Western Ukrainian History WWII

[Ludmila]

Ukraine was one of only three countries to vote against a UN resolution initiated by Russia calling for countries to make greater efforts to discourage the glorification of Nazism.^[33][34][35]

[JayH]

Heavy shelling in Horlivka

http://twitter.com/GirkinGirkin/status/550709805179207681

[krimster2]

"Ukraine was one of only three countries to vote against a UN resolution initiated by Russia calling for countries to make greater efforts to discourage the glorification of Nazism"

Yup, and the other two countries that voted against it were the US and Canada, and the EU nations abstained, maybe because they understand Russia's actual intention has nothing to do with the subject of Nazi-ism and everything to do with Ukraine, sorry Russia...

[AC]

I suppose the second step must be the return of Western Ukraine to Poland. Annexation of part of Poland in 1939 was one of the crimes committed by Stalin. If you reject the Soviet past you have to return the gifts obtained under Soviet rule.
Ukraine has given back Crimea as the process of rejecting brutal and miserable past, so you're moving in right direction I suppose.
Or you intend in battle with past to restrict youself to only demolition of monuments?

Interesting post, Belvis.  Keep in mind that if W. Ukraine is returned to Poland, one of the first things they would do is to topple all of those statues of Bandera.

Interesting that some from W. Ukraine talk about human rights abuses of Lenin and Stalin, but try to whitewash the past when it comes to Bandera.

[Boethius]

Bandera was rather ruthless, but he was not responsible for the massacres committed by UPA.  Moreover, UPA did not have a secret police that tortured tens of thousands to death, or sent millions to gulags.
 
It is only the post WWII diaspora that denies UPA atrocities.  Most Western Ukrainians are, in fact, aware of UPA atrocities, but it was tit for tat in a region that was the crossing ground for a lot of death.   Banderites are respected because they did not sit back and wait to be slaughtered.  They wanted a Ukrainian sated, and they fought back, always against overwhelming odds, into the mid 1950's.

[AC]

Bandera was rather ruthless, but he was not responsible for the massacres committed by UPA.  Moreover, UPA did not have a secret police that tortured tens of thousands to death, or sent millions to gulags.
 

In your opinion only. 

Historians around the world believe otherwise and have stated so, as well as most Western governments.

[Boethius]

Please name those historians and cite the works in which they so claim. 

[AC]

Please name those historians and cite the works in which they so claim.

It's already been done numerous times in the past.  Google is your friend.  Belvis point of giving back territory to Poland is where you should begin.  They have an entirely different version of history then you do regarding Bandera.  As do other nations in that region, as do most Western governments. 

You believe what you want to believe about Bandera because it comforts you; just like those who like Stalin believe what they want to believe about the man.

[Boethius]

In other words, you can't substantiate your post.

[AC]

It is only the post WWII diaspora that denies UPA atrocities.  Most Western Ukrainians are, in fact, aware of UPA atrocities, but it was tit for tat in a region that was the crossing ground for a lot of death.   Banderites are respected because they did not sit back and wait to be slaughtered.  They wanted a Ukrainian sated, and they fought back, always against overwhelming odds, into the mid 1950's.

The diaspora who denies Bandera was a war criminal and Nazi collaborator is mostly in Canada, which includes you.

Bandera was killed by the KGB for good reason, and good riddance.  Ukraine will never become part of the EU until they come to terms with what that man really was: a monster who took money from Nazi's in exchange for the brutal murder of thousands of Jewish men, women and children in W. Ukraine; and a man who ordered his men to invade Polish villages, kill the villagers, and leave their bodies on trees with their genitals in their mouths.

Germans liked Hitler as well, but at least they've the good common sense to not pretend he was only for "German statehood".  At least there are not Hitler statues all over Germany.

[Ed S.]

The diaspora who denies Bandera was a war criminal and Nazi collaborator is mostly in Canada, which includes you.

Bandera was killed by the KGB for good reason, and good riddance.

The same thing happened with Draza Mihailovic. It's not fair to label him as a Nazi collaborator because some Chetniks and Serbs collaborated. The fact is most people in Eastern Europe had to deal with an unimaginable situation of being occupied by one of two foreign powers, both of which were among the most brutal in history. Granted, I don't know enough about Bandera, but with Mihailovic it was clearly a case of the victor (Tito) writing the history. I don't think either account has been definitively settled by historians, and may never will be. The fact is WWII set off a powder keg of ethnic cleansing that left practically nobody unscathed or uninvolved.

