At 10 a.m. the following day, the trial recommenced with the reading of the remainder of the indictment. With the exception of Karpynets’, the defendants’ demeanor was listless. Vasyl’ Mudryi, UNDO politician and deputy speaker of the Sejm, came to the courtroom. Leon Jarosławski, a specialist in the Ukrainian language, was admitted as an expert but not as an interpreter.[490] The part of the indictment that was read out gave details of other assassinations and terror acts performed by the OUN. It started with the unsuccessful attempt of the UVO—forerunner of the OUN—to kill the “Leader of the Nation,” Józef Piłsudski, on 25 October 1921 in Lviv and ended with the assassinations of the Ukrainians Bachyns’kyi and Babii. The latter was murdered after almost all the leading OUN members were taken into custody during the arrests in June 1934.[491]

The observers at the trial also learned that some OUN members such as Spol’s’kyi, Makarushka, and Myhal’, whose statements during interrogations were read out in the courtroom, experienced moral problems about some OUN orders, especially concerning the murder of Ukrainians. Either during the investigation or already prior to their arrest, their attitude toward the OUN had changed. Spol’s’kyi, an OUN member who was not among the defendants, stated during the investigation that he was revealing information that would enable the security authorities to “liquidate the OUN, whose activities he considers to be very harmful for the Ukrainian nation.” Makarushka asserted that the OUN was making young Ukrainians “pessimistic, dogged, simpleminded, unsociable, and treacherous.”[492] Myhal’ stated that he was ready to die for his evidence, if it contributed to the liquidation of the OUN.[493] After the chairman finished reading the act of indictment at 4.30 p.m. on the second day of the trial, and the members of the court had left the courtroom, Lebed’ jumped up and tried to shout something, but he was prevented by a guard and also by Karpynets’, who shouted at him to sit down.[494]

An unidentified correspondent of Gazeta Polska wrote that the text of the indictment revealed astounding information about “the activities of the OUN in Poland and other countries, as well as about the help that the Ukrainian terrorists received from the Lithuanian government.”[495] Other newspapers discovered especially interesting and significant information as to such collaboration and advertised it with huge headlines, frequently on the front page, such as “Lithuania Abets the Murderers from the O.U.N.!” “When Ministers Liaise with Murderers …” and “Leaders and Fighters of the OUN Were Paid by Lithuania: Unbelievable Revelations in Trial in Warsaw.”[496]

On 20 November 1935, the third day of the trial, a reporter for Gazeta Polska spotted a Yugoslav journalist, probably interested to hear about the connections between the OUN and the Ustaša. The Polish reporter also mentioned that Lebed’s mother, whom he characterized as a plain peasant woman, had appeared in the courtroom. The chairman Posemkiewicz addressed the defendants, starting with Bandera. He read from the indictment, and asked Bandera whether he pleaded guilty. Bandera started to answer in Ukrainian: “For me as a Ukrainian . . . [Meni iako ukraïns’komu . . .]” According to Prosecutor Żeleński, Bandera informed the court that he was a Ukrainian citizen and therefore not subject to the Polish law. The chairman interrupted him, reminding him to speak Polish. Bandera continued in Ukrainian with a resonant voice, explaining once more that Polish law did not apply to him. The chairman informed the defendant that if he spoke a “non-Polish language” the court would regard it as a refusal to testify, he would be removed from the courtroom, and relevant information concerning him would be read out from the interrogation record. Bandera answered in Ukrainian, “I want to explain . . . [Ia khochu vyiasniaty . . .]” The chairman told him that if he did not stop shouting he would be removed. Bandera did not lower his voice, and the chairman ordered him removed.[497] Żeleński commented on this scene in his memoirs: “Bandera resisted and so the police removed him by force. The convulsive waving of the hands and legs of this little man appeared rather comical. But there came from him unbelievable energy and fantastic strength.” He also added that everybody in the courtroom understood that Bandera was indeed the leader of the defendants and carried authority.[498] A reporter from the popular newspaper Ilustrowany Express Poranny, on the other hand, who also observed the scene, wrote that Bandera wanted to deliver a prepared speech. He perceived Bandera as being nervous and angry. His short speech was slurred, and it was difficult to understand him.[499]

