In April 1942, the Second Conference of the OUN-B took place. At this time, the leaders of the OUN-B considered that the Germans would win the war in the East against the Soviet Union but lose against the Allies in the West. In these circumstances they hoped that the Nazis might change their minds and establish a Ukrainian state with Bandera and Stets’ko as its leaders. Officially however, they wanted to distance themselves from the Germans, so as not to jeopardize relations with the Allies.[1227] The leadership of the OUN-B declared that it did not intend to “take part in anti-Jewish actions, in order to avoid becoming a blind tool in alien hands.” Yet, in the same resolution, the OUN-B stated that it regarded “Jews as a tool of Russian Bolshevik imperialism,” which means that it had not changed its attitude toward them.[1228] Other OUN-B documents from 1942 also confirm that the OUN-B did not revise its attitude toward the Jews, and that it took the “Jewish Bolshevism” stereotype for reality. One OUN-B leaflet stated “We do not want to work for Moscow, for the Jews, the Germans, or other strangers, but for ourselves.”[1229]
In 1942 the Nazis regarded the OUN-B as a “predominantly anti-German, illegal organization.”[1230] In leaflets distributed in Poltava in the same year, the OUN-B declared its intention to establish a Ukrainian army that would fight against the Wehrmacht.[1231] In the Horokhiv region in Volhynia in September 1942, the Germans found a slip of paper attached to a barn, calling on Ukrainians to free themselves from the Germans. The slip was signed in Stepan Bandera’s name.[1232]
Although in 1941 and 1942, the Gestapo arrested a number of leading OUN-B members in Ukraine and in Germany, several of whom were sent to concentration camps, these measures did not destroy the organization or even substantially affect it.[1233] The OUN-B quickly recovered, and more members were recruited for the underground. Bandera, as the legendary Providnyk of the movement, did not disappear from the universe of OUN-B activists after the Germans took him to Berlin in early July 1941. For example, the recruitment of new OUN-B members included an oath on Stepan Bandera, Christ, Christ’s wounds, wounds of the heroes of the OUN, and a range of historical Ukrainian heroes like Khmel’nyts’kyi. The oath had to be performed under portraits of Bandera and Konovalets’ on each side of a trident, and under yellow-and-blue, and red-and-black flags.[1234]
Preparing in 1942 for the first anniversary of the proclamation of 30 June 1941, the OUN-B stressed that it wanted to “tie the Nation much more strongly to the Organization and to Providnyk Stepan Bandera.” For this purpose, OUN-B activists delivered speeches and organized church services.[1235] Portraits of Bandera and Stets’ko appeared on the first page of the OUN-B Biuleten’ from June–July 1942.[1236] In April 1942, the Germans arrested a group of OUN-B members. The Nazis characterized them as young people without occupation, who spread nationalistic propaganda among peasants and frequently carried “holy medallions and chauvinistic prayers” and “banners with the inscription ‘Heil Hitler!’”[1237]
The decision of the OUN-B to found an army was taken at a conference in November 1942 and a meeting in December 1942. The first units of the army were formed in February 1943 in Volhynia, where the OUN-B was headed by Dmytro Kliachkivs’kyi (Klym Savur). In the first instance, the OUN-B called its army the Ukrainian Liberation Army (Ukraїns’ke Vyzvol’ne Viis’ko, UVV) but after April-May 1943 the name “Ukrainian Insurgent Army” (Ukraїns’ka Povstans’ka Armiia, UPA) became prevalent. This name was previously used by an army headed by Taras Bul’ba-Borovets’, who had never recognized the OUN-B proclamation of a state on 30 June 1941. After the OUN-B took over the name of the original UPA, Bul’ba-Borovets’ renamed his army as the Ukrainian People’s Revolutionary Army (Ukraїns’ka Narodno-Revoliutsiina Armiia, UNRA). At the same time, the OUN-B terrorized Bul’ba-Borovets’ and his troops, killing his wife and several of his closest officers. Bul’ba-Borovets’ proposed collaboration with the Germans but was arrested by them on 1 December 1943 in Warsaw and sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp for political prisoners.[1238]
Between 19 March and 14 April 1943 alone, about 5,000 out of a total of 12,000 Ukrainian policemen in Volhynia deserted the police force and joined the UPA at the behest of the OUN-B.[1239] Other Ukrainians who joined the UPA, with experience in the mass killing of civilians, were soldiers from Schutzmannschaft battalion 201, which was disbanded on 31 December 1942. This battalion had been formed from the Nachtigall and Roland battalions in late 1941 and was sent to Belarus in 1942 to combat partisans. The majority of the people killed in Belarus by this and other Schutzmannschaft battalions were not partisans but civilians.[1240] Some individuals from this battalion, such as Roman Shukhevych and Vasyl’ Sydor, occupied leading positions in the UPA. After the disbandment of the battalion, a significant number of its members also joined the Waffen-SS Galizien division.[1241] An unknown number of Ukrainians deserted from the Waffen-SS Galizien division and joined the UPA. Some of them deserted before the division was defeated by the Red Army near Brody in July 1944; some, after the defeat.[1242] Ivan Katchanovski estimated that 46 percent of the OUN and UPA leaders had served in the local Ukrainian police, in Schutzmannschaft battalion 201, or in the Waffen-SS Galizien division, or had been recruited in German-sponsored military or intelligence schools.[1243]
The UPA partisans were recruited by OUN-B revolutionaries. Like the OUN-B, they used the greeting “Glory to Ukraine!”—“Glory to the Heroes!” but they abandoned the fascist raising of the arm “slightly to the right, slightly above the peak of the head.” They received a thorough ideological education, which was “steeped in the spirit of fanaticism,” as the UPA partisan Danylo Shumuk remembered. In their ideology lessons, they learned by heart the “Decalogue of a Ukrainian Nationalist,” “The Forty-Four Rules of Life of a Ukrainian Nationalist,” and hymns like “O Lord, Almighty and Only” (Bozhe Velykyi Iedynyi), and other ideological and religious pieces. They were not allowed to discuss anything and were expected to accept everything that the OUN-B ideologists taught them. Shumuk noticed that this kind of ideological-religious education enabled the UPA insurgents to reconcile the mass murders with their own consciences. They were taught to believe that they could commit mass murders against other ethnic groups, because these groups had harmed “Ukrainians” in the past.[1244] In 1944 the UPA counted between 25,000 and 30,000 partisans, who were grouped in more than 100 battalions. It could mobilize up to 100,000 people. After late 1944 and early 1945 the number of partisans declined.[1245]
Like the OUN-B activists, the UPA leaders had serious difficulties in cooperating with eastern Ukrainians, for whom nationalist and racist ideology was strange. The UPA leaders frequently mistrusted eastern Ukrainians and did not regard them as “their people.” Shukhevych, according to the SB officer Ivan Pan’kiv, ordered eastern Ukrainians killed “on shaky grounds or without any grounds and even contemplated their total extermination, including even OUN and UPA members.”[1246]
The UPA was divided into UPA-West, UPA-South, and UPA-North. Most UPA partisans were no older than thirty, the majority were under twenty-five, and many were even younger than twenty. The leaders of the UPA, who were leading OUN-B members, were no older than forty. Kliachkivs’kyi, the first colonel of the UPA and the commanding officer of UPA-North, was thirty-two in 1943. His follower Lytvynchuk was twenty-eight in 1945, when he headed UPA-North. Shukhevych, who replaced Kliachkivs’kyi as commander-in-chief of the UPA in August 1943, was thirty-six. The UPA was policed by the Security Service (Sluzhba Bezpeky, SB) of the OUN-B, which used draconian measures, including murder and torture, to keep partisans from deserting or defecting. During one month from mid-September to mid-October 1943, the SB executed 110 persons, of whom sixty-eight were Ukrainians. In November 1943, it shot twenty-four deserters from a single company during the course of a day. Despite these harsh measures, many Ukrainians deserted from the UPA. On 8 November 1943 for example, a whole company defected to the Red Army.[1247] Some joined the UPA, not for patriotic or ideological reasons, but to avoid forced labor in Germany, or because they were policemen and feared Soviet retribution, or because their friends were in the UPA, or for other reasons.[1248] Women in the UPA played an important role as nurses or SB agents.[1249]
