Shukhevych and the Nachtigall Battalion: Soviet Fabrications about the Ukrainian Resistance Movement

In this article I will not be responding to the numerous fabricated stories that are still being published in newspapers and books in Russia and elsewhere, which portray the freedom fighters of the Ukrainian resistance movement—the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) or the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)—as “fascists.” Even in Ukraine today there are still significant numbers of people who maliciously defame those who sacrificed their lives for their country’s freedom and independence. Clearly, certain individuals find it easier to make their “scholarly” careers by issuing groundless accusations. Where some of these accusers are concerned, this type of allegation is an unmistakable holdover from the Soviet propaganda era.

In the Russian Federation, in particular, it is a matter of state policy to denigrate all past and present efforts of Ukrainians to be free in their own independent state. The decree issued on 14 October 2004 by President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine, whose goal was to bring about reconciliation between the veterans of the Red Army and the members of the Ukrainian resistance movement, was immediately criticized in an article published in a Moscow newspaper.I Thus, it is hardly a surprise—indeed, it was to be expected—that several individuals recently publicly accused the Commander in Chief of the UPA General Roman Shukhevych and the Nachtigall Battalion for crimes they did not commit.

Should one waste time arguing with people who make baseless accusations against Ukraine’s resistance movement? I think not. It is more effective to convey to readers who desire to learn the truth about the dramatic and often tragic events of World War II in Ukraine by showing them evidence based on solid documentation.

The most enduring object of slander against the Ukrainian national liberation movement has been Stepan Bandera, who for many people remains a flag-bearer and symbol of the struggle for Ukraine’s national dignity and political independence. Bandera and his followers have been characterized variously as “fascists,” “Hitlerites,” “collaborators,” “Nazis,” etc. However, like Hetman Ivan Mazepa or Symon Petliura, Bandera has become part of Ukrainian political history—a symbol that is applied to anyone who was ever committed to the ideal of national independence. The Russians regarded even Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko as a “Banderite” (banderivka), journalist Yurii Korohodsky has written.II

A storm of criticism against the Ukrainian resistance movement erupted in the Russian media in 2007, when President Yushchenko posthumously conferred the title of “Hero of Ukraine” on General Roman Shukhevych (nom de guerre: Taras Chuprynka), the Commander in Chief of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, who died in a shoot-out with special units of the MVD in March 1950. The award was presented to his son Yurii Shukhevych on 14 October 2007. On that occasion President Yushchenko called upon the parliament and government to grant official recognition to the members of the UPA, who had fought for the independence of Ukraine.III

Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded negatively to President Yushchenko’s suggestion, viewing it as the latest in a string of anti-Russian manifestations, which, according to Russia, are cropping up in Ukraine. In its declaration of 14 December 2007 Russia expressed particular concern over the “rehabilitation of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army” because, as the Russians maintained, “it [is] well known that the bandit formations of the UPA participated in the Nazis’ punitive actions.”IV On 23 June 2008 the Russian government again criticized President Yushchenko for his decision to grant an award to Shukhevych whom they identified as a “captain of the SS.” It would have been constructive if the Russians had provided evidence to back their accusations. The commentary also stated that it is absolutely unacceptable to treat “Nazi criminals and the fighters of the OUN-UPA, and the veterans of the Great Patriotic War” as equals. What is particularly interesting to a historian is the Russian objection to “efforts to re-examine the consequences of World War II.”V

The position of Russia’s foreign ministry was restated by Vitaly Churkin, the Ambassador of the RF to the UN at a press conference held on 28 October 2008, during which he went so far as to call Roman Shukhevych “a Nazi.” Furthermore, he said that “throughout the Second World War they,” i.e., the members of the Ukrainian resistance movement, “were part of the Nazi movement…” The ambassador also stated that “the majority of those people who were killing Jews in Babyn Yar were Ukrainian Nazis.VI ” Where did these Ukrainian Nazis come from?

