Stepan Bandera: Difference between revisions

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 Hitler disagreed and Bandera was interned as a "guest of honor" because his plans and fanaticism were incompatible with the goals of Generalplan Ost, which encompassed the genocide of Galicians as well. This did not negatively affect the de-facto collaboration between Germany and the OUN in practice. The OUN(b) continued acting as an official auxillery police to the Nazi state and it's only significant units capable of limited conventional combat were under direct command and leadership of the german military.
-After the Battle of Stalingrad and the OUN's hasty attempts to refashion themselves into anything other than a powerless collaborator gang, Bandera was transferred to a concentration camp because of his movement's nominal treason. The first priority of his on the ground remained the extermination of Poles and Jews.
+After the Battle of Stalingrad and the OUN's hasty attempts to refashion themselves into anything other than a powerless collaborator gang, Bandera was transferred to a concentration camp because of his movement's nominal treason by attempting to align with the Allies. The first priority of his on the ground remained the extermination of Poles and Jews.
+On the initiative of the OUN(b), negotiations with the SS and its Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst, SD) were resumed on March 5, 1944.<ref name=":0" /> By March 1944, the UPA was sharing information with the German authorities on their murder of “Poles, bandits, and Jews.” Formal cooperation with the German Security Police, Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo) and the SD was resumed in May 1944.<ref>Pohl, Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien, 376; Frank Golczewski, “Shades of Grey: Reflections on Jewish-Ukrainian and German-Ukranian Relations in Galicia,” in Ray Brandon and Wendy Lower, eds., The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 143.</ref>
+Bandera was released in October 1944.
 ==Participation in the Holocaust==
 ===Operation Barbarossa===
-[[Operation Barbarossa]], the Nazi operation to invade and occupy the [[Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922–1991)|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.<blockquote>"The Jews are to be isolated, removed from positions to avoid sabotage, Muscovites and Poles even more so. If there is an absolute need to retain, for example, a Jew in the economic administration, one of our militiamen must be placed over him, and should liquidate him for the slightest transgression. Only Ukrainians, not foreign enemies, can be leaders in the various branches of life. The assimilation of Jews is excluded."<ref>“Instruktsii Revoloiutsiinoho Provodu OUN(B) dlia orhanizatsiinoho aktyvu v Ukraini na period viiny. “Borot’ba i diialnist’ OUN pid chas viiny” H. Vkazivky na pershi dni orhanizatsii derzhavnoho zhyttia,” TsDAVO Ukrainy, f. 3833, op. 2, spr. 1, ark. 33–57.</ref></blockquote><blockquote>“Don’t throw away your weapons yet. Take them up. Destroy the enemy . . . People!—Know this!—Moscow, the Hungarians, the Jews—these are your enemies. Destroy them.”<ref>“Ukrains’kyi narode!” OUN(b) flyer, July 1, 1941, TsDAVO Ukrainy, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 42, l. 35. See also Dieter Pohl, Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien 1941–1944: Organization und Durchführung eines staatlichen Massenverbrechens, 2d ed. (Munich: Verlag Oldenburg, 1997), 57.</ref></blockquote>At the beginning of Operation Barbarossa the Nachtigall Battalion, a volunteer unit for the Brandenburger Commandos recruited exclusively from among the OUN(b) and commanded by Roman Shukheyvch, could rely on a local support network of the OUN to assist in identification of targets for liquidation and enthusiastic<ref>Berndt Boll, “Złoczów, July 1941: The Wehrmacht and the Beginning of the Holocaust in Galicia: From a Criticism of Photographs to a Revision of the Past,” in Omer Bartov, Atina Grossmann, and Mary Nolan, eds., Crimes of War: Guilt and Denial in the Twentieth Century (New York: The New Press, 2002), 73.</ref> assistance in the mass executions.
