The graves of OUN activists and German soldiers were to be decorated with flowers. When passing the graves, people were expected to raise their right arm in order to honor the dead heroes with the fascist salute.[1033]

The OUN-B instructions were taken seriously and carried out in numerous localities. For example, in the village of Perevoloka, after conducting a pogrom, OUN-B activists organized an event at which they forced “Soviet activists” to burn Soviet books and portraits of Soviet leaders. They also prepared a blacklist, as “Struggle and Activities”—written by Bandera and other OUN-B leaders—instructed them, and they killed about twenty-five people who were on the list.[1034] Regional leader Levko Zakhidnyi forbade greeting Jews and shaking hands with them.[1035] OUN-B member Stepan Mechnyk noticed that, during the OUN-B revolution, Ukrainians erected mounds for soldiers, with the inscription “Fallen for the Freedom of Ukraine,” priests conducted memorial services at these mounds, and OUN-B revolutionaries delivered patriotic speeches.[1036]

Some patriotic teachers also agreed with the OUN-B agenda. A group of them addressed a leaflet to their colleagues with the statement:

We were forced to poison children’s minds with Jewish internationalism, love for everything Russian, and contempt for our own country, language, literature, and culture. … Yet we, the great army of Ukrainian culture, did not even for a minute forget, even in the terrible bondage of serfish Bolshevism, that we are the heirs to Cossack glory, that we are the most resilient people, whose name is the Ukrainians. Even during the fiercest torture imposed on us by the invaders from the Russian-Bolshevik Empire, and the Jews, that Judas tribe the whole world curses, we preserved the purity and transparency of our language, the melodiousness of our famous Ukrainian songs. … Let us welcome the German army, the most civilized army in the world, which is expelling the Jewish Communist swine from our land. Let us help the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists under the leadership of Stepan Bandera build a great Independent Ukrainian State.[1037]

During the first weeks after the German attack on the Soviet Union, the conduct of Metropolitan Sheptyts’kyi was ambiguous, just as it was in the last part of the war. At the beginning, the head of the Greek Catholic Church was enthusiastic about the “Ukrainian National Revolution” and in particular the attempts of the OUN-B to found a Ukrainian state. For this reason, as already indicated, he supported the OUN-B state in a pastoral letter, but not OUN-B policies toward ethnic minorities.[1038] On 1 June 1941, however, when Rabbi Jecheskiel Lewin asked Sheptyts’kyi to appease the pogromists, Sheptyts’kyi offered shelter to Lewin and his family but did not intervene.[1039] The Holocaust survivor Edmund Kessler wrote in his diary, which he kept from 1942 to 1944, about Sheptyts’kyi during the pogrom: “The Ukrainian archbishop preaches a sermon in which, instead of calming the excited mood and taming their barbarous instincts, he demagogically incites the mobs, and in the name of their sacred religion, calling upon the population to retaliate against the Jews for their supposed bestial murder of political prisoners, even though these prisoners included some Jews too.”[1040] According to the OUN-B, Sheptyts’kyi ordered all Greek Catholic priests to decorate their churches with German flags and to obey the German and the new Ukrainian authorities.[1041] He was concerned about the conflict within the OUN and, for this reason, advised Mel’nyk to become reconciled with Bandera and Stets’ko.[1042] Sheptyts’kyi criticized the OUN for the greeting “Glory to the Heroes!”—”Glory to Ukraine!” because it replaced the religious greeting “Glory to Jesus Christ!”[1043] In the aftermath of the “Ukrainian National Revolution,” he was, according to the agency of the Polish government-in-exile, disappointed by the OUN-B and called its members “unserious people” and “snot-nosed kids [smarkachi].”[1044] The Metropolitan rescued and helped to rescue more than a hundred Jews during the Holocaust, hiding them in Greek-Catholic monasteries, churches, and also his residence.[1045] People who were rescued by Sheptyts’kyi remembered him as a very kind and noble man.[1046]