This latest chapter in the vilification campaign against Shukhevych and the Nachtigall Battalion was started by Yosef Lapid, claiming to be the Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council, who, during President Yushchenko’s state visit to Israel and his side-trip to Yad Vashem in November 2007, protested against the granting of the title “Hero of Ukraine” to Shukhevych. Lapid maintained that Shukhevych and the Nachtigall Battalion had participated in the murder of 4,000 Jews in Lviv  in 1941.VII On 6 December 2007 he restated his position during a program aired by the international broadcaster Deutsche Welle: “We have a whole dossier which shows that Shukhevych was one of those implicated in mass murder. Ukraine has not yet asked us to hand over these documents.”VIII

The Ukrainian government, which had been cooperating with Yad Vashem, having already delivered 126,000 pages of various documents to Israel, decided to send an official delegation to Yad Vashem to uncover the truth about what really happened in Lviv. On 27 February 2008 Ihor Yukhnovsky, chairman of Ukraine’s Institute of National Memory, and Volodymyr Viatrovych left for Israel. The next day they met with Yad Vashem’s director Avner Shalev, who informed the Ukrainian delegation that there is no separate dossier on Shukhevych and that Yosef Lapid, who had raised the issue, is not a member of Yad Vashem.IX The following question arises: whom can we trust when we, historians, try in an honest fashion to recreate the complexities of the past?

Recently, the Russian archives released, but most likely fabricated, documents that characterize the Ukrainian resistance movement as a tool of Nazi Germany, since the Germans controlled the leadership of the OUN, which had created the UPA.X These documents, as well as the position of the Russian foreign ministry and Churkin’s statement about the OUN, UPA, and General Shukhevych, in which Russia’s Ambassador to the UN connects the Ukrainians’ efforts to gain recognition for the Holodomor (the genocide by starvation in 1932-1933) with the alleged efforts of the Ukrainian leadership “to glorify…individuals who supported the Nazis,” are all fabrications whose objective is to create a negative image of the Ukrainian resistance movement, the central objective of which was the establishment of an Independent Ukrainian State.

How could the Germans have controlled the leadership of the OUN when in July 1941 they had already placed under house arrest the two leaders of the organization, Stepan Bandera and Yaroslav Stetsko, who were then sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in January 1942? Their arrests were followed by mass arrests of other leading members of the OUN.XI Only Mykola Lebed, whom Stetsko designated as the leader of the OUN, escaped arrest. During their manhunt for Lebed, on 4 October 1941 the German security services issued an all-points bulletin with Lebed’s picture, warning that he was armed and dangerous.XII He disappeared into the underground, from where he successfully conducted OUN operations and later, UPA actions. Lebed’s wife Daria was less fortunate: the Germans captured her and sent her to the Ravensbr ck concentration camp. So how did the OUN conduct its collaboration with the Nazis—from inside the concentration camps or from the underground?

All of these events happened unexpectedly and within a short period of time, and they were triggered by the unilateral decision of the OUN leadership to proclaim in Lviv on 30 June 1941 the Restoration of the Ukrainian State without consulting the German authorities. By this act, the OUN challenged the Germans’ policy of converting Eastern Europe into a German colony, and the Germans responded instantly.XII Yaroslav Stetsko, who signed the Act of Restoration of the Ukrainian State, was told on the spot by the German intelligence officer, Hans Koch, that he was making a mistake. Koch demanded that the assembly be cancelled and warned Stetsko: “You are playing with fire.”XIV The German authorities interpreted the Proclamation of 30 June and the efforts of the OUN to establish a local government and police force as the Bandera leadership’s attempt to “present the German authorities with a fait accompli.”XV

