Collaboration and or Resistance: The OUN and UPA during the War John-Paul Himka Paper prepared for the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter Shared Narrative Series: Conference on Issues Relating to World War II Potsdam, 27-30 June 2011 [Questions set by the conference organizers. Desired length: 4000-5000 words.] 1. What does the historical record establish as to the role of OUN and UPA in relation to resistance and collaboration, murder of Jews, and the 1943 massacre of Poles in Volhynia? Let me start with a brief look at the historiography. Publications by the nationalists themselves in the postwar era studiously avoided publishing material on their antisemitism or campaigns against the Poles. They censored documents to conceal their wartime attitudes.1 John A. Armstrong’s Ukrainian Nationalism, which was based to a large extent on interviews with nationalist leaders, differed little from the OUN’s own narrative. It totally avoided discussion of OUN’s role in the Holocaust and barely mentioned the mass murder of Poles by UPA. On the other hand, it propagated the nationalists’ myth about Jewish participation in UPA.2 It is little wonder that this work is regarded authoritative by champions of the OUN-UPA heritage. A different story was told by some Israeli historians of the Holocaust, but these left something to be desired in precision. Eliyahu Yones, for example, wrote a substantial monograph on the Holocaust in Lviv. He noted that on the eve of the Lviv pogrom, OUN postered the city with incendiary antisemitic leaflets and that Ukrainians took an active part in the pogrom, especially “young men sporting blue and yellow armbands.”3 But he was unable to connect the dots that the latter young men were the militia established by the OUN government. Another example is Shmuel Spector’s monograph on the murder of Jews in Volhynia. It contains a section specifically devoted to UPA, but it is largely devoid of concrete information.4 1 Some examples can be found in Taras Kurylo and John-Paul Himka [Ivan Khymka], “Iak OUN stavylasia do ievreiv? Rozdumy nad knyzhkoiu Volodymyra V”iatrovycha,” Ukraina Moderna 13 (2008): 259-60. Another example: Zlochyny komunistychnoi Moskvy v Ukraini v liti 1941 roku (New York: Proloh, 1960). I carefully compared all the texts in this volume that were taken from the wartime newspaper Krakivs'ki visti with the originals in the newspaper. Several of the originals were vehemently antisemitic, but the offending passages were all eliminated or modified in the document collection. 2 John A. Armstrong, Ukrainian Nationalism, 2nd ed. (Littleton, CO.: Ukrainian Academic Press, 1980). 3 Eliyahu Yones, Smoke in the Sand: The Jews of Lvov in the War Years 1939-1944 (Jerusalem and New York: Gefen, 2004), 80. Yones’ book originally appeared in Hebrew in 1960. 4 Shmuel Spector, The Holocaust of Volhynian Jews 1941-1944 (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, The Federation of Volhynian Jews, 1990), 268-73. Better informed was Philip Friedman, a long-time student of the history of Jewish Galicia and a father of Holocaust studies. In his small monograph on the destruction of the Jews of Lviv, he identified the Germans and the Ukrainian militia as the prime movers of the outrages. However, he mistakenly believed that it was the Germans, not OUN under German prodding, that organized the militia.5 In his survey of UkrainianJewish relations during the war, he mentioned that he had come across reports of UPA setting up labor camps for Jews and liquidating the Jews later; he was not sure, however, whether to give credence to them.6 (Since he wrote, many other such reports have been found.) In the 1970s, the Soviets, for political reasons, began to be interested in the connection between OUN and the Holocaust. They prepared a number of inflammatory pamphlets on that theme, notably Lest We Forget, published by Ukrainian-American communists.7 At the time, there was no way to verify any of the information contained in these works, and scholars did not consider them usable sources. Since then, however, much of the material has been verified. Of the pre-1989 studies of the connections between OUN and the Holocaust, one of the most impressive was never published. This was a report by Günter Plum of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte on OUN involvement in the Lviv pogrom of 1941. The report concluded that the OUN militia perpetrated the pogrom together with civilian assistance.8 The opening of the former Soviet archives made it possible to learn a great deal more about OUN and UPA during World War II, including their treatment of national minorities. In 1997 Dieter Pohl published an overview of the Holocaust in Galicia that indicated significant involvement of OUN. Pohl characterized the Bandera faction of OUN as antisemitic for much of the war, particularly in the spring and summer of 1941 and again, as the Soviets closed in, in 1944; in 1942-43 OUN distanced itself from the Germans’ murder of the Jewish population.9 Pohl did not link the OUN directly to any concrete war crimes. His treatment of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in relation to the Holocaust was ambiguous. Some of his later articles said more about nationalist 5 Filip Friedman, Zagłada Zydów lwowskich w okresie okupacji niemieckiej (Munich, 1947), 7-8. 6 Philip Friedman, "Ukrainian-Jewish Relations during the Nazi Occupation," in Philip Friedman, Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust, ed. Ada June Friedman (New York: Conference on Jewish Social Studies, Jewish Publication Society of America, 1980), 176-208. 