Between 17 and 21 February 1943, the OUN-B organized the Third OUN Conference. The leadership of the OUN-B thought that Germany would lose the war, and that Ukrainians would have to struggle for independence against the Soviet and Polish armies. Germans were not an essential enemy of the OUN-B or the UPA, because they fought the Soviet Union and might eventually withdraw from Ukraine. However, for the sake of eventual cooperation with the Allies, the leadership of the OUN-B emphasized that it was struggling against two imperialisms: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.[1250] For the same reason, the OUN-B decided to break away from fascism and to “democratize” itself, but the term “democracy” still had a very negative meaning among the OUN-B and UPA leaders. As at the First Great Assembly in April 1941, the OUN-B also wanted to mobilize other European “enslaved nations” in order to cooperate with them in the struggle against the Soviet Union. The OUN-B condemned all Ukrainians who would collaborate with the Nazis or Soviet authorities. In so doing, the OUN-B and UPA leaders condemned 80 percent of all Ukrainians, as eastern Ukrainians were frequently loyal to the Soviet Union and regarded the UPA as an alien and enemy-like army. The OUN-B preserved the idea of the “Ukrainian National Revolution” of 1941 but it abandoned the right-arm fascist salute.[1251] In May 1943, the OUN-B theoretically abandoned the Führerprinzip and established a triumvirate of Zinovii Matla, Dmytro Maїvs’kyi, and Roman Shukhevych. In reality, the triumvirate was dominated by Shukhevych and did not essentially deviate from the Führerprinzip.[1252]
Between 21 and 25 August 1943, the OUN-B organized the Third Extraordinary Great Assembly. The participants decided to give Bandera the opportunity to become the leader of the OUN whenever he would be able to resume the position.[1253] In official documents, the OUN-B was now manifesting even more hostility against “German Hitlerism and Muscovite Bolshevism”[1254] and “international and fascist-national-socialist concepts,”[1255] than it had at the Third Conference in February. It stated that it did not want to live in the “New Europe” for which it had yearned in 1941,[1256] but it based its political concepts on Mikhnovs’kyi and his racist Ukrainian nationalism.[1257] With the concept of “Freedom for the Nations and the Person” the OUN-B wanted to break up the Soviet Union into several states. This slogan became the main concept of the Conference of Enslaved Nations of Eastern Europe and Asia, which took place on 21–22 November 1943 near Zhytomyr. The conference, attended by thirty-nine delegates from thirteen countries, was allegedly organized in cooperation with Rosenberg. The conference must have been a disaster for the OUN-B, as they destroyed the minutes and afterwards killed several of its delegates.[1258]
In official documents released after the Third Extraordinary Great Assembly, the OUN-B guaranteed the “equality of all citizens of Ukraine” and the rights of minorities, at least those that were “aware of a common fate with the Ukrainian nation” and would “fight together with it for a Ukrainian state.”[1259] The reason for these statements and considerations was the desire to collaborate with the Allies and to win over the eastern Ukrainians. At this time, the OUN-B was sure that Britain and the United States, both democratic states, would win the war and could help the OUN-B in the fight against the Soviet Union. The OUN-B sent its representatives to Sweden, Italy, and Switzerland, to make contact with the Allies. It also began negotiations with the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK). It hoped that the AK, which was in contact with the Polish government in London, would help it to contact the Allies. The AK, however, was reluctant to agree to the OUN-B’s request, because of the ethnic cleansing conducted by the UPA against the Polish population at this time.[1260] In July 1944, for the sake of a “democratic” image and eventual cooperation with Britain and the United States, the OUN and UPA established the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (Ukraїns’ka Holovna Vyzvol’na Rada, UHVR).[1261]
The UPA and Mass Violence against Poles
At the same time as the OUN-B leadership was discussing how to “democratize” or renew itself and to guarantee rights to national minorities, the UPA in Volhynia under the leadership of Kliachkivs’kyi was conducting an ethnic cleansing, in which they murdered several dozen to several hundred Poles a day. The OUN-B and UPA leadership knew about this ethnic cleansing from the outset. It discussed it and approved it at the Third Extraordinary Great Assembly, which Kliachkivs’kyi attended. From participants, we know that this decision was deliberately not recorded in the official documents.[1262] The first systematic mass murders of Poles began in March 1943, when the Ukrainian policemen joined the UPA, but the OUN-B had already killed several hundred Poles in January and February 1943. During these first experimental mass killings, the OUN-B realized that the Poles would not leave the “Ukrainian territories” as the OUN-B demanded, and might try to resist the attacks. Therefore, the only way to remove them would be to annihilate them.[1263] According to reports of the Polish underground, one of the UPA leaders stated: “On 1 March 1943 we begin an armed uprising. It is a military operation, and as such it is directed against the occupier. The current occupier [the Germans] is however temporary and we should not lose strength fighting against them. When it comes to the Polish question, this is not a military but a minority question. We will solve it as Hitler solved the Jewish question. Unless [the Poles] remove themselves [from the ‘Ukrainian territories’].”[1264]
The Poles who lived in Volhynia and Galicia did not understand why they should leave their homes and did not know where they could go. With the exception of the military settlers who had come after the First World War, Poles had lived in Volhynia and eastern Galicia for centuries and considered it their homeland. Ukrainians were their immediate neighbors. After centuries-long coexistence, the cultural differences between Poles and Ukrainians, especially in the villages, had blurred and were not essential. In 1943 however, the Polish inhabitants of villages became the main target of the UPA, which barely existed in urban areas and was at home in the villages and forests. The annihilation of the Jews in Ukraine, in which the Ukrainian police were involved, had a significant influence on the OUN-B’s decision to annihilate the Poles, as it demonstrated that a relatively small number of people could annihilate an entire ethnic group in a relatively short period.[1265]
Officially, the OUN-B and UPA euphemized the mass murder of Poles as an “anti-Polish action” but in internal documents the term “cleansing” (chystka) was common.[1266] UPA orders even specified the date by which a particular territory had to be “cleansed” of Poles. These documents frequently ended with the greeting “Weapons ready—Death to Poles” (Zbroia na verkh—Smert’ poliakam).[1267] The OUN-B justified the “cleansing” by citing both proven and alleged collaboration of Poles with the German and Soviet authorities. Another excuse for the murder of Poles was the position of the Polish government in London, which considered Volhynia and Galicia as territories that would be included in the Polish state after the war. Furthermore, the OUN-B assumed that the Poles living in the “Ukrainian territories” were guilty of centuries-long suppression of Ukraine, and that this justified their death at the hands of the UPA and other Ukrainians. In July 1943, which was one of the most violent months of the ethnic cleansing, the OUN-B distributed a leaflet in which it blamed Poles for triggering the conflict and provoked the UPA to murder them.[1268] The OUN-B and UPA encouraged Ukrainians to take the land and property of Poles and offered them “ideology and protection from Polish revenge.”[1269]
In its propaganda, the OUN-B considered it important to depict the ethnic cleansing as an action provoked by Poles, and for which Poles were responsible. It also blamed Germany, the Soviet Union, and the war in general for the mass murder.[1270] However, in unofficial talks and documents, it referred to mass murder as “ethnic cleansing” and debated whether it was favorable for Ukraine or not. According to Stepaniak, he and Lebed’ argued at the Third Extraordinary Great Assembly that the “UPA compromised itself with its bandit deeds against the Polish population,” just as the OUN-B had compromised itself through collaboration with the Germans. During an NKVD interrogation, Stepaniak stated that the majority of the OUN-B leaders were against his and Lebed’s alleged position.[1271] Yet it is not clear whether Lebed’ and Stepaniak indeed opposed the terror of the UPA at the Third Extraordinary Great Assembly, or if Stepaniak only stated this under interrogation, in order not to incriminate himself. Another OUN member, Oleksandr Luts’kyi, confirmed Stepaniak’s version of the events of the Third Extraordinary Great Assembly.[1272] In April 1943 however, according to Petro Balei, Lebed’ had already issued orders concerning the annihilation of Poles in Volhynia. This suggests that Lebed’ did not oppose the “cleansing,” at least in its first stage.[1273] After Shukhevych inspected Volhynia, the leadership of the OUN-B and UPA decided to conduct a similar ethnic cleansing the following year in eastern Galicia. The mass murder of Poles in eastern Galicia began in early 1944 and lasted until spring 1945. Although it was no less cruel than the murders in Volhynia, fewer Poles were killed in eastern Galicia.[1274]