Berlin, hoping that the OUN would change its plans, dispatched Undersecretary of State Ernst Kundt to Cracow, where he held talks with Stepan Bandera, Volodymyr Horbovy, Vasyl Mudry, Stepan Shukhevych and Viktor Andriievsky. The meeting turned into a confrontation between Kundt and Bandera. While Kundt insisted that Germany alone had the right to decide the political future of Ukraine, Bandera explained that the struggle in which the Ukrainians were engaged was the struggle for a free and independent Ukraine. Furthermore, he declared that “the basis for full cooperation with German institutions was the goal of establishing an independent Ukrainian state…”XVI Bandera also explained to Kundt that in his decisions he did not depend on any German authority. “I wish once again to clarify,” Bandera declared, “that in all of the orders issued by me, I did not rely on any German authority or any consent of the German authorities, but only on the mandate that I received from the Ukrainian people...”XVII

I would suggest that those who make cavalier statements about the leadership of the OUN and UPA being pro-Nazi, particularly representatives of states or important institutions, should first examine the contents of reliable archival documents. After 30 June 1941 the Germans knew whose cause the OUN represented. That is why as early as 5 August 1941 a report issued by Armeeoberkommando 17 talks about “Traveling Bandera-Propaganda Groups.” On 7 September 1941 one finds “Ukrainian political agents of the Bandera Movement” in the category of undesirable individuals.XVIII

The radicalization of the relations between the German authorities and the OUN proceeded apace, as we learn from a report that was introduced at the Nuremberg Trials. On 25 November 1941 the Einsatzkommando C/5 issued an order to its branches, stating: “It has been established with certainty that the Bandera Movement is preparing an uprising in the Reichskommissariat, whose ultimate objective is to create an independent Ukraine. All functionaries of the Bandera Movement are to be immediately arrested and, after a thorough interrogation, secretly liquidated as pillagers.”XIX

German concerns over a possible revolution planned by Bandera’s followers were reflected in various reports of the German security services. A report dated 16 January 1942, for example, states that on the basis of information provided by “the arrested followers of Bandera no definite date for an outbreak of the planned revolution has been named. The signal for the uprising should be given by Bandera whose release the OUN is hoping for.”XX Of course, that signal could not come because Bandera remained in the concentration camp until October 1944. After his release Bandera had a conversation with Obergruppenf hrer Gottlob Berger on 6 October 1944, during which the Ukrainian leader expressed great hopes for the success of the Ukrainian resistance movement. Berger summed up his impression of Bandera, noting that “he is dedicated to his idea to the very end” and that “he hates the Russians as much as the Germans.”XXI It is worth noting that in the German security service (Sicherheitsdienst, SD) report of January-March 1942 the OUN(B) is already characterized as the most active and dangerous.XXII Generally speaking, beginning in the spring of 1942, there is a significant increase in the number of reports about the activities of the OUN, which is characterized as a dangerous resistance movement.XXIII Also intriguing is an SD report dated 31 July 1942, which quotes an article from issue no. 4 of the OUN(B)’s illegal publication Bulletin. “The year 1941,” the article states, “brought us change: one totalitarianism disappeared [and] a second took its place...In their basic objectives both are similar, only tactics separate them.” XXIV

A lengthy report on the “National-Ukrainian resistance movement UPA,” dated 1 November 1944, makes for fascinating reading. The document was prepared for Fremde Heere Ost (German Intelligence Evaluation Service, Eastern Section) by Colonel Reinhard Gehlen. The document states that “the objective of the OUN is to create an independent national Great-Ukraine [Grossukraine].”XXV The author also explains that “as the relations between Germans and Ukrainians gradually worsened, the OUN took a position of hostility not only against the Poles and Bolshevism, but also against the German administration. By this time the organization’s fight was directed against the Germans, Soviets, and Poles. After repeated occupation of Ukraine by the RA [Red Army] she [UPA] is fighting exclusively against the Soviets…” XXVI

These sources provide far better evidence concerning the real objective, as well as the relationship between the OUN leadership and the German authorities, than rehashed Soviet propaganda.

