the Ukrainian insurgent army,collaborators or resistants?

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Georgien
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#106

Post by Georgien » 22 Dec 2005, 02:39

NO MORE COMMUNISM!

NO MORE FASCISM!

There is nothing more evil than Nazism, Fascism, Communism....

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batu
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#107

Post by batu » 22 Dec 2005, 18:25

Georgien wrote:NO MORE COMMUNISM!

NO MORE FASCISM!

There is nothing more evil than Nazism, Fascism, Communism....
and every nation has a right to selfidentification!
FREEDOM TO ABKHASIA, SOUTH OSSETIA, ADJARIA!


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Askold
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#108

Post by Askold » 22 Dec 2005, 18:56

I agree, its time for Ingermanland to break the mongolian shacles!

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/1433/

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Georgien
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#109

Post by Georgien » 22 Dec 2005, 21:46

anti georgian histerics by "batu" has nothing to do with UPA topic or subject. Moderator should delete all unrelated materials to this topic of UPA/Polish Genocide/UPA Nazi relations.

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batu
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#110

Post by batu » 22 Dec 2005, 22:25

Askold wrote:I agree, its time for Ingermanland to break the mongolian shacles!

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/1433/
:)
thanx, at least our ukranian friend has better knowledge of their "enemy", than our Georgian one.
I appreciate Askold's awareness of Ingernmanland. Thank you, I didn't know this webpage exists.
But the pity side of it is that the webpage is done in Russian, since Ingrians have almost lost their language.
I also remember mysterious scrathes in the Saint-Petersburg metro with INGRIA in latin letters.
Freedom to Helsinki was a funny private message from Georgien. Good try :)
BTW what is worng with the freedom to Abkhasia? they want to be part of Russia, why don't you respect them?
And the same goes to South Ossetia. Why not reunite Ossetian people, artificially divided into two countries.
I am sure you're sympathetic towards Kurds, Kosovars, why are you agaisnt Abkhasians?

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Georgien
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#111

Post by Georgien » 22 Dec 2005, 22:30

Freedom of Helsinki is as much commical as Abkazian or so called "south ossetian" freedoms. As for separatistic issues in georgia it has nothing to do with the topic. You are violating the rule of this Forum which clearly states that all materials should be relevant to the topic.
Note: Russians are not my enemies.

Learn more about the topic, use reliable sources for any claims you use next time.

Good lock

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Georgien
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#112

Post by Georgien » 23 Dec 2005, 00:47

In September 1944 the Nazis were thrown out of the Bieszczady district by the Soviet troops. The administrative center for Strubowiska became the small town of Cisna, where the local authorities were soon organized. In Cisna, the police station - citizen's militia - was formed. Many young men coming from the Bieszczady area joined the unit. The local population, happy that the war was over for them, had settled down for a peaceful life.

But, the Soviet troops were moving west, clearing the southern territory of Poland of Nazis. These Nazis were in the Carpathian region looking for shelter for their many armed men. They were the remains of the XIV SS Division "Galizien", famous for their cruelty. The division was formed by the Germans from Ukrainian Nationalists in the Soviet occupied territories in 1941. In June 1944 this division was completely defeated by the Soviet Army in the Wolyn district. Only 5,000 men, one third of the division escaped with their lives. A large number of these survivors went to the Bieszczady. They organized during the war the Ukrainian Patriots Army "UPA" and considered the Carpathian district very suitable for their underground activities. As the civilian nationalist authority started its operation the Ukrainians Union - the body formed by Germans in the 1930's- was collaborating with the Nazis Abwehra.

The refugees from the Soviet territory were collaborating with German officers and clerks of civil administration, members of Nazis SS troops and members of so called "einstatz groups" -specially formed units for extermination of prominent people of the occupied nations, and other individuals considered as war criminals. All these then were looking for safe shelter. The ideological argument for their activity was that "the third World War will come soon, so it will be the war of the West with the Soviet Union, we have to wait for it here".

The above mentioned and briefly described local population felt very comfortable in the district which was mountainous and well covered by forest and guarded by small groups of the Soviet Army and posts of civil militia.

The Polish People's Army -about 400 thousand men- was fighting at that time in central and northern Poland. In this situation the Ukrainian Nationalists started the formation of the powerful underground army, covered by the Carpathian forest. Later in 1946 and 1947 this army will be fighting a Civil War with the Polish forces, but not only in the Carpathian district, but in the whole western Polish country territories. In southern Poland the fighting included the Czechoslovakian Army and the Soviet Army.