Some OUN-B activists and UPA partisans did not agree with the policy of killing Poles, sometimes for personal reasons, but orders required them to carry it out.[1275] Not only did the UPA partisans and OUN-B activists personally kill Poles but they also involved the Ukrainian population in the killings. Many Ukrainians in Volhynia and eastern Galicia did not oppose this policy. The OUN-B and the UPA motivated Ukrainians with nationalist and racist slogans and promised them the land of the Polish peasants and an opportunity to enrich themselves. Many of the victims were killed with instruments like axes or pitchforks, which made the mass murders brutal and cruel.[1276] Probably because of the shortage of cartridges, the aggressors sometimes preferred to use axes or knives, even when they possessed firearms.[1277] Ordinary Ukrainians sometimes murdered their immediate Polish neighbors or were involved in their murder.[1278]
The OUN-B and UPA were prepared to murder all Poles who would not leave the “Ukrainian territories,” including women and children. They frequently returned on the second or third day after an attack and looked for survivors in order to slaughter them. The UPA regularly demanded that Ukrainians in mixed marriages kill their spouses and children.[1279] Poles had lived in Volhynia and eastern Galicia for decades and centuries, and were often bilingual. The UPA partisans frequently could not identify Poles by language. If they could not learn from local Ukrainians who was Polish, they asked the suspect to pray in Ukrainian.[1280] The idea of annihilating the “non-Ukrainian” partner in a mixed marriage goes back to the racist roots of OUN-B ideology. In “The Nation as a Species,” an undated brochure published perhaps in 1944, the OUN came to the conclusion that a mixed marriage was a crime that should be punished: “The Ukrainian nation is against mixed marriage and regards it as a crime. … The substance of our families must be Ukrainian (father, mother, and children). The family is the most important organic unity, the highest cell of the national collective, and thus we have to keep it purely Ukrainian.”[1281]
Elsewhere in the brochure, we read that all nations are races and that the Ukrainian nation is a unique race, the purity of which should be protected by law, because it is natural for every nation to protect itself against weaker races. To substantiate its racist arguments, the authors of the brochure referred to the Ukrainian geographer Rudnyts’kyi:
Professor Dr. St. Rudnyts’kyi, in his book On the Basis of Ukrainian Nationalism writes that “mixed marriages with our neighboring peoples are disadvantageous,” as they lead to the denationalization of many and the degeneration of others. … Our neighbors played a very sad role in mixed marriages because they are much weaker physically, culturally, and racially, which impacts us in a negative way. … The reflex against mixed marriages is natural, as it rises out of the instinct of self-preservation and growth of the Nation. It is typical for all national societies. Nations in the process of expansion strictly adhere to this law. For instance, in Germany racial laws determine the destiny of the people and of the individual throughout his entire life. (The same is true for Italians and others.)[1282]
The UPA was the army that the OUN-B leaders expected to “cleanse” the Ukrainian race. Perhaps as a result of this conviction, acts of pathological sadism occurred frequently. In May 1943 in the village Kolonia Grada, for example, UPA partisans killed two families who could not escape as all the others had, after they realized that the UPA was attacking the neighboring village of Kolonia Łamane. The partisans killed all the members of these two families, cut open the belly of a pregnant woman, took the fetus and her innards from her, and hung them on a bush, probably to leave a message for other Poles who had escaped the attack and might come back to the village.[1283] Some of these murders were conducted under the leadership of Hryhorii Perehiniak, who before the war was imprisoned in Święty Krzyż in the same cell as Bandera and other OUN activists. Bandera taught Perehiniak history and ideology and stayed on good terms with him, not least because they came from neighboring villages.[1284]
For the purpose of killing Poles, some UPA units used methods similar to those used by the Germans to annihilate Jews in Ukraine. This knowledge was based on the experience of OUN-B activists in the Ukrainian police. The UPA partisans would sometimes give candy to Polish children and be very polite to the population generally, in order to calm them. They would ask the Poles to go to a meeting, and then they would either take small groups from the meeting and shoot them, or they would burn the entire Polish population of a village, in a barn or other building. They would attack on Sundays, when the Polish villagers were gathered for a service in church, and would either throw grenades into the church, burn it down, or enter and murder everyone inside. They would dig a large grave, take groups of Poles to it, and either shoot the Poles or murder them with sharp implements, either beside the grave or in it. When the grave was full of corpses, they would cover it with earth, almost exactly as the Einsatzkommandos had done with the Jews. After murdering the population in one place, these UPA units could move quickly from one locality to another, in order to surprise the population and prevent it from escaping. The UPA partisans could also attack several villages on the same day, as happened on 11 July 1943 for example, when the UPA attacked ninety-six localities. In July 1943, one of the bloodiest months of the “cleansing,” the UPA attacked 520 localities and killed between 10,000 and 11,000 Poles.[1285] On 11 and 12 July 1943, the UPA murdered about 4,330 Poles.[1286] Ivan Vasiuk, a nineteen-year-old UPA member captured by the Soviet police, stated that his company exterminated 1,500 Poles in three villages in 1943. He himself killed nineteen persons, including eight men, six women, and five children.[1287] In addition to the ethnic cleansing of Poles in 1943–1944, the OUN-UPA also annihilated an unknown number of Ukrainians who were Roman Catholics, or had close relationships with Poles, or did not support the ethnic cleansing, or for other reasons.[1288]
In July 1943, the AK reported that Ukrainian peasants were saying that, after the Jews, “the Poles are next in line.” That month the AK noticed that the slogan “Death to the Poles” (Smert’ liakham) became so popular among Ukrainians in Lviv, that it was even used as an everyday greeting. In July 1943, the AK in Stanislaviv observed that Ukrainians used the greeting “Death to the Poles” while answering “Glory to Ukraine.”[1289] Janina Kwiatkowska was travelling in January 1945 with two sisters from Ternopil’ to Chortkiv. They had to stay overnight in the provincial town of Terebovlia and did not want to remain at the railway station. In Ukrainian, which they spoke as fluently as Polish, they asked a Ukrainian woman to allow them to stay in her house. The woman took them for Ukrainians and agreed. When they asked her where her husband was, the woman answered carelessly, “He went to murder Polacks and will soon be back.” Kwiatkowska referred to the man as a Banderite in her testimony.[1290]
The mass murder carried out by the OUN-B astounded the Polish population in Volhynia. Poles in Volhynia—and later, even more so in eastern Galicia—tried to defend themselves against the murderous units of the UPA. The Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK) tried to help the Poles in Volhynia to defend themselves but because the number of UPA partisans and mobilized Ukrainians was much greater than that of the AK and other Poles, they met with limited success. The AK, which was connected with the Polish government in London, held the opinion that Poles should not leave the territories, and that the Polish state should retain the same eastern border after the Second World War. This geopolitical idea clashed totally with that of the OUN-UPA, which considered Volhynia and eastern Galicia to be Ukrainian territories and part of a future Ukrainian state. The AK frequently encouraged the Polish population not to leave when the UPA demanded that it leave immediately.[1291] Poles sought to escape from the UPA terror by moving to towns or villages with facilities for self-defense. Those who survived were repatriated to the territories of eastern Germany that became the western part of the People’s Republic of Poland (Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa, PRL), a state established on 22 June 1944 in Lublin and ruled by Communists. The Germans who lived in these territories were repatriated to the territory of contemporary Germany.[1292]
After some Ukrainian policemen deserted in March 1943, Poles joined the German police and later, when the Soviet army arrived, the local Soviet militia and the Soviet destruction battalions (istrebitel’nye batal’ony). In 1943, 5,000 to 7,000 Poles joined the Soviet partisans.[1293] Soviet partisans and Soviet soldiers in Volhynia and eastern Galicia appeared to the Poles to be allies, and indeed they sometimes prevented UPA attacks against Poles.[1294] Poles in German or Soviet battalions or in the AK, in particular those who had experienced the UPA terror or whose families were killed by the UPA, not only defended themselves but also sought revenge by murdering Ukrainian civilians.[1295] Poles in the AK, Peasants’ Battalions (Bataliony Chłopskie, BCh), Schutzmannschaft battalion 202, and other units committed numerous war crimes against the Ukrainian civilian population. In some villages, Pavlokoma, for example, they applied annihilation methods resembling those of the UPA in Volhynia and eastern Galicia.[1296]
