Tut I Tam  The Bandera Brouhaha

By Dr. Myron Kuropas

I never thought I would come to the defence of Stepan Bandera. My father was, after all, a loyal “Melnykivts”. 

It’s not that I ever held anything against Stepan Bandera personally. It was some of his followers, the “Banderivtsi” who were the problem, whether in the Ukrainian National Association (UNA), which they tried to take over, the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), which they helped disembowel, or the Ukrainian World Congress, which they dominated for decades.  My memories of the “OUN Wars” in North America are not exactly heartwarming.  

That declared, allow me to comment on the recent ruckus regarding then-President Viktor Yushchenko’s recognition of Stepan Bandera as a “Hero of Ukraine.”  Bandera was a patriot who gave his life for an independent Ukraine.  So why are non-Ukrainians denigrating him? 

Let’s begin with the Jews, not the Zionists whom I respect as Jewish nationalists - especially the followers of Zeev Zabotinsky - but the parlour Jews, the B’nai B’rith types and other members of the Jewish establishment raised in the miasma of Ukrainophobia.  For them, Bandera, like Bohdan Khmelnitsky and Simon Petliura, is a pogromist. So when Berl Lazar, Chief Rabbi of Russia, originally from New York City by the way, complains about Bandera’s elevation to hero status, it’s like same old, same old. Had Rabbi Lazar come out earlier and condemned Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s attempts to rehabilitate Joseph Stalin - the man who agreed to the Nazi/Soviet Pact with Adolf Hitler to invade Poland and the outbreak of World War II, thereby condemning hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews to death - the good rabbi would have more credibility.  I applaud Yaakov D. Bleich, Chief Rabbi of Ukraine, who dismissed the Bandera affair as “irrelevant”, and took Rabbi Lazar to task for his intemperate remarks.  I am also encouraged by Vaad Yosyp Zisels, a Ukrainian Jew whose own research discredits Jewish criticisms of Bandera and OUN.

On February 25, the European Parliament declared that it “deeply deplores the decision by the outgoing President of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, to posthumously award Stepan Bandera, a leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) which collaborated with Nazi Germany, the title of ‘National Hero of Ukraine’”, and expressed its hope that “the new Ukrainian leadership would reconsider such a decision and would maintain its commitment to European values.”  European values?  Really? Do the parliamentarians mean the values that brought about two World Wars?  Or the values exemplified by Germany and Italy during World War II?  Or by Vichy France?  European values indeed!

Polish disappointment in Viktor Yushchenko’s elevation of Bandera is understandable, if not acceptable. The Poles invested much political capital in the Orange Revolution.  Nobel laureate Lech Walesa and then-President Aleksander Kwasniewski travelled to Kyiv to show support for Viktor Yushchenko. President Lech Kaczynski became Yushchenko’s close ally and travelled with him to Georgia to show support for President Mikhail Saakashvilli following Russia’s invasion.  I can appreciate that OUN activities in Polish occupied Ukraine prior to the War, OUN (B) involvement in Roland and Nachtigall during the German invasion of Poland, and the fire fights which took place between Polish and Ukrainian partisans during WWII, are sorrowful episodes for  Poles to remember.  Poles should be mindful, however, that Polish behaviour towards Ukrainians - the 1930s “pacification” campaign and infamous Bereza Kartuzka prison where Ukrainians were held, the same firefights, and “Operation Wisla” in 1947, for example - don’t exactly endear Poles to Ukrainians.  Much healing still remains to be done between our two peoples.

I am bothered by the views of David Marples who recently jumped on the anti-OUN bandwagon claiming that “members of the OUN (B) spearheaded pogroms in Lviv in the summer of 1941, when about 4,000 Jews were killed.” The facts are quite different.  Jews helped the NKVD round up Ukrainian nationalists after the Soviet invasion of 1939. Caught off-guard by the German invasion of Soviet Ukraine in 1941 and their advance on Lviv, the NKVD, which, as local Ukrainians knew, included an inordinate number of Jews, hastily massacred some 4,000 civilian prisoners. Hoping to provoke the local population, the Gestapo allowed Lviv’s Ukrainians to view the results of the slaughter.  Recently declassified documents indicate that OUN leaders were aware of the Gestapo plot to exploit Ukrainians and warned its members to be wary of the provocation.  Tragically, some Ukrainians fell for the Gestapo conspiracy, but the killing of Jews that followed was not initiated by OUN (B).

Both OUNs were exploited and then betrayed by Germany. Both OUNs disavowed further cooperation when they formed the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) to fight the Germans and the Soviets.  Both OUN leaders, Andrij Melnyk and Stepan Bandera, were interred in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. 

Young Stepan Bandera recently offered to return his grandfather’s award to Viktor Yanukovych if Ukraine’s new President would return his ill-gained multi-million dollar mansion to the Ukrainian people.  A gallant gesture of good will.  Viktor will agree, right?   Not!