There is here [in the dock] still a place for some other persons. I see in the dock neither Anna Chemeryns’ka, nor Fedyna, nor Iaroslav Baranovs’kyi, nor Senyk, nor Iaryi, nor Konovalets’. Where are you, generals of the organization, at the moment when your subordinates are judged, at the moment when the assassination of Minister Pieracki is on trial? They have been, are, and will stay in a safe place. We do not have in Poland a default judgment but we can ascertain the guilty by default. … Although you will not sentence them, you will judge them, because you cannot leave them out, since you will be unfair not only toward them but also toward those in the dock.[536]

As to the question of Lithuanian collaboration with the OUN, Żeleński pointed out that although Lithuania was a small and impoverished country, which could not even afford to maintain a representative at the League of Nations in Geneva, it paid the OUN about $1000 a month.[537] This observation implied that Lithuania, which did not have its own terrorist organization, was interested in supporting a foreign one that combated the common enemy, the Second Republic. Vilnius, which Lithuania claimed to be its capital, had been incorporated into Poland in 1922 just like Lviv. Żeleński warned all countries in the world to be careful with Lithuanian passports because Lithuania issued fakes that were used to organize crimes. Finally, he stressed that Lithuania had supported the OUN not only before but also after Pieracki’s assassination.[538]

Ultimately, Żeleński characterized the OUN as a “company” that murdered in order to make money. He stressed that murder, and spying for other countries were the main sources of income for the OUN. It sent its representatives to North America, on Lithuanian passports, to “sell” assassinations as patriotic deeds to the Ukrainian diaspora. Żeleński argued that, according to Konovalets’s letter to Senyk, which had been found in the Senyk archives, Konovalets’ decided to kill Pieracki because the OUN was close to “bankruptcy.” He decided to murder Pieracki “not only to demonstrate the power of the organization but also to enlarge its finance capital.” Żeleński pointed out that such a motive was “the lowest point of hideousness.”[539] In conclusion, the prosecutor asked the judges for a verdict that would sentence Chornii, Zaryts’ka, and Rak to at least ten years, and Klymyshyn and Pidhainyi to life imprisonment. As for Bandera, Lebed’, and Karpynets’, although parliament had banned capital punishment on 2 January 1936, the prosecutor asked that they be sentenced to death because, as he put it, this is “a sentence that the Polish State demands strongly from you.” [540]

The correspondent for Novyi chas perceived Żeleński’s speech as an “outpouring of aggressiveness against the defending lawyers, the defendants, and some imprisoned witnesses.”[541] This observation might refer among others to the fact that Żeleński showed the court such surprising documents as a letter from the confiscated Senyk archives, in which Bandera in July 1933 had rebuked the OUN member Horbovyi, his lawyer in the Warsaw trial, for neglecting “organizational work.”[542] The correspondent also observed that Żeleński illustrated his speech by raising his voice and making abrupt gestures with his hands and that the defendants listened attentively as he pointed his finger at them.[543]

After the four days of prosecution speeches, Bandera’s lawyer Horbovyi began his speech with the observation that crimes such as Pieracki’s assassination “have always been regarded as political crimes and not as common crimes. In theory a political crime is an attempt to introduce an illegal change into the current social relations and legal system … in the case of a successful change of power, the act ceases to be a crime.”[544] When he began talking about the Polish-Ukrainian conflict in 1918, the chairman interrupted him with the argument that such matters had nothing to do with the trial. Afterwards Horbovyi was similarly interrupted when he tried to introduce Bandera’s views on the question of language in the trial.[545] Realizing that the court would not tolerate historical or politico-linguistic argument, Horbovyi asked the rhetorical question: “What connects my clients to the act?” He answered by saying, “In brief, nothing.” He argued that the defendants were innocent and had been arrested and put in the dock to satisfy public opinion. The accusation was, according to him, based on unreliable material such as information received from informers whose names had not been revealed. As he began to speak about freedom as “a man’s greatest treasure” he was interrupted again.[546] Toward the end of his speech, Horbovyi tried to convince the judges that they should not believe Maliutsa and should not consider his testimony, because this defendant had suffered a breakdown and therefore could not be relied upon to speak the truth.[547] Finally, he tried to challenge the allegation that Matseiko had killed Pieracki, by referring to the bits of tobacco that were found in the coat which the killer had left behind. According to Horbovyi, Matseiko did not smoke because the OUN forbade it and also because he was sick with tuberculosis. Therefore, according to him, Matseiko could not have assassinated Pieracki.[548]