7 Michael Hanusiak, Lest We Forget (New York: Ukrainian-American League, 1975). The first, shorter edition of this work appeared in 1973. 8 Günter Plum, [Report on OUN involvement in 1941 pogroms] (Munich: Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 1965), typescript in Mykola Lebed archives, consulted at Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, box 1, file 3. A copy of the report is in the author’s possession. 9 Dieter Pohl, Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien 1941-1944: Organisation und Durchführung eines staatlichen Massenverbrechens (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1997), 40, 48-49, 375, 382. collaboration in the Holocaust.10 Pohl’s work, however, relied almost exclusively on German and OUN documents, without much consultation of victim testimony. As a result, he was not able to arrive at a clearer picture of the nationalists as perpetrators. The Ukrainian historian Ivan Patryliak, although sympathetic to the nationalists, in his study of 2004 identified the OUN militia as the most likely perpetrator of the pogroms and other anti-Jewish violence that encompassed Western Ukraine in the summer of 1941.11 The involvement of both OUN and its armed forces, UPA, in the murder of Jews was documented, although not at great length, in Franziska Bruder’s monograph on OUN of 2007.12 Crucial was her use of contemporary testimony. In the last few years, Karel Berkhoff,13 Marco Carynnyk,14 Christof Mick,15 John-Paul Himka,16 10 Dieter Pohl, "Ukrainische Hilfskräfte beim Mord an den Juden," in Die Täter der Shoah: Fanatische Nationalsozialisten oder ganz normale Deutsche, ed. Gerhard Paul (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2002), 205-36. Dieter Pohl, “Anti-Jewish Pogroms in Western Ukraine – A Research Agenda,” in Shared History – Divided Memory: Jews and Others in Soviet-Occupied Poland, 1939-1941, ed. Elazar Barkan, Elizabeth A. Cole, and Kai Struve (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2007), 305-13. 11 I.K. Patryliak, Viis’kova diial’nist OUN (B) u 1940-1942 rokakh (Kyiv: Kyivs’kyi natsional’nyi universytet imeni Tarasa Shevchenka Instytut istorii Ukrainy NAN Ukrainy, 2004), 232, 333-34, 350, 364. 12 Franziska Bruder, “Den ukrainischen Staat erkämpfen oder sterben!” Die Organisation Ukrainischer Nationalisten (OUN) 1929-1948 (Berlin: Metropol, 2007), 145-48, 218-19. 13 Karel C. Berkhoff and Marco Carynnyk, "The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and Its Attitude toward Germans and Jews: Iaroslav Stets'ko's 1941 Zhyttiepys," Harvard Ukrainian Studies 23, no. 3-4 (1999):149-84. There is a failed attempt to rebut the latter documentary publication: Taras Hunczak, “Problems of Historiography: History and Its Sources,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 25, no. 1-2 (2001): 129-42. The problems with Hunczak’s arguments are explained in Kurylo and Himka, “Iak OUN stavylasia do ievreiv?” 253. Karel C. Berkhoff, “Dina Pronicheva’s Story of Surviving the Babi Yar Massacre: German, Jewish, Soviet, Russian, and Ukrainian Records,” in The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization, ed. Ray Brandon and Wendy Lower (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2008), 303. 14 Marco Carynnyk [Marko Tsarynnyk], “Zolochiv movchyt’,” Krytyka 9.10 (2005): 1417.Marco Carynnyk, “Foes of Our Rebirth: Ukrainian Nationalist Discussions about Jews, 1929-1947,” Nationalities Papers, forthcoming. 15 Christoph Mick, “Incompatible Experiences: Poles, Ukrainians and Jews in Lviv under Soviet and German Occupation, 1939-44,” Journal of Contemporary History 46, no. 2 (2011): 346-51. 16 John-Paul Himka, Ukrainians, Jews and the Holocaust: Divergent Memories (Saskatoon: Heritage Press, 2009). John-Paul Himka, “The Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Holocaust,” American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Boston, 12-15 November 2009. John-Paul Himka, “The Lviv Pogrom of 1941,” Annual Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities, New York, 14-16 April 2011. Many more relevant papers and articles are available on the site academia.edu. Taras Kurylo,17 Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe,18 and Per Anders Rudling19 have also documented OUN and UPA antisemitism and mass murder of Jews, although some of their work exists so far only as conference papers or are still in print. The publication of document collections such as Ukrains’ke derzhavotvorennia (2001) has made available OUN documents evincing and inciting hatred of Jews.20 Nationalist apologetics still exist of course. An example is Volodymyr Viatrovych’s monograph on OUN and the Jews.21 As Taras Kurylo and I demonstrated in a detailed review, this is a work not up to scholarly standards. The monograph attempts to exonerate the OUN of charges of antisemitism and complicity in the Holocaust by employing a series of dubious procedures: rejecting sources that compromise the OUN, accepting uncritically censored sources emanating from émigré OUN circles, failing to recognize antisemitism in OUN texts, limiting the source base to official OUN proclamations and decisions, excluding Jewish memoirs, refusing to consider contextual and comparative factors, failing to consult German document collections, and ignoring the mass of historical literature on the subject written in the English and German languages.22 The UPA murder of the Poles has generated a much larger historiography, but my remarks about it will be even more cursory. Although the large compendium on the “genocide” put together by Władysław Siemaszko and Ewa Siemaszko can be criticized for being one-sided, the many testimonies collected in it cannot be easily dismissed.23 A series of monographs and conference proceedings have dealt with the UPA murders of Poles in Volhynia and Galicia in 1943-44. Among the important individual works are those by Grzegorz Motyka24 and Ihor Iliushyn.25 Yaroslav Hrytsak referred to this 17 Taras Kurylo, article on Dontsov and the OUN press on the Jews forthcoming in Polin 26. 