http://euromaidanpress.com/2015/07/26/u ... aborators/If there is one Ukrainian nationalist that has earned infamy over and above all others, it is Stepan Bandera.
Even before WWII Bandera’s name had been associated with bloodshed in Poland, notably the assassination of the Polish politician Bronisław Pieracki in 1934, for which Bandera was imprisoned at Wronki. Before his imprisonment Bandera was already climbing up the ranks of the OUN (Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists) which up until 1938 had been led by Yehven Konovalets. Konovalets’ assassination by an NKVD operative quickly prompted a leadership struggle between Stepan Bandera and another somewhat more conservative nationalist, Andriy Melnyk. The followers of each would eventually become known as the OUN(b) an OUN(m). Not that Wilhelm Canaris, head of German military intelligence (Abwehr) initially cared too much about this, as the OUN received cash from him in exchange for intelligence about Poland. The Abwehr cash given to the OUN is rather well known, even if others in the Nazi leadership such as Alfred Rosenberg were more fickle about funding the OUN. [14] In September 1939 Bandera managed to escape from Wronki after which he stayed in Kraków where he built his personal base of followers and plotted an armed uprising in Soviet-occupied Ukraine.
On 30 June 1941 after the Germans had marched into Lviv, Bandera’s OUN(b) proclaimed the “Declaration of Ukrainian Independence,” Point 3 of which proclaimed that the new Ukraine would work with Nazi Germany. These facts have given Bandera the reputation of being a would-be Ukrainian Quisling. But the Germans were not in any mood to tolerate a new independent Ukraine, regardless of how much it may or may not have collaborated with Hitler’s wishes. There would not even be an equivalent of the “Lokot autonomy” here, and so on 6 July 1941 Bandera was arrested. He would eventually be placed into the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany. As for Melnyk, he would also end up at Sachsenhausen after trying to proclaim an independent council in Kyiv.
Despite his imprisonment, how culpable is Bandera for the actions his followers undertook during his imprisonment? One of the most notorious acts of bloodshed that the Bandera name is associated with are the massacres of perhaps up to 100,000 Poles (and Ukrainians) in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia in 1943-44. The blame for these massacres usually falls on both the OUN(b) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Although the OUN and UPA weren’t technically one and the same, many OUN members served as UPA soldiers and officers, and vice versa. What this means is that those in the UPA who took part in the Volhynia and Eastern Galicia massacres would still have been Bandera followers. According to this analysis, Bandera wasn’t directly involved, which may be true. But if it can be argued that those who initiated the massacres believed that in doing so they were exercising a spirit of Bandera which demanded a Ukraine free of Poles, then Bandera cannot be completely excused from blame for imbibing that spirit. [15]
What happened in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia remains an uncomfortable history for Ukrainians and Poles to read, but even here, there are some genuine Ukrainian heroes. Romuald Niedzielko has documented over 1,340 cases of Ukrainians who risked their own lives to save Poles from these massacres. Despite these massacres which have long soured Polish-Ukrainian relations, there is still good hope that true reconciliation between Poland and Ukraine is possible in the same way Germany now has good relations with Poland and Israel. Last year Poroshenko tried to urge that reconciliation by insisting Poles and Ukrainians must forgive each other for past mistakes. Now there is a planned joint Polish-Ukrainian Historical Commission to investigate the massacres.
Bardzo, bardzo niespodziewany artykuł na stronie Euromaidanu. Zapodałem tylko fragment, reszta w linku.
Autor, James Oliver, chyba teraz będzie miał problemy prawne na Ukrainie?