The most absurd moment in Horbovyi’s speech, however, occurred when he claimed that the OUN had not killed Pieracki, a crime to which the OUN had already confessed in October 1934. Yet, according to Horbovyi, if the OUN had killed the minister, then Bandera, who knew that he would be sentenced to death not only in this but also in the upcoming trial in Lviv, would “have manifested his national feeling” and revealed the motives for the crime, instead of remaining silent.[549] He also argued that the OUN could not have committed the crime, because it had never committed murder outside the “ethnographic Ukrainian territories.”[550] Horbovyi finished his speech with a plea to acquit all his clients, with two exceptions. Kachmars’kyi clearly belonged to the OUN and there were “circumstances that reassure the court that Bandera belonged to the OUN.” However, he asked for a very mild sentence for Bandera because his client had not pleaded guilty.[551]

Shlapak, the next defense lawyer to speak, tried to develop an even more peculiar argument than Horbovyi’s. First, he said that a “strange fate [dziwne fatum], which had haunted Ukrainians for ages, brought these twelve people into the courtroom.”[552] Then he stated that “if as a result of a disaster everything would get lost and only the acts of this trial would remain, then from their content it would be possible to reconstruct the history of several years of independent Poland.”[553] For this observation he was fined 300 złotys. After that, he claimed that the twelve defendants were in the courtroom because they wanted to establish a Ukrainian state. According to Shlapak, they had devoted their “youth, freedom, and even life” to this cause. When Shlapak started to quote the Polish poet Juliusz Słowacki, he was interrupted again and requested to come to the actual case.[554] Further, he insinuated that Karpynets’ did not have the skills and facilities for constructing the bomb that was found by the police, and he argued that Prosecutor Żeleński knew where the bomb had been actually manufactured, but was withholding this information. For this insult he was again fined 300 złotys.[555]

Speaking on behalf of Klymyshyn and Zaryts’ka, Pavents’kyi seized on Rudnicki’s observation that the thinking of the OUN members was sick. He did not disagree with the comment but thought that if that were the case, then the defendants should be hospitalized and not punished.[556] Unlike Horbovyi and Shlapak, in the rest of his speech Pavents’kyi remained factual. He admitted some of the deeds of his clients, such as smuggling illegal newspapers from Czechoslovakia, and pleaded for a mild sentence because, as he stated, there was no evidence that his clients had acted deliberately. According to Pavents’kyi, Zaryts’ka helped Matseiko escape from Poland to Czechoslovakia without knowing that she was helping Pieracki’s murderer.[557] Pavents’kyi was the only defending lawyer who received congratulations on his speech from Prosecutor Żeleński.[558]

The next lawyer defending the OUN in Warsaw, Hankevych, argued that Matseiko had not killed Pieracki. He claimed that such a “powerful and prosperous organization, which was supported by some other countries,” would not use an “inexperienced semi-intelligent boy” like Matseiko.[559] According to Hankevych, it was only because Matseiko was hungry and did not have anywhere to go, that he told Myhal’ that he had killed Pieracki. Matseiko knew that the OUN would help him if he claimed that he had killed the Polish minister.[560]

When it came to Lebed’, Hankevych stated that the reason his client stayed in Warsaw from 15 May to 15 June 1934 was his love for Hnatkivs’ka. “These young people walked through the city, did sightseeing, read.”[561] The fact that Hnatkivs’ka and Lebed’ gave a completely different account of the day on which Pieracki was assassinated, and which they spent together, Hankevych explained by saying that Lebed’ lied because he wanted to protect his lover.[562] The lawyer described Hnatkivs’ka as an innocent victim who had never belonged to the OUN and who was in the dock because she loved Lebed’, for which they were both paying the price, because love, according to him, was a “gypsy child [cygańskie dziecię].” Like Horbovyi, he then argued that the OUN did not kill Pieracki and that there was no evidence to prove that it did. He also argued that it was wrong to omit from the indictment the fact that “strong emotions caused by political motives … even caused psychosis” and motivated the defendants to commit the crime. Hankevych finished his speech with the words, “Your hearts, my lords, should caution you against a judicial mistake.”[563]

When the defense lawyers had finished their speeches, the chairman offered the defendants an opportunity to say their last words. Of the two defendants who decided to speak Polish at the trial, only Myhal’ accepted the offer and delivered a speech in which he explained why he had broken down after killing Bachyns’kyi. He began his speech with the date of 1 November 1919, on which his schoolteacher asked her pupils never to forget this date, the anniversary of the establishment of the ZUNR, and to swear always to love their homeland. Myhal’ said that he had always remained faithful to this oath. But something changed in him, when he realized that Bachyns’kyi was not a police informer as the OUN had told him. He had had a dream in which he saw himself as a pupil writing the text of the oath on 1 November 1919, and close to him were Bachyns’kyi’s body and Babii’s crying children.[564]