During the period 1943–1945, the OUN and UPA, together with other mobilized Ukrainians, killed a total of between 70,000 and 100,000 Poles. Grzegorz Motyka, a specialist on this subject, estimated that the number might be closer to 100,000 than to 70,000. In different circumstances, Poles killed between 10,000 and 20,000 Ukrainians, of whom the majority were not killed in Volhynia and eastern Galicia, where the OUN and UPA conducted the ethnic cleansing, but in territories that were mainly inhabited by Poles and not Ukrainians, and now belong to Poland.[1297]
Some Orthodox and Greek Catholic priests supported the perpetrators. Orthodox priests blessed the axes, pitchforks, scythes, sickles, knives, and sticks, which Ukrainian perpetrators, among them peasants mobilized by the UPA or the OUN-B, used to slaughter Poles.[1298] On 15 August 1943 Sheptyts’kyi published a pastoral letter in which he condemned murder by “young people” with “good intentions.” He was not as much concerned about the victims as about the good name of the nation: “We have even been witnesses of terrible murders committed by our young people, perhaps even with good intentions, but with pernicious consequences for the nation.” In the same letter he also asked “fathers” to “warn your sons against crime” and to “remember that you will achieve nothing good through actions that are opposed to God’s law.”[1299] In November 1943, he released a pastoral letter signed by the entire Ukrainian episcopate. He again condemned murder in powerful words but spoke about “bands” and, as before, did not specify which murders he was condemning.[1300] Bolesław Twardowski, Roman Catholic archbishop of Lviv, asked Sheptyts’kyi to intervene in order to stop the murder of Roman Catholic priests. In a letter dated 15 November 1943, Sheptyts’kyi denied that the ethnic cleansing of Poles was happening, claiming that Roman Catholic priests were murdered, not for political reasons, but because they were rich: “In the complete chaos of the present moment, all the worst elements rise to the surface and run wild. Regarding murder statistics, I think that murders connected with robbery occupy a very important place—and Roman Catholic priests have in general a reputation of being rich people.”[1301] He further claimed that they were not murdered by the OUN-UPA but by “Bolshevik partisans, Jewish bands, and agitators of revolutionary Polish organizations from Warsaw, who even boast in their publications about murdering Poles.”[1302] In the first draft of his letter to Twardowski however, Sheptyts’kyi did not deny that Ukrainians were killing Poles but wrote: “The Ukrainian parties of Bandera and Mel’nyk deny responsibility for the murders; they steadfastly maintain that they have forbidden their members to kill Poles.” This suggests that he knew what the OUN and UPA were doing but decided to blame others for the actions of the Ukrainian nationalists.[1303]
The UPA and the Murdering of Jews
In addition to conducting the ethnic cleansing of the Polish population, the UPA, together with the OUN-B and especially the SB of the OUN-B, murdered Jews. The majority of the Jews killed in 1943 and 1944 by the Ukrainian nationalists had escaped from the ghettos in order to avoid the transports to Bełżec and other extermination camps. They hid in bunkers, or camps in the woods, or in peasant houses. Some of these Jews were killed as the UPA murdered Poles and destroyed their houses.[1304] The survivors of these attacks frequently described the perpetrators as “Banderites” and considered them to be Ukrainian nationalists. The OUN and UPA documents and other sources disclose that the “Banderites” were members of the SB of the OUN-B, OUN-B activists, UPA partisans, and sometimes Ukrainian peasants or bandits. The Ukrainian police were not usually described as Banderites, but as policemen, because of their uniforms.[1305] Antisemitism in the UPA was common and the UPA partisans, like the OUN activists, took the stereotype of “Jewish Bolshevism” for reality. The UPA partisan Fedir Vozniuk stated during an interrogation that UPA leaders in 1943 and 1944 issued orders to their members to kill Poles and Jews.[1306] According to a Polish witness, UPA partisans passing through Głęboczyce, Volhynia in 1943 sang: “We slaughtered the Jews, we will slaughter the Poles, old and young, every one; we will slaughter the Poles, we will build Ukraine.”[1307] Under the UPA terror, relations between Poles and Jews improved, and the two groups were sometimes allied against their common aggressor. For the same reason, Poles and Jews also allied themselves with Soviet partisans.[1308]
Mania Leider, who escaped from a train on its way to Bełżec and hid in a forest in Peremyshliany region, was protected by Polish and Jewish partisans.[1309] In July 1943, the UPA attacked the village of Medwedówka. The invaders killed fifty-seven Poles and four Jews.[1310] In the village of Nowiny Czeskie in 1943 and 1944 the UPA murdered a number of Jews, Poles, and Czechs.[1311] On 30 August 1943 in the village of Myślina, Ukrainians under the leadership of Fedor Hałuszko killed a number of Poles and four Jewish families, including three children.[1312] In March 1944, a group of 500 Jews who were hiding in a forest in the Peremyshliany region escaped to a Polish village, Hanaków, after they were warned by a Banderite. The next day, when Ukrainian nationalists attacked the village, Poles and Jews defended themselves together against the invaders. The Banderites killed seventy Poles and two Jewish families. At Easter, the UPA attacked the village again and killed sixty Poles and an unknown number of Jews.[1313] In the military colony Bortnica, in the Dubno region, fifteen Poles and eight Jews organized self-defense. In autumn 1943, Ukrainians attacked them and killed twenty people. At Christmas 1943, they attacked again, killing eight Poles and three Jews.[1314]
Some of the Jews who tried to survive with the Soviet partisans fought with them against the UPA and the Germans.[1315] Szlojme Katz joined a Soviet partisan group in the Zhytomyr region in May 1943. He took part in a number of battles against the Germans and the UPA and testified to having killed six Banderites and twelve Germans.[1316] Jankel Fanger, who hid in the woods in the Przemyślany area, decided to avenge two Jews who were delivered to the Germans by a Ukrainian peasant, shortly before the arrival of the Soviet army. The peasant had done so because the Jews had run out of money to pay him. Fenger went to the peasant’s house and informed him that he was from the Ukrainian underground and had come to punish him for hiding “enemies of the Ukrainian people.” After the peasant showed him the bottle of vodka and a bag of salt, which he had received from the Germans for delivering the Jews, Fanger killed the peasant and his wife, but not their children.[1317]
Many Jews hid in bunkers and camps in the forests. If they were discovered by OUN or UPA nationalists, twenty to hundred or even more Jews could be murdered at once.[1318] Izraela and Barbara Lissak testified that Banderites discovered three Jewish bunkers. They threw a shell into one and fired at Jews who escaped from the others. The Lissaks also reported that the Banderites, attacking three Polish families, killed twelve Jews and ten Poles.[1319] Ignacy Goldwasser hid with his mother and other Jews in bunkers around Boryslav. Shortly before the arrival of the Soviet Army, Banderites began killing the Jews hiding in the bunkers.[1320] Of the hundred people who hid together with Lipa Stricker, only about ten survived. On 2 March 1944, Stricker observed from a hiding-place in the bushes how a group of Ukrainians went to a bunker. Using knives, they slaughtered all the people in the bunker, among them his family.[1321] Edzia Szpeicher hid in a bunker close to Drohobych with twenty other Jews. One day, some Banderites introduced themselves as Soviet partisans and invited the Jews hiding in the bunker to join their unit. After they emerged, the Banderites ordered them to undress and killed them.[1322] In March 1944, the UPA forced a Pole who was supplying food for sixty-five Jews hiding in a bunker in a forest near Naraiv, Berezhany region, to show them where the Jews were hiding. They then killed fifty-one of them.[1323] Leon Knebel, who hid in the woods near Boryslav, remembered the Banderites as much more cruel than the “Waldschutzpolizei,” who also looked for Jews in the woods. On one occasion the nationalists killed twenty-four Jews, among them a young woman. The Banderites cut off her hands and strips of skin from her body.[1324]
The OUN-B and UPA did not intend to kill all the Jews who were hiding in the forest immediately, but offered some of them “protection.” The OUN-B registered these Jews, kept them in “camps,” and forced them to work for the OUN-B and UPA. The “camps” were frequently farms or houses of murdered Poles. Most of such Jews were killed by the nationalists before the Red Army arrived in western Ukraine.[1325] The leadership of the OUN-B and UPA had no interest in letting the Jews survive the war, because they suspected that the Jews might join the Red Army, support the Soviet authorities, or provide information about the Ukrainian nationalist partisans to their Soviet enemies.