[AC]

The same thing happened with Draza Mihailovic. It's not fair to label him as a Nazi collaborator because some Chetniks and Serbs collaborated. The fact is most people in Eastern Europe had to deal with an unimaginable situation of being occupied by one of two foreign powers, both of which were among the most brutal in history. Granted, I don't know enough about Bandera, but with Mihailovic it was clearly a case of the victor (Tito) writing the history. I don't think either account has been definitively settled by historians, and may never will be. The fact is WWII set off a powder keg of ethnic cleansing that left practically nobody unscathed or uninvolved.

The Simon Wiesenthal center has many top historians, and they immediately condemned the (previous, it was rescinded) naming of Bandera as a "hero" of Ukraine (might as well call Hitler a "hero" of Germany).


January 28, 2010

WIESENTHAL CENTER BLASTS UKRAINIAN HONOR FOR NAZI COLLABORATOR

“It is surely a travesty when such an honor is granted right at the period when the world pauses to remember the victims of the Holocaust on January 27,” says SWC official.



 The Simon Wiesenthal Center today condemned Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko for posthumously awarding the “Hero of Ukraine,” one of the country’s highest honors, to Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist leader whose followers killed thousands of Jews and others during World War II.

 In a letter to Oleh Shamshur, Ukraine’s Ambassador to the United States, Mark Weitzman, the Wiesenthal Center’s Director of Government Affairs, expressed “deepest revulsion at the recent honor awarded to Stepan Bandera, who collaborated with the Nazis in the early stages of World War II, and whose followers were linked to the murders of thousands of Jews and others. It is surely a travesty when such an honor is granted right at the period when the world pauses to remember the victims of the Holocaust on January 27.”

Mr. Weitzman added that, “The motto of the late Simon Wiesenthal, the namesake of our institution and the famous “Conscience of the Holocaust,” who was born in the Ukraine was ‘Justice, not Vengeance.’ It is truly a shame that President Yushchenko chose to ignore that lesson and to instead embrace the legacy of Bandera and the perpetrators.”


http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=lsKWLbPJLnF&b=4441467&ct=7922775#.VUe1Mc90yP8

[Boethius]

So where is the proof Bandera ordered the ethnic cleansing in that post? 

The diaspora who denies Bandera was a war criminal and Nazi collaborator is mostly in Canada, which includes you.

Bandera was killed by the KGB for good reason, and good riddance.  Ukraine will never become part of the EU until they come to terms with what that man really was: a monster who took money from Nazi's in exchange for the brutal murder of thousands of Jewish men, women and children in W. Ukraine; and a man who ordered his men to invade Polish villages, kill the villagers, and leave their bodies on trees with their genitals in their mouths.

Germans liked Hitler as well, but at least they've the good common sense to not pretend he was only for "German statehood".  At least there are not Hitler statues all over Germany.

Again, you prove how little you know.  And, you know nothing of the Ukrainian diaspora, beyond what I have posted, so don't even try to debate the issue, as your ignorance is evident in every post.  I repeat.  I have not seen proof Bandera was involved in ethnic cleansing, and apparently, neither have other scholars.  Given Bandera was under house arrest and monitored, and that Germans were known for their meticulous record keeping (their records on the spies in Metropolit Shyptetsky's home have now been disclosed), it is inconceivable that no written record, or even an oral memory of his knowledge of these events exists.  I live in the world of proofs, not airy fairy fantasies.
 
Since you can't answer the challenge, I will provide some historians' perspectives -

Timothy Snyder -

Bandera was still in the German camp at Sachsenhausen, and without influence, when his group took command of a partisan army in early 1943. As the tide turned against the Germans at the Battle of Stalingrad, Ukrainians who had served the
Germans as auxiliary policemen left the German service and went into the forest.  Among their duties as policemen had been the mass killing of west Ukrainian Jews. These Ukrainians, some of them members of the OUN-B, formed the core of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (or UPA), which declared itself against both the existing German occupation and the coming Soviet one. Two leaders of Bandera’s organization, Mykola Lebed’ and Roman Shukhevych, brought the UPA under the control of the OUN-B.
 
Under their command, the UPA undertook to ethnically cleanse western Ukraine of Poles in 1943 and 1944. UPA partisans murdered tens of thousands of Poles, most of them women and children. Some Jews who had taken shelter with Polish
families were also killed. Poles (and a few surviving Jews) fled the countryside, controlled by the UPA, to the towns, controlled by the Germans. Those who survived formed self-defense organizations, or joined the German police (replacing the Ukrainians) or the Soviet partisans who were fighting against the UPA. In all of these conflicts Poles took revenge on Ukrainian civilians. The UPA, for that matter, probably killed as many Ukrainians as it did Poles, since it regarded people who did not adhere to its own brand of nationalism as traitors.

