The funerals in Poland arising out of the recent Katyn airplane
catastrophe remind us not only of the current tragedy, but also serve
to underline the Polish disaster in Katyn forest where some 20,000
officers were massacred by the Soviet NKVD secret police.
Those familiar with that disaster know that the Soviet regime sought to
blame the massacre on the Nazis, falsified records and refused to
reveal the archives to allow the truth to emerge until after the Soviet
Union fell apart. To this day, not everything about Katyn forest has
been revealed. To all Poles, Katyn forest is a reminder of their
suffering during World War II. But Polish wounds that took so long to
heal were again reopened by recent events.
Ukrainians worldwide understand the lesson of Katyn forest, since that
is where the Soviet secret police demonstrated to what depths of
depravity it was capable of descending. It was this same Soviet NKVD
secret police that used similar actions on the Ukrainian national
liberation movement and one of its leaders, Stepan Bandera who former
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko recently recognized as a Hero of
Ukraine.
The European Parliament reacted by hurriedly passed a resolution at the
behest of that institution’s Polish delegation calling on the Ukrainian
government to revoke this recognition. Bandera, of course, had nothing
to do with Katyn forest. Instead, Bandera has been accused of heading a
fascist organization that strove for an ethnically pure Ukrainian state.
More recently, it has been alleged that members of the Organization of
Ukrainian Nationalists -- with his knowledge and approval, if not
pursuant to his direct orders -- slaughtered thousands of Jews in
pogroms in 1941 and later, in the spring and summer of 1943, that
Ukrainian nationalist insurgent army units engaged in further killings
of thousands of Poles in Volhynia.
It appears that Ukraine's newly elected President Viktor Yanukovych
shares at least some of these apprehensions since it has been announced
he will revoke the award during the upcoming ceremonies marking the
65th anniversary of the conclusion of World War II on May 9, where
Katyn forest was part of the ceremonial reflections. But before the new
president takes such an extraordinary step regarding Bandera, wouldn't
it make sense to review the facts to see if such a move is warranted?
Life of Stepan Bandera
Stepan Bandera's life was inextricably wound up with the history of
Ukraine and its struggle for unity, statehood and independence in two
arenas: eastern Ukraine and western Ukraine.
Bandera, who grew up in Galicia, had a relatively uneventful childhood
until, at age 11, his mother passed away from tuberculosis. From then
on, he was raised by his father, a Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest of
the Eastern Rite of the Catholic Church.
Bandera did not emerge on the political stage until 1928, when he was
19. He and his father, Rev. Andriy Bandera, were arrested that year by
Polish authorities in Kalush for taking part in a requiem memorial
service for World War I soldiers who fought for Ukraine’s independence
in the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen military units.
The next year, in 1929, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists was
created with a view to consolidating and actively leading the national
liberation struggle against the colonial occupation and oppression of
Ukraine by Poland in the west and Soviet Russia in the east. During
World War II, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists also engaged
in armed resistance against German occupation. Bandera joined the
organization when he was 20 years old.
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists ideology
Militarily conquered, repressed and effectively sealed off from the
world, eastern Ukraine increasingly succumbed to the grip of the
newly-created Soviet state. As a result, Ukrainian revolutionary
political activity shifted westward to Galicia and western Ukraine.
There the severity of the economic conditions, political repressions
and cultural straightjacket imposed on Galicia by Polish rule, forced
the Ukrainian population to reconsider both the means and ends of
political resistance. While mainstream Ukrainian groups explored all
manner of legal avenues to assert the cause of Ukrainian independence,
the younger generation increasingly looked to more radical
alternatives. Increasingly Ukrainians, particularly the radicalized
youth of Galicia, saw the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists as
providing the kind of leadership that was needed to directly address
the severe repressions the population faced.
In democratic societies, it is possible to seek change through
democratic means. But what is one to do under an authoritarian or even
a totalitarian regime, especially when controlled by a foreign power?
How does one respond to oppressive measures including widespread
physical intimidation and violence, incarceration, exile and, as
occurred in Russian-occupied Ukraine, the wholesale murder not only of
the intelligentsia but of members of every class and group in society?
Ukrainian leaders tried to employ democratic means in response to
serious political repression under Russian totalitarian rule in Ukraine
and Polish authoritarian rule in Galicia but without success. Following
the failure of that approach, OUN and the Ukrainian Military
Organization before it went underground where it was possible to employ
far more radical measures. Bandera was drawn into this revolutionary
underground movement.