Since the Russian Ambassador to the UN wildly ascribes the murder of Jews in Babyn Yar to Ukrainian nationalists, in order to provide true and accurate information I shall simply quote the findings of the Nuremberg Trials. The report on Kyiv states: “Consequently all Jews of Kiev were requested, in agreement with the city commander, to appear on Monday, 29 September by 8 o’clock at a designated place. These announcements were posted by members of the militia of Kiev in the entire city. Simultaneously it was announced orally that all Jews were to be removed. In collaboration with the group [Gruppen] staff and 2 Kommandos of the police regiment South, the Sonderkommando 4a executed on 29 and 30 September, 33,771 Jews.”XXVII The account clearly indicates who committed this horrendous crime in Kyiv.

Since the assault on the Ukrainian resistance movement, known as the OUN and the UPA, was launched with an attack against Shukhevych and his service in the Nachtigall Battalion, I propose to examine the origins of this issue. Roman Shukhevych, the focus of these Moscow-engineered attacks and actions by certain foolish individuals, was from his youth dedicated to the cause of Ukrainian independence. When he was eighteen years old, Shukhevych joined the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO), where he was known for his dedication and organizational skills.XXVIIILater he joined the ranks of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which was founded in Vienna in1929. As a member of the OUN, Shukhevych not only performed the numerous duties that were expected of him, but also dedicated his entire life to gaining freedom for the Ukrainian nation. His first military service in defense of the Ukrainian cause took place during the struggle for the independence of Carpathian Ukraine in 1939. After a brief battle against units of the Hungarian army, Shukhevych left for Cracow, where he carried out liaison duties for the OUN.XXIX

The political situation in 1939 was a stormy period in European history, but a real doomsday arrived when Stalin and Hitler signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact on 23 August 1939, dividing Eastern and Central Europe into spheres of domination and influence. As a result of the Pact, Eastern Poland, which was inhabited primarily by Ukrainians and Belarusians, as well as Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and, after a short but bloody war, part of Finland came under Soviet control.XXX It must be kept in mind that, with Stalin on his side, Hitler knew he would not have to fight on two fronts, as was the case during World War I. Therefore, without delaying his plans, Hitler launched his invasion of Poland one week after the pact was signed. On 17 September Stalin joined Hitler and sent the Red Army against Poland, thereby implementing the first stage of the Pact’s “Secret Protocols,” which entailed the partition of Poland.XXXI After annihilating the Polish army, the commanders of the German and Soviet armies met in the Belarusian cities of Grodno and Brest to celebrate their victory.XXXII Thus, while Hitler was waging war in the West against Great Britain and France, the Stalin-Hitler alliance, which continued until June 22, 1941, was sealed with Polish blood.XXXIII

The OUN, which earlier had cherished some hope of gaining German support in its struggle for independence, now found itself in a hopeless situation because the Germans, who were at war with France and Great Britain, were being supplied with raw materials by the Soviets, and therefore Hitler was not about to antagonize Stalin by establishing any overt relations with the Ukrainians. A handful of discreet contacts between Colonel Riko Jaryj, acting on behalf of the OUN, and some German intelligence representatives resulted in an agreement to provide covert military and intelligence training for small groups of OUN members. The situation changed after Germany’s victories in the West. When the French government capitulated on 22 June 1940, the Germans became more receptive to OUN proposals.XXXIV In April 1941 Bandera authorized Riko-Jaryj to conduct negotiations with several representatives of the German Wehrmacht—professors Theodor Oberl nder, Hans Koch, and Georg Gerulis—with the objective of forming a Ukrainian military unit within the Wehrmacht. The undertaking was successful, and an understanding was reached about the formation of two battalions, Nachtigall and Roland.XXXV

Initially, the Ukrainian recruits were trained secretly in small groups called “Arbeitsdienst” or were simply kept in isolation. In April 1941 some 700 Bandera followers (OUN-B) were recruited into the program; in mid-May they were divided into two groups and sent for additional training in special operations. It is important to note that, although the training was conducted with the support of the Abwehr (German Military Intelligence), headed by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the Abwehr did not attach the two battalions to any army unit.XXXVI They were obviously designated for special tasks. The recruits were divided and sent to two separate places for final training. One group, named Nachtigall, was sent to Neuhammer, in Silesia. The other group, called Roland, was sent to Saubersdorf Castle located south of Vienna, and was placed under the command of Major Yevhen Pobihushchy. During the OUN(B)’s negotiations with the Germans, an understanding was reached, according to which the members of the Nachtigall and Roland battalions would swear allegiance only to the Ukrainian state, not to Germany or Hitler.XXXVII