18 Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, “The ‘Ukrainian National Revolution’ of 1941: Discourse and Practice of a Fascist Movement,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 12, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 83-114. 19 Per Anders Rudling, “Szkolenie w Mordowaniu: Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201 i Hauptmann Roman Szuchewycz na Białorusi 1942 roku,” in Prawda historyczna a prawda polityczna w badaniach naukowych. Przykład ludobójstwa na kresach połudiowej Polski w latach 1939-1946, ed. Bogusław Paź, forthcoming. Per A. Rudling, The OUN, UPA and the Holocaust: A Study in the Manufacturing of Historical Myths, Carl Beck Papers, forthcoming. 20 Orest Dziuban, ed., Ukrains’ke derzhavotvorennia. Akt 30 chervnia 1941. Zbirnyk dokumentiv i materialiv (L’viv-Kyïv: Piramida, 2001), 77, 129, 190, 394. 21 Volodymyr V”iatrovych, Stavlennia OUN do ievreiv: formuvannia pozytsii na tli katastrofy (Lviv: Vydavnytstvo Ms, 2006). 22 Kurylo and Himka, “Iak OUN stavylasia do ievreiv?” 23 Władysław Siemaszko and Ewa Siemaszko, Ludobójstwo dokonane przez nacjonalistów ukraińskich na ludności polskiej Wołynia, 1939-1945, 2 vols. (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo von borowiecky, 2000). 24 Grzegorz Motyka, Ukraińska partyzantka 1942-1960 (Warsaw: Instytut Studiów Politycznych PAN, 2006). historiographical discussion, involving both Polish and Ukrainian historians and productive of a massive body of literature, as the Ukrainian Historikerstreit. This issue has also been researched in depth by the American historian Timothy Snyder.26 There is no longer any dispute among scholars that UPA killed tens of thousand of Poles in Western Ukraine. But given the central place of UPA in nationalist mythology, the mass murder of the Poles is still a matter that is hushed up in the Ukrainian diaspora public sphere.27 Getting a clear picture of what actually happened between the nationalists and the minorities during the war has been hindered by a number of deliberate obfuscations. Here I will only mention three incidents. In 1954 Ukrainian nationalists in the overseas diaspora published a fictive autobiography of a Jewish woman, Stella Krenzbach, who supposedly fought in the ranks of UPA and then went to Israel. This has been a pillar of the nationalist legend that Jews served in UPA, and therefore UPA could not have been antisemitic or involved in the Holocaust. The “memoirs” were exposed very soon after they were printed both by the nationalist Bohdan Kordiuk and the Jewish historian Philip Friedman, each following a different line of argument.28 Nonetheless, the Krenzbach text was reprinted in Ukraine after independence and later posted on line by the poet Moisei Fishbein, for whom “UPA is sacred.”29 The memoirs are also treated as genuine by other champions of the nationalist heritage, such as Volodymyr Viatrovych, in his above-mentioned book,30 and Marco Levytsky, editor of Edmonton’s Ukrainian News.31 In 1959-60 the Soviets tried to embarrass the Adenauer government in West Germany by linking one of its ministers, Theodor Oberländer, with the Lviv pogrom. Oberländer was the German liaison to the nationalist battalion Nachtigall that fought 25 I.I. Il'iushyn, Volyns'ka trahediia 1943-1944 rr. (Kyiv: Natsional'na akademiia nauk Ukrainy, Instytut istorii Ukrainy; Kyivs'kyi slavistychnyi, universytet, 2003). 26 Timothy Snyder, “To Resolve the Ukrainian Question Once and for All: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ukrainians in Poland, 1943-1947,” Journal of Cold War Studies 1, no. 2 (Spring 1999): 86-120. Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 (New Haven & London, 2003), 166-201. Timothy Snyder, Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist’s Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine (New Haven and London, 2005), 185-191. 27 John-Paul Himka, War Criminality: A Blank Spot in the Collective Memory of the Ukrainian Diaspora." Spaces of Identity 5, no. 1 (April 2005). 28 B. Kordiuk, “Pro liudei, spovnenykh samoposviaty.” Suchasna Ukraina, 20 July 1958. Friedman, "Ukrainian-Jewish Relations,” 203-04 n. 57. I have summarized their arguments in John-Paul Himka, “Falsifying World War II History in Ukraine.” Kyiv Post, 9 May 2011, http://www.kyivpost.com/news/opinion/op_ed/detail/103895/. 29 Stella Krentsbakh, “Zhyvu shche zavdiaky UPA,” Poklyk sumlinnia, 20 June 1993. Moisei Fishbein posted the 1957 version together with an English translation by Marta D. Olynyk on his blogsite, http://mosesfishbein.blogspot.com/2009/10/memoirs-of-stella-krenzbach-i-amalive.html (accessed 26 October 2009). See also Ol’ha Betko, “Poet M. Fishbein: dlia mene UPA – tse sviate,” BBC Ukrainian.com, 14 October 2008. 30 V”iatrovych, Stavlennia OUN do ievreiv,” 79. 