An unknown number of Jewish doctors, dentists, and nurses agreed or were forced to treat UPA insurgents. During their period with the UPA, they were usually frightened of the partisans and OUN-B activists and tried to escape.[1326] Like the Jews “employed” by the OUN-UPA in collective farms or camps, the majority were killed shortly before the Red Army came to western Ukraine. Holocaust survivor and early Holocaust historian Philip Friedman commented on this question:
Ukrainian sources speak of a considerable number of Jewish physicians, dentists, and hospital attendants who served in the ranks of the UPA. The question is: Why did only a small number of them remain alive? The Bandera groups also utilized other Jewish skilled workers. According to Lew Shankowsky, practically every UPA group had a Jewish physician or pharmacist, as well as Jewish tailors, shoemakers, barbers, and the like. Again the question arises: What happened to these hundreds of thousands of Jewish professionals and skilled workers? Betty Eisenstein states that in the spring of 1943 the Bandera groups began to imitate the German tactics of “selection.” Only the skilled workers were left alive, and they were concentrated in special camps, where they worked at their trades or on the farms. One such camp, established in April 1943 near Poryck, Volhynia, contained more than 100 Jews. A second camp, which had some 400 Jews, was located in Kudrynki, nearly 20 miles from Tuczyn, Volhynia. Eisenstein reports that at the approach of the Soviet army the Bandera groups liquidated the Jews of the camps.[1327]
The few Jews who escaped to the Red Army confirmed that the UPA killed its Jewish doctors shortly before the Red Army arrived in western Ukraine.[1328] The total number of Jews who survived their period with the UPA seems to be low and is difficult to estimate.[1329] Lea Goldberg managed to survive, working as a nurse. The Banderites first wanted to kill her but then decided that she could stay because she was useful and could be murdered any time later. She was with a UPA group of about 400 partisans and frequently feared for her life. She heard how the nationalists cursed the Jews, Poles, and Soviet partisans, and said that they needed to kill the Jews for the sake of Ukraine and had to attack and wipe out Polish villages. While at the UPA camp she observed several times how the UPA partisans tortured and murdered Soviet partisans, Poles, and Jewish children. After a UPA partisan tried to kill her, she escaped to the Soviet partisans and remained with them until the Red Army arrived.[1330]
One of the orders to murder the Jews in the UPA collective farms and work camps came from the SB of the OUN-B, an entity that might have killed more Jews than the UPA partisans. “All non-professional Jews [serving in the UPA] should be secretly eliminated so that neither [other] Jews nor our people will know,” the order said. “The rumor should be spread that they went to the Bolsheviks.”[1331] During an NKVD interrogation, Ivan Kutkovets’ stated that the SB of the OUN-B issued an order in 1943 to “physically exterminate Jews who were hiding in the villages.”[1332] In the Rivne region, the Ukrainian nationalists “literally hunted for Jews, organizing round-ups and combing the forest paths, ravines, etc.”[1333]
In the last few months before the Red Army arrived in western Ukraine, Jews occasionally fled from forests and bunkers where they were hiding, to seek protection in German work camps. The survivor Hilary Koenigsberg testified in 1948:
With the beginning of 1944 the Banderite bands multiplied, began tracking Jewish bunkers in the woods and in the villages, killing all in a cruel way. Peasants revealed the bunkers. Sometimes they brought the Jews to the police with an axe in hand. Then happened what might seem to be unbelievable. The Jews fled from woods and bunkers to the camps. The [remainder] of the Jewish police and the administrators of the local estates made profit [from] it. Under the pretext that they could not take any more Jews into the camps they demanded bribes in money or items. The Banderite bands and the local nationalists raided every night, decimating the Jews. Jews sheltered in the camps where Germans were stationed, fearing an attack by Banderites. Some German soldiers were brought to protect the camps and thereby also the Jews.[1334]
The survivor Edzia Spielberg-Flitman, her six-year-old brother, and her mother were rescued by a local German officer. Edzia remembered that “80 percent [of my family] were killed by the Ukrainians who were our friends” and that the Ukrainians “were worse than the Germans.”[1335] Mojżesz Szpigiel testified in 1948 that several members of his family were killed by Ukrainian peasants and Ukrainian policemen. Describing the murder of 120 Jews on a farm by the Ukrainian police, he wrote: “It is important to state that this killing was not a German action, that it was performed by Ukrainian policemen and bandits.” When Ukrainian policemen attacked the last Jews in a farm, a German “major … went [there] with his aide and hit one [Ukrainian] policeman on the head with his revolver … and ordered them to leave immediately.”[1336]
As the Red Army came closer to western Ukraine in spring 1944, the interests of the UPA and the Germans began to overlap, and as a result many UPA units began to collaborate with the Germans again.[1337] At a conference in Lviv in October 1943, the leadership of the OUN had already decided that, like the UPA, Polish troops in Ukrainian territory should not fight against German troops, and they passed on this resolution to the Polish underground.[1338] One UPA partisan stated during an interrogation that fighting Germans made no sense for the UPA.[1339] Members of the UPA occasionally shot Jews at the Germans’ request. According to a Wehrmacht intelligence report, “The UPA has successfully taken up pursuit of the Jewish gangsters and up to now shot almost a hundred.”[1340] In March or April 1944, the UPA informed the Germans that it would cleanse the Chełm (Kholm)—Rawa-Ruska (Rava Rus’ka) region of “Poles, bandits, and Jews.”[1341] Dontsov insisted in 1944 that the “struggle against Jewry is in the interest and in the traditions of the Ukrainian nation.”[1342]
It is difficult to estimate how many Jews the OUN-B and the UPA actually killed in 1943 and the first half of 1944. Given the clandestine nature of this mass murder, we might never be able to establish an accurate number. The analyses done for this and previous research conducted by other historians suggest that in 1943 and 1944 the OUN-B and UPA killed hundreds or even thousands of Jews in Volhynia and eastern Galicia, but the actual number is difficult to determine. Grzegorz Motyka, who studied the anti-Polish violence of the UPA in depth, with the anti-Jewish angle as only a minor part of his study, estimated that the UPA killed between 1,000 and 2,000 Jews.[1343] Shmuel Spector, who investigated the Holocaust in Volhynia, wrote that “thousands of survivors of the German liquidation Aktionen were slaughtered by Ukrainian nationalist partisans.” According to him only 3,500 Jews (1.5 percent) survived the Holocaust in Volhynia. Of the 40,000 Jews who fled from ghettos and hid in forested areas, villages, or other hiding spots only 9 percent survived.[1344] Ewa and Władysław Siemaszko, who like Motyka concentrated on the anti-Polish violence of the UPA, came to conclusions similar to that of Spector.[1345]
Nobody has calculated how many Jews in eastern Galicia escaped from the ghettos, slave labor camps, or transports to extermination camps and tried to survive in the forest or in other hideouts. Eastern Galicia offered less space for organized survivor camps than Volhynia because it was less forested. However, there were more than twice as many Jews in eastern Galicia than in Volhynia, and thus the number might be as high as in Volhynia or even higher. Only 2 to 3 percent, or 10,000 to 15,000 Jews, survived the Holocaust in eastern Galicia.[1346] Therefore the number of Jews in Volhynia and eastern Galicia who hid in forests and other hideouts but did not survive seems to be between 60,000 and 80,000.[1347] The current state of research does not allow for a close specification as to how many of these Jews were killed by the OUN and UPA, the local population, the Ukrainian police, or the Germans, or who died from causes such as disease or hunger while hiding.
The Ukrainian police were certainly involved in the murder of more Jews than the OUN-B and UPA combined had killed. The police themselves may also have killed more Jews than the OUN-B and UPA, because the police helped the Germans during mass shootings, patrolled the ghettoes, hunted for Jews in the woods, and transported them to the extermination camps. However, the police seem to have killed fewer of the Jews who tried to survive in the woods or in other hideouts than the OUN-B and UPA did, because the UPA controlled the woods and large parts of the countryside. Furthermore, the police were infiltrated by the OUN-B, and many Ukrainian policemen involved in the murder of Jews deserted in the spring of 1943 for the UPA. As already mentioned, they brought with them the skills and methods of exterminating a large number of people in a relatively short time.[1348]
The role of the local population in the Holocaust in Volhynia and eastern Galicia was also significant. Some of the local Ukrainians helped the Jews to survive, while many others were indifferent and some actively helped the Germans, the Ukrainian police, and the UPA hunt for and kill the Jews. The peasants knew that the Jews were outlawed (vogelfrei) and that nobody would prosecute them for robbing or murdering the Jews. On the contrary, hiding or helping the Jews was risky because one’s neighbors might have reported them to the police or to the Germans. The disappearance of the Jews from villages and towns was also a long-standing goal of the moderate Ukrainian national movement, which had dominated Ukrainian politics before the formation of the OUN. Some peasants had more trust in the moderate form of Ukrainian nationalism than in the fascistized and extreme form of OUN nationalism.[1349] Finally, religion, in which many peasants found a justification for the genocide of the Jews, also played a role in these mass murders. One peasant in Volhynia said to his Jewish acquaintance who had escaped from the ghetto: “Hitler has conquered almost the whole world and he is going to slaughter all the Jews because they had crucified our Jesus. You think you can escape from this fate? You shouldn’t run away from the ghetto; at least you would have rested in the same grave with your family. Now who knows where you’re going to die. My advice for you is to return to the ghetto.”[1350]
As in the case of “democratization” and the ethnic cleansing of Poles, the OUN-B began to falsify its immediate past with regard to anti-Jewish mass violence. In late October 1943, the UPA ordered the preparation of statements that the Germans had persecuted Jews in 1941 without any help from the Ukrainian police:
c. Lists that would confirm that the Germans carried out anti-Jewish pogroms and liquidations by themselves, without the participation or help of the Ukrainian police, and instead, before carrying out the executions, urged the Jewish committee or the rogues themselves to confirm with their signatures the presence of the Ukrainian police and its involvement in the actions.