The Ukrainian national liberation struggle headed by the Organization
of Ukrainian Nationalists shared many characteristics with other
national liberation movements of the 20th century. Although
fundamentally populist in outlook and nature, operationally the
movement was the product of the circumstances in which it arose: it was
revolutionary, conspiratorial, authoritarian and not only prepared, but
fully committed, to engage in violence and armed resistance to achieve
its overriding objective.
That goal was to attain political, economic, social, cultural and
linguistic freedom -- through the creation of a united, independent and
sovereign Ukrainian state -- for a nation that for hundreds of years
had been subject to foreign colonial and imperial occupation and
oppression. Another defining characteristic of the Organization of
Ukrainian Nationalists (and one also shared by most other 20th century
national liberation movements) was its reliance on nationalism as a
radicalizing and galvanizing force as well as a catalyst to
revolutionary activity. The fact that the ideological underpinnings of
Ukrainian nationalism were influenced by political currents in central
Europe and, especially, Italy in the first part of the 20th century,
has prompted many critics to label the Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists as fascist.
What these critics fail to grasp, however, is the profound difference
between an armed struggle for self-determination by a subjugated and
stateless nation and the reliance on nationalist rhetoric and symbolism
to advance the imperialistic/colonial agenda of an oppressor state.
There is an enormous difference between nationalism as the unifying
dynamic or spiritual and ideological force defining a national
liberation struggle versus the chauvinism, xenophobia and racism
(cloaked in nationalist rhetoric) promulgated by the government of an
established state to solidify its own hold on power, consolidate or
extend the state’s imperial/colonial domains and/or oppress minorities
within that state or other nationalities within the broader boundaries
of its empire.
Ukrainians were an oppressed majority within their own homeland. The
nationalism embraced by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists
constituted a powerful means of distinguishing the oppressed majority
from its foreign oppressors and those minorities which sided on most,
if not all important matters, with the colonial powers. In this sense,
Ukrainian nationalism was not only a precondition for national
liberation, but in so far as it was inextricably bound up with the
quest for political self-determination, it reflected the population’s
overwhelming desire to have a full and meaningful say in the creation
of the institutions of the new Ukrainian state and in its overall
governance. In other words, Ukrainian nationalism had as its
fundamental goal not only the creation of an independent state, but one
in which the Ukrainian population would be able to determine its own
destiny through the democratic expression of its own will.
It cannot be said that the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists had a
fully developed political platform from its inception. The organization
consisted of people with varying political views united in the belief
that Ukrainian statelessness in Ukraine’s own ethnic territory was the
primary problem to be addressed. They referred to themselves as
“Ukrainian nationalists” because they sought Ukrainian sovereignty, in
whatever form that may take, other than an extreme like communism or
Nazism. While they agreed that Ukrainians should be masters in their
own home, there was a diversity of opinion on precisely what that
entailed as became evident in later Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists congresses. When challenged to spell out their ideology,
at least in the early years, the leadership argued: “First you must
build a house before you can decide what goes into it.” This was a far
cry from a fascist approach.
The leadership very quickly came to understand that if the movement was
to attain the same degree of support in eastern Ukraine as in western
Ukraine, it would need to modify and expand its political program to
deal with social and economic issues, minority rights and other matters
of importance to citizens resident in what was then Soviet-occupied
Ukraine.
The measure of the organization’s commitment to building a unified
Ukrainian state that respected the needs and desires of all its
citizens was amply demonstrated in the resolutions that were adopted at
the Third Party Congress in August 1943. These included a shift to a
much more social-democratic political and economic orientation that
would not only guarantee freedom of speech, religion, and the press,
but would also protect the rights of workers, national minorities and
the equality of women. The amended program also made mention of various
social programs ranging from pensions to health care and free
education. Clearly, such a shift in policy in response to the
perceived, if not actual, demands of the majority of the Ukrainian
population which was then residing in communist-occupied territories
demonstrate the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists’ commitment to
democracy once an independent Ukrainian state had been achieved.
The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists rejected the notion of
working with the occupying power as an interim measure on the road to
sovereignty, be that Russia or Poland. While it sought help from
Germany in overthrowing the Soviet regime, it split ranks with its
erstwhile ally immediately upon the latter’s invasion of Ukrainian
territory when it became clear that Germany had no intention of
supporting Ukrainian statehood and, instead, was intent on colonizing
Ukraine herself.
