2015

[Thomas Eckhardt]

 > And Bandera a Nazi collaborator or an Stalin-enemy? And wasn't
 > Stalin himself a "Nazi collaborator" until June 1941?

Bandera was of course both a Nazi collaborator and an enemy of Stalin.

I do not get your point about the Hitler-Stalin-Pact.


Here is some information on Bandera and Banderists from the U.S. 
government archives:

'A Banderist proclamation in April 1941 claimed that “Jews in the USSR 
constitute the most faithful support of the ruling Bolshevik regime and 
the vanguard of Muscovite imperialism in the Ukraine.” Stetsko, even 
while under house arrest in July 1941, said that “I…fully appreciate the 
undeniably harmful and hostile role of the Jews, who are helping Moscow 
to enslave Ukraine…. I therefore support the destruction of the Jews and 
the expedience of bringing German methods of exterminating Jewry to 
Ukraine….” In Lwów, a leaflet warned Jews that, “You welcomed Stalin 
with flowers [when the Soviets occupied East Galicia in 1939]. We will 
lay your heads at Hitler’s feet.” At a July 6, 1941, meeting in Lwów, 
Bandera loyalists determined that Jews “have to be treated harshly…. We 
must finish them off…. Regarding the Jews, we will adopt any methods 
that lead to their destruction.” Indeed pogroms in East Galicia in the 
war’s first days killed perhaps 12,000 Jews. Back in Berlin, Stetsko 
reported it all to Bandera.

Nazi authorities mobilized Ukrainians into auxiliary police units, some 
of which cleared ghettos. Few such auxiliary police belonged to 
Bandera’s group, which operated independently. But Banderist guerrillas 
in western Ukraine often killed Jews. Historian Yehuda Bauer writes that 
Banderists “killed all the Jews they could find,” surely “many 
thousands” in all. Moshe Maltz, a Jew living in hiding in Sokal, heard 
from a friendly Polish contact “about 40 Jews who were hiding out in the 
woods near his home … the Bandera gangs came and murdered them all.”

When the Soviets reconquered East Galicia in November 1944, there were 
few Jews there left alive. But Maltz recorded that, “When the Bandera 
gangs seize a Jew, they consider it a prize catch. The ordinary 
Ukrainians feel the same way…. they all want to participate in the 
heroic act of killing a Jew. They literally slash Jews to pieces with 
their machetes….”

When the war turned against the Germans in early 1943, leaders of 
Bandera’s group believed that the Soviets and Germans would exhaust each 
other, leaving an independent Ukraine as in 1918. Lebed proposed in 
April to “cleanse the entire revolutionary territory of the Polish 
population,” so that a resurgent Polish state would not claim the region 
as in 1918.16 Ukrainians serving as auxiliary policemen for the Germans 
now joined the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Maltz recorded that 
“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.” On a single day, July 11, 1943, the UPA attacked some 80 
localities killing perhaps 10,000 Poles.'

http://www.archives.gov/iwg/reports/hitlers-shadow.pdf

p. 74-76


What do you think?

Thomas (!)
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l