31 Marco Levytsky, “Open Letter Villifies Freedom Fighters, Minimizes Holodomor,” Kyiv Post, 6 May 2011. along with the Wehrmacht. The Soviets produced “evidence” that it was Nachtigall that perpetrated the atrocities in Lviv in early July 1941. That something was fishy here should have been apparent from the start. Competent people who made it their business to know about the Lviv pogrom in the immediate aftermath of the war and who were aware of Nachtigall’s presence in the city at the time did not link the pogrom with Nachtigall. Particularly I have in mind the Jewish historian Philip Friedman and the Polish chronicler Tadeusz Zaderecki.32 A preponderance of evidence pointed to a Soviet fabrication.33 In February 2008 the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) revealed documentation that demonstrated clearly that the KGB had “cooked” the evidence against Nachtigall.34 However, at the same time that the SBU exposed one deception, it perpetrated another. Among the materials it came upon in its research into Nachtigall was a document entitled “For the Beginning of ‘The Book of Facts.’” The SBU presented this as “essentially a chronicle of the activities of OUN during March-September 1941.” In this document, it is stated that the Germans offered OUN a chance to conduct a three-day pogrom against the Jews in early July 1941, but OUN refused to get involved. The SBU heralded this as proof that speculation about OUN involvement in the pogrom was misplaced.35 However, internal evidence shows without a doubt that the document was composed either very late in or after World War II. It was soon exposed as an after-thefact OUN exculpation, most likely composed in response to an order from the Western Ukrainian leadership of OUN in October 1943 to prepare documents showing that OUN was not a participant in pogroms against the Jewish population.36 This document is cited by defenders of OUN to “prove” that it had nothing to do with the pogroms.37 32 Friedman, Zagłada. Friedman, "Ukrainian-Jewish Relations.” Tadeusz Zaderecki, “Gdy swastyka Lwowem władała...(Wycinek z dziejów okupacji hitlerowskiej),” Yad Vashem Archives, 06/28. 33 The arguments are well summarized in Patryliak, Viis’kova diial’nist OUN (B), 321-68. 34 “U Sluzhbi bezpeky Ukrainy vidbulys’ Hromads’ki istorychni slukhannia ‘Zvynuvachennia proty “Nakhtihaliu” – istorychna pravda chy politychni tekhnolohii,’” press release of the Security Service of Ukraine, 6 February 2008, http://www.ssu.gov.ua/sbu/control/uk/publish/article?art_id=74369&cat_id=74549 (accessed 6 May 2011). “Iak tvorylasia lehenda pro Nachtigall,” Dzerkalo tyzhnia, 16 February 2008, available on the website of the Security Service of Ukraine: http://www.ssu.gov.ua/sbu/control/uk/publish/article?art_id=74855&cat_id=74589 (accessed 6 May 2011). “Dokumenty SBU sprostovuiut’ zvynuvachennia proty batal’iony ‘Nakhtihal’,” press release of the Embassy of Ukraine in Canada, 22 March 2008. 35 Ibid. 36 John-Paul Himka, “Be Wary of Faulty Nachtigall Lessons,” Kyiv Post, 27 March 2008. Dmitrii Rybakov, “Marko Tsarynnyk: Istorychna napivpravda hirsha za odvertu brekhniu,” LB.ua, 5 November 2009, http://lb.ua/news/2009/11/05/13147_marko_tsarinnik_istorichna.html (accessed 6 May 2011). Himka, “Falsifying.” 37 Marco Levytsky, “Ukrainian Nationalists Played No Part in Massacre of 4,000 Jews,” The Ukraine List (UKL), no. 441 (16 February 2010), item 3. Levytsky, “Open Letter Villifies Freedom Fighters.” Once one clears away the fog of deceptions, the picture that emerges, especially from the newest research, is that OUN wanted to create a “Ukraine for Ukrainians,” violently cleansed of national minorities. Whom they killed when was to some extent situational. In September 1939, when OUN acted openly and took advantage of the civil war conditions created by the Soviet invasion of Eastern Poland/Western Ukraine, OUN units killed thousands of Poles. In summer 1941, as the Germans invaded, the OUN militias and related organizations were involved in the murder of tens of thousands of Jews, but of relatively few Poles.38 When the OUN-led UPA definitively broke with the Germans in the late winter/early fall of 1943, it focussed its attention on Poles, killing tens of thousands of them. At the same time, however, it was routinely eliminating any Jewish people it came upon. After UPA cleansed most of Volhynia of Poles, it turned its attention to the surviving Jews, whom it referred to as zhydy nedobytky.39 They lured them out of their bunkers in the forest, registered them in work camps, and later killed them. At this last stage, I think, the murder of Jews was motivated less by the “Ukraine for Ukrainians” ideal than by the well-founded expectation that the Jews who survived would help the returning Soviet administration. OUN’s involvement in the Holocaust can be summarized as follows. Although the Bandera faction of OUN had ruled out pogroms at its grand assembly in Kraków in 1941, Richard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office, insisted as of 17 June 1941 that they were necessary and that they were to be coordinated in such a way as to leave no trace of German instigation and to make no political promises to the perpetrators. The OUN militia was assigned this task, as Yaroslav Stetsko wrote to Stepan Bandera on 25 June. Accordingly, the militia perpetrated a pogrom in Lviv on 1 July 1941, the day after Stetsko proclaimed a Ukrainian state. The militia rounded up Jews for pogrom activities, and also for execution by Wehrmacht forces. On the very next day the militia was subordinated to the SS. On the next day and for a few days thereafter the militia rounded up Jews for Einsatzgruppe C to shoot. Several thousand Jews perished as a result. Later in July, during the so-called Petliura days, the militia rounded up more Jews for the Einsatzgruppe to execute.40 On 13 August, the Ukrainian National Militia was dissolved and replaced by the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police. Many militiamen entered this police force, and OUN systematically infiltrated it as well.41 The story of the summer of 1941 38 Ewa Siemaszko estimated that OUN-led violence took the lives of at least 1036 Poles in Volhynia and 2242 in Galicia in 1939, with the comparable figure for both Volhynia and Galicia in 1941 being 443. Ewa Siemaszko, “Bilans zbrodni,” Biuletyń Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, no. 7-8 (116-17) (July-August 2010): 80-81. My as yet unfinished research on this topic is headed towards the same conclusion. 