 1934. During this interrogation Bandera denied that he belonged to the OUN. He informed the investigating officer, who wanted to interrogate him in Polish, that he knew Polish but would only answer in Ukrainian. Due to the “impossibility to communicate,” the interrogation was postponed until 26 June.[457] On 12 November 1934, Bandera again denied belonging to the OUN. He also claimed that he did not know Lebed’ and could not recognize him on a photograph. On 16 November 1934, he said that not only did he not belong to the OUN but that he had nothing in common with it.[458] On 10 January 1935, Bandera denied that he had suspected Bachyns’kyi of being an informer, denied that he had ordered his murder, and denied that he had ordered the disposal of his corpse. He would only confirm that he knew Bachyns’kyi from the Ukrainian Student House.[459] During the same interrogation he denied knowing Lemyk and ordering him to kill the Soviet consul and denied knowing Matseiko and ordering him to kill Pieracki.[460] In a similar manner, Bandera denied several dozen criminal deeds.[461]

The protocols of the interrogation between 16 June and 26 September 1934 are missing. According a protocol dated 27 September, Bandera claimed that he was interrogated without interruption from 9 a.m. on 6 August, to 8 p.m. on 11 August. Although he had already signed a protocol on 7 August at about 8 p.m., the interrogators continued to interrogate him for four more days. They did not allow him to sleep or even rest, and they informed him that they would not stop until he gave them further information. In order to interrupt the interrogation, Bandera informed them on Saturday 11 August that he would give them further statements on Monday 13 August, and would also prepare a statement about his views on the OUN for the newspapers. He was taken to his cell, from where he informed other OUN prisoners about the circumstances of the interrogation, shouting through an open window: “[It’s] Bandera! I testified [sic]; the police keep interrogating without interruption, all day and night, and demand other statements. I was interrogated from Monday till Saturday, and on Monday they will interrogate me further.” On Monday 13 August, Bandera told the interrogators that he would not do as he had promised on Saturday, and that he had only made the promise in order to interrupt the interrogation and to inform other OUN prisoners about the conduct of the interrogators.[462] Another OUN prisoner, Klymyshyn, did not mention such interrogation methods in his memoirs, but, unlike Bandera, he decided from the very beginning not to make any statement or answer any questions.[463]

Several other arrested OUN members, for example Stets’ko and Ianiv, consistently denied everything, like Bandera. Roman Shukhevych even stated that he “does not agree with the ideology of the OUN because it does not lead to the aim.”[464] Nevertheless, the interrogating officers obtained a huge amount of information about the structure of the OUN and Bandera’s role in the organization from other sources. One of the sources consisted of the OUN members Ivan Maliutsa, Roman Myhal’, Bohdan Pidhainyi, and Ievhen Kachmars’kyi, who began to reveal the secrets of the organization during their interrogations.[465]

Myhal’ and Maliutsa decided to testify because they had “qualms of conscience” about their deeds. Both were involved in the murder of Ivan Babii on 25 July 1934, and Myhal’ was also involved in the murder of OUN member Bachyns’kyi on 31 March 1934. Both Bachyns’kyi and Babii were killed on Bandera’s order. Babii was accused by Bandera of supporting the Polish authorities and of suppressing Ukrainian nationalism. Bachyns’kyi was murdered because Bandera suspected him of collaborating with the Polish intelligence service.[466] Myhal’, and Sen’kiv invited Bachyns’kyi, for a drink on 9 May 1934. They felt that they had to get drunk before shooting him, because they had an amicable relationship with him.[467] After murdering Bachyns’kyi, Myhal’ fell into a deep depression, and the OUN sought to “liquidate” him.[468] Of the four individuals who informed on their comrades, only Pidhainyi later tried to withdraw his testimony on the grounds that it was made under duress.[469]

Another major source of information was the Senyk archives, an important collection of about 2,500 OUN documents that were confiscated in Prague in 1933 from the house of OUN member Omelian Senyk. The Czechoslovak intelligence service made these documents available to the Polish service.[470] The contents of the Senyk archives helped the investigators to persuade some of the defendants to testify.[471] Together with the contents of the Senyk archives, their evidence enabled Prosecutor Żeleński to write a detailed act of indictment, containing much information about the structure, deeds, and financing of the OUN.[472] In the course of the investigation, Żeleński prepared twenty-four volumes of investigation records for the Warsaw trial.[473]