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/feb/24/a-fascist-hero-in-democratic-kiev/[/quote]

From Stepan Bandera: The Life and Aftermath of a Ukrainian Nationalist, Gregorz Rossolinski, page 279:

While the OUN and UPA were conducting the ethnic cleansing of the Poles and hunting Jews, Bandera was not in Ukraine.  He remained confined in Berlin and Sachsenhausen  . . . I did not find any documents confirming that Bandera approved or disapproved of the ethnic cleansing or the murder of the Jews or other minorities.

John Paul-Himka, who has written extensively of UPA's ethnic cleansing, has stated there is no proof Bandera ordered any of the killings.

You can also read David Marples' Heroes and Villains, which basically states the same thing.

[AC]

Blah blah blah.  More ad hominem, more cherry picking (what a surprise!).  If Bandera had not cooperated with the Nazi's when he was under arrest in Sachsenhausen, in a special area (Zellenbau, a special barracks for high-profile political prisoners) with plenty of food and medical care available, they would have immediately killed him. 

To claim that the leader of the OUN UPA et all (whatever!) had no knowledge of the atrocities being committed by his men is the height of being deliberately obtuse.

Again, cooperate (which his men did on his orders) or be executed by the Nazi's.

NEXT!!

[Boethius]

So provide historians who support your postion.  This is what I have read.  I have not read any historian who states what you assert. 
 
 

[Boethius]

Blah blah blah.  More ad hominem, more cherry picking (what a surprise!).  If Bandera had not cooperated with the Nazi's when he was under arrest in Spandau, in a special area with plenty of food and medical care available, they would have immediately killed him. 

To claim that the leader of the OUN UPA et all (whatever!) had no knowledge of the atrocities being committed by his men is the height of being deliberately obtuse.

Again, cooperate (which his men did on his orders) or be executed by the Nazi's.

NEXT!!

Blah, blah yourself.  You can't provide the names of historians who accept your "unique" perspective, you don't even know the difference between OUN and UPA, and likely don't know OUN had factions, and somehow, I am supposed to take your opinion seriously?
 
The Poles, not exactly fans of Bandera, have been studying the Volyn' massacre for decades.  Their prosecutors, in conjunction with Polish historians, have concluded they cannot lay blame on any one person, though they have identified perpetrators.  Polish historians, in aiding Polish prosecutors, have a few theories.  One is that the intent was to expel Poles, but events on the ground led to a massacre.  A second theory is that the massacre arose as a result of internal conflict within OUN's leadership (note, not involving Bandera), as the internal conflict is well documented. 
 
There is no written evidence of a planned or coordinated massacre, though a slaughter did indeed occur (and, there was a slaughtering of Ukrainians by Poles as well), and certainly, nothing directly linking Bandera to these events.
 

[Boethius]

The same thing happened with Draza Mihailovic. It's not fair to label him as a Nazi collaborator because some Chetniks and Serbs collaborated. The fact is most people in Eastern Europe had to deal with an unimaginable situation of being occupied by one of two foreign powers, both of which were among the most brutal in history. Granted, I don't know enough about Bandera, but with Mihailovic it was clearly a case of the victor (Tito) writing the history. I don't think either account has been definitively settled by historians, and may never will be. The fact is WWII set off a powder keg of ethnic cleansing that left practically nobody unscathed or uninvolved.

You are correct, because most of AC's talking points come right from Soviet and Russian propaganda.
 
Bandera was not a "nice" person.  As I have posted in the past, he was ruthless.  He was directly involved in the execution of at least two individuals in the interwar period, one of them, a Ukrainian.  I suspect he would have been a totalitarian leader had his faction won.  However, he was out of the picture fairly early in the war.

[AC]

Blah, blah yourself.  You can't provide the names of historians who accept your "unique" perspective, you don't even know the difference between OUN and UPA, and likely don't know OUN had factions, and somehow, I am supposed to take your opinion seriously?
 
The Poles, not exactly fans of Bandera, have been studying the Volyn' massacre for decades.  Their prosecutors, in conjunction with Polish historians, have concluded they cannot lay blame on any one person, though they have identified perpetrators.  Polish historians, in aiding Polish prosecutors, have a few theories.  One is that the intent was to expel Poles, but events on the ground led to a massacre.  A second theory is that the massacre arose as a result of internal conflict within OUN's leadership (note, not involving Bandera), as the internal conflict is well documented. 
 