In 1944 some "signaling" episodes happened (e.g., in September 1944 the UPA group murdered in Baligrod 42 men during Holy Mass in the Greek-Catholic church. A bit earlier, a large group of people going back home after Holy Mass in the Roman Catholic church in Komancza were murdered by the UPA. My brother Stanislaw M[name withheld by G. Gressa] was one of the men murdered at that time.

During the winter period 1944-1945 the different UPA groups left their posts dispersed in the forest and concentrated the small units into larger ones. These larger units they called "sotnia", which means "hundreds".

From the forest Jawornik, laying south of the large village Wetlina, the "sotnia" commanded by Weselyj (gay) went to Strubowiska for their winter quarters. "Weselyj" - the proper name is unknown, was a soldier born in the Tarnopol district. He was earlier a noncommissioned officer in the SS Galizien Division and was well known for cruelty against the Poles as well as the Ukrainians. In the UPA he first commanded a group, then a platoon and then a "sotnia". In February 1945, part of his unit attacked the militia post at Zatwarnica, a village northeast of Wetlina located on the San River. Four M.O. men were killed during this attack.

This incident alarmed the Soviet Unit staying on rest in Wetlina. The M.O. post in Cisna was also informed secretly by civilians about the Strubowiska situation (the behavior of Weselyj wasn't liked by the Strubowiska inhabitants). Weselyj's unit also started the forced mobilization of young men into the UPA army. The information from the civil population permitted the militia to plan to free the group of youth "recruited" by the "recruiting" group of "Weselyj". The operation against the "sotnia" in Strubowiska was prepared.

On March 21, 1945 two companies of the Soviet infantry surrounded the village of Strubowiska. The third company remained as a reserve under the commanding officer Colonel Stiepashkin.

In the staff of "sotnia" they had a pope. [probably a Greek Orthodox priest] He wrote in his diary: "Early morning 21 March our patrol gave the information that militia men from Cisna with the Bolsheviks are just in the village of Krzywe. After a short conference with his adjutant, the company surgeon Horislaw and the pope, the commandant decided that on the first day of Spring a good lesson is necessary to be given.....No one expected the big forces of enemy".

Close to seven in the morning the village was tightly surrounded by the Soviet troops and militia men. It was a frosty day. The soldiers were lying on the open field. One hour of time was given to the UPA men to leave the houses in the village and give up to the surrounding troops. The idea was to save the property and lives of the civilian population. Until twenty past eight no reply was given. The Colonel decided to give an additional hour to surrender. The civilian population was informed that they can leave the houses and village behind the line of the surrounding troops. A few women with children in their arms run out of the houses. When they reached the line of lying soldiers some of them got up to help. The machine guns fired from the windows of the houses killing the women, children and some of the standing soldiers. Only one little boy survived.

The red flash [flare] shot by the commanding Colonel was a signal to attack. The militia men from Cisna knowing the houses where the UPA groups had their winter posts, were the guides. The battle for each of these houses started. They were all quite well prepared for the defense. One of these houses, containing the ammunition stores, exploded during the battle. The men of both fighting groups who were nearby, lost their lives.

At evening, most of the village was cleared of UPA men. Only a few houses were still shooting fortresses. The Soviet flashes [flares] were lighting the battlefield and permitted them to observe the enemy. Suddenly they saw a group of women running out of the village. But they were suspicious since the women were all without children. In the light of a flash, one of the soldiers saw the machine gun in the hands of the "woman". The fire opened by both sides, there were victims. The rest of the "women" - escaped back to the houses.

Now the UPA men lighted the houses. In the light given by the burning village they tried to escape, running and shooting. Also all the Soviet soldiers were shooting. To close off the battle field the reserve company was used. Only a few of the UPA men survived the battle.

In the early morning of March 22 , the fight in Strubowiska was over. The 84 killed UPA men were found on the battle field. All the houses were completely burned. The attacking forces had only a few soldiers killed, including Captain Golovienko who commanded the reserve company. The soldiers spent the whole day of March 22 looking for guns and ammunition.