According to the evidence given during the investigation, Bandera’s role in Pieracki’s assassination was significant. He was accused of persuading Matseiko to murder Pieracki and of providing him with the gun. He was accused of supplying Lebed’ with money, for the purpose of observing Pieracki in Warsaw, and was also accused of other aspects of the crime.[474] According to prosecutor Żeleński, however, it was not Bandera who made the initial decision to kill Pieracki, but the leadership in exile, or the PUN. In particular, it was alleged that Konovalets’, Iaryi, and Senyk had issued the order and instructed Bandera and other members to organize and carry out the assassination.[475]

Stepan Shukhevych and Volodymyr Starosol’s’kyi, two lawyers who had previously acted for the OUN, were called as witnesses for the prosecution. This made it impossible for them to act as defending lawyers in this trial, despite the request of the families of the defendants. The two lawyers were therefore replaced by Volodymyr Horbovyi, Stanislav Shlapak, Lev Hankevych, and Lev Pavents’kyi, all of them less experienced in this kind of trial than Shukhevych and Starosol’s’kyi.[476] According to Stepan Shukhevych, who had not only defended OUN members at several trials but was also connected with the OUN through family ties, Konovalets’ intended to admit at the beginning of the trial that the OUN had killed Pieracki, but Hankevych had changed the meaning of the message before passing it on to the other three defense lawyers.[477]

Just as the OUN regarded assassination as a means of propaganda, so they also used trials as political stages. A trial was an opportunity to propagate the cause of Ukrainian nationalism and to draw international attention to the situation of the Ukrainians in Poland. This frequently came about as the result of an unwritten agreement with elements of the Ukrainian press, which would depict trials of OUN members as political, even if they were accused of a robbery or killing a policeman. All trials of OUN members in the Second Republic were in fact political, because, in addition to the crimes that they had committed, the defendants were inevitably accused of belonging to the OUN.

The Warsaw trial of the OUN members, like Pieracki’s funeral some months before, became a political spectacle for the media. Throughout the trial, almost all Polish and Ukrainian newspapers published detailed reports on the proceedings. Some of them, for example Express Poranny from Lviv and Ilustrowany Kurier Codzienny from Cracow, published sensational articles. Polish tabloid newspapers mobilized their readers’ emotions, publishing front page articles with large headlines such as “Huge Revelations about Pieracki’s Murders,” “Leaders and Fighters of OUN Paid by Lithuania: Unbelievable Revelations at Trial in Warsaw,” or “Amazing Confessions of Witnesses and Devious Strategy of Defense.”[478] During the trial, the Ilustrowany Kurier Codzienny published detailed reports of the crime, and grief-inducing pictures of Pieracki’s assassination, of the mourning ceremonies in June 1934, of Pieracki’s body in a coffin on a catafalque, and of Pieracki’s mausoleum in Nowy Sącz.[479]

The main Ukrainian newspaper Dilo published less sensational and more factual reports from the courtroom. It also printed parts of the indictment, translated into Ukrainian.[480] Novyi chas, another major Ukrainian newspaper, chose a more sensational path of reporting. It published huge headlines on the first pages, such as “12 Ukrainians Accused of Complicity in the Murder of Minister Pieracki before the Court in Warsaw” and “Fighter of the Ukrainian Underground before the Court in Warsaw. The Huge Political Trial in Consequence of the Murder of Minister Pieracki.”[481] On the first page of Novyi chas, readers could not miss the pictures of the “Croatian Insurgents,” which appeared next to the articles about the OUN revolutionaries. The Ustaša was involved in the assassination of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia and French foreign minister Louis Barthou in Marseilles on 9 October 1934, and their trial took place at the same time as the trial in Warsaw.[482]