There is no written evidence of a planned or coordinated massacre, though a slaughter did indeed occur (and, there was a slaughtering of Ukrainians by Poles as well), and certainly, nothing directly linking Bandera to these events.

         


Which is why the Nazi's did not kill Bandera, but instead released him from prison, set him up in Berlin, and financed him to continue his nefarious actions in Ukraine.

I know all of the factions and all of the history very well; I am just not going to remain in an endless polemic with a holocaust revisionist. 

[AC]

You are correct, because most of AC's talking points come right from Soviet and Russian propaganda.
 

Hardly.  Ed, you can certainly read for yourself.  The European Parliament, the USA, France, the UK, the Czech Republic, etc, etc.  all denounced when a former leader of Ukraine attempted to make Bandera a "hero" of Ukraine.  As well as all major Jewish groups who suffered a holocaust in Ukraine due to the actions of the Nazi collaborator.

excerpt


A European Parliament spokesman, Pavel Zalevski, has said the making of Ukraine’s Nationalist leader Stepan Bandera Hero of Ukraine by former President Victor Yushechenko is at odds with European values.

A European Parliament spokesman, Pavel Zalevski, has said the making of Ukraine’s Nationalist leader Stepan Bandera Hero of Ukraine by former President Victor Yushechenko is at odds with European values. In an interview published by Ukraine’s “Zerkalo Nedeli” the spokesman said that Bandera had embraced Nationalism and relied on terror and that Kiev will have to reconsider its decision if it plans to join the EU. Zalevski initiated a European Parliament resolution slamming Bandera’s heroization and calling on Ukraine’s new leadership to abolish the decision. 
Read more: http://sputniknews.com/voiceofrussia/2010/03/13/5268016/

[Boethius]

Hmm, again, historians (such as Marples) have stated Bandera's relationship with the Germans was, at best "ambivalent".
 
At the time of the Volyn massacre, Bandera was in a concentration camp - hardly esconsed in the cozy arms of the Nazis, as you allege.
 
You may not like the facts, but those are the facts, and no, you obviously don't know history very well.

[Boethius]

Hardly.  Ed, you can certainly read for yourself.  The European Parliament, the USA, France, the UK, the Czech Republic, etc, etc.  all denounced when a former leader of Ukraine attempted to make Bandera a "hero" of Ukraine.  As well as all major Jewish groups who suffered a holocaust in Ukraine due to the actions of the Nazi collaborator.

excerpt


A European Parliament spokesman, Pavel Zalevski, has said the making of Ukraine’s Nationalist leader Stepan Bandera Hero of Ukraine by former President Victor Yushechenko is at odds with European values.

A European Parliament spokesman, Pavel Zalevski, has said the making of Ukraine’s Nationalist leader Stepan Bandera Hero of Ukraine by former President Victor Yushechenko is at odds with European values. In an interview published by Ukraine’s “Zerkalo Nedeli” the spokesman said that Bandera had embraced Nationalism and relied on terror and that Kiev will have to reconsider its decision if it plans to join the EU. Zalevski initiated a European Parliament resolution slamming Bandera’s heroization and calling on Ukraine’s new leadership to abolish the decision. 
Read more: http://sputniknews.com/voiceofrussia/2010/03/13/5268016/

None of which proves what you allege.  Try again.

[AC]

Hmm, again, historians (such as Marples) have stated Bandera's relationship with the Germans was, at best "ambivalent".
 
At the time of the Volyn massacre, Bandera was in a concentration camp - hardly esconsed in the cozy arms of the Nazis, as you allege.
 
You may not like the facts, but those are the facts, and no, you obviously don't know history very well.

Nice try.  As usual, you cherry pick your "facts".  Here, from Harvard Historian Timothy Snyder, who I introduced to you a couple of years ago.  While the history is certainly complicated, an honest person (such as Ed S. and many others) can see the obvious truth.

excerpt
"For Yushchenko, who is not a west Ukrainian, the embrace of Bandera was part of a more general attempt to distance Ukraine from the legacy of Stalinism. As everyone who is interested in the history of Soviet Ukraine knows, from Vladimir Putin in Moscow to Ukrainian nationalist emigrants in Toronto, partisans fighting under Bandera’s name resisted the imposition of Stalinist rule with enormous determination. Thus there seems to be a certain binary political logic to Yushchenko’s decision: to glorify Bandera is to reject Stalin and to reject any pretension from Moscow to power over Ukraine.