+[[Operation Barbarossa]], the Nazi operation to invade and occupy the [[Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922–1991)|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.<blockquote>"The Jews are to be isolated, removed from positions to avoid sabotage, Muscovites and Poles even more so. If there is an absolute need to retain, for example, a Jew in the economic administration, one of our militiamen must be placed over him, and should liquidate him for the slightest transgression. Only Ukrainians, not foreign enemies, can be leaders in the various branches of life. The assimilation of Jews is excluded."<ref>“Instruktsii Revoloiutsiinoho Provodu OUN(B) dlia orhanizatsiinoho aktyvu v Ukraini na period viiny. “Borot’ba i diialnist’ OUN pid chas viiny” H. Vkazivky na pershi dni orhanizatsii derzhavnoho zhyttia,” TsDAVO Ukrainy, f. 3833, op. 2, spr. 1, ark. 33–57.</ref></blockquote><blockquote>“Don’t throw away your weapons yet. Take them up. Destroy the enemy . . . People!—Know this!—Moscow, the Hungarians, the Jews—these are your enemies. Destroy them.”<ref>“Ukrains’kyi narode!” OUN(b) flyer, July 1, 1941, TsDAVO Ukrainy, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 42, l. 35. See also Dieter Pohl, Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien 1941–1944: Organization und Durchführung eines staatlichen Massenverbrechens, 2d ed. (Munich: Verlag Oldenburg, 1997), 57.</ref>
+“We will butcher the Jews, strangle the Poles, and establish a Ukrainian state!”<ref>Bruder, “Den ukrainischen Staat,” 100, citing Kommunikat Nr. 7, Archiwum Akt Nowych, Ambasada RP w Berlinie 3677, Bl. 262.</ref> - Lyrics from an OUN song</blockquote>At the beginning of Operation Barbarossa the Nachtigall Battalion, a volunteer unit for the Brandenburger Commandos recruited exclusively from among the OUN(b) and commanded by Roman Shukheyvch, could rely on a local support network of the OUN to assist in identification of targets for liquidation and enthusiastic<ref>Berndt Boll, “Złoczów, July 1941: The Wehrmacht and the Beginning of the Holocaust in Galicia: From a Criticism of Photographs to a Revision of the Past,” in Omer Bartov, Atina Grossmann, and Mary Nolan, eds., Crimes of War: Guilt and Denial in the Twentieth Century (New York: The New Press, 2002), 73.</ref> assistance in the mass executions.
 ===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 58<ref>Rudling, P.A. (2011) ‘The OUN, the UPA and the Holocaust: A Study in the Manufacturing of Historical Myths’, ''The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies'' [Preprint], (2107). Available at: <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.5195/cbp.2011.164</nowiki>.</ref> progroms. In July 1941 they murdered between 38,000 and 39,000<ref>Dieter Pohl, “Anti-Jewish Pogroms in Western Ukraine: A Research Agenda,” in Barkan, Cole, and Struve, eds. Shared History—Divided Memory, 305–315.</ref> Jews in other towns surrounding Lvov.
+The OUN-B carried out 58<ref name=":0">Rudling, P.A. (2011) ‘The OUN, the UPA and the Holocaust: A Study in the Manufacturing of Historical Myths’, ''The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies'' [Preprint], (2107). Available at: https://doi.org/10.5195/cbp.2011.164</ref> progroms. In July 1941 they murdered between 38,000 and 39,000<ref>Dieter Pohl, “Anti-Jewish Pogroms in Western Ukraine: A Research Agenda,” in Barkan, Cole, and Struve, eds. Shared History—Divided Memory, 305–315.</ref> Jews in other towns surrounding Lvov.
+Mass executions were the OUN's favoured method of implementing the Holocaust. The german system of Concentration Camps was established by the SS in response to the problem that the enormous volume of death witnessed and inflicted by their professional executioners resulted in severe mental breakdowns and occasional crises of faith due to development of empathy for the victims. An often overlooked aspect of this outsourcing was making the direct killing more technical and the other approach was delegating the killing to more enthusiastic collaborators like the Banderites. Concentration camps were, sytematically speaking, a backup-measure for whoever wasn't caught by the collaborators. Furthermore the collaborators acted reciprocally as a dragnet for escapees from the Ghettos and specialised annihilation camps.
+Survivor of the Galician Holocaust described the Banderites methods thusly:<blockquote>"When the Bandera gangs seize a Jew, they consider it a prize catch. . . . They literally slash Jews to pieces with their machetes."<ref name=":1">Moshe Maltz, Years of Horrors—Glimpse of Hope: The Diary of a Family in Hiding (New York: Shengold, 1993), 147, entry for November 1944.</ref></blockquote><blockquote>"Bandera men . . . are not discriminating about who they kill; they are gunning down the populations of entire villages. . . . Since there are hardly any Jews left to kill, the Bandera gangs have turned on the Poles. They are literally hacking Poles to pieces. Every day . . . you can see the bodies of Poles, with wires around their necks, floating down the river Bug."<ref name=":1" /></blockquote>Bladed weapons and farm tools were preffered weapons of murder.<ref>Bruder, “Den ukrainischen Staat,” 146.</ref> Polish survivor testimonies contain accounts of how the UPA (at that time thoroughly infiltrated by and merged with the OUN-B forced family members to take part in murders of their relatives. Mutiliation and torture were employed as standard procedure and a favoured method of exhibiting the results to the OUN's enemies was the crucifiction of victims.
 ===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 ( for contrast) 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.