e-Poshta | 17Jun2009 | Myroslava Oleksiuk
Editorial
 
Nazi torturing trio of Wolf, Wirzing and Shultz vs Demjanjuk

Today, when German law limits the prosecution of Germans for Nazi war crimes, Germany is getting ready to prosecute, for Nazi war crimes, a Ukrainian prisoner of war captured by the Germans, as they razed Ukraine and brought its people to their knees (with 8 million Ukrainians killed in WWII, 2.3 slave labourers in Germany and 10 million left homeless). As Germany is gearing up for a politically motivated, justice impaired, show trial of the John Demjanjuk to teach young Germans that their ancestors were not entirely to blame for the Holocaust, Ukrainians are remembering another Nazi sacrifice  -- a leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, who at 37 years old was tortured to death by the NAZI trio of Wolf, Wirzing and Shultz.

Sixty-five years ago, on June 10, 1944, Nazi torturers murdered Oleh Olzhych (Kandyba), a 37-year-old archeologist, poet, publicist and patriot. Prior to his arrest by the Gestapo in the spring of 1944, he directed underground activities in Nazi-occupied Ukraine. He was the acting head of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists while the actual leader, Col. Andrii Melnyk, was incarcerated together with several other Ukrainian political leaders at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Olzhych left Ukraine with his father, popular Ukrainian poet Oleksandr Oles, after the Russian Communist takeover in 1923. He studied archeology in Prague (then Czechoslovakia), wrote several scientific papers and later lectured at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. In 1938 he returned to Europe, leaving his position at Harvard and his American fiancée to represent the Ukrainian nationalist leadership in the short-lived independent Carpatho-Ukraine. He was arrested by the Gestapo in Lviv on May 25, 1944 and imprisoned at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Today the German government and media are expending considerable effort into trying to find a scapegoat, in order to minimize their culpability by attempting to spread it to Ukraine and the peoples of other nations they invaded and devoured. However, their Gestapo representatives such as Wolf, Wirzing and Shultz undermine their own country's credibility. Thus, Germany should stick to its achievements in the realm of tragedy, for which it is historically and culturally known, rather than venturing into the realm of farce, where it appears to be perilously headed.

Myroslava Oleksiuk