39 One lesson of a political training course OUN or UPA offered in 1943 in Volhynia concerned “our relations towards national minorities.” About Jews a student wrote in his class notes: “We consider them agents of Muscovite imperialism, formerly tsarist but now proletarian. Still, we have to first beat the Muscovites and then the surviving Jews (zhydiv nedobytkiv).” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum RG-31.017M, reel 1, Derzhavnyi Arkhiv Rivnens’koi Oblasti, f. 30, op. 2, od. zb. 82, ll. 36v-37. 40 Himka, “The Lviv Pogrom.” On the police and its connection with the Ukrainian nationalists, see Gabriel N. Finder and Alexander V. Prusin, "Collaboration in Eastern Galicia: The Ukrainian Police and the Holocaust," East European Jewish Affairs 34, no. 2 (Winter 2004): 95-118. 41 outside Lviv, in the rest of Galicia and in Volhynia, is similar in broad outline, although it took longer to unfold and had many interesting differences which space restrictions do not allow us to pursue. The Ukrainian police, called Hilfspolizei in Galicia in the General Government and Schutzmannschaften in Volhynia in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, were involved in the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews. Mainly they helped with the round up of Jews, and less frequently did they do the actual shooting. Not all policemen were in OUN, but OUN was deeply embedded in the police. The “Eastern Bureau” of the Polish underground government in exile, reporting on OUN and its influence, remarked in early 1943: “One gets the impression that the main organizational core in Volhynia are the c. 200 police stations which exist on that territory.”42 In the late winter/early spring thousands of these policemen defected to the Volhynian woods with their weapons and formed the leadership of the OUN-led UPA. They had been well trained by the Germans to engage in the mass homicide they were about to commence against Poles and surviving Jews.43 Nationalists who served in German antipartisan units in Belarus, including Roman Shukhevych and remnants of the Nachtigall battalion, also joined UPA. 2. How did the OUN conceive of the establishment of an independent Ukrainian state within the reality of Nazi power (the German “new order”)? Did this include the possibility of German puppet state status, as was the case in Croatia or Slovakia? To begin with, it is worth noting that OUN was very much on the Slovakian track of statehood in 1938-39. Only when Hitler gave Carpatho-Ukraine to Hungary in midMarch 1939 did this kind of statehood get off track. Kost Pankivsky, who was outside the nationalist movement but cooperated with it during the war, depicted the mood of Galicians in general to the prospect of an independent state delivered by Hitler. “We were so permeated with the desire to achieve statehood that we, in our simplicity, thought that the ‘recognition’ of the independence of Ukraine by Hitler would realize all our dreams, would be the universal cure for all our indispositions, and would resolve all our problems and remove our difficulties – economic, social, national, etc.”44 Galicians found the cases of Slovakia and Croatia inspiring. “Of all the ‘independent’ nations, the fate of the Slovaks and Croatians was closest to ours. And we thought at that time that they were in a much better position because both Hitler and Mussolini not only ‘recognized,’ but – to tell the truth – granted them ‘independence.’”45 42 Mieczysław Adamczyk, Janusz Gmitruk, and Adam Koseski, eds., Ziemie Wschodnie. Raporty Biura Wschodniego Delegatury Rządu na Kraj 1943-1944 (Warsaw and Pułtusk: Muzeum Historii Polskiego Ruchu Ludowego, Wyższa Szkoła Humanistyczna im. Aleksandra Gieysztora, 2005), 22. 43 See Snyder, Reconstruction of Nations, 160, 162. 44 Kost’ Pan’kivs’kyi, Roky nimets’koi okupatsii (New York and Toronto: Zhyttia i mysli, 1965), 176. 45 Ibid., 178. OUN did not stand totally apart from this enthusiasm. Borys Lewytzkyj recalled the tremendous excitement that the announcement of the formation of an independent Croatia in April 1941 produced in the Banderite milieu in Kraków: “The Banderite leadership spontaneously decided to send a congratulatory telegram with a greeting, and the formation of this ‘state’ was treated as proof that there would be a similar ‘independent Ukraine.’ [Ivan] Mitrynga and comrades protested against such a telegram. Two of the main leaders at the time responded to our protest with a scene that cannot be forgotten: they marched around the room with their arms’ on each other’s shoulders, shouting: ‘We have never made a mistake, we will never make a mistake.’”46 A few months later, however, the Banderites saw problems with the kind of statehood enjoyed by Slovakia and Croatia. Their memorandum on Ukrainian statehood issued on 15 June 1941 stated: “Since 1938 two new states have appeared in Europe: Slovakia and Croatia. Notwithstanding the difference in area and size of population of these countries, the Ukrainian problem has a much greater significance because to solve it fundamental changes will be realized in the political and economic structure of the European continent and in the raising of a problem of intercontinental significance. And the further course of German-Ukrainian relations will not only depend on the ultimate resolution of