Stepan Bandera

Stepan Bandera (Ukrainian: Степан Бандера) was a Ukrainian fascist, nationalist and Nazi-collaborator who led the Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). He instructed his organization to carry out the ethnic cleansing of Jews and Poles in Ukraine, culminating in the Holocaust where he helped murder more than 800,000 Jewish Ukrainians.

Life

Bandera was born on 1 January 1909 in the village of Staryi Uhryniv, located in the eastern part of Galicia, the easternmost province of the Habsburg Empire. During World War 1 the region was a battleground between Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire. Political partisanship was polarised between russophile Pan-Slavism and Austroslavism, which made fighting on this front a de-facto regional Civil War that resulted in physical extermination of the local russophile movement as part of the Habsburgs counterinsurgency operations. This in combination with the polish recolonisation of the region as part of their phyrric victory in the Polish-Soviet War after World War 1 set the context within which Bandera grew up. He was involved in the nationalist movement from a very early age. He joined the UVO, a precursor to the OUN, in 1927, shortly before moving Lvov. The OUN was established in 1929, which the UVO merged into. Bandera became active in the nationalist movement, being arrested many times by Polish authorities until the Nazi invasion of Poland.

When the Nazis invaded Poland, Bandera escaped from prison and continued to organize with other nationalists under the new Nazi government. While most Ukrainian nationalists at the time were not anti-semitic, Bandera was a pioneer. Bandera even petitioned the Nazi governor of Poland, Hanz Frank, to kill all the Jews and Poles in what he considered to be Ukrainian territories.

Rise to leadership

A split grew in the OUN as some members didn't trust the Nazis. On February 10th, 1940, Bandera gathered members that supported the Nazis in Krakow to proclaim a new organization - the OUN-B (OUN-Bandera). The other faction became the OUN-M (OUN-Mel’nyk)

On 31 March, 1941, the OUN-B organized the second great congress of the Ukrainian nationalists. Since the first great congress was organized by the OUN, this second congress was intended to show that the new OUN-B was the real successor. At this congress several resolutions were adopted, such as the concept of “One nation, one party, one leader”, the beginning of Ukrainian "race science", and declaring Jews as an enemy of the OUN-B.

The congress also introduced a set of fascist rituals. This included the red-and-black flag, which symbolizes blood and soil as well as the slogan "Slava Ukrayini!" (Glory to Ukraine) to which the response was "Heroiam slava!" (Glory to the heroes).

Stepan Bandera was then declared Providnyk, their new equivalent to the Nazi Fuhrer.

Participation in the Holocaust

Operation Barbarossa

Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi operation to invade and occupy the Soviet Union, was planned alongside the OUN-B's "Ukrainian national revolution". When the Nazis launched Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941, Bandera commanded the OUN-B to carry out their revolution. The Nazis wouldn't allow Bandera to visit his organization or the invaded territories, instead he had to command the revolution from Nazi-occupied Poland. Bandera explicitly gave instructions for the OUN-B to cleanse Ukraine of Jews.

Pogroms

On July 1st, 1941, the day after Lvov had been captured by the OUN and the Nazis, a pogrom occurred. The OUN-B began mass killing Jews while inciting the local population to participate. Thousands of Jewish residents of Lvov were taken out of their homes by locals and taken to prisons, being beaten along the way. In the prison they were mistreated and over-worked, leading to an overwhelming mortality. Of the 2000 Jewish inmates imprisoned in the Brygidki prison, only 80 survived. As the pogrom was being carried out, the Nazis were continuing the invasion of the Soviet Union, and the OUN-B was building their new state. They put up posters in their new capital of Lvov reading “Long Live Stepan Bandera, Long Live Adolf Hitler.”

The OUN-B carried out many other pogroms. In July 1941, they murdered between 38,000 and 39,000 Jews in other towns surrounding Lvov.

Ghettos and concentration camps

The OUN-B established an organisation to carry out killings of Jews in western Ukraine called the Ukrainian People's Militsiya. This organization became the police of western Ukraine as instructed by the Nazis. The Ukrainian People's Militsiya alongside the Nazis transferred hundreds of thousands of Jews to ghettos and concentration camps. In the Ternopil Oblast of western Ukraine, 97% of Jews were killed, whereas in the Kharkov Oblast of eastern Ukraine, 91% survived. The OUN-B was directly involved in the killing of some 820,000 Jews in concentration camps and ghettos.

Death

On 15 October 1959, Bandera was poisoned with hydrogen cyanide by the KGB and died later that day.

Rehabilitation

On 7th July, 2016, Kiev renamed Moscow Street to Stepan Bandera Street.

Monuments dedicated to Stepan Bandera have been constructured in a number of western Ukrainian cities. Statues have been erected in Lviv, Staryi Uhryniv, Kolomyia, Drohobych, Zalishchyky, Mykytyntsi, Uzyn, Buchach, Hrabivka, Horodenka, Staryi Sambir, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, Strusiv, Truskavets, Horishniy, Velykosilky, Sambir, Velyki Mosty, Skole, Turka, Zdolbuniv, Chortkiv, Sniatyn, Berezhany, Boryslav, Chervonohrad, Dubliany, Kamianka-Buzka, Kremenets, Mostyska, Pidvolochysk, Seredniy Bereziv, Terebovlia, Verbiv, and Volia-Zaderevatska.

In 2010 and 2011, Bandera was named an honorary citizen of a number of western Ukrainian cities, including Khust, Nadvirna, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Kolomyia, Dolyna, Varash, Lutsk, Chervonohrad, Terebovlia, Truskavets, Radekhiv, Sokal, Stebnyk, Zhovkva, Skole, Berezhany, Sambir, Boryslav, Brody, Stryi, and Morshyn.