The behavior of Greek Catholic priests varied during the revolution. For example, the priest Gavdunyk from Nezvys’ko (Niezwiska) was one of the main organizers of a pogrom on 2 and 3 July 1941, in which Jews from several adjacent villages were killed.[1047] A priest in Luka, close to Nezvys’ko, agreed to help a Jewish couple on condition that they would agree to be christened.[1048] The priest in Bolekhiv (Bolechów), according to the survivor Matylda Gelerntner, said at a meeting that “Jews are a damned nation, of damned origin, a harmful element, and thus they should be destroyed.”[1049] In her testimony, Ellen Pressler, another survivor of Bolekhiv, mentioned priests who incited peasants to violence. However, she also remembered a priest who invited the local nationalist leaders to a meeting and tried to convince them to stop the anti-Jewish violence. Because they did not listen to him and continued the pogrom, he removed the Ukrainian flag from his church.[1050] In a sermon in Koropets’ shortly after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Greek Catholic priest Skorokhid condemned the murder and imprisonment of Poles by Ukrainian militiamen. When the service ended, militiamen were waiting for him in front of the church. After a short talk, Skorokhid took the first train and left Koropets’. In his place came another priest who equated Poles with Russians in his sermons and called both peoples the “enemies of the Ukrainian nation.”[1051]

The report of a OUN-B task force—Iaroslav Stets’ko, Lev Rebet, Iaroslav Starukh, and others—written on 29 July 1941, shows how a particular group of OUN-B activists acted during the “Ukrainian National Revolution” in the town of Iavoriv.[1052] Other documents such as the testimonies from Jewish survivors held in the AŻIH allow us to look at the events in Iavoriv in a broader context.[1053]

In Iavoriv during the two-week occupation in September 1939, Ukrainian militiamen with yellow-and-blue armlets assisted the German troops, who, in a variety of ways, humiliated, tortured, beat, murdered, and otherwise mistreated the Jews, and destroyed the synagogue.[1054] This incident stuck in the minds of the Jews from this provincial town, located close to the German-Soviet border. As the German attack on the Soviet Union began, many Jews suspected what awaited them and decided to escape from the town. This possibly prevented the German troops who had entered Iavoriv on 25 June 1941, and the local OUN-B activists, from organizing a pogrom.[1055] In this sense, Iavoriv was an exception. In general, only a few Jews escaped from western Ukraine to Soviet territory before the coming of the Germans.[1056]

The local Ukrainian population of Iavoriv welcomed the German army with flowers.[1057] The task force arrived in Iavoriv on 28 June 1941 from Krakovets’, where it had established an administration and militia under the “leadership of Stepan Bandera.”[1058] After the Germans’ arrival in Iavoriv, an OUN-B activist first called a meeting of local OUN members and sympathizers, which elected “in the name of the OUN and the Providnyk Stepan Bandera,” the head of the militia and the heads of the regional and town administration. All of them had to swear an oath, as provided for in “Struggle and Activities.” They then went to the German commandant in the town, and bid welcome to him and the “great German army ... in the name of the OUN, the new administration, and the whole Ukrainian nation.” The German commandant authorized the town administration, but added one Pole. Although this irritated the OUN-B activists, they did not protest but decided to deal with the problem later.[1059]

At 4 p.m. on 28 June 1941, they organized a meeting of—as the report claims—all citizens of Iavoriv, at which they wanted to familiarize the local Ukrainians with the new authorities and ask them to swear an oath to Stepan Bandera, as “Struggle and Activities” prescribed. But at that moment, the news arrived that the Stepan Bandera battalion, that is the Nachtigall battalion, would soon march into the town. They therefore interrupted the preparations for the meeting and erected a triumphal arch with the inscription “Glory to Ukraine—Glory to Bandera” and waited for the battalion, with flowers in their hands. Because the battalion did not arrive, they started the gathering, for which they had meanwhile decorated a room in the town hall. According to the report, the room was filled with people and flowers. The new officials, who were elected by the OUN-B activists, delivered speeches, which were interrupted by applause. The OUN-B activists endorsed the elected officials in front of the gathered people, who began to venerate Stepan Bandera and Ukraine with loud shouts and sang the national anthem. Afterwards, they “put into motion the whole [administrative] apparatus to get the entire raion going.”[1060]

