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Glorifying the Butcher
Inna Rogatchi | 15th February 2010

This article has been read 3863 times


The bitter taste of irony when Ukrainian "butcher" is named national hero

On a Sunday night in January, I get a late telephone call from Moscow. The old friend calling, a brave man who saw quite a lot in his intensive, risk-exposed life, and with whom we went through many daring situations, sounded completely perplexed.

“Listen, the guys and I, we just wanted to ask you - he started atypically slowly as if being not quite sure what would be my response - we are thinking here all the time, and our heads went twisted over that. What do you make of this Stepan Bandera thing, we wonder?”, and he went quiet.

I was glad he asked. For a few days already my husband and I were boiling with outrage over the making the butcher of hundreds of thousands of Poles, Jews, Hungarians, Byelorussians and Russians a Hero of Ukraine. And I understand why my friend was approaching the matter so cautiously.

I was born and grew up in Ukraine, and my husband’s family is from there, too. Since day one of Ukrainian independence, I was a steady and vocal supporter of it. Being an active writer and political observer, I considered Mr. Yushchenko, then the head of the Ukrainian Central Bank, as an able and decent man, years before many others had heard of him as a politician.

I always prompted the others to support him as the president of struggling Ukraine, and felt compassion towards his personal destiny, which has been incredibly harsh after heavy poisoning. I felt deep respect for his ability to stay reserved and still run his country in very uneasy circumstances, representing it in a civilized way, especially on the international stage. Until now.

Later on, my early instincts in seeing Victor Yushchenko as more of a worthy person than a savvy statesman proved to be right. As we have seen, armed with the highest authority, he was unable to get his country out of the mess it has been in for two decades, and now, with its new president, Mr. Yanukovich, who is barely literate, but has the first-hand rich experience on how a prison functions from the inside, the place is sliding into far deeper trouble.

But to my deep sadness and disappointment, my instincts seemed to fail me when it came to the personal qualities of this man.

Was outgoing President Yushchenko thinking, perhaps, that his theatrical gesture of awarding Stepan Bandera, posthumously, with Hero of Ukraine on the Day of Unity of his country would be perceived by the rest of the world as a spectacular grand-finale, with the audience bursting into uncontrollable applause and tears of admiration? I am afraid it looks as if Mr. Yushchenko had been acquainted only with very primitive, hopelessly provincial theater.

I wonder whether Mr. Yushchenko, whose father had been kept by Nazis as a prisoner of war in several concentration camps, including Auschwitz, has ever read any of the masses of documents which his – and now Ukraine’s – hero, Stepan Bandera, had produced during his years of militant activism. Bandera glorified Hitler and was completely ready to serve the Nazi regime. Has the president ever noticed this commonly known fact of Bandera and his organization’s attitude and plans for the other people, both inside Ukraine and from all neighboring countries: “Moscali (diminutive for Russians), Poles, Jews are hostile to us and must be exterminated,” as well as “deported and destroyed?”

Has President Yushchenko ever heard of the battalions Nachtigall and Roland, the only two battalions in the entire Eastern Europe which were formed of volunteers? These Ukrainian volunteers from the Bandera-lead organization were trained by Nazis and served them enthusiastically. Impressive records of their ‘exploits’ are widely available. Has the president of Ukraine ever heard of the SS Galichina division, and the degree of their collaboration with the Bandera led OUN, Organization of the Ukrainian Nationalists? Mr. Yushchenko’s father was among the witnesses of those massacres.

Astonishingly, there has been another nomination of this sort. One year ago, Bandera’s comrade-in-arm, OUN Military Leader Roman Shuchevich, was decorated Hero of Ukraine by President Yushchenko. Shuchevich was a captain of the Wehrmacht and was awarded a well-earned Iron Cross. This fact somehow slipped the attention of the public outside Ukraine and the former Soviet Union, and all of us were wrong to tolerate this blatant glorification of butchers and active Nazi collaborators.