At evening the Soviet troops were leaving the ruins of the village, moving to the east. With them, using the horse sliding cars, the civilian population of Strubowiska was leaving their village. They were bringing with them the little personal property that remained after the battle. All went to Ustrzyki Gorne, from where they were transported to the Soviet Union.


In his report a Soviet officer wrote: "They have on their faces the reflection of tragedy, of pain".

At the end of April 1945, the troops of Colonel Stiepashkin left the district. A group of the Polish Army was posted at Cisna. For these soldiers a very difficult time was to come. The civil war for clearing the whole territory of enemy was before them. The Civil War was in 1946-1947. At that time the village of Strubowiska didn't exist.

An author of a report writes: "only a small chapel remained after the battle".

"Weselyj" (Gay) was killed in battle.

Today the village site is called Strzebowiska on Polish maps.

Source: ©1996 by G. Warholic

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#113

Post by AdaOg » 29 Dec 2005, 11:25

As a granddaughter of the victims of OUN UPA - I say they were murderers.

1. Contacts of OUN with Germans
Ukrainian Nationalists had begun contacts with NSDAP since 1921. At the beginning Germans did not treat Ukrainians seriously; they were just interested in “East matters”.
From German side contacts were held by Alfred Rosenberg, Herman Göring, Ernst Röhm from Ukrainian side there were contacts with different emigration groups UWO (extreme nationalists) and “hetmans” – Skorpadski (conservative nationalists). Riko Jaryj had been in close contact with Hitler’s command since 1921. Since 1932 Jaryj and Sciborskyj held positions of official OUN spokesmen in Hitler’s general headquarter. Recovery of Ukrainian- German nazi contacts is dated since 1929. Nazis appreciated utility of OUN’s sabotage on East, but Ukrainian nationalistic extremism was not comfortable for far reaching Hitller’s plans. Rosenberg’s people saw in OUN the ally in fight with USRR.
Fragments of „Mein Kampf” of „lebensraum” and Slav’s as lower people were belittled in Ukraine , Dmytro Dońcow Ukrainian Nationalist’s spokesman and defender in his newspaper „Wisnyk” commented that: as German “interest” of tight economic cooperation, because Germans need sources and food.

Co-operation was held under unofficial talks and decisions because until 1934 Hitler was not allowed to lead official foreign policy because it was in Auswärtiges Amt jurisdiction .
Mr Konowalec (OUN leader) was expected by Germans (in 1933) to activate terrorist movement against USRR – and arouse suspicion that it was done by Poles.
Jewhen Konowalec had became the leader of the organization since the moment of creation of OUN in 27.1. – 3.2. 1929. The organisation was In tight contact with Abwehra, and with Foreign Minister of III Reich, with Gestapo, SS head quarter, and with managed by Alfred Rosenberg’s Foreign Office of NSDAP.

2. University work on that topic
http://ujss.sa.utoronto.ca/Spring%202005/49.pdf

3. Before the war there were not Polish atroicies on Ukrainian Nation. There was stupid policy of closing shools and churches (after Ukrainian many terrosistic attacks and killing Polish Minister B. Piernacki). There was also jail for terrorists but after 11.09.2001 WTC everyone understans why...

4. Ukrainian guerillas were differ from other guerillas. I have never heard of such cruelty as Ukrainian (beofe Chmielnicki's and later UPA) .

Acording to historian Norman Davies: "for the half of the century the World knew almost nothing about that events." He caunts up to 500.000 victims of Ukrainian Nationalists.

Ukrainian Professor Mr. Poliszczuk caunts that from Nationalists' hands died about 80.000 Ukrainians who helped Poles or who did not want to help UPA to kill Poles or Jews.
Such claims are sustained by Ukrainian professor Mr Hrytsak.



And here are documented ways of killing Poles and Jews...
We can distinguish at least 136 ways of tortures committed by UPA. As a result of individual crimes and later the mass murders committed on the borderland population of Poles OUN-UPA terrorists in years 1939-1945 and a few years later murdered about 500.000 Poles. Most of them died in such cruel circumstances and sophisticated tortures, mostly physical but also psychological, that civilised persona of XX century cannot believe on that.