Once Bandera had been removed from the courtroom, the chairman read out Bandera’s evidence from the lengthy interrogation. According to the correspondent of Gazeta Polska, Bandera had originally denied belonging to the OUN, planning Pieracki’s assassination, and other terrorist acts. When asked by interrogators about a journey to Gdańsk, Bandera told them that the purpose was not to meet other OUN members but to invite a cousin to the wedding of his sister. While there, he went swimming in the Baltic Sea, caught a cold, was confined to bed for a week, and missed his sister’s wedding. After some weeks in custody, however, Bandera ceased to deny his membership of the OUN, assured the interrogators that he wanted to give honest evidence, and declared his wish to appeal to Ukrainian youth with a publication of some sort that described the true state of affairs, calling upon Ukrainian youth to oppose the terrorist acts of the OUN and to prevent more bloodshed. When asked by the investigating officer about his original denial, Bandera claimed that he had lied in the first instance. During subsequent investigations, however, he refused to write a statement about the OUN and said that he had lied in order to put an end to the interrogation, and in order to inform his colleagues in other cells that he had not admitted anything. During succeeding interrogations, Bandera had returned to his claim that he did not belong to the OUN. When he was confronted with the evidence of Pidhainyi and Maliutsa, who had revealed Bandera’s role in the OUN and his involvement in terrorist activity, Bandera had expressed his wish to say nothing. The chairman said that when the results of the investigation were presented to Bandera, he said that all of the accusations were groundless.[500]

Lebed’ applied the same tactics concerning language as had Bandera, which caused a dispute between the defense and prosecution. Prosecutor Kazimierz Rudnicki explained that, if the defendants did not know Polish, the court would have asked an interpreter to translate their testimony, as it would for any other non-Polish speakers, regardless of their nationality, but because the defendants had studied at Polish universities and knew Polish very well, it was apparent that they chose to speak Ukrainian with the intention of making a political demonstration, which the court would not tolerate. Defense lawyer Hankevych protested that Lebed’ had not studied at a Polish university as had the other defendants and that he had refused to speak Polish in order not to mangle the language. Prosecutor Żeleński objected that Lebed’ knew Polish from high school. At this point, Lebed’ asked to speak in Polish. The chairman allowed him to speak but Lebed’ continued in Ukrainian. The chairman interrupted him and read out his evidence from the interrogation record.[501]

Speaking in Ukrainian, the next defendant Hnatkivs’ka also denied belonging to the OUN and informed the chairman that she would only testify in this language. He allowed her to sit down, and he then read out her evidence from the investigation.[502] Karpynets’, Pidhainyi, Maliutsa, Kachmars’kyi, Zaryts’ka, and Rak behaved in a similar fashion. The chairman responded by interrupting the defendants in turn and reading out their evidence from the investigation record.[503] Klymyshyn responded to every question with silence, as he had during the entire interrogation.[504] Some of the defendants had applied the language ploy during the investigations. For example, Bandera had stated during the interrogations that he “can speak and write Polish but refuses to use this language.”[505] Other defendants also claimed that they knew Polish but would not use it, because it was the language of their “enemies” and “occupiers.”[506] Ilustrowany Kurier Codzienny reported these linguistic contentions in a sensationally written article entitled, “The Defendants Provocatively Do Not Want to Testify in Polish!”[507]

The first defendant to testify in Polish was Myhal’. He legitimized his decision by observing that Warsaw did not lie on Ukrainian territory and that he was therefore not harming the Ukrainian nation by testifying in Polish.[508] He pleaded guilty and stated that he wanted to recount all his crimes, such as shooting Bachyns’kyi. Then he spoke about crimes committed by other defendants, as he had already described during the interrogation.[509] Nevertheless, he did not reveal all of them, and, by providing false or incomplete information, he tried to avoid incriminating some OUN members.[510] Asked by the defense lawyer Hankevych, “How would you explain that you are stressing your guilt with such pleasure, because I do not understand how somebody can push himself in such a way under the guillotine?” Myhal’ replied that he wanted to right a wrong—the death of Bachyns’kyi and Babii.[511] When his testimony was read out in the courtroom on the next day, 26 November 1935, other defendants appeared astonished, perplexed, and nervous. Two days later, the newspaper Express Ilustrowany published an article entitled “Impressive Revelations by Myhal’: Prosecuted Ukrainians Listen with Bated Breath.” [512]