The trial began on 18 November 1935, in the eighth penal division of the regional court in Warsaw. For security reasons, the courtroom was separated from other parts of the building. Without special tickets, members of the public were excluded from the courtroom. Apart from the lawyers, security people, and other court staff, the well of the court was therefore occupied only by journalists and by relatives of the accused.[483] On a long table placed before the court, exhibits, such as weapons, and numerous bottles and flasks from Karpynets’s laboratory were arranged. In addition, twenty-four thick volumes of the investigation record were stacked up.[484]

Observing Bandera, who was sitting near the exhibits, an unidentified reporter from Gazeta Polska characterized him as

the leader of all the other [defendants] and the superior in the ranks of the terrorist organization … who coordinated the terrorist action in the entire territory of Poland and who was in contact with the leading members abroad. Bandera, the ace of the terrorist organization, looks inconspicuous. Small, thin, puny, looks not older than twenty or twenty-two, receding chin, sharp features, unpleasant physiognomy, darting eyes with a small squint, nervous movements, small pinched mouth, laughs quite often, revealing uneven teeth, talks to his defending lawyers with vibrant gestures.[485]

The trial began at 10 a.m. and was soon transformed into a power struggle. After a short and formal statement concerning juridical formalities, the chairman of the court, Władysław Posemkiewicz, began to question the defendants as to their personal details—the first, in alphabetical order, being Bandera. He answered the chairman’s first question, about his name, with a resonant “Stepan.” This differed from the Polish equivalent “Stefan,” which appeared in the indictment, and which the chairman expected to hear. Bandera then gave the names of his parents and his date of birth, in Ukrainian. The chairman reminded Bandera that the official language of the court was Polish, to which Bandera replied in Ukrainian, “I will answer only in Ukrainian [Budu vidpovidaty til’ky po-ukraїns’ky].” The chairman asked Bandera if he knew Polish. Bandera answered with “Tak,” which means “yes” in both Ukrainian and Polish. At this point, Bandera’s lawyer Horbovyi stood up, but the chairman did not allow him to speak and immediately reminded the court that he would not permit any discussion of the question of language because it was regulated by a law that allowed the use of Ukrainian in trials held exclusively in the south-eastern voivodeships of Poland.[486]

The next two defendants questioned, Lebed’ and Hnatkivs’ka, applied the same tactics regarding language and behavior in the courtroom as had Bandera. Karpynets’, the student of chemistry and constructor of the bomb that did not explode, when reminded to speak Polish, boomed: “The prestige of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists enjoins me to speak Ukrainian!” Prosecutor Żeleński then applied to the court for the appointment of an interpreter, in case defendants such as Karpynets’ wanted to reveal important evidence. The chairman replied that the court would consider the question later but would not take note meanwhile of any testimony in a “non-Polish language” and would regard it as a refusal to testify. Bandera immediately shouted in Ukrainian, “I want to testify!” The chairman answered in Polish, “The court will take notice of testimony only in Polish,” and explained that, because the defendants had not followed his instructions, he would read out their personal details.[487]

When Bandera’s lawyer Horbovyi asked for the trial to be postponed on the grounds that he had not had enough time to study the voluminous investigation record, and because five defendants had not yet managed to retain counsel, Bandera stood up, and shouted in Ukrainian, “Because not all the defendants have a defending lawyer, I abandon my defense lawyer!” The chairman stated that he had not asked Bandera to take the floor and refused all of Horbovyi’s requests. The defending lawyers then tried to postpone the trial, using the argument that the defendant Chornii was under psychiatric observation during the investigation and might be mentally disordered, whereas this was not mentioned in the indictment. Prosecutor Żeleński protested that psychiatrists had examined Chornii and had determined that he was not insane. Bandera jumped up again and informed the court in a resonant voice that he was abandoning his lawyer. The chairman again requested Bandera to remain silent, unless he had been asked to speak, and informed him and the other defendants that anyone who interrupted the proceedings would be removed from the courtroom. Surprised by Bandera’s capricious move to abandon his lawyer, the latter asked the court for a recess in order to confer with his client, which was granted.[488] After the break, Horbovyi informed the court that Bandera had withdrawn his request to do without defense counsel. The chairman read out part of the indictment, which gave details of the preparation and execution of Pieracki’s assassination.[489]