d. Material that would clearly confirm that Poles had initiated and taken part in anti-Jewish pogroms and at the same time that they had served as the hirelings and agents of the Germans in their struggle with Ukrainians.[1351]
At the same time as hunting, murdering, and exploiting Jews, the OUN-B guaranteed them, in official and propaganda documents, equality and minority rights. This very much resembled its attitude to Poles.[1352] On 1 November 1943, the leadership of the UPA announced “that we tolerate all nationalities—also Jews, who work in favor of the Ukrainian state. They will be regarded as Ukrainian citizens with full civic rights. We have to inform Jewish doctors and other professionals who are part of our effort about this.”[1353]
The attitude of the OUN-B and the UPA to the Jews was related to their attitude to Poles, Russians, and other minorities, and it was determined by the fact that many Ukrainian policemen, who in 1942 were involved in the destruction of the Volhynian and Galician Jews, deserted in spring 1943 for the UPA. Nevertheless, one should not forget that the OUN-B and UPA consisted of various kinds of people, and that it would inappropriate to portray it as a monolith, composed of only racist fanatics and war criminals. Examining the social composition of the UPA, we would find people of different classes, with different educational backgrounds, and of both genders. As already mentioned, some joined the UPA voluntarily and supported it willingly. Others, however, were forced to join by the OUN-B or UPA members, or did so to avoid German or Soviet repression, or for other reasons. Some of the UPA partisans were communists or disapproved of nationalism for other reasons, before they were forced to join. While in the UPA, however, some of them adjusted or changed their views over a period of time, adopting the nationalist, racist, and antisemitic agenda of the movement. Oleksandr Povshuk, for example, a Volhynian Ukrainian who was skeptical about the Ukrainian nationalists, was forcibly enlisted in the UPA in summer 1943. He at first criticized the OUN in his diary, for collaboration with the Germans, the annihilation of Poles, and several other aspects. After a year, he changed his views and made nationalism and antisemitism important aspects of his identity.[1354]
The ethnic and political mass violence conducted by the UPA in 1943 and 1944 cannot be explained solely by the nationalist and racist ideology of the OUN-B. As a set of rules that approved of killing the “enemies of the Ukrainian nation,” this ideology was certainly sufficient to turn ordinary men and women into murderers, but the question is how and why this ideology came into being and in what political and military context it was put into practice. This leads us to four factors: first, to the social and political situation of Ukrainians in the interwar period or even before; second, to the military aims and strategies of the UPA; third, the tone that the Nazi occupation and Nazi ideology had set; and fourth, the fact that there was no strong administration in these territories at a time when the front was changing.
As explained in previous chapters, the Ukrainians did not succeed in retaining a state after the First World War. In the interwar period, they were discriminated against in Poland and therefore had good reasons to dislike and oppose the Polish authorities. Because of the famine and Stalin’s repressions, the fate of Ukrainians in the Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s was even worse. This experience certainly had an impact on the motives and aims of the OUN-B and UPA. During the Second World War, the leadership of the OUN-B was afraid that the situation after the First World War would be repeated and that once again the Ukrainians would be unable to establish a Ukrainian state. The Polish government-in-exile insisted on the inclusion of the contested territories in the Polish state, thereby confirming the fears of the Ukrainian nationalists. Furthermore, Soviet leaders made no secret of the fact that they would include all Ukrainian territories in the Soviet Union and would detain or execute all political opponents. In order to mobilize peasants to violence, the OUN and UPA promised them a Ukrainian state, and land belonging to Poles. The prospect of acquiring Polish or Jewish houses and their contents was another important motive for the conduct of ethnic violence. It would be incorrect to state that only OUN-B members and UPA partisans, or peasants motivated by Ukrainian genocidal nationalism hunted for Jews in the forests in 1943 and 1944. In addition, other types of Ukrainians, including robbers and peasants who were motivated primarily by non-nationalist motives or a mixture of ideological and economic motives, killed Jews.[1355] Finally, we should mention that some Ukrainians helped Jews and Poles survive the war, by hiding them, providing them with food, warning them of the approach of their enemies, and in other ways. In so doing they endangered themselves and their families.[1356]
While the OUN-B and the UPA were conducting the ethnic cleansing of the Poles and hunting Jews, Bandera was not in Ukraine. He remained confined in Berlin and Sachsenhausen. The leadership of the OUN-B and the UPA were in contact with Bandera through his wife, and through other channels. Bandera might therefore have been informed about OUN-B and UPA policies, but we do not know to what extent, or what his opinion was concerning the ethnic cleansing in Volhynia and eastern Galicia, and other forms of ethnic and political violence at that time. I did not find any documents confirming that Bandera approved or disapproved of the ethnic cleansing, or the murder of the Jews and other minorities. After the war, he never condemned the ethnic cleansing or pogroms or even admitted that they happened. Such conduct was rather typical of the leaders and members of the movement, and of its sympathizers. The ethnic and political violence conducted by the OUN and UPA during the Second World War was certainly not against Bandera’s pre-war beliefs and convictions, which he expressed at the Lviv trial for example, when he argued: “Our idea, as we understand it, is so great that, as it comes to its realization, not hundreds but thousands of human lives [will] have to be sacrificed in order to carry it out.”[1357] Similarly, Bandera’s planning and preparation of the “Ukrainian National Revolution” in 1940–1941, which included mass violence against ethnic minorities and political opponents, also suggest that the violence conducted by the OUN-B and UPA in 1942–1944 might not have been against Bandera’s political views and expectations.
Although Bandera was not involved in the mass violence of 1942, 1943, and 1944, and although his personal, as opposed to moral, responsibility for those murders was either very limited or non-existent, the killing of thousands of Poles and several hundreds or even thousands of Jews by the OUN-B and UPA in 1943–1944 contributed to the formation of his political myth and affected his political image. This happened because the OUN-B activists and the UPA partisans were known to their victims as Banderites, or Bandera’s people. The term “Banderites” goes back to the split of the OUN into the OUN-M and OUN-B, in 1940. It existed in June and July 1941 but was not commonly used at that time by the victims of the pogroms. Two years later however, the word “Banderites” was known to everyone in western Ukraine and was frequently used to describe the OUN-B activists, UPA partisans, and apparently, other Ukrainian perpetrators. In his written testimony in German from 28 April 1945, Moses Brüh, who survived the war in western Ukraine, used the term “Banderisten” to describe the UPA partisans who killed Poles in Volhynia and raided the Jews who hid in the bunkers.[1358] In their collective testimony written in Polish in 1945, Jakub and Esia Zylberger, and Hersz and Doba Mełamed described as banderowcy or Banderites the UPA partisans who murdered the Poles, hunted the Jews in the woods, kept them in work camps, and tried to annihilate them before the coming of the Soviets. They did not label as Banderites those perpetrators whom they perceived as peasants, who hunted the Jews, or as the militiamen who killed the Jews during the pogrom in Tuchyn (Tuczyn) in 1941.[1359] Dozens of other survivor testimonies collected by the CŻKH between 1944 and 1948 depict the Banderites similarly to Zylberger and the Mełameds.[1360]
Among Poles and Jews between 1943 and 1945, the term had a practical meaning, referring to people who might arrive at any time and commit murder. The term was colloquial and was used to identify Ukrainian nationalist insurgents, in particular OUN-B activists and UPA partisans. Its users undoubtedly employed it on occasion to refer to bandits who did not belong to the OUN-B or the UPA and committed murder for other reasons. Nevertheless, the general use of the term was to describe the Ukrainian nationalists. It was not used with reference to the Ukrainian police, who were referred to as such.[1361] The soldiers of Taras Bul’ba-Borovets’, who also murdered Jews but did not belong to the OUN-B or UPA, were identified not as Banderites but as “bul’bivtsi” or “bulbowcy” or “bul’bovtsy.”[1362] Because Jews and Poles used the term “Banderites” to describe people who murdered them and conducted other atrocities against them on a daily basis, the term acquired a strongly pejorative meaning in these communities. It basically meant bandits, villains, or murderers.