The OUN-B task forces proceeded in a similar fashion in many other locations. In some cases they not only organized a militia but also arranged a church service for the new authorities, or organized paramilitary youth organizations named after Stepan Bandera.[1061] The German army and Adolf Hitler were celebrated and venerated by the revolutionary masses in all revolutionary territories. General Karl von Roques observed on 30 June in Dobromyl (Dobromil):

About 4.00 p.m. I reached my accommodation in Dobromyl. Already on the way there, Ukrainian children threw flowers under our feet. In Dobromyl, a dressed-up crowd was waiting for me in front of our building. When the car stopped, a dozen Ukrainian women in colorful national dresses surrounded me. Everyone gave me a bouquet; in the state building, the mayor and a representative of the national Ukrainian movement delivered a longer speech (both in tolerably good German). I was celebrated as conqueror and liberator from the Bolshevik yoke. …

Pleasure and excitement was given highest expression the next day, during a meeting of all the inhabitants in front of the town hall. When I came back from a trip to the front, in the oilfields around Drohobych, in the evening shortly after 8 p.m., I saw the gathering. I got out and went to the balcony of the town hall where several officers were already assembled. The crowd of many thousands, dressed up, in the middle all the clergy in robes, next to them all the girls in their traditional costumes with the long pearl necklace encircled several times around their neck and shoulder were a very colorful picture. After several speeches I also had to deliver a speech. A translator translated every sentence into Ukrainian. Every time the name “Adolf Hitler” was mentioned the people became delirious and clapped. During all my trips in these days my car was showered with flowers in all localities.[1062]

In Olszanica, the local population welcomed the Germans as liberators and organized church services. Attracted by the religious chants, two German soldiers looked inside a church; the priest interrupted his sermon, expressed thanks in German to the two officers for the liberation, and began to pray in German together with the congregation, for Germany and its army.[1063]

In some places, representatives of villages came to the raion center to participate in the proclamation ceremony, as in the town of Radekhiv (Radziechów) in the Lviv oblast, where on 13 July 1941 the OUN-B organized a celebration in which 6,000 people took part. The celebration began with a church service, in which representatives of all villages in the Radekhiv raion allegedly participated. After the service, Stets’ko’s proclamation was reread in an administrative building. Participants in the meeting hoped that the militia that had already been established would soon grow into a Ukrainian army.[1064]

In Zhuravno (Żurawno) a group of thirty young people dressed in festive clothes carried the Ukrainian yellow-and-blue flag and shouted: “Death to the Jews and communists.” Later, after the Ukrainians took power and established a militia, “fanatical Ukrainians rounded up dozens of Jews, forced them all into some damp cellars and beat them with great cruelty.”[1065]

In Stanislaviv, which was liberated by Hungarian troops, the celebration took place on 12 July 1941. It began with a church service and was attended by representatives of the Hungarian authorities. From a podium, the engineer Semianchuk read the OUN-B proclamation, which the crowd frequently interrupted with shouts like “Glory to the Ukrainian State!” “Glory to Stepan Bandera!” “Glory to the OUN!” “Glory to Adolf Hitler!” “Glory to the Allied Hungarian Army!” Then everybody stood up and the orchestra played the national anthem. Afterwards, OUN activist Rybchuk informed the crowd that the OUN had completed the first stage of the fight against the “occupiers of Ukrainian territories,” who had “tortured [thousands of victims] to death in prisons and camps in the Solovetsky Islands after deportation.” The victims were honored with a moment of silence. Then the crowd was informed that “now the organization under the leadership of Stepan Bandera is in the second stage [of the fight], in which it will establish a Ukrainian state.”[1066]