On 13 January 1936, the chairman announced the verdict. All the defendants were found guilty of belonging to the OUN and of either co-organizing the assassination or of helping the assassin escape. Bandera, Lebed’, and Karpynets’ were sentenced to death. However, because of the resolution adopted by the Polish parliament on 2 January 1936 to abolish capital punishment, their sentences were reduced to life imprisonment. They were also disenfranchised and deprived of some other civil rights. Klymyshyn and Pidhainyi were given life imprisonment and were disenfranchised for the rest of their lives. Hnatkivs’ka received fifteen years’ imprisonment and was disenfranchised for ten years. Maliutsa, Myhal’, and Kachmars’kyi were given twelve years’ imprisonment and were disenfranchised for ten years. Zaryts’ka was given eight years’ imprisonment and was disenfranchised for ten years. Rak and Chornii were given seven years’ imprisonment and were disenfranchised for ten years.[565]

After the chairman finished reading the verdict, Bandera and Lebed’ stood up, raised their right arms slightly to the right, just above their heads—as they had learned from Italian and other fascists—and called out “Slava Ukraїni!” For this gesture, which interrupted the final moments of the proceedings, both young men were removed from the courtroom.[566]

The trial had a political character but it was not a show trial. The defendants tried to use the trial as a political stage to promote the idea of their “liberation struggle” and to draw international attention to the situation of Ukrainians in Poland. These attempts were rigorously restricted by the judges and the prosecutors, who used the trial to show the destructive, harmful, and terrorist nature of the OUN. They allowed those OUN members who wanted to testify about the OUN crimes to speak at length and prevented those who attempted to defend the organization or legitimize its aims. Pieracki’s assassin Hryhorii Matseiko was not sentenced because he was not apprehended. Instead a number of leading OUN members involved in the assassination were punished harshly. The three death sentences in particular appeared to fulfill a political function. The Polish authorities and judicial system used the trial to smash the leadership of the OUN in Poland and to demonstrate that it would not tolerate and would harshly punish any activities directed against the state.

Membership of the OUN was a crime in the Second Republic, a violation of articles 93 and 97 of the Criminal Code. Gazeta Polska wrote that belonging to the OUN was a crime because the OUN aimed to split away “Eastern Little Poland [Małopolska Wschodnia], Volhynia, the Chełm region, Polesia—all these territories, we have to stress having for ages been inseparably tied to the Polish Republic and inhabited by a mixed population, Polish and Ruthenian, both brought up by the Polish culture and civilization and both always attracted to Polishness.”[567]

In addition to the judgment delivered orally in court, there were also “Grounds of Judgment,” which were subsequently delivered in writing. The judges wrote that “emotions did not influence the defendants because they planned the murder for a longer time and prepared and conducted the murder with malice afterthought.”[568] Bandera figured in the grounds of the judgment as the “spirit of the conspiracy.”[569] He was an “eminent member of the OUN” who received the order from the leadership in exile to kill Pieracki, and on whose order Matseiko had done so.[570] In an article entitled “The Spirit and Notion of a Criminal Act: Stepan Bandera,” which appeared in Ilustrowany Kurier Codzienny after Żeleński’s final speech, Bandera was portrayed in a similar spirit.[571] Dziennik Polski introduced Bandera in the article “The List of Bandera’s Crimes” as the embodiment of the OUN and its crimes.[572]

In the article “After the Trial … Ruthenian Society Should Abandon the Politics of Hate and Crimes,” the newspaper Ilustrowany Kuryer Codzienny blamed Ukrainian society alone for the existence and terrorist activities of the OUN. While explaining the question of Ukrainians in Poland it explicitly ignored how Polish politics and the European state of affairs contributed to the radicalization of the Ukrainian nationalism:

The longstanding tactics of the so-called “moderate” parts of Ruthenian society proved to be disastrous. Ostensibly they condemned the OUN but simultaneously they praised the “heroic patriotism” of its members, for whom everything was forgiven, as for “gallant although confused young people.” The Greek Catholic clergy conducted services for the terrorists who were executed as a result of legal judgments, their portraits appeared in Ruthenian papers and the legal press of the Ukrainian parties, such as the legal political groups who maintained a discreet silence about the OUN but daily attacked the Polish authorities that liquidated the OUN. Ukrainian educators have an enormous guilt on their conscience.[573]