Answering my bewildered friend, I said, “You know, one who fights for his motherland, and who is seeking his country’s independence, does not pave the way over mountains of corpses of people of ‘wrong’ nationalities, and the best sample of that is Poland; the country fought through the Second World War with dignity and courage, although in a truly desperate situation and betrayed by all.

One who supported Nazism with the such enthusiasm and ample practical ‘contribution’ as Bandera did, along with his militants, just cannot be pronounced as anything other that what they were: willing collaborators of the Nazis, utter racists, and bloody criminals.”

To use one’s presidential authority to name those people heroes of one’s country is not only to shame that authority forever, but also to shame your country. This is not exactly what one would expect from the son of a survivor of Auschwitz.

No wonder then that the president of Ukraine, a big and important neighbour of Poland, was not among those leaders of states who were celebrating the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz at the end of January. It is hard to imagine him among those people, at that very place, any longer. Especially after he signed his infamous decree just five days before the anniversary, which is also the international Holocaust Memorial Day. And how ironic those photos of President Yushchenko are, visiting Israel in a kippah ( Jewish skullcap for observant men), kissing The Western Wall in Jerusalem, in all that ‘devotion.’ He threw it all away with his honoring the butchers.

Soon after this outrageous act, the entire Poland went to protest against it, with a fair and harsh statement by president Lech Kaczyński, and mass demonstrations in all big cities of the country, from Warsaw to Wrocław.

Over 20 members of The Council of Europe issued the document of Inadmissibility of Honouring Militant Nationalists as Heroes, condemning the weird gesture of the outgoing Ukrainian president. This is certainly not the way that a decent political figure should leave the highest post in his big and notable country. This is not only an obscure legacy he is leaving behind. This is a legacy of glorifying atrocities. This is a legacy of blindness.

There were many other protests, in different countries and by various organisations all over the world.

But the most impressive and poignant one has been, in my opinion, the laconic move of Moshe Reuven Azman, Chabad chief rabbi of Ukraine, who has returned his Order of Merit, a Ukrainian medal awarded him, in protest against what he called this “hideous blow to Ukraine’s international image.”

To be a rabbi in Ukraine is not an easy position at all. Traditionally, the environment is quite challenging for the Jews living there, to put it diplomatically. To be the leading rabbi figure there is a very demanding position in which you are responsible for many of your colleagues. Because you are representing a very large Jewish community, you are expected to maintain friendly dialogue and be on good terms with the authorities, whoever they are, not to mention the country’s highest office. Rabbi Azman acted bravely, from his heart; and his gesture did not endanger his people as some might think. He defended them, all of us. He defended their dignity, which is the most important thing to defend.

Only confused, weak and short-sighted persons are hoping to enter the hall of history by glorifying murders. In fact, one of them just left the empty stage of his utterly provincial theater by the back door, being largely shamed and widely ignored. He might discover now how bitter the taste of irony can be. And how long it can last.

Inna Rogatchi is a writer and the president of The Rogatchi Foundation. She is a senior international affairs advisor to the European Parliament, and senior strategy advisor to a number of international human rights and modern history institutions.

The column is first published in The Baltic Times.

© Inna Rogatchi, 2010



askold 24th February 2010

Inna Rogatchi, shame on you!

My father was a member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. On June 30, 1941 in the turmoil of the Nazi invasion of and Soviet withdrawal from Western Ukraine, the OUN declared Ukrainian independence in Lviv. This was a direct challenge to the Nazis who would never accept Ukraine’s right to exist. My father and the brother of OUN leader Stepan Bandera were entrusted with the function of carrying out that proclamation in another area of Western Ukraine, then called Stanislaviv now Ivano Frankivsk. As a result, Bandera’s two brothers, my father and other OUN members were arrested on September 22, 1941 in Stanislaviv and sent to Auschwitz, where my father remained interned until just before the Soviets arrived. The Nazis transferred him to another camp at Mauthausen and then Ebensee. He remained interned until the end of the war, finally liberated by the Americans. Bandera’s brothers were not so lucky. They were brutally murdered in Auschwitz.