The Nachtigall Battalion, whose code name was “Special Gruppe Nachtigall,” was under the command of Dr. Hans-Albrecht Herzner whose chief consultant and liaison officer was Prof. Theodore Oberl nder, who held the rank of First Lieutenant. For the Ukrainians, the real commander was Roman Shukhevych, one of the leading members of the OUN(B).XXXVIII Both battalions spent only a short time in their new training bases. By 7 June 1941 Roland was on its way to Romania, expecting to take part in operations in southern Ukraine, and on 18 June Nachtigall was dispatched to the Soviet-German border: Operation Barbarossa was about to start.

The members of the Nachtigall Battalion headed out eagerly to the Soviet border, hoping the war would start soon, since they knew about the massive arrests being conducted by the NKVD and the deportations of the population from Western Ukraine to Siberia. Between 1939 and 1941 some 550,000 people were deported.XXXIX As expected, the German attack on the Soviet Union began on 22 June 1941. Without having taken part in any battles, the Nachtigall Battalion crossed the Soviet border on its way to Lviv, where it arrived in the early hours of 30 June. Following instructions, the battalion gained control over several strategically important objectives: railroad stations, gas and electric stations, St. George’s Cathedral, and the city hall.XL

In Lviv the soldiers of the Nachtigall Battalion saw the results of the Soviet reign of terror. The prisons were filled with mutilated and decomposing corpses of prisoners.XLI Several members of the battalion who went to Brygidky Prison found the corpse of Yurii Shukhevych, their commander’s brother.XLII The NKVD director of jails, Filippov, reported on 5 July 1941 that 2,464 prisoners had been executed in the prisons of Lviv. The report also provides details on executions of prisoners in other cities of Western Ukraine.XLIII The terror that had been unleashed by the Soviets, and the mass executions of prisoners, angered the population of Lviv. Overcome with fury and anxiety, some relatives of murdered prisoners as well as ordinary residents of Lviv XLIV seized Jews whom they encountered on the streets and forced them to go to the jail cellars to bring out the decomposing bodies. This was all happening amidst ruthless violence and abuse. The stereotype of the “Jewish Bolshevik” turned innocent people into victims because those who were guilty of these criminal acts, irrespective of their nationality, had been evacuated by the Soviets before the German army entered Lviv.

Taras Hunczak is a professor emeritus at Rutgers University in Newark, N.J., and at Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv since 1991

I Nataliia Pechorna, “Nad Ukrainoi vitaet prizrak Bandery” VPK 157 (no. 41), 22-31 October 2006. See also the article published on 15 October 2007 by the Russian Orthodox information agency Russkaia Liniia.

II Yurii Korohodsky, “Nebezpechnyi dreif Tymoshenko,” Ukrainska Pravda, 29 September 2008.

III “Yushchenko doruchyv Tymoshenko vyznaty UPA,” Ukrainska Pravda, 14 October 2007.

IV “Zaiavlenie Ministerstva inostrannykh del Rossii v sviazi s antirossiiskimi proiavleniiami na Ukraine,” http://www.mid.ru/brp_4.nsf/sps/8Bo2FF594F151D36C32573B1004930DC.

V http://www.In.mid.ru/brp4.nsf/0/75EABB35DB1CACCB1C325747100594B1A. See also “Rosiia skarzhytsia svitu na Ukrainu za OUN-UPA,” www.PRAVDA.com.ua (24 June 2008).

VI http://www.un.org/webcast/2008.html.

VII Lviv is the current name of this Ukrainian city. Under Polish rule it was known as Lw?w; under Austrian and German rule it was called Lemberg. In Russian it is known as Lvov.