Among UPA members there was the crime solidarity. Each candidate was obliged first of all to kill „Lach” (Pole).
The variety of tortures and atrocities was not freely according to murderer’s mind. Mostly particular kind of tortures was established by „revolutionary committee”.
For instance there were such tortures committed by OUN-UPA on Poles (men, women, children):
1. Hammering in a big nail into skull. 2. Scalping. 3. Dealing a blow with a head of axe into the skull. 4. Dealing a blow with a head of axe into the forehead. 5. Carving an eagle on victim’s forehead. 6. Hammering in bayonet into temple of head 7. Gouging out one eye. 8. Gouging out two eyes. 9. Cutting out a nose. 10. Cutting out one ear. 12. Cutting out two ears. 13. Drilling ears (through the head) with thick wire. 14. Cutting out lips. 15. Cutting out tongue. 16. Cutting the throat. 17. Cutting the throat and pulling out a tongue from the hole 18. Cutting the throat and inserting to the hole a rag. 19. Knocking teeth out. 20. Crushing jaw . 21. Tearing apart mouth from ear to ear. 22. Gagging still living, transported victims with oakum. 23. Cutting throat with knife or sickle. 24. Hitting with the axe on victim’s neck. 25. Vertical chopping of a head with an axe . 26. Turning the head away. 27. Crushing head with the vice 28.29 Cutting off the head with sickle or scythe 30. Cutting out the head with the axe. 31. Pricking on the head. 32. Cutting out narrow strips from victim’s back. 33. (......). 39. Cutting off women’s breast with the sickle. 40. Cutting off women’s breast and sprinkling wounds with salt. 41. Cutting off men’s genitals with the sickle. 42. Cutting victim’s body on two halves with a saw. (...) 44. Piercing with a bayonet pregnant woman’s stomach. 45. Cutting stomach and pulling out intestines. 46. Cutting pregnant woman’s stomach, taking out the child and putting inside living cat or hedgehog a then sewing up the stomach. 47. Cutting stomach and pouring boiling water inside. 48. Cutting stomach , putting inside stones and throwing victim into the river. 49. . Cutting pregnant woman’s stomach, and putting inside crushed glass. 50. Pulling out veins from whole body. (...)55. Hanging victims with his intestines. 56. (...). 58. Cutting stomach and pouring stomach with pig’s fodder – later starving pigs were eating fodder together with intestines. (...) 74. Crucifying victims in church (..) 79. Fixing small child’s tongue to a table with a knife. 80. Cutting children for small pieces with a knife. 81. Ripping children’s stomachs. 82. Fixing child with a bayonet to the table. 83. Hanging child with the genitals on the handle. 84, 85. Crushing children’s legs and hands joints. (...) 88, 89. Throwing living children into wells or into the flames. 89. Crushing children’s skull. (...) . 91. Hammering in children into the pale . (...). 93. Hammering in children to the doors with nails. (...)108. Fixing woman’s legs to 2 trees and hands above ripping stomach from breast to crotch. (...)111. One woman was dragged along the streets with her 3 children: her leg was fixed to the cart with the chain. The second leg was fixed with chain to oldest child’s leg. The second leg of that child was fixes with chain to a leg of younger child etc. (...)120. Tearing apart victim in two halves: victim’s legs and hands were fixed to two bent down trees. Later trees were trees set free (Ada: that torture described me granny) (...). 125. Hammering baby in fork and throwing into the flames (...)

Above mentioned tortures are only the examples and the full list is not completed.
They were also full of the humour. Sometimes they hanged out victim’s intestines on the walls and murderers made Ukrainian inscription: “Poland from sea to sea” (Pilsudski’s watchword). They organised party after killing people with alcohol and singing.
A.Kubasik in his book also writes of : hammering babies to the walls with inscription “ Polish eagle” - "polskij orel”.

ps. They killed 13 people of my family INCL 3 MONTH OLD CHILD (by cutting off the skin form its back).

4. Jewish source of Ukrainian nationalists.
The interesting article of Sol Littman with Ukrainian "impartial" resume....
http://ukar.org/littma99.html
Host's Introduction

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Museum of Tolerance. I think you're in for an interesting evening this evening. Ah, my name is Rick Eaton. I am a uh researcher with the Simon Wiesenthal Center. I have been researching extremist groups, and neo-Nazis, and white supremacists for the past uh eleven and a half years. And in my spare time I also uh spend a little time running the museum here and and making sure things go smoothly.

I think this is an uh appropriate lecture this evening because, uh in the in the course of our of this museum we've had nearly, I believe, a million and a half visitors come through in the past four and a half years.