Consistent as the rehabilitation of Bandera might be with the ideological competition of the mid-twentieth century, it makes little ethical sense today. Yushchenko, who praised the recent Kiev court verdict condemning Stalin for genocide, regards as a hero a man whose political program called for ethnic purity and whose followers took part in the ethnic cleansing of Poles and, in some cases, in the Holocaust. Bandera opposed Stalin, but that does not mean that the two men were entirely different. In their struggle for Ukraine, we see the triumph of the principle, common to fascists and communists, that political transformation sanctifies violence. It was precisely this legacy that east European revolutionaries seemed to have overcome in the past thirty years, from the Solidarity movement in Poland of 1980 through the Ukrainian presidential elections of 2005. It was then, during the Orange Revolution, that peaceful demonstrations for free and fair elections brought Yushchenko the presidency. In embracing Bandera as he leaves office, Yushchenko has cast a shadow over his own political legacy"."


http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/feb/24/a-fascist-hero-in-democratic-kiev/

[Boethius]

The point about Bandera not representing European values is correct.  But, it doesn't prove what I have been arguing, which is, there is no proof Bandera, in a concentration camp at the time, was involved in slaughters.
 
OUN was fascist, like many European nationalist movements of the time.  OUN eventually rejected parst of their fascist platform, but not all.  Their platform was not in accordance with today's political values, not even in Western Ukraine, where the majority of Western Ukrainians view Bandera negatively.   That is what was objected to, so, the quote above is really apples and oranges.
 
The declaration re Bandera was done purely out of political motivations by Yushchenko, not because anyone in Ukraine, and particularly Western Ukraine, was asking for it.
 
 

[AC]

Hmm, again, historians (such as Marples) have stated Bandera's relationship with the Germans was, at best "ambivalent".
 

 

These were just some of his actions prior to being detained, which resulted in the huge financial reward the Nazi's gave to him.

excerpt

"Bandera was one of the main organizers of terror campaigns intended to prevent Ukrainians from accepting the Polish government by provoking Polish retaliation. The main targets of their assassination attempts were Ukrainians and Poles who wished to work together. The OUN assassinated the leading advocate of Ukrainian-Polish rapprochement, Tadeusz Holówko, in his sanatorium bed. They also sought (but failed) to kill Henryk Józewski, who was implementing a policy of national concessions to Ukrainians in Poland."


http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/feb/24/a-fascist-hero-in-democratic-kiev/

[Boethius]

Nice try.  As usual, you cherry pick your "facts".  Here, from Harvard Historian Timothy Snyder, who I introduced to you a couple of years ago.  While the history is certainly complicated, an honest person (such as Ed S. and many others) can see the obvious truth.

excerpt
"For Yushchenko, who is not a west Ukrainian, the embrace of Bandera was part of a more general attempt to distance Ukraine from the legacy of Stalinism. As everyone who is interested in the history of Soviet Ukraine knows, from Vladimir Putin in Moscow to Ukrainian nationalist emigrants in Toronto, partisans fighting under Bandera’s name resisted the imposition of Stalinist rule with enormous determination. Thus there seems to be a certain binary political logic to Yushchenko’s decision: to glorify Bandera is to reject Stalin and to reject any pretension from Moscow to power over Ukraine.

Consistent as the rehabilitation of Bandera might be with the ideological competition of the mid-twentieth century, it makes little ethical sense today. Yushchenko, who praised the recent Kiev court verdict condemning Stalin for genocide, regards as a hero a man whose political program called for ethnic purity and whose followers took part in the ethnic cleansing of Poles and, in some cases, in the Holocaust. Bandera opposed Stalin, but that does not mean that the two men were entirely different. In their struggle for Ukraine, we see the triumph of the principle, common to fascists and communists, that political transformation sanctifies violence. It was precisely this legacy that east European revolutionaries seemed to have overcome in the past thirty years, from the Solidarity movement in Poland of 1980 through the Ukrainian presidential elections of 2005. It was then, during the Orange Revolution, that peaceful demonstrations for free and fair elections brought Yushchenko the presidency. In embracing Bandera as he leaves office, Yushchenko has cast a shadow over his own political legacy"."


http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/feb/24/a-fascist-hero-in-democratic-kiev/

You didn't introduce me to Timothy Snyder.  I knew of him before I started posting here, because he has lectured on Ukrainian issues for years, and long before you could probably even locate Ukraine on a map.
 
Still all irrelevant to the issue, which is that Bandera ordered the massacre in Volyn.