2015

[János Székely]

It is extremely difficult to find reliable sources about those days of
turmoil, but as far as I (and my Polonist/Ukrainist friends) can
reconstruct the story, the horrible Lwów (Lemberg) pogrom was commanded by
Stetsko, and of course he reported it to Bandera when they met in Berlin
but that doesn't involve Bandera's responsibility. Bandera was an
anti-Polish terrorist in the first place.
As Norman Davies says in A History of Poland, by 1939, after the Stalinist
genocide, the crushing of Poland and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Nazi
Germany remained the only possibly ally for Ukrainian nationalists such as
Bandera. But Hitler soon repressed any Ukrainian national movements in the
field. Many of those people were rabid anti-Semites, yes, and joined the
SS, but Banderite UPA itself fought against the Russians, the Germans and
the Polish Home Army, all three of them. "Nazi Banderites" as such is a
Stalinist propaganda construct.
During the Maidan days Ukrainian extremists went to great lengths to prove
they were _not_ anti-Semites as they didn't want to compromise the
revolution. (e.g. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27173857 )  . It was
funny to see Russian propaganda, which attacked the Maidan people for being
both anti-Semites and Jewish. (Such as Kolomoisky, the new Dnipropetrovsk
governor, who is an archetypal Jewish oligach and an Ukrainian-Israeli
dual, or also Cypriot triple, citizen).

János


2015-01-05 0:06 GMT+01:00 Thomas Eckhardt <thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de>:

> Am 04.01.2015 um 21:47 schrieb János Székely:
>
>> Yes but Bandera was in Sachsenhausen all the while.
>>
>
> Indeed, as far as I know, the acts of mass murder of Jews and Poles I
> referenced were committed by "Banderists" acting in Bandera's name, not by
> Bandera himself or on his orders.
>
> When today's Banderists in Ukraine act in Bandera's name, do you believe
> that this distinction is important to them?
>
> Thomas
>
> P.S. You may have noticed the following: "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."
>
> P.P.S. With regard to the U.S. connection, Stetsko and Lebed are the
> interesting guys. Bandera may have been a German or British asset. The U.S.
> considered him unreliable/uncontrollable, if I remember correctly.
>
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