Novyi chas announced the verdict on the front page with an oversized headline: “Two Death Penalties, Three Life Imprisonments, and 198 Years of Imprisonment in the Trial of the OUN.” The way of presenting the verdict implied a collective punishment and must have struck readers even more than the misstatement of the number of death penalties.[574] Dilo stated in the article “Consequences of the Verdict” that, despite the attempts of the court and the prosecutors not to make the trial a political one, it was political and would have political implications. The newspaper equated the OUN with Ukrainian society and stressed that the trial was not only against the OUN but against the whole Ukrainian nation: “[In terms of] the fate of the twelve young Ukrainian men and women, there is no division into the ‘mass’ and the ‘we.’ The mass and we are, in this case, one and the same: the same nation, the same grief for the fate of the Ukrainian youth, the same understanding of the tragedy. The mass and we experienced the verdict on Monday in a similar—or to be more precise—the same way.”[575] Furthermore, Dilo commented on the pointed article “After the Trial …” in Ilustrowany Kuryer Codzienny. It wrote that the lords (pany) from the Ilustrowany Kuryer Codzienny deliberately called Ukrainians “Ruthenians” in order to insult them, as had happened in the “good old days” when Ruthenians were classified as subhuman.[576]

The Biuletyn Polsko-Ukraiński was glad that the trial had finally ended after eight weeks, and it hoped that “with the last words in the courtroom, the period marked by blood has ended, and that it has hopefully made it possible to open a period without bloodshed.” It also pointed out that both societies needed reforms that would be an alternative to gunshots and verdicts.[577]

The brothers and Polish intellectuals Mieczysław and Ksawery Pruszyński published articles about the trial and Polish-Ukrainian relations, in which they romanticized the OUN. Both articles appeared in Wiadomości Literackie. Mieczysław began his article with the observation that about five million Ukrainians lived in the Polish state and that “Polish racists denied [them] even … the name.”[578] He wrote that there was an analogy between the Polish nation before 1914 and the Ukrainian one after 1914. He also criticized Polish attempts to Polonize the Ukrainians, claiming that this turned the Ukrainian population into an uneducated and a poor one. He compared Polish-Ukrainian relations with British-Irish and Spanish-Catalonian relations, and he pleaded in favor of a Ukrainian autonomy in the Polish state. This would benefit not only Ukrainians but also Poles. It would guarantee Ukrainians their own institutions and equal status. It would strengthen the moderate political Ukrainian parties and those organizations not hostile to Poles. It would weaken the radical, fanatical, and terrorist groups that were hostile to everyone else.[579]

Ksawery’s article “People and Crime” was written more literally but presented similar opinions. He emphasized that because of the trial:

Everybody in Poland knows which one of the girls was not only a member of the conspiracy but who was also the fiancée of a member whom she visited and dated. We hear the testimonies of their fathers and aunts. We know how they spent their childhood and school days, we know against whom they were fighting and whom they loved, where they lived, how much money they had. We know more about them than about dozens of our friends. We speak about them as people we know on the streetcar, at the theatre, and at home. It is really difficult to believe that these people, whom we saw, had killed. These people killed because they wanted to serve their nation. We do not think that they served well. They are doing it well only now: three quarters of the Polish press, which for seventeen years did not want to know the word “Ukrainian,” learned it in the two weeks [of the trial].[580]

Mieczysław and Ksawery Pruszyński correctly criticized Polish nationalist politics toward Ukrainians in the Second Republic and made a few good suggestions for improvement, but they miscalculated the violent and destructive nature of the OUN while romanticizing this fascist movement. Ksawery pointed out the OUN nationalists’ hatred toward the Polish language and state, but he did not comment on the crimes they had committed and the violent and ultranationalist ideology they believed in: “Now these people [defendants and witnesses], although they know Polish, do not want to speak Polish. Their hatred for the Polish state, the minister, and the policeman has extended to the Polish language.”[581]

Because all the defendants appealed the verdict, appeal proceedings took place between 28 and 30 April 1936. Bandera’s appeal stated that the motivation for his acts was the desire to establish a Ukrainian state and that, “according to the ethics of the grouping which Bandera represents, belonging to the OUN is an act that is free of all criminal features.”[582] When the chairman asked Bandera whether he pleaded guilty and wanted to give an explanation, Bandera began to answer in Ukrainian. The chairman interrupted him and said that Bandera did not want to avail himself of the right to give explanations.[583] As a result of the appeal, Chornii’s sentence was reduced from seven years to four, Zaryts’ka’s from eight to two, and Rak’s from seven to four. Chornii was acquitted of the charge of belonging to the OUN. The other sentences remained unchanged.[584] Horbovyi, the defending lawyer, submitted to the court a request to allow Lebed’ and Hnatkivs’ka to be married in the prison church.[585] Klymyshyn wrote in his memoirs that, toward the end of the proceedings when the defendants were allowed to have their last say, Bandera shouted: “Iron and blood will decide between us,” and all defendants called “Slava Ukraїni!”[586]