Ms. Rogatchi, how dare you call Stefan Bandera a “butcher?” He was a prisoner of the Nazis in Berlin and then at Sachsenhausen. Despite tremendous personal pressure he would not betray Ukrainian independence. He even issued pleas to the Ukrainian people and directives to his members to fight the Germans and the Soviets, but not participate in the German plans against the Jews. He did this in spite of the fact that Jews in disproportion to the population served as the bloody murdering agents of the Soviets in the two years of Soviet rule in Western Ukraine between 1939 and 1941. Bandera’s entire family was decimated by the Soviets. Besides his two brothers at Auschwitz, his father, Andrij Bandera, a Ukrainian Catholic priest was arrested and shot by the Soviets in July 1941. His persecutors even forged an indictment against his family for Father Andrij’s signature. Stepan Bandera’sister Oksana spent twenty years in Siberia. Bandera himself was brutally murdered by the Soviets in October 1959 in Munich.

How can you accuse Roman Shukvevych? That same calumny of General Roman Shukhevych receiving the Iron Cross was originated in Moscow, repeated by communists and Jews in Ukraine and even by Yad Vashem only a few years ago. Just last month as a result of a legal court proceeding brought by the children of Roman Shukhevych those slanderers in Ukraine were directed to apologize for their historical distortion. Last year, Yad Vashem was challenged to produce its dossier on Shukhevych and was able to submit only old Soviet fabrications. What about those children of Shukhevych? His son Yuriy spent almost forty years in Soviet prisons and concentration camps. His daughter Maria was taken away from her mother and forced to live in Soviet orphanages. Shukvevych’s sister Natalia was arrested by the Soviets in 1940 and sentenced to 10 years hard labor in the Urals and five years exile in Kazakhstan. Both Shukhevych’s parents were exiled and both died in Soviet exile. His brother Yuriy was murdered brutally by the Soviets in a Lviv prison in June 1941.General Roman Shukhevych himself was killed in battle against Soviet security forces in 1950.

I do not believe in your complicity. My heart tells me that you are vulnerable. You wish to keep alive the memory of the Holocaust victims. So you create new demons. But you have lent your name to disrespect and calumny heroes of the Ukrainian people, those same people with whom you lived as neighbors. You dishonored those people. Shame on you for being an accomplice to history’s distortions! You laud the Rabbi in Ukraine who discarded his Order of Merit in protest over the honoring of Bandera. You state that it is not easy to be a Rabbi in Ukraine and challenging to the Jews who live there. To the contrary that Rabbi lives in Ukraine because it is a good place for him to live. It is easy for Jews to live in Ukraine. Just look at the human rights reports of any legitimate international human rights’ group. Both the Rabbi and you dishonor the victims of the Holocaust by shamelessly slandering people who had nothing to do with the unfortunate fate of those Holocaust victims and all because you are ignorant and vulnerable.

You say you received a telephone call from Moscow. It was Moscow that issued the orders that starved to death 7-10 million Ukrainians during the Great Famine of 1932-33. Here once again disproportionately Jews acted as agents of that murderous plan. They sided with the enemy in Moscow against their neighbors in Ukraine. We Ukrainians, share great grief and much tragedy. Still we are seeking to forgive. Instead you distort and side with the enemy again, and make forgiveness that much more difficult.

Isn’t it ironic that it always seems to originate with Moscow?


February 22, 2010 Askold S. Lozynskyj

Askold S. Lozynskyj, the son of an Auschwitz survivor, is an attorney from New York and former president of the Ukrainian World Congress

FreeUkraine 22nd February 2010

Why does the author ignore the fact that both Polish and Russian occupants created hell in Ukraine for over 600 years? Does she even know who Ukrainian Kozaks are? The freedom fighters who organized themselves to fight these evil occupants as well as Turks and Tatars?

I think this author is clueless in regard to Ukrainian history. People like yourself are the ones that got Yanukovich elected...corrupted by evil Moskali in Russia!

FreeUkraine 22nd February 2010

Are you serious??? You should be ashamed of yourself. I'm not surprised, this article started with a call from Moscow! huh...listen to yourself. Someone born in Ukraine and not knowing basic facts should be ashamed!