It is undeniable that the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists’
leadership, like most of Europe's political leaders at that time, was
influenced by the emergence of fascism as a dominant ideology on the
European continent. However, John Armstrong, the leading scholar on the
subject, has persuasively argued that neither the Organization of
Ukrainian Nationalists nor its brand of nationalism was fascist in
nature or substance. It never advocated a dictatorship for Ukraine. On
the contrary, it sought to overthrow one. It never maintained that the
Ukrainian people or race was superior to others. On the contrary, it
sought to unite with other oppressed nations in the struggle for
justice and freedom. It never sought to conquer foreign territories,
but only to liberate its own. And, at the end of the day, it had no
fascist political program to implement. But instead, it was prepared to
advance that mix of social-democratic policies, principles and programs
as would meet the needs and desires of the western and eastern halves
of the country, including the national minorities that constituted an
essential part of both.
After all, its motto was: “Freedom for all peoples, freedom for each
individual.”
Bandera as a rank-and-file member
In the 1930s, Stepan Bandera became a rank and file member of the
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in western Ukraine. Two major
anti-Ukrainian events stoked the fires of the Ukrainian underground.
One was the 1932-1933 Holodomor in Soviet Ukraine, in which millions of
Ukrainians perished during an artificial famine inflicted upon them by
the Kremlin. The other was the Polish occupation of western Ukrainian
territories by force following World War I and the subsequent 1930
policy of “pacification.” This latter policy was aimed at breaking the
backbone of resistance by Polonizing Ukrainians, closing Ukrainian
schools, destroying Ukrainian churches and randomly subjecting
thousands of completely innocent people to physical violence as a means
of establishing Polish domination and control over them. Under
pacification, private property belonging to Ukrainian residents as well
as to Ukrainian educational institutions, cooperatives and cultural
centers was vandalized or destroyed, while Ukrainian political leaders
not even associated with the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists
were arrested and imprisoned.
Bandera rose up through the ranks of the movement. At first, he was the
head of the organization’s underground publishing unit. Then he became
chief propaganda officer in Ukraine. Finally, he became head of the
organization’s executive in Ukraine. This work was far riskier than the
work of the older leaders living in Europe, outside the reach of the
Poles and the Russians.
In retribution for the suffering inflicted on the Ukrainian population
under Stalin in the east and Poland in the west, the Organization of
Ukrainian Nationalists undertook a series of assassinations of
high-ranking Soviet and Polish officials. The victims of their actions
were targeted political or military leaders. One of the most prominent
was the 1933 assassination of Soviet envoy Alexei Mailov in Lviv to
draw international attention to the Holodomor of 1932-33 in Soviet
Ukraine. Another high profile example was the June 15, 1934,
assassination of the Polish minister of internal affairs, General
Bronislaw Pieracki, undertaken by Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists operative H. Matseyko as a reprisal for the repressive
pacification regime that had been introduced in western Ukraine.
Ultimately, the Polish government resolved to crack down on the
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in a series of arrests,
including that of Stepan Bandera in Lviv. From 1935 to1936, Stepan
Bandera and other leading members stood trial in Warsaw and Lviv for
their revolutionary activities. Following the trials, Bandera was
sentenced to death, but this was later commuted to life imprisonment.
He remained in various Polish jails, including the infamous Bereza
Kartuzka concentration camp, specifically created by the Poles to
incarcerate Ukrainian “nationalists” until 1939 and the outbreak of
World War II. With the Nazi invasion of Poland, Bandera escaped from
jail and made his way to Lviv and then on to Slovakia, Austria and
Italy.
Assassination of Yevhen Konovalets
Meanwhile, leading into World War II, the Soviet leadership arranged
the assassination of Yevhen Konovalets, the leader of the Organization
of Ukrainian Nationalists, by Pavel Sudoplatov, a Soviet NKVD agent on
May 23, 1938, in Rotterdam.
A year later, on Aug. 23, 1939, the infamous Molotov- Ribbentrop pact
was signed. Pursuant to this agreement, Stalin and the Soviet Union
allied with Hitler and Nazi Germany and, among other things, agreed to
divide Poland (including all of occupied western Ukraine) between them.
Through this high-handed collaboration, Hitler’s armies were able to
invade Western Europe and to goose step through its major capitals as
Stalin protected Hitler’s back for 21 months while simultaneously
launching a campaign of terror in western Ukraine, spearheaded by his
dreaded secret police, the NKVD.
In April 1941, some three years after the murder of Konovalets, the
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists fractured into two parts, with
the more conservative older faction represented by Andrei Melnyk
remaining in Western Europe.