VIII See Halyna Coynash’s lengthy and carefully documented article, “Shukhevych charges a phantom of Soviet propaganda needing closure” in Kyiv Post, 19 March 2008.

IX Maksym Medynsky, “Takyi heroi—ne karatel! V arkhivi izrailskoho memoriialnoho kompleksu Yad Vashem nemaie dosie na Romana Shukhevycha,” Ukraina Moloda, 5 March 2008. See also Volodymyr Viatrovych, “Kinets lehendy pro Nachtigall,” Den (Kyiv), 19 March 2008.

X Central Archive of the Federal Security Service (FSB) of the Russian Federation, fond 4, list 3, file 818, fols. 177-186.

XI See Bundesarchiv, R58/214, Ereignismeldung UdSSR, Nr. 11, pp. 3-4. For a partial record of OUN-B members arrested during 1941-1943, see Bundesarchiv, R58/223, Meldungen aus den besetzten Ostgebieten Nr. 41; see also The National Archives, Washington, D.C., T 175/274; T 175/146.

XII Copy of the “Fahndungsersuchen des Reichskriminalpolizeiamtes” from the author’s private collection.

XIII It should be noted that some highly-placed Germans supported the idea of an independent Ukraine. See the letter of Admiral Canaris, the head of the Abwehr (German military intelligence service), “Aktennotiz ber die Besprechung mit dem Reichsleiter Rosenberg am 30. Mai 1941,” Milit r Archiv, Freiburg, RW 4/v.760.

XIV For more details, see Yaroslav S. Stetsko, 30 chervnia 1941: Proholoshennia Derzhavnosty Ukrainy (Toronto: Ukrainska Vydavnycha Spilka, 1967), pp. 175-98.

XV SD report of 3 July 1941 in Bundesarchiv, R58/214, Ereignismeldung UdSSR, Nr. 11, p. 58.

XVI “Niederschrift ber die R cksprache mit Mitgliedern des ukrainischen Nationalkomitees und Stepan Bandera vom 3.7.1941,” Hoover Institute on War and Revolution, NSDAP No. 52, pp. 7-10.

XVII Ibid. p.14.

XVIII See “Ukrainische politische Agitatoren” and “ berwachung des Zivilverkehrs” in Freiburg, AOK 17/14499/51.

XIX Internationaler Milit r-Gerichtshof N rnberg. N?rnberg 1949, vol. XXXIX, pp. 265, 269-70.

XX See “T tigkeit der OUN,” Bundesarchiv R 58/220, Ereignismeldung UdSSR Nr. 156, January 1942, pp. 193-94. One can find additional reports about the anti-German activities of Bandera’s followers, i.e., the OUN(B), in Ereignismeldung UdSSR, Nr. 52, 56, 66, 78, and others.

XXI “Besprechung mit Bandera,” Bundesarchiv, NS 19/1513, fol. 1.

XXII Bundesarchiv, Koblenz, SD Reports 70/31, p. 31. See also “T tigkeits-und Lagebericht Nr. 8 der Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD in der UdSSR,” p. 132.

XXIII The National Archives of the United States, T 175/16/ 2519868-2519872; Meldungen aus den besetzten Ostgebieten Nr. 4 “Widerstandsbewegung in der Ukraine,” a) Bandera-Bewegung.

XXIV “Meldungen aus den besetzten Ostgebieten,” No. 14. T 175/17/ 2520097, p. 5.

XXV The National Archives of the United States, T 78/562, “Die national-ukrainische Widerstandsbewegung UPA,” Stand: 1. Nov. 1944, p. 2.

XXVI Ibid., p. 3.

XXVII Trials of War Criminals before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, N rnberg, October 1946-April 1949, p. 148.

XXVIII About Shukhevych’s early life, see Petro Arsenych, Rid Shukhevychiv (Ivano Frankivsk: Nova zoria, 2005).