The majority of the OUN members who were called as witnesses refused to testify in Polish, just as most of the defendants had done. The court regarded their behavior as a political demonstration. Those who knew Polish but refused to testify in that language were punished with a fine, or imprisonment in default. The witness Irena Khomiak was punished with a fine of 100 złotys or ten days imprisonment, for speaking Ukrainian.[513] Romana Chorna, Roman Shukhevych, Oleksandr Pashkevych, Osyp Mashchak, Dmytro Myron, and Osyp Nydza were punished with 200 złotys or ten days imprisonment.[514] On 5 December 1935, Olena Chaikivs’ka was punished with 300 złotys or ten days imprisonment, and on the order of the chairman, was removed by force from the courtroom, as she would not stop speaking in Ukrainian to him. The next day, however, she decided to testify in Polish.[515] The witness Adriian Hornyts’kyi claimed that during the interrogation he was forced to give evidence against his colleagues, by being kept outside in freezing weather for hours. Despite the attempts of the prosecutor to calm him down, Hornyts’kyi said that he venerated the OUN and stressed that he “belonged to the OUN and will belong.” For this political statement he was sentenced to two days in a dark cell. Prosecutor Żeleński established that Hornyts’kyi was interrogated on 7 and 8 September. Prosecutor Rudnicki commented that on 7 and 8 September there “may or may not have been good weather, but certainly not frost,” and initiated a separate investigation against Hornyts’kyi for giving false testimony.[516]

The most spectacular witness that day was the young OUN member Vira Svientsits’ka. As many other OUN witnesses before her had done, she informed the court in Ukrainian that she spoke Polish but was prepared to testify only in Ukrainian. For this statement, the chairman punished her with a fine of 200 złotys or ten days imprisonment and ordered the guards to lead her out. As Svientsits’ka was passing the dock, she went toward the defendants, raised her right arm, and shouted, “Slava Ukraїni!” The defendant Karpynets’ stood up, raised his arm, and answered, “Slava Ukraїni!” This is apparently the first recorded fascist salute that OUN members performed in public. For performing a fascist salute in court, Svientsits’ka was punished with one day in a dark cell.[517]

On 29 November 1935, Prison Warden Wojciech Żygała, who was questioned by the chairman as a prosecution witness, delivered some interesting information about Bandera’s behavior in the Brygidki prison in Lviv. Żygała discovered on a mess tin, in which Bandera had received his lunch, the inscription in Ukrainian “Die but do not betray,” signed in Bandera’s name. In the evening, he discovered the same inscription on another mess tin, in which Bandera had been served his supper. A few days later, Żygała heard how Bandera tried to communicate with other prisoners by tapping on the wall in Morse code. Żygała answered him and Bandera asked by tapping on the wall, “Who is in the neighboring cells? Give me the names.” Żygała did not answer but went to Bandera’s cell and said to him, “Mr. Bandera, please do not tap. I know Morse code and understand what you are tapping and will inform the prosecutor about it.” Bandera answered: “I was just tapping around.”[518]

When Antoni Fic—one of the officers who had interrogated Bandera—testified before the court, Bandera’s lawyer Hankevych asked him whether it was true that Bandera was interrogated continuously without interruption from 6 to 11 September, and from 13 to 16 September 1934. Fic answered that he had interrogated Bandera only in the daytime and that he did not know whether other officers had also interrogated him during the night.[519] The OUN member Iaroslav Spol’s’kyi also implied that prosecution officers used force in the interrogation. When the chairman asked him why his testimony in the courtroom differed from what he had said during the interrogation, Spol’s’kyi answered that an officer had beaten him. This statement annoyed Prosecutor Żeleński, who demanded to know if Spol’s’kyi had any witnesses for his claim, by whom, with what object, and on which part of his body he had been beaten, and why he had not informed anybody about this sooner. Spol’s’kyi did not deliver a plausible answer to any of these questions. The prosecutor maintained that Spol’s’kyi chose to change his evidence because he was afraid of OUN reprisals against him for incriminating other defendants. Żeleński further asked the court to summon Łączyński, the chief officer from the prison in Lviv, in order to clarify this incident, as Spol’s’kyi had claimed that Łączyński was responsible for the beating.[520] The next day 3 December 1935, Łączyński appeared before the court and stated that he had not beaten Spol’s’kyi but had sent him to a dark cell for two days as a punishment for engraving his name on a spoon during a hunger strike. Spol’s’kyi confirmed this version of events.[521]