The more radical younger faction, now represented by Stepan Bandera,
burrowed underground in western Ukraine. Bandera’s generation saw that
of its parents' sacrifice everything in the struggle for Ukrainian
independence following World War I. That struggle was doomed from the
start, however, due to a lack of resources, a lack of effective
communication of its political program and the absence of a
well-equipped, well-trained army to hold and defend the newly
proclaimed independent Ukrainian state from foreign invaders. When
their opportunity came 20 years later, Bandera and his followers were
bound and determined not make the same mistakes.
Collaboration with the German military
By 1941, after Hitler had consolidated his control of Europe, it became
increasing clear that his armies would soon invade the Soviet Union. In
view of this inevitability, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists
devised a plan to capitalize on the upcoming invasion to create the
core of a Ukrainian army that, after being built up and augmented,
could ultimately stand in defense of a newly established independent
Ukraine. The nationalists believed that the clash of these titans would
result in the demise of both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, thus
making it possible to proclaim a free Ukraine as a fait accompli. Its
leadership therefore pursued an agreement with the Abwehr (German
military intelligence) and Wehrmacht (unified German armed forces) –
together, the least sympathetic of German military organizations to
Nazi ideology.
The plan was to initially establish two army units - Nachtigal and
Roland – consisting of some 600 Ukrainian soldiers to be trained and
armed by Germany to join in the fight against the Soviet Union once the
war on the eastern front began. As it later became apparent, these two
battalions were formed without the knowledge or authorization of
Hitler, Himmler or the other Nazi leaders who detested Ukrainians as an
inferior race.
Let he who is without sin cast first stone
Was it wrong for the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists to attempt
to create the nucleus of a Ukrainian army with the assistance of the
German military? Before rushing to conclusions, it is necessary to
consider the organization’s actions in the context of Ukraine’s
circumstances and what others did at that time.
If it was so wrong for Bandera and the Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists to negotiate with the German military, what should be said
of the conduct of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, French
Prime Minister Edouard Daladier, and Italian Prime Minister Benito
Mussolini, who met Hitler in Munich to negotiate and sign off on the
annexation of Sudetenland to Nazi Germany in September 1938?
By comparison, Bandera and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists
had no country, no army, and no power to influence Hitler like these
leaders did. Consider also the role of Italy, Japan, Slovakia, Romania,
Croatia,Vichy France, Hungary, Bulgaria, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, and
Albania, all of which fought as allies of Nazi Germany during the war.
If we are to condemn Bandera, what should be said about all of these
“collaborators,” none of which, incidentally, was engaged in a national
liberation struggle?
The Nazi invasion
When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the two
Ukrainian battalions were among the first military groups to enter
Ukraine. These battalions were greeted warmly as a liberation army by
the Ukrainian population. But the declaration of a free Ukraine
proclaimed by the Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists on June 30, 1941, in Lviv was not received favorably by
Hitler and the rest of the Nazi leadership. On the contrary, on July 4,
1941, Hitler called a meeting to review the situation in Ukraine. The
meeting resolved to arrest the Ukrainians who took part in this
unilateral declaration of Ukrainian statehood and independence and
bring them to Berlin. At the same time, the two Ukrainian battalions
were recalled from the front and decommissioned.
The Nazis proceeded to round up Bandera and the entire nationalist
movement’s leadership, demanding that they retract their declaration of
independence. When they refused, the Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists leadership was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration
camp. Bandera’s two brothers were arrested and taken to Auschwitz,
where they later perished at the hands of Polish guards serving the
Nazis there. Bandera himself remained incarcerated in Sachsenhausen
until 1944, when he was again released. After refusing a German request
to express support for Hitler at this late stage in the war, he went
into hiding under the assumed name of Popil, eventually settling in
Munich at the conclusion of the war. It was here that Bohdan
Stashynsky, a Soviet secret police agent, finally assassinated him on
Oct. 15, 1959.
June 1941 in Galicia
Recently, allegations have been raised that Bandera's Organization of
Ukrainian Nationalists conducted a pogrom against the Jews in Galicia
in July 1941 as part of the Holocaust. These allegations are worthy of
some discussion.
Immediately following the departure of the Soviet administration from
Galicia in late June 1941, the corpses of thousands of
recently-murdered political prisoners – most of them Ukrainian, but
among them also many Poles and Jews -- were found in 22 cities, towns
and villages throughout western Ukraine. All had been massacred by
Stalin’s NKVD secret police.