the problem, but also from the methods that will be applied at the outset.”47 The last sentence means that if Ukraine were not granted genuine independence from the start, this would have negative implications for Germany. This was clearly a misjudgment of who was dependent on whom in the summer of 1941. On 3 July 1941, by which time the militia of the proclaimed Ukrainian state was already subordinated to the SS, Stetsko wrote a letter to the Croatian Poglavnik expressing his belief that “both revolutionary nations, hardened in battle, will guarantee the establishment of healthy circumstances in the Europe of the new order.”48 The Germans, of course, refused to recognize Stetsko’s state of 30 June 1941 and arrested the OUN leaders. OUN responded with a series of meetings held across Galicia. They addressed letters to Hitler, Bandera, and Stetsko, asking Germany to recognize the Ukrainian state and release the nationalist leaders.49 The letters do not mention that this Ukrainian state had to be more independent than Croatia or Slovakia. The fact of the matter is that OUN had no plan B in 1941, no alternative strategy to establishing a Ukrainian state in alliance with Nazi Germany. It would be an error to imagine that OUN would be content with whatever crumbs Germany threw it at this stage, but it was certainly willing to take these crumbs in the meantime, as its exploitation of opportunities in the Ukrainian police attests. 46 Borys Levyts’kyi: “Natsional’nyi rukh pid chas Druhoi svitovoi viiny: Interv”iu z B. Levyts’kym,” Dialoh 2 (1979): 15. 47 Dziuban, Ukrains’ke derzhavotvorennia, 74. The OUN’s view expressed in the memorandum was also summarized in a report prepared for the Reich’s foreign ministry on 1 July by a certain Grosskopf. Wolodymyr Kosyk, ed., Das Dritte Reich un die ukrainische Frage: Dokumente 1934-1944 (Munich: Ukrainisches Institut, n.d.), 64-65. 48 Rossoliński-Liebe, “The ‘Ukrainian National Revolution’ of 1941,” 99. 49 Ibid., 106-13. When OUN turned these policemen into its own fighting force, it repudiated the German tutelage and tried to establish the ethnically cleansed, truly independent state it longed for. 3. How did the OUN’s positions with regard to the Nazis, Jews, and other minorities evolve during the war? John A. Armstrong’s Ukrainian Nationalism50 and nationalist histories of OUN and UPA more generally accord great importance to the Third Extraodinary Congress of OUN of August 1943 and the conference that founded the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (UHVR) in summer 1944. The assessment of how this programmatic turn to tolerance of national minorities and other progressive policies still awaits thorough scholarly treatment. Here I will offer only a few observations. First, the mass murder of national minorities did not stop in summer 1943, in fact, at least for a while, it accelerated. As Timothy Snyder, has noted “precisely in July 1943, the UPA’s fearsome campaign of comprehensive atrocities to end the Polish presence in Volhynia reached its zenith.”51 UPA’s most systematic and extensive extermination of the Jewish population occurred at the end of 1943 and beginning of 1944.52 Second, when it was clear that Germany was going to lose the war, many of its East European collaborators tried to redecorate themselves to be acceptable for better treatment from the Western allies. OUN and UPA were certainly interested in obtaining Western support.53 Third, there is considerable evidence that the programmatic turn was not merely window dressing, at least for some members of OUN and UPA. Although Dmytro Kliachkivsky and Roman Shukhevych seem to have been cynical about the new program and continued the mass murder of minorities, others – including Mykola Lebed and Mykhailo Stepaniak – took the new direction seriously.54 50 Armstrong, Ukrainian Nationalism, 159-65. Snyder, "To Resolve the Ukrainian Question,” 116. 52 Himka, “The Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Holocaust,” 8-11. 53 See Jeffrey Burds, The Early Cold War in Soviet West Ukraine, 1944-1948, The Carl Beck Papers in Russian & East European Studies, 1505 (Pittsburgh: The Center for Russian and East European Studies, a program of the University Center for International Studies, University of Pittsburgh, 2001). Also: John-Paul Himka, “The Importance of the Situational Element in East Central European Fascism.” East Central Europe 37 (2010): 353-58. 54 “Vytiah z protokolu dopytu chlena tsentral’noho provodu OUN M. Stepaniaka,” in Borot’ba proty povstans’koho rukhu i natsionalistychnoho pidpillia: Protokoly dopytiv zaareshtovanykh radians’kymy orhanamy derzhavnoi bezpeky kerivnykiv OUN i UPA: 1944-1945, ed. O. Ishchuk and S. Kokin; Litopys UPA, new series, 9 (Kyiv-Toronto: Litopys UPA, 2007), 89-93. “Vytiah iz protokolu dopytu Mykhaila Stepaniaka vid 25 serpnia 1944 r. stosovno tret’oi konferentsii OUN, shcho vidbulasia v liutomu 1943,” in Pol’shcha ta Ukraina u trydsiatykh-sorokovykh rokakh XX stolittlia: Nevidomi dokumenty z arkhiviv spetsial’nykh sluzhb, vol. 4: Poliaky i Ukraintsi mizh dvoma totalitarnymy systemamy 1942-44, part 1 (Warsaw-Kyiv: Derzhavnyi arkhiv Sluzhby bezpeky Ukrainy et al., 2005), 230. “Vytiah iz protokolu dopytu Iuriia Stel’mashchuka 51 The diary of an OUN soldier, Aleksander Povshuk, presents a very ambiguous picture. Before he was drafted into UPA, he hated the organization for murdering Poles instead of fighting Germans. While he was in UPA, however, he read the August 1943 program of OUN and embraced it wholeheartedly, saying that this was what he had believed all along. At the same time, however, his views on the national minorities had changed tremendously. Before