An even more bewildering incident occurred when the court came into session at 10:30 a.m. on the thirteenth day of the trial. The defendant Maliutsa, who was director of organizational matters in the homeland executive of the OUN, stood up and declared that, on account of Spol’s’kyi’s testimony the day before, and his own doubts since the beginning of the trial about his own behavior and the nature of the OUN, he wanted to testify in Polish. The court immediately removed the other defendants from the courtroom and allowed him to testify. Maliutsa gave even more details than had Myhal’ before him, supplying a range of crucial information, including the names of many OUN members. This testimony overlapped with that of Myhal’ and with information that Pidhainyi had revealed during the investigation. When Maliutsa finished, the defense lawyer Shlapak asked him why he had changed his mind and decided to testify. Maliutsa answered, “I came to the conclusion that the methods that the OUN applies are not good for the Ukrainian nation. We shot not only at Poles but also at our people. Director Babii was shot in this manner, and as I just learned, so was my closest colleague Maria Kovaliukivna.”[522] Once the OUN applied terror to persons who were close to him, Maliutsa, like Myhal’, had decided to break with the OUN strategy of denying the terror. Maliutsa further testified that Konovalets’ had confided to him, in a face-to-face talk in Prague, that he also had doubts about some of the methods used by the homeland executive of the OUN. This suggests that the main instigators of terror against fellow-Ukrainians were Bandera and other young people in the homeland executive.[523]

The thirteenth day of the trial featured another significant moment. The witness Inspector Dugiełło mentioned an unnamed informer as a source of information. Defense lawyer Hankevych asked him to reveal the name of the informer in order to “reconcile the Polish and Ukrainian nations.”[524] Dugiełło could not reveal the name as it was an official secret. Hankevych’s comment outraged Prosecutor Żeleński so much that he delivered a short speech concerning political matters which, until then, he had scrupulously kept out of the trial:

The court condescended to be the witness of an appeal that I address to the Ukrainian defending lawyers. You gentlemen ought not introduce political matters into the trial, and thereby upset the ambiance. This trial is not directed against Ukrainian society, and nobody should even for a moment understand it as such. There is no right yet to presume that this trial is even only indirectly directed against Ukrainian society. We are accusing here only certain people and a certain organization which, as we heard from the defendants themselves, is a misfortune of Ukrainian society.[525]

The fourteenth day of the trial, 5 December 1935, began with the chairman’s remark that, on the previous day, Karpynets’ had behaved badly toward the officer escorting him from the courtroom. The chairman admonished all the defendants to behave appropriately and not to force him to use special security measures. He then read out Maliutsa’s testimony from the previous day and informed the other defendants that they were free to introduce clarifications. Bandera suddenly jumped up and shouted sternly in Ukrainian what was reported as a “horrible accusation against the defendant Maliutsa.”[526] The chairman asked him to be quiet, but Bandera lost control of himself and became more and more tense and agitated. The chairman ordered the guards to remove the outraged Bandera from the courtroom but he would not cooperate, so they used force and carried him out. The chairman then ordered a pause in the proceedings, after which Karpynets’ stood up and spoke loudly in Ukrainian, with the result that he was also removed. After these incidents the chairman ordered the separation of the defendants from one another and from the defending lawyers, by having policemen sit between them, as at the beginning of the trial.[527]