As the local population opened up the jails of Galicia and discovered
the atrocities that had been committed by the Soviet secret police, the
Gestapo sought to exploit the situation through provocation and the
instigation of anti-Jewish violence. In pursuit of this policy, General
Major Otto Rash, the Commander of Einzatsgroupe C, who arrived in Lviv
on July 1, 1941, delivered a speech to his troops and to a large
assembly of people from Lviv gathered before him, blaming the NKVD’s
bloody massacres on the Jews. The plan, approved by the Fuhrer himself,
linked Jews with the Stalinist regime and encouraged the lowest
elements of Lviv society, including Ukrainians and Poles, to undertake
a pogrom against Jews living in that city. German posters accusing the
“Jewish Bolsheviks” of the massacre were put up on the walls of
buildings.
These provocations resonated with at least some residents of the city.
It is true that some Jews, including those who earlier had identified
Ukrainian nationalist leaders in Lviv for the Bolsheviks to imprison,
were shot on the spot or rounded up by relatives and friends of the
prisoners, sometimes mistreated along the way, and brought to the jails
to see “what they had done” and for the role they played in the NKVD.
For the most part, however, exacting vengeance on the Jewish population
of Lviv for the acts of the Soviet secret police in the first days of
July 1941 was without any semblance of justification or warrant.
Ukrainian and Polish hooligans in rioting mobs “settled scores” with
Jews, particularly in the Jewish quarter. These scenes continued until
July 3, 1941. In the end, some 4,000 innocent Jews were killed. The
entire anti-Jewish strategy of the German authorities, however, was
nowhere near as “successful” as the Nazis had hoped. The evidence at
Nuremburg indicated that the number of individuals who were provoked by
the Gestapo in this manner was relatively small and certainly far
smaller than had been anticipated or hoped for by the Nazi instigators.
In general, the population’s antipathies increasingly turned in an
anti-Bolshevik/anti-communist direction rather than towards the city’s
Jews. The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists itself, at its August
1943 congress, and in numerous official publications in the years
preceding the congress, expressly recognized that Ukraine’s enemies
were not the Jews but the ruling authorities of oppressor states who
turned Ukrainians against Jews and vice versa.
From the perspective of this inquiry, the most important point is that
the acts in June 1941 in Galicia were the acts of hoodlums, the dredges
of this earth. They were not those of the leadership of Organization of
Ukrainian Nationalists, nor its organized membership.
As attorney Askold Lozynsky the former head of the World Congress of
Ukrainians pointed out, Soviet prosecutor Roman Rudenko had the
capacity to pin blame on them at the Nuremberg trials if the evidence
was there. Consider the fact that Rudenko had full access to both
Soviet and German archives, as well as a strong motive to pursue
“Ukrainian nationalists” as one of the Soviet Union's greatest threats.
The Nuremberg trials were concluded in 1949 at a time when Ukrainian
Insurgent Army units were still engaged in widespread guerilla combat
against the military might of the U.S.S.R.
The facts were still fresh in the post-war memory, unlike today 65
years later. Moreover, it can categorically be stated, based on the
evidence assembled and published by Myroslaw Kalba in his book
Nachtigal, as well as from the evidence at Nuremberg, that neither the
Nachtigal nor the Roland battalions were in anyway linked to, or
involved in, any actions against the Jewish community in Western
Ukraine or Lviv during this (or any other) time. A decisive role in
stopping the pogroms was the appeal for calm issued by Metropolitan
Andrei Sheptytysky of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, the efforts of the
Ukrainian militia in Lviv to stop it and the arrival of the bulk of the
49th army corps of the German Wehrmacht.
Volhynia
As for the actions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and
the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in Volhynia, as Professor Peter Potichnyj
of Canada, editor of the book Poland and Ukraine, Past and Present,
points out, if minorities fought in support of the NKVD secret police
or other oppressors, they ran the risk of falling victim in the war.
Those who opposed the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the
Ukrainian Insurgent Army, including Poles who sought to restore the
600-year oppression of Ukrainians under Poland, chose to do so at their
own peril. There is no denying, however, that thousands of innocent
Poles were slaughtered in Volhynia. This happened in the context of a
total war, where Germans were playing Ukrainians and Poles off against
each other and where Poles were slaughtering Ukrainians at the same
time. Those who seek further clarity in this regard would do well to
consult the book and other works by Professor Potichnyj. Although the
issue of Ukrainian-Polish conflict remains a topic of considerable
debate, Poles and Ukrainians can unite in their condemnation of Stalin,
the leadership of the former U.S.S.R. and the acts of the former NKVD
secret police in Katyn forest or in the cities of western Ukraine in
June 1941. On these matters there is no disagreement.