he was in UPA his diary did not mention Jews. After recruitment, however, he wrote about communism as something Jewish. In his pre-recruitment entries he had rather identified communism with some of his relatives, Ukrainians. Before recruitment, he was horrified by UPA’s murders of Poles; after recruitment, he excepted Poles from the rights that should be accorded minorities, because the Poles tried to rule over and enslave the Ukrainians and treated them as cattle.55 OUN and UPA statements on the national minorities had changed tone considerably by 1944. A letter of instruction the OUN leadership addressed to political referents of larger districts [nadraiony], dated 8 January 1944 said simply: "We do not attack [ne vystupaiemo proty] the Jews."56 An instructional directive of OUN of March 1944 had this to say about national minorities: “a) consider them allies, b) treat them as we treat our own people, c) give them the same tasks as the Ukrainian people, c) organize their active political organizations.”57 But it was hard for OUN to give up antisemitism. A brochure issued by the OUN underground in 1950 was addressed to “Jews – citizens of Ukraine” and sought a rapprochement with the Jewish population. The brochure contained, however, a not well veiled threat: Remember that you are on Ukrainian land and that it is in your own interest to live in complete harmony with its rightful owners – the Ukrainians. Stop being an instrument in the hands of Muscovite-Bolshevik imperialists. The moment is soon coming when the times of Khmelnytsky will be repeated, but this time we would like it if they were without anti-Jewish pogroms.58 vid 28 liutoho 1945 r.,” in ibid., 442. The sources just cited are the records of Soviet interrogations of OUN-UPA leaders that were made available to scholars in the 2000s. However, the outlines of the division in OUN are confirmed in an interview that was published in 1979 with an influential OUN member of that time, Borys Levytsky: “Natsional’nyi rukh pid chas Druhoi svitovoi viiny: Interv”iu z B. Levyts’kym,” Dialoh 2 (1979): 4-31, esp. 23. 55 John-Paul Himka, “Reflections of a Soldier in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army: The Diary of Aleksander Povshuk, 1943-44,” in Prawda historyczna a prawda polityczna w badaniach naukowych. Przykład ludobójstwa na kresach połudiowej Polski w latach 1939-1946, ed. Bogusław Paź, forthcoming (in Polish translation). 56 Volodymyr Serhiichuk, OUN-UPA v roky viiny. Novi dokumenty i materialy (Kyiv: Dnipro, 1996), 379. 57 Haluzevyi derzhavnyi arkhiv SBU, fond pechatnykh izdanii, arkhiv, no. 372, tom 3, 106. I am grateful to Oleksandr Melnyk for this document. 58 V”iatrovych, Stavlennia OUN do ievreiv, 139; see also 98. 4. To what extent did local administrations cooperate with the German occupation in central and eastern Ukraine between 19411944? That cooperation with the Germans, even in the murder of the Jews, was extensive also in Central and Eastern Ukraine flows clearly from the findings of Father Patrick Desbois as he criss-crossed Ukraine to interview witnesses to the Holocaust.59 However, there are important differences from the situation in Western Ukraine (Galicia, Volhynia, Bukovina). In the pre-1939 Ukraine, collaboration was not organized by any independent Ukrainian body or political body of any sort, such as OUN. The Germans relied more on violence to get their way with the local Ukrainian and Russian population. They also attracted locals into collaboration by providing the opportunity to avoid deportation to Germany and lethal reprisals as well as to obtain economic advantages. 5. What were Jewish responses and attitudes to Soviet rule during the war? How were Jews treated by the Soviets? Here I will share some of what can be found on this topic in the testimonies of Jewish survivors from Galicia collected by the USC Shoah Foundation. The testimonies reveal attitudes to the Soviet occupation that generally ranged from positive to mixed. The Soviets expropriated their businesses, but often the Jewish owners could be hired back as the managers of their enterprises or be appointed to another good position. Many Jewish families had to share their apartments with Soviet employees, sometimes as part of a quid pro quo. Some Jews were in danger of arrest and deportation, while others, particularly younger Jews, saw opportunities open up for them that were not available in interwar Poland. And many Jewish survivors stressed that Jews as Jews were safe under the Soviets, especially compared to the German regime that followed. Ana Merdinger, whose family was considered bourgeois, was hard hit by the Soviets’ nationalization of property: her father’s store in Lviv was expropriated and the family was left penniless; much the same happened to her husband’s family in Zalishchyky, Ternopil oblast.60 However, she appreciated that there was no killing under their rule; they were nice people, she said – they would share their last crumbs with you. But towards the end of 1940, they began to send people away to camps.61 Edward Spicer’s father owned a factory in Lviv. He gave it up immediately when the Soviets came in, but the workers themselves elected him to be the manager of the factory because he was the type of boss who worked together with the people. For Spicer, Soviet rule brought the possibility of higher education. Under Poland there had been a quota for how many Jews could enroll in the polytechnicum; but when the Russians came in, he said, admissions were open and then about half the students were Jewish. They passed their exams, and the school was very good. He studied there in 1939-41. He had aspirations to become an engineer, but then the Germans invaded.62 Bill Koenig said that “under the 59 Patrick Desbois, The Holocaust by Bullets: A Priest’s Journey to Uncover the Truth behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). 