The accusation of torture by the interrogating officers during the investigation surfaced again on 11 December 1935, when the witness Iaroslav Shtoiko—an OUN member sentenced to five years in prison—tried to withdraw his previous statements, with the claim that, by means of long interrogations that weakened him, he had been forced to speak about matters that had never occurred. In direct response to this claim and indirectly to some previous ones, Prosecutor Żeleński said that the more somebody “rats” on his colleagues and the more somebody reveals the activities of the OUN before the court, the more this person feels that he has the right to vilify the whole trial and to accuse the police and even the prosecutor of tormenting him and forcing him to give evidence.[528]

It is difficult to ascertain whether OUN members were indeed tortured during the interrogation. The OUN used trials for political goals and frequently made claims that aroused attention. Torture certainly belonged to these. But it was also in order to avoid punishment from the OUN, that some of the defendants who revealed information about the organization stated later that they did so under the pressure of torture. Investigating officers were instructed not to break the law by causing pain to the defendants in order to obtain information. However, they apparently interrogated OUN members such as Bandera, who maintained their denials, for several days at a time. This was obviously against the ethics of an interrogation and almost tantamount to torture, because the interrogated, as some of them claimed, were not allowed to sleep or even rest for several days.[529]

The chairman and especially Prosecutor Żeleński made continual efforts during the trial to prevent the defendants and their lawyers propagating the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism and transforming the trial into a political one. Rudnicki, the second prosecutor, however, understood his role differently. On 27 December 1935, in a long speech in which he summarized the trial and announced the recent parliamentary resolution to abolish capital punishment, he became very political. His speech circled around the problem of Polish-Ukrainian coexistence in the Second Republic. At one point, for example, he allowed himself to compare the Poles in the Russian Empire with the Ukrainians in the Second Republic:

However, there is a huge difference between Polish society in 1863 [the time of the January uprising against the Russian Empire] and Ukrainian society in 1918 and 1933: in 1915 only a handful of retired Russian estate custodians, some hundreds of Polonized officials, and some Russian symbols remained [in the territory claimed by the Poles]. In some hours they could be easily removed from the Polish territories. They passed by just as water flows from a granite stone. Nothing was left of them on Polish soil. However, we [the Poles] cannot go away from the territories that the OUN claims, because we are not colonizers, we have lived there for 600 years. If the Polish army and administration left, the Polish peasant and educated persons as well as the Polish intellectual and literary contributions would still remain. I do not say thereby that Ukrainian culture should not develop, but this country is the country of Polish culture, Polish and Ukrainian population. … If we went and left the Polish population there, it would become a national minority although an important minority since it would make up to 50 percent. We know that the OUN declares that the prosperity and life of one nation depends on the destruction and death of another. Therefore we cannot leave so many Poles in the lurch and relinquish their lives.[530]

Rudnicki’s reasons why the Polish state should not give up Volhynia and eastern Galicia are remarkable. Apart from the questions of national pride and cultural investment on the part of Poland, he also mentioned people’s fear of the OUN. Toward the end of the speech Rudnicki characterized the OUN activists as mentally ill:

We realize here that the thinking of these people is sick and because it is sick we are in the courtroom today. A sick mind has to be cured in a madhouse. For sick thinking we have no other help than legal punishment. I have a feeling of relief in my soul that the gallantry and generosity of my nation removed from this trial the specter of the gallows. It was right that the Polish nation granted executive clemency before the judgment was certificated. The judgment must be and will be very harsh.[531]

Rudnicki’s speech was followed by Żeleński’s three-day speech, which was less political and more analytical, although moderately polemical. Żeleński listed all the criminal deeds conducted by the OUN. He argued that Bandera, as the leader of the homeland executive, was the most responsible for them of all the defendants: “All this is Bandera’s work.”[532] On the one hand, Żeleński called Bandera a “twenty-three-year-old semi-child … almost pathological”[533] and on the other, he argued that Bandera “has led all the defendants until this moment, as he did in prison, inscribing orders for them on spoons and mess tins.”[534] He also added that “This is not only the leader [prowidnyk], but also one of the main culprits of Pieracki’s assassination; he is the one who assembled the entire organization, and contributed to making it work superbly and accomplishing its purpose.”[535]

Żeleński then characterized the other defendants and explained their culpability. He also spoke about persons who were not in the courtroom but who, like the defendants, were involved in Pieracki’s assassination and other terror acts: