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Stepan Bandera 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.[1] 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.[1] 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.[1]
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 Ukraїni!" (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.[2]
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.[3] 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.[4] 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.” [5]
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.[6]
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.[7]
Rehabilitation
On 7th July, 2016, Kiev renamed Moscow Street to Stepan Bandera Street.[8]
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.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Rossolinski-Liebe, Grzegorz (2015). Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist. Columbia University Press. ISBN 9783838266848
- ↑ “The act of registering all Jews by the militia was related to the plan to exterminate
or remove them from Ukraine after establishing the state. Citizens of the OUN-B state were expected to provide the militia with information about “Red Army soldiers, NKVD men, Jews [zhydiv (evreïv)], and informers—in short, everyone who does not belong to the village community.””
Rossolinski-Liebe, Grzegorz (2015). Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist (p. 185). Columbia University Press. ISBN 9783838266848 - ↑ “On the way to the prisons, the Jews were beaten by a furious crowd of both men and women, with fists, cudgels, canes, and other implements. Some of the Jews were forced to crawl on their knees”
Rossolinski-Liebe, Grzegorz (2015). Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist (p. 206). Columbia University Press. ISBN 9783838266848 - ↑ “The Jews were forced to work in the Brygidki prison until about 9 p.m. Lewin estimated that of the approximately 2,000 Jews crowded into the Brygidki prison on 1 June, about eighty survived. Before the Germans allowed them to go home, soldiers of the Nachtigall battalion came to the yard and mistreated the remaining Jews for a while. A German soldier threw a grenade against a group of Jews, and German soldiers continued killing the wounded victims in the yard.”
Rossolinski-Liebe, Grzegorz (2015). Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist (p. 207). Columbia University Press. ISBN 9783838266848 - ↑ “Because the pogrom in Lviv took place at the same time as the proclamation of the Ukrainian state, the city was full of yellow-and-blue and swastika flags, and posters blaming the Jews for the murder of the prisoners, or celebrating Stepan Bandera and Adolf Hitler with slogans such as “Long Live Stepan Bandera, Long Live Adolf Hitler.” The “Great German Army,” the OUN, and the war against “Jewish communists” were also celebrated on posters”
Rossolinski-Liebe, Grzegorz (2015). Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist (p. 214). Columbia University Press. ISBN 9783838266848 - ↑ Rossolinski-Liebe, Grzegorz (2015). Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist (p. 219). Columbia University Press. ISBN 9783838266848
- ↑ “In eastern Galicia 570,000 Jews and in Volhynia 250,000 were annihilated in four stages. The first stage was the pogroms, which cost about 30,000 Jewish lives in both regions, and which were analyzed in the previous chapter in connection with the “Ukrainian National Revolution.” In the second stage, which began during the pogroms and lasted until the end of 1941, Einsatzgruppe C shot about 50,000 Jews in eastern Galicia and 25,000 in Volhynia. The third stage differed between eastern Galicia and Volhynia. About 200,000 Jews in Volhynia were shot close to the ghettoes or in the local fields and forests. The Einsatzkommandos and Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police), who were assisted by the Ukrainian police, finished the murder of Volhynian Jews in late 1942. In eastern Galicia, more than 200,000 Jews were sent to the Bełżec annihilation camp, 150,000 were shot, and 80,000 were killed or died in the ghettos and labor camps. The extermination of the majority of eastern Galician Jews was completed in the summer of 1943. In the fourth stage, about 10 percent (80,000) of all western Ukrainian Jews fought for their lives while hiding in the woods, countryside, towns and cities. Ukrainian nationalists were involved in different ways in all four stages of the murder of the western Ukrainian Jews and committed other massacres of civilians, while pursuing their revolutionary and genocidal ideas.”
Rossolinski-Liebe, Grzegorz (2015). Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist (p. 241). Columbia University Press. ISBN 9783838266848 - ↑ "Kyiv's Moskovskiy Avenue renamed after Stepan Bandera" (2016-07-07). Unian.