XXIX Bohdan Kravtsiv, Liudyna i voiak: Zbirnyk na poshanu gen. Romana Shukhevycha (Munich-London: Ukrainska Vydavnycha Spilka, Ukrainskyi Instytut Osvitnoi Polityky, 1990).

XXX For more details, see William R. Keylor, The Twentieth-Century World: An International History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 172-77. See also Frank P. Chambers, Christina Phelps Grant, and Charles C. Bayley, This Age of Conflict: A Contemporary World History, 1914-1943 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1943), pp. 812-20.

XXXI V. I. Kucher, ed., et al., Ukraina u Druhii svitovii viini (1939-1945), vol. 4 (Kyiv: Heneza, 2003), pp. 55-60.

XXXII Yurii Shapoval, Dolia iak Istoria (Kyiv: Heneza, 2006), pp. 154-63. The Soviet secret service (NKVD) recorded some very negative views among the population about the Nazi-Soviet collaboration. Professor Tsekhanovych from Mykolaiv said that “the Soviet Union placed itself against all the democratic states of the world by starting, in alliance with Germany, the war against Poland…” State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine (DA SBU), fond 16, list 32 (1951), file 13, fols. 183-198. Volkov, an intellectual from Kyiv, said: “…With this fraternization with the fascists, the USSR and its leaders disgraced themselves in the eyes of all the democratic states…” Ibid., p. 9.

XXXIII Report of L. Beria to Stalin (5 March 1940) about the numbers of Polish prisoners, Narodnyi Kommissariat Vnutrennikh Del (Moscow), no. 794/5. In his report to Nikita Khrushchev dated 3 March 1959, the KGB chief Aleksandr Shelepin stated that, in accordance with a decision passed in 1940, 21,857 Polish prisoners had been executed.

XXXIV In 1940 the OUN split into two organizations with the same name. One was headed by Colonel Andrii Melnyk (OUN(M)), and the other, by Stepan Bandera (OUN(B)).

XXXV Roman Ilnytzkyj, Deutschland und die Ukraine: 1934-1945. Tatsachen europ ischer Ostpolitik, ein Vorbericht, vol. 2 (Munich: Osteuropa-Institut, 1956), pp. 139-40.

XXXVI Volodymyr Kosyk, Ukraina pid chas Druhoi svitovoi viiny 1938-1948 (New York: n.p., 1992), p. 153.

XXXVII Ilnytzkyj, Deutschland und die Ukraine, p. 140. For details about the Roland Battalion, see Ievhen Pobihushchyi, Druzhyny Ukrainskykh Natsionalistiv 1941-1942 (Toronto: Nasha Knyhozbirnia, 1953).

XXXVIII Myroslav Kalba, U lavakh Druzhynnykiv: Spohady uchasnykiv (Denver, CO.: Vyd. Druzhyn ukrainskykh natsionalistiv, 1982) pp. 22-26.

XXXIX V. A. Smolii, Politychnyi teror i teroryzm v Ukraini XIX-XX st. (Kyiv: Natsionalna Akademiia Nauk Ukrainy, Instytut Istorii Ukrainy, 2002), pp. 584-85.

XL Kalba, U lavakh Druzhynnykiv, p. 28.

XLI For photographs of murdered prisoners, see The National Archives, Washington, D.C. T312/674-8308287.

XLII Ibid., pp. 80-81.

XLIII Ivan Bilas, Represyvno-karalna systema v Ukraini 1917-1953, vol. 1 (Kyiv: Lybid, 1994), pp. 128-29. For more details, see Bundesarchiv, R58/214, Der Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD Berlin, der 12 Juli 1941. Ereignismeldung UdSSR, Nr. 20. For photographs of prisoners murdered in other Western Ukrainian cities, see The National Archives, Washington, D.C., T 312/617/8308287-8308296.

XLIV Kost Pankivsky, Vid derzhavy do Komitetu (New York-Toronto: Kliuchi, 1957), p. 35. See also Bundesarchiv, Ereignismeldung UdSSR. Nr. 24, p. 191.