The ceremony was also attended by Ukrainian militiamen in mazepynka caps who, shortly before the celebrations, were prevented by the Hungarian army from organizing a huge pogrom in Stanislaviv, although they did organize a small one. The OUN-B complained about this incident in its reports.[1067] In the hall of the Ivan Franko theatre in Stanislaviv, another ceremony took place. Professor Hamers’kyi announced in his speech to the audience:

We live now in important historical days. The German army under the leadership of Adolf Hitler creates a new hope for the world and helps us to build a Ukrainian state that will collaborate with National-Socialist Great Germany. The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which, under the leadership of Ievhen Konovalets’, its deceased founder and leader, and Stepan Bandera, its current leader, is waging a heroic battle against the horrible oppression of the Ukrainian nation and is emerging from underground to create Ukrainian independence.[1068]

In Rivne on 27 July 1941, 10,000 people attended a “Celebration of Ukrainian Independence” in the square of the old castle. The main attraction of the celebration was the First Battalion (kurin’) of the “Ukrainian Army.” Many OUN groups arrived with banners that displayed slogans such as “Long Live Our Vozhd’ Bandera” and “We Struggle for the State of Volodymyr the Great.” While the local OUN leaders were delivering speeches, the crowd performed the fascist salute, calling once “Glory to the Heroes!” and responding three times “Glory to Ukraine!” At other times, the crowd shouted “Long Live Stepan Bandera!” “Long Live Stets’ko’s Government!” and “Long Live Adolf Hitler!” Finally, after the speeches, the First Battalion swore an oath, and the numerous flags, among them the red-and-black flag of the battalion, which was also the OUN-B flag, and one with the inscription “Freedom for Ukraine or Death,” were blessed.[1069]

As well as organizing and performing nationalist celebrations, and exercising ethnic and political violence, the OUN-B released a few newspapers, which praised the revolution and the leaders of the revolution. The newspaper Samostiina Ukraїna, in Stanyslaviv oblast, printed OUN-B propaganda from 7 July 1941 onward. On 10 July, it reprinted the text of the proclamation on the front page, with a photograph of the protagonist of this event, Iaroslav Stets’ko (Fig. 21). On 24 July, Ukraїns’ke slovo printed a photograph of the Providnyk Stepan Bandera, together with articles about the “Ukrainian-German-Hungarian war” against the “NKVD and its villains who tortured the Ukrainian nation” (Fig. 22).[1070]

Letters and Leaders

Because Bandera and Stets’ko had been arrested by the Germans and were not with the revolutionary masses during the “Ukrainian National Revolution,” the OUN-B tried to have them released, and permitted to return to Ukraine. For this purpose, OUN-B activists began to collect “plenipotentiary letters” that they wanted to send to Hitler. The “plenipotentiary letters” were often signed by numerous Ukrainians at the local proclamation ceremonies. For this reason, the content of the standardized text from the “Struggle and Activities” was modified. Here is an example of one of these standard documents:

We, citizens of the village Rudnyky, were called to a ceremonial assembly at which the Independent Ukrainian State was proclaimed. We listened to the text of the proclamation act with inexpressible pleasure: We are proud to have such a leader [providnyk] of the OUN and of the whole Ukrainian Nation as STEPAN BANDERA. We are very grateful to the invincible Allied German Army and to its leader [vozhd’] Adolf Hitler, who helps to liberate the Ukrainian people from Jewish-Muscovite slavery [z-pid zhydivs’ko-moskovs’koï nevoli].

Long live Great National Socialist Germany and its leader Adolf Hitler.

Long live the Independent Ukrainian United State.

Long live the leader of the OUN and of the whole Ukrainian Nation STEPAN BANDERA.[1071]

Some of the letters began with the heading “declaration” (zaiava),[1072] others with “resolution” (rezoliutsiia),[1073] and still others were addressed directly, without any