The AK used the term “Banderites” in its documents in 1942 and more frequently in 1943 and 1944 to describe the OUN-B and the UPA, or sometimes Ukrainian villagers who raided and murdered Poles. The AK in western Ukraine explained in its documents that the term appeared after the split of the OUN into the OUN-M and the OUN-B.[1363] Soviet or pro-Soviet partisan units in western Ukraine, consisting of Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, and other ethnic groups, also used the term “Banderites” to describe the UPA and possibly also other nationalist partisan formations.[1364] The Soviet secret service, Soviet partisans, and politicians started to use the term “Banderites” more frequently at about the same time as the AK did in 1942, and in 1943 they often used it to describe the OUN and the UPA. The term “Banderites” had appeared in Soviet secret documents for the first time in late 1940 when the conflict between Bandera and Mel’nyk broke out.[1365] One Soviet document explained that “the Banderites now use the name UPA.”[1366] The UPA also referred to itself as Banderites and meant thereby a patriotic, anti-Soviet movement that struggled for the independence of Ukraine.[1367] The German military referred to the OUN-B activists as the Bandera-Gruppe (Bandera group) or Bandera-Bewegung (Bandera movement) and sometimes described them as a band.[1368]
At the Third Extraordinary Great Assembly in August 1943, the OUN-B leadership distanced itself from the pogroms of 1941 and the movement’s identification with fascism and fascistization, but Bandera did not disappear entirely from the minds of OUN-B activists and UPA partisans. Many sources suggest that the UPA partisans identified themselves with him. During the negotiations with Bul’ba-Borovets’ in 1943, the OUN claimed that Bandera was the only leader of Ukraine.[1369] In “What We Are Fighting for,” a leaflet from 1943, the OUN introduced Bandera as a sufferer for the cause.[1370] The brochure “Our Leaders: Symon Petliura, Ievhen Konovalets’, Stepan Bandera,” apparently printed in 1943, introduced Bandera as the ideal figure of a revolutionary fighter who spent many years in prison for his commitment to liberation.[1371] On 30 June 1943, Bandera was acclaimed by the OUN-B activists and UPA partisans as the most important person connected with the proclamation of a Ukrainian state on 30 June 1941. The OUN-B text that explained how to celebrate the proclamation ended with “Long Live the Leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and of the Ukrainian Nation, Stepan Bandera!!! Glory to Ukraine—Glory to the Heroes!!!”[1372]
In addition to conducting the ethnic cleansing against the Polish population in Volhynia and eastern Galicia, and hunting the Jewish survivors in the woods, the UPA struggled against Soviet partisans and later, to a lesser extent, against the Red Army and the Polish AK, and to a much lesser extent against the Germans. In Volhynia the UPA mainly attacked the Germans when they left the towns and cities in which they usually stayed, and which they left only in groups, for safety reasons.[1373] UPA attacks on Germans were mainly to obtain their weapons and equipment, or to prevent them from taking food from the population. The UPA generally avoided attacking German troops however, because it knew that the Germans were losing the war and would withdraw from Ukraine.[1374] In Galicia where relations between Ukrainians and Germans were much better than in Volhynia, attacks against Germans were even less frequent.[1375]
Because the Soviet Union was their common enemy, the UPA and the Germans concluded local agreements in 1943 and 1944 and tried to avoid fighting one other.[1376] On 28 September 1943 the leadership of the OUN in Ukraine warned Otto Wächter, the Governor of Distrikt Galizien, that the Soviets were preparing to assassinate him. “We are not adherents of the German policies in the East …” they wrote, but “the Bolshevists are for us the number-one enemy …” and “Dr. Otto Wächter is by the way, a quite decent man. … We have allowed ourselves to take over the protection of your person, Mr. Governor, through our men.”[1377] For the sake of collaboration with the Allies however, the OUN-B and UPA kept the collaboration with the Germans a secret, portrayed itself as the enemy of “Nazi imperialism,” and applied in this matter a propaganda strategy similar to that regarding the ethnic cleansing of Poles and the murder of Jews.[1378] The Germans also kept the cooperation with the OUN-UPA a secret. When they withdrew from Ukraine, they left the OUN-UPA tons of arms and ammunition. The German army regarded this cooperation as a good investment in the war against the Soviet Union.[1379]
During negotiations with German troops on 2 April 1944, “Okhrim,” the leader of the UPA in Volhynia, demanded the release of Stepan Bandera and other political prisoners.[1380] The Greek Catholic priest and OUN-B member Ivan Hryn’okh asked the SS and German police in the General Government on 28 March 1944 to allow him to see Bandera. He argued that Bandera’s release would improve relations between the UPA and Nazi Germany. The Germans responded to this proposal only several weeks later, after the next Soviet offensive began. They took Hryn’okh to Berlin and allowed him to meet with Bandera.[1381]
When Hryn’okh came to the German capital to visit the Providnyk, Bandera was detained in Zellenbau, a building in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin, where the RSHA kept special political prisoners (Sonderhäftlinge and Ehrenhäftlinge).[1382] It is difficult to reconstruct the exact date from which Bandera was kept in Zellenbau. The divergent accounts suggest that he was moved from Berlin to Sachsenhausen several times. Stets’ko wrote in 1967 that Bandera came to Zellenbau in January 1942.[1383] In an interview in 1950, Bandera said that he was held in Berlin by the Gestapo until 1943 and was then moved to Zellenbau.[1384] In an interrogation in 1956 in Munich, he stated that he was relocated from Berlin to Sachsenhausen in the winter of 1942–1943.[1385] Bandera’s prisoner number 72192 was assigned to him in October 1943. His prison card shows that he was released on 28 September 1944.[1386] Kurt Eccarius, an SS-Hauptscharführer who was in charge of Zellenbau, stated in an interrogation in August 1946 that Bandera, with six other OUN members, was already located in Zellenbau in late 1941. According to Eccarius, a Gestapo officer “Schultze” visited Bandera in his cell in Zellenbau and took him to Berlin several times for negotiations.[1387]
Bandera was detained in Zellenbau together with other prominent politicians such as the Romanian fascist Horia Sima, who, together with six other members of the Iron Guard, was there from early 1943 until August 1944.[1388] Gottfried Graf von Bismarck-Schönhausen, a grandson of Otto von Bismarck; Stalin’s son Iakov Dzhugashvili; Fritz Thyssen, a German industrial magnate; and Stefan Grot-Rowecki, the leader of the Polish Home Army were also imprisoned in Zellenbau. Kurt Schuschnigg, chancellor of Austria between 1934 and 1938, lived with his family in a house in a special area of the camp.[1389] For the entire period of his imprisonment in Sachsenhausen, Bandera had the status of Sonderhäftling or Ehrenhäftling, and enjoyed much better treatment than an average political prisoner in a German concentration camp.[1390] Bandera’s wife Iaroslava, who lived with her daughter Natalia in an apartment in Berlin-Charlottenburg, could send parcels of food, underwear, clothes, and other items to him every two weeks. They could also visit him.[1391]
Zellenbau had eighty cells. Like the other prisoners, Bandera had his own cell, number 73. Several other Ukrainians, such as Stets’ko, Bul’ba-Borovets’, and later Mel’nyk, were also imprisoned in Zellenbau. They were assembled there in order to begin negotiations about renewed collaboration between the Ukrainians and Germans. Bandera could read newspapers and did communicate with other prisoners, although the communication must have been secret. According to Mel’nyk, at least one OUN member, Oleh Kandyba, died or was killed in the camp, which Mel’nyk learned about from Bandera.[1392]
Bandera was not entirely cut off from politics and the activities of the OUN-UPA. The OUN-B knew that Bandera’s wife visited him, and they used her to forward letters in both directions. Contact with Bandera could not have been difficult, because in 1943 the OUN-B in Ukraine bought cloth of the best quality, to be conveyed to Bandera by his wife, for a suit. According to the testimony of OUN-B member Mykhailo Polevoi, other people also had access to the Providnyk.[1393] Although the OUN-B knew of Bandera’s circumstances in Berlin and Sachsenhausen, it portrayed him as a sufferer and martyr. One leaflet from 1942 claimed that Bandera “suffers for our idea in the cellar rooms of prisons.”[1394] A leaflet from 1943 said, “Stepan Bandera—the best son of Ukraine, and the fighter for its liberty, has been tortured by the Germans for two years in a prison.”[1395]
The Providnyk was released from Zellenbau on 28 September 1944, and was kept in Berlin under house arrest. Shortly afterwards, the Germans also released Stets’ko, Mel’nyk, Bul’ba-Borovets’, and about 300 other OUN members who had been held in different camps. While under house arrest Bandera could move about the city and meet other people.[1396] In a bulletin on 14 November the OUN announced that “the Leader Stepan Bandera is free.”[1397] The Nazis had released Bandera and some other special political prisoners from Zellenbau because Germany was losing the war and wanted to organize Russians, Ukrainians, and other Eastern Europeans for the last struggle against the Red Army. Sima and other legionaries had already been released at the end of August 1944, following which they established a Romanian government in Vienna. This was intended to motivate Romanians to support Hitler and to mobilize them to fight against the Soviet Union.[1398]