What Yanukovych should do
In regard to the tragedy of Katyn forest, including the recent airplane
catastrophe, all Yanukovych and the rest of the Ukrainian nation and
diaspora can do is acknowledge the Polish pain and the rightfulness of
their truth about what happened there. But in regard to Bandera,
instead of retracting his recognition at the upcoming ceremonies
marking the 65th anniversary of the end of World War II, Yanukovych
would be better advised to condemn those who were responsible,
including Stalin, for the killings of thousands of Ukrainians and
others in the prisons of western Ukraine at the end of June 1941, while
expressing sorrow for the innocent Jews killed in the Lviv pogrom and
elsewhere shortly thereafter. In this he can invite Polish solidarity.
Yanukovych should say that for Ukrainians, however, while May 9, 1945,
was a moment to celebrate the victory over Nazi Germany, it was also a
moment that marked the consolidation and continuation of the Soviet
Union's totalitarian control over Ukraine, and other former Soviet
republics, for another 46 years. Whether Polish leaders agree with
Bandera’s legacy or not, he should join in expressing his support for
the cause in whose name Stepan Bandera and many other leaders of the
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists laid down their own lives,
namely, to ensure that the Ukrainian people never again fall under
foreign colonial rule.
Andriy J. Semotiuk is an attorney practicing in the area of
international law in the field of immigration. He is a member of the
bars of California and New York in the United States and Ontario,
Alberta and British Columbia in Canada. A former United Nations
correspondent who was stationed in New York, Semotiuk resides in Los
Angeles. SELECTED COMMENT:
Lubomyr Prytulak, Guest | April 20 at 08:40
Regarding Andrij Semotiuk's recommendation that Ukrainians should
express "sorrow for the innocent Jews killed in the Lviv pogrom and
elsewhere shortly thereafter," we should keep in mind that there was no
"Lviv Pogrom". Below are three quotations from pre-eminent Holocaust
historian Raul Hilberg to this effect. Following the 60 Minutes
broadcast "Ugly Face of Freedom" which alleged a "Lviv Pogrom," I wrote
Hilberg to ask what he knew about it, and his listing of incidents that
did not include mention of the Lviv pogrom in question indicated that
he didn't know of any Lviv pogrom. This should not be surprising, as
John Demjanjuk was convicted and sentenced to death for crimes
committed by Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka when in fact there was no
Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka: http://www.xoxol.org/dem/blurb.html
BEGIN HILBERG QUOTE 1
From the Ukraine Einsatzkommando 6 of Einsatzgruppe C reported as follows:
Almost nowhere can the population be persuaded to take active steps
against the Jews. This may be explained by the fear of many people that
the Red Army may return. Again and again this anxiety has been pointed
out to us. Older people have remarked that they had already experienced
in 1918 the sudden retreat of the Germans. In order to meet the fear
psychosis, and in order to destroy the myth ... which, in the eyes of
many Ukrainians, places the Jew in the position of the wielder of
political power, Einsatzkommando 6 on several occasions marched Jews
before their execution through the city. Also, care was taken to have
Ukrainian militiamen watch the shooting of Jews.
This "deflation" of the Jews in the public eye did not have the desired
effect. After a few weeks, Einsatzgruppe C complained once more that
the inhabitants did not betray the movements of hidden Jews. The
Ukrainians were passive, benumbed by the "Bolshevist terror." Only the
ethnic Germans in the area were busily working for the Einsatzgruppe.
(Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1961, p. 202)
END HILBERG QUOTE 1
BEGIN HILBERG QUOTE 2
The Slavic population stood estranged and even aghast before the
unfolding spectacle of the "final solution." There was on the whole no
impelling desire to cooperate in a process of such utter ruthlessness.
The fact that the Soviet regime, fighting off the Germans a few hundred
miles to the east, was still threatening to return, undoubtedly acted
as a powerful restraint upon many a potential collaborator. (Raul
Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 308)
END HILBERG QUOTE 2
BEGIN HILBERG QUOTE 3
First, truly spontaneous pogroms, free from Einsatzgruppen influence,
did not take place; all outbreaks were either organized or inspired by
the Einsatzgruppen. Second, all pogroms were implemented within a short
time after the arrival of the killing units. They were not
self-perpetuating, nor could new ones be started after things had
settled down. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews,
1985, p. 312)