60 Shoah Foundation, 9640 Ana Merdinger, 14-16, 19. Soviet authorities, shortly after taking Lviv in 1939, compiled lists of store owners. The majority of names are recognizably Jewish. DALO, R-221/1/151. 61 Shoah Foundation, 9640 Ana Merdinger, 23-24. 62 Shoah Foundation, 12729 Edward Spicer, 16-18. Russians” he did not fare badly. His father was angry at them because they took everything away from him. But his employees said he was a good man, so he was allowed to manage the business. There were no pogroms under the Russians, said Koenig. “I worked, minded my own business; I made a good living during the Russians. I even had money enough to go to cabarets and enjoy life.”63 Lidia Mayer was just in first grade when “the Russians came.” They immediately they took over part of her family’s apartment and put in another family. The times were not so bad for Jewish people, and later many of them fled with the Russians into Russia.64 Artur Weiser said that the Russians nationalized his father’s store, but his father befriended a high-ranking officer who set him up with a good job in the main post office. But that did not prevent them from having to take a Russian officer and his wife into their home. It was crowded, but the Russians who lived with them were cultured and polite and not a burden. Life was still much easier for Jews than before the war. Antisemites did not want to reveal themselves: the Poles were afraid of repressions and the Ukrainians too kept quiet because they saw that many Jews occupied high positions in the Soviet system, in the police and in the NKVD. So we had a peaceful life, he said. He was able to study at the Institute of Fine Arts in Lviv.65 Ann Speier, born in Lviv in 1922, said that the Soviets expropriated her father’s business and the family’s means of support were severed. It was very hard to buy something and to make a living, she said, but at least they let us live.66 Rosa Sirota, born in Lviv in 1933, remembered that her life did not change much when the Soviets came; it changed after the Germans came.67 Maria Gesiola put it thus: the Russians had taken our property, so we were initially hopeful about the Germans; but the Russians took property, while the Germans took lives.68 Matylda Wyszynska had nothing good to say about the Soviet regime: life was very hard, they requisitioned apartments, and they fired her father. The Soviets who requisitioned her family’s apartment denounced them.69 Anna Zaryn, a teenager in Lviv under the Soviets, also remembered that time as very difficult. The Russians nationalized her father’s factory, and he had to find other employment. They took two rooms in the flat. The Russians in the apartment were NKVD, so at least the family was protected from deportations. When these Russians were sent back to Moscow, they took the furniture with them. When Matylda’s mother asked them why they were taking the furniture, they responded: if you have any complaints, you will go where the polar bears live. Then another NKVD man moved in with his wife and mother. These Soviets took three rooms, including hers; she had to sleep in the dining room. But again the family was protected. This was important, because the Russians were making lists for deportation. Almost all the refugees from the west of Poland, i.e., from the German zone of occupation, were deported. At night the Russians used to come and take people away in large trucks. Medicine for her sick father had to be bought on the black market.70 After the Russians 63 Shoah Foundation, 12664 Bill Koenig, 37. Shoah Foundation, 13265 Lidia Mayer, 16-17. 65 Shoah Foundation, 15611 Artur Weiser, 12-16. 66 Shoah Foundation, 14670 Ann Speier, 3-4. 67 Shoah Foundation, 12493 Rosa Sirota, 14. 68 Shoah Foundation, 29911 Maria Gesiola, 9. 69 Shoah Foundation, 22876 Matylda Wyszynska, 29-32. 70 Shoah Foundation, 26130 Anna Zaryn, 25-36. 64 came to Lviv, Zygfryd Atlas remembered, everyone was trying to hide their wealth. Talking to people was risky because everybody was reporting everybody else. The Soviets were deporting people to Siberia; people were disappearing. Everyone had a twenty-kilogram bag packed for Siberia. The Soviets tried to force him to join the NKVD, to be a spy. A Georgian commissar took him aside and told him he had to report any anti-Soviet activities. His code name was “Football.” “I nearly died,” Atlas said: “I could never report a mouse.” But it was 1941, just a few months before the end of Russian rule. He was not going to report on anyone so he tried to join the Komsomol to show that he was a patriot. But the war broke out and nothing came of it.71 The situation of Jews in Bukovina under Soviet rule has been surveyed by Vladimir Solonari. Activists in Jewish political parties such as the Zionists and social democrats of the Arbeiterbund were arrested and deported, along with prominent Jewish journalists. Some Jewish petty bourgeois (“craftsmen and merchants”) were also deported. The shops and workshops of Jews were confiscated or nationalized, just as in Galicia. Jews who had been in the underground communist movement before 1940 were not generally given positions in the administration; most positions went to personnel from Eastern Ukraine.72 71 72 Shoah Foundation, 20357 Zygfryd Atlas, 44-49. Vladimir Solonari [Solonar’], “Stavlennia do ievreiv Bukovyny z boku radians’koi ta rumuns’koi administratsii u 1940-1944 r.,” Holokost i suchasnist’ no. 2 (8) (2010): 123.