I'm surprised...when I read this crap I thought it was definitely written by a Moskal...this is disgusting...

Bandera and Shuhevich are Ukrainian heroes that gave up their lives for its freedom. They made the greatest sacrifices imaginable, and it's ludicrous that you would listen to Russia, the most evil country in the history of the world, and use their propaganda as fact....

You are a disgrace!

coffe1243 16th February 2010

"IPN REPORTS ON INVESTIGATION INTO VOLHYNIA MASSACRES.

The National Remembrance Institute (IPN) on 1 July held a conference titled 'The Crimes of Ukrainian Nationalists Committed Against the Polish population in 1939-1948 in the Light of Investigations Conducted by IPN Prosecutors.' The proceedings of the conference were subsequently published on the IPN website (http://www.ipn.gov.pl/). One of the three reports presented at the conference touched upon an investigation into the crimes committed by Ukrainian nationalists against Poles living in Volhynia (now northwestern Ukraine) in 1939-45. The investigation is being conducted by the IPN's regional branch in Lublin. The conference took place 10 days before the planned reconciliation ceremony to commemorate the Poles of Volhynia in the Ukrainian village of Pavlivka on 11 July, which is to be attended by Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski and his Ukrainian counterpart Leonid Kuchma.

'The fate of the Polish population of Volhynia and eastern Galicia doubtless made one of the most tragic pages in Polish history,' IPN Chairman Leon Kieres said in opening the conference. According to historians, from 75,000-90,000 Poles were killed due to operations of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army [UPA] in these regions. Some researchers say the number of victims could be even 100,000. Several hundred thousand people were forced to leave their own homes. Hundreds of Polish villages were totally destroyed. The UPA strove to remove Poles from the areas it regarded as indigenously Ukrainian. In the opinion of many historians, the goal pursued by the Ukrainian guerrillas was to destroy the Polish ethnic group in these areas, which can legally be categorized as genocide." from: www.rferl.org

buick455 15th February 2010

A Ukrainian nationalist gets spat on by a Pole. What else has not changed in the last few centuries?

toshu1 15th February 2010

In February 2008, Ukrainian Security Services (SBU) archive representative Oleksander Ishchuk showed declassified documents which provide an objective basis to state that OUN (the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) is not connected with any violent actions against the civilian population of L'viv on or after July 4, 1941.

The declassified documents of SBU indicate that from July 4-7, 1941, representatives of Gestapo who arrived in L'viv turned to the Ukrainian population, inciting them to carry out an anti-Jewish pogrom.

"The OUN leadership, having got to know about that, informed its members that it was a German provocation in order to compromise Ukrainians with massacres," the document reads.

Prior to the German invasion, the Soviet NKVD, in which Jews had disproportionate membership, was involved in the killing of 4,000 to 8,000 civilian prisoners -- a fact the Nazis hoped would provoke Ukrainian retaliation.

Furthermore, while the Israeli Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem has also attempted to pin the L'viv Massacres on Ukrainians, especially Roman Shukhevych, leader of the Nachtigall battalion and later the anti-Nazi, anti-Soviet Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the head of the Association of Jewish Communities and Organizations of Ukraine, Vaad Yosyp Zisels, asked Yad Vashem for documentary evidence to prove that claim and was unable to obtain it.

The Soviet investigation into the killing of L'viv's Jews identified the "42 butchers of L'viv" responsible for the slaughter of the Jewish innocents in July of 1941. That list, compiled immediately after the Second World War and submitted to the Nuremberg military tribunals for prosecution, does not contain a single member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.

If Stepan Bandera was even guilty of half the crimes of which Moskva and its ilk accuse him, then he would have been swinging from the gallows at Nuremberg 65 years ago.

How strange it is that this author, Inna Rogatchi, so blindly ignores the wholesale Polish butchery of Ukrainian Lemkos and the massive destruction of their ancient churces, both Catholic and Orthodox (aided and abetted in this by their own Polish clergy) as described by the victims themselves in this document (click and copy the link, paste it into the address bar of your browser, and press Enter):

http://bit.ly/aQYXXl

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