On 5 October 1944, Bandera asked to speak to the German authorities, which resulted in a meeting with SS-Obergruppenführer Gottlob Berger. Berger reported to Himmler that he had suggested that Bandera cooperate with Andrei Vlasov, leader of the ROA, which was established in the autumn of 1944 to fight alongside the Germans against the Red Army. Bandera turned down the proposal because he thought that “through this cooperation he would lose his supporters in Ukraine.” He claimed that his movement in Ukraine had become so strong that Stalin would not succeed in defeating it. At the end of his letter to Himmler, Berger briefly characterized Bandera and wrote that he was at that moment very important for them but might later become dangerous, and that he hated both Russians and Germans. Berger finished his letter with the comment that he was proposing to make use of Bandera’s movement.[1399]
Negotiating with Berger and other Nazi politicians, Bandera was not as much against collaboration with Germany, which was at war with the Soviet Union, as he was against collaboration with Vlasov, who was for him a Russian imperialist. Other Ukrainian and several other non-Russian politicians representing countries formerly in the Soviet Union took a similar position. In order to separate “imperialists” from “nationalists,” the Germans organized national committees for Ukrainians and other non-Russian people.[1400]
On 14 November 1944 in Prague, Vlasov was appointed leader of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (Komitet Osvobodzheniia Narodov Rossii, KONR). At about the same time, arrangements began for a similar institution for Ukrainians. On 23 February 1945 Rosenberg assigned Shandruk to establish the Ukrainian National Committee (Ukraїns’kyi Natsional’nyi Komitet, UNK) in Weimar, and officially recognized it on 12 March 1945. Apart from Shandruk and Bandera, Volodymyr Kubiiovych, Oleksandr Semenko, Andrii Mel’nyk, and Pavlo Skoropads’kyi were involved in establishing the UNK and became its leaders. On 17 March 1945 the UNK appointed Shandruk as head of the Ukrainian National Army (Ukraїns’ka Natsional’na Armiia, UNA). The UNK tried to mobilize Ukrainians, of whom about two million were in German-held territory, for the UNA. The Waffen-SS Galizien was renamed the First Division of the UNA, but the Germans used the old name until the end of war.[1401]
The task of Bandera, Mel’nyk, and Skoropads’kyi was to convince their political supporters to continue fighting against the Soviet Union. In December 1944, the Abwehr took Bandera and Stets’ko to Cracow, where they helped Abwehrkommando 202 prepare a Ukrainian unit for parachuting into the hilly surroundings of Lviv. The Germans gave the unit a million roubles, stolen in Russia, which sum the troop was to transport to Shukhevych. Bandera, Stets’ko, and Lebed’ gave the courier Iurii Lopatyns’kyi letters to Shukhevych. Bandera instructed the courier to give the UPA the order to fight the Soviet army from the rear. He also stated that he was prepared to return to Ukraine. Stets’ko asked the courier to inform the OUN-B and UPA leaders in Ukraine that he still regarded himself as prime minister of Ukraine.[1402]
On 6 January 1945, Bandera celebrated the Greek Catholic Christmas in Lehnin, a village about forty kilometers south-west of Berlin.[1403] He then went with his family and some of his followers to Weimar, and stayed there for three weeks.[1404] According to Shandruk, during meetings of the UNK in Weimar, Mel’nyk remained cautious about the idea of the proposed last crusade against the Soviet Union. In contrast, Bandera argued for “full support to the end, whatever it may be.”[1405] Two other witnesses, OUN-B member Ievhen Stakhiv and the Abwehr officer Siegfried Müller, confirmed that, while in Weimar, Bandera mobilized Ukrainians for an army that would support the Nazis in their fight against the Soviet Union.[1406] Later, however, Bandera informed OUN members and the CIA that he had not supported the UNK or the Third Reich after his release from Sachsenhausen.[1407]
In late January or early February 1945, Bandera and his wife and daughter went to Berlin. In early February, they “escaped” from Berlin and travelled, with the help of Lebed’ and Matviieiko, to Vienna. There the OUN-B organized a conference in which several leading OUN members participated. Bandera was elected representative of the leadership of the Foreign Units of the OUN (Zakordonni Chastyny OUN, ZCh OUN). When the Red Army approached Vienna, Bandera went to Prague, and from there to Innsbruck.[1408]
At a meeting of the leadership of the OUN in Ukraine on 5–6 February 1945, Bandera was re-elected leader of the entire OUN. Shukhevych had resigned from this position and became the leader of the OUN in Ukraine alone. The leadership in Ukraine further decided that Bandera should not return to Ukraine but stay abroad, where he could, as a former prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp and a symbol of Ukrainian nationalism, make propaganda for the national cause.[1409]
At about the time as Bandera was suggesting “full support to the end, whatever it may be,” Shimon Redlich, a Jew who had survived the three years of German occupation in eastern Galicia, observed the “most dramatic event in Brzezany during that single year after liberation”:
I stood near a window facing the Rynek [market square]. With me in that room were several people. One of them was Bela … who sat at the piano. Out there, in the far end of the Rynek was a small crowd. It was snowing. A truck appeared and stopped in the middle of the crowd. On its platform were a few people. One of them seemed to read something from a piece of paper. After a few minutes the truck moved with those standing on the platform. Except one. That man remained, hanging, his body dangling from side to side. Bela was playing Chopin’s mourning march [sic]. I was told that the man who was hanged was a banderovits, a Ukrainian nationalist. People were talking about atrocities committed by the banderovtsi against the Soviets.[1410]
The fate of the Banderites in Ukraine changed dramatically after the Red Army took control of western Ukraine in summer 1944. The OUN-B and UPA continued to murder Poles who were still in Ukraine and began to murder those Ukrainians whom they accused of supporting the new Soviet regime. The Soviet authorities, for their part, started to eliminate the Banderites, in which category they included OUN members, UPA insurgents and its supporters, and also Ukrainian civilians accused of supporting the Ukrainian nationalists or of being Banderites.
After their detention in Germany, Bandera and Stets’ko attempted reconciliation with the Nazi leaders but the latter found other, more reliable Ukrainian partners for collaboration, such as Volodymyr Kubiiovych. In late July 1941 Hitler decided to include eastern Galicia into the General Government and to create the Reichskommissariat Ukraine from the rest of the conquered Ukrainian territories. This decision disappointed the OUN-B who had hoped that Hitler would allow them to unite the Ukrainian territories. In addition, several hundred OUN-B members were arrested in Ukraine and Germany and confined in different concentration camps as political prisoners. As a result of the conflict with the OUN-B the Germans dissolved the Ukrainian militia, which had been established by the OUN-B, and set up the Ukrainian police. Nevertheless, the OUN-B members tried to remain in the police while concealing their affiliation with the organization. In the following months the OUN-B sent more and more members to the police with the purpose of infiltrating and controlling it. The Ukrainian policemen significantly outnumbered the Germans and were deeply involved in the annihilation of the Jews. In spring 1943, about 5,000 out of a total of 12,000 Ukrainian policemen in Volhynia deserted the police and joined the UPA, which the OUN-B had formed a few months before.
From early 1943 on, the UPA conducted an ethnic cleansing against the Polish population in Volhynia and eastern Galicia, killing between 70,000 and 100,000 civilians. At the same time, the OUN-B, UPA, the Ukrainian police and Ukrainian peasants killed several thousand Jews who had escaped from the ghettos and hid in the forests. During these massacres Bandera was imprisoned in Berlin and in Zellenbau, a building for special political prisoners in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. During this period he had only limited contact with the leadership of the OUN and UPA. Nevertheless, the killing of thousands of civilians by the OUN and UPA strengthened the Bandera myth, because the murderers were frequently perceived by their victims as Banderites and also identified themselves with Bandera. In view of their dire situation on the eastern front, the Germans renewed their collaboration with the OUN-B in the spring of 1944, as they had done with the Iron Guard and some other nationalist and fascist movements. Bandera and other Ukrainian leaders were released in autumn 1944 in order to mobilize the Ukrainians for the fight against the Soviet Union, which Bandera, according to Shandruk, took very seriously. In early February 1945, Bandera went to Vienna with his family. He was reelected as the leader of the OUN and decided to stay in exile to make propaganda for the national cause.