A good majority of those visitors are high school and junior high school students, many who really have no conception of the time that is involved, the historical aspects, and many still believe that, that the, Oh!, these, this, these are historical facts and and these people are all dead, and uh those that committed these crimes, committed the Holocaust and and and other atrocities during World War II, they must all be dead by now. Well, that's really not the case, and uh our speaker tonight will elaborate on that subject.

Our speaker is Sol Littman. Uh, in his, in his uh uh vast experience he uh and I would, I must say I was very happy to be uh uh asked to introduce him tonight. I've worked with him on on various projects over the years, and and most importantly of all his many qualities, I think that he is probably one of the most diligent and and uh hard-working researchers that I know of in a field that that can easily be uh uh short uh shorter than that field. Sol is a very diligent, hard working, gets right down in there and and finds out the truth, and and that's one of his most important qualities. But over the years he's been a sociologist. He's a veteran journalist. He's a writer. Uh, he's been a long-time, dedicated civil rights worker, almost as long as I've been alive, since the 19, early 1950s. Uh, and is the author of a soon-to-be-published book that he's going to talk about today, The Tryzub and the Swastika.

So, without further ado, Sol Littman.

[applause]


Sol Littman's Tryzub and Swastika Speech

A tale of treachery, of murder, and deceit

Ladies and gentlemen, it's a pleasure to be with you tonight, and my purpose in being here is basically to tell you a story, and the story you're going to hear tonight is a tale of treachery, of murder, and deceit. It involves cover-up by government and deliberate misrepresentation by scholars in major universities. It's a tragic and frustrating story, and a story which strangely enough has never been told in full, honest detail before now. I'm talking of the 14th Waffen-SS Grenadier volunteer Division Galitzien, better known among its Ukrainian members as the Halychyna Divisia, or the First Ukrainian Army.

In order better to understand the nature of this infamous division, and why it was formed, and how it earned its murderous reputation, it's necessary to remind you of two facts. First, that the Western portion of the Ukraine, the part we call Galicia, where the Galitzianer came from, was for a century or more a backward, impoverished province of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, ruled from Vienna. This large area, which included the cities of Lvov and Lutsk was taken from Austria and ceded to Poland by the Versailles Treaty in 1918. So from 1918 to 1939, Galicia was a Polish province. The Poles typically tried to Polonize the area, to make it completely Polish by language and culture. The Polish government settled many Poles to live amongst the Ukrainians. The area became a pepper pot of Ukrainian, Polish, and Jewish villages, each speaking its own language, and generally resenting the presence of others.

Fascism thrived everywhere

Next, I must remind you that the period between World War I and World War II was a turbulent, violent time. In every country of Europe, a vociferous, militant, Fascist party arose, modelled either on Mussolini's Fascisti, or Hitler's Third Reich. In France, you have the Action Francaise as the Fascist party. In Holland, the Dutch National Socialist party. In Belgium, the Rechsus. In Romania, the Iron Guard. In Hungary, the Cross and Arrow. In England, Mosley's National Front.

Including Ukraine

And in the Ukraine, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, known better as the OUN.

There were two branches of the OUN. One consisting of Ukrainians who had fled Galicia because they feared arrest by the Polish government, and they fled to Germany and Austria, and they were led by a former Ukrainian army officer by the name of Melnyk. The other consisted of younger Ukrainians who stayed on in Galicia and carried out terrorist activities against the Poles. They were led by a fellow by the name of Bandera.

Bandera and his band were among the most desperate terrorists in Europe. They assassinated Polish cabinet ministers, executed liberal university professors, and ambushed schoolteachers who sought to reconcile Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews.

When you talk to Ukrainians today, they will tell you that Melnyk and Bandera were great nationalist heroes, who wanted nothing more than to free the Ukraine from the Bolsheviks, and to create an independent Ukraine. Don't believe them! Don't believe them! Both branches of the OUN were intrinsically Fascist. Both believed the Ukrainians were a superior race. Both believed in rule by an inspired, charismatic dictator. Both proclaimed Jews as their major enemy, and both uttered "Jew-Bolshevik" as if it were one word.

The relatively benign occupation of Western Ukraine

I'm sorry, there's one more thing of which I must remind you. In 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland and defeated the Poles in six weeks, the Russians, if you will, recall entered Poland from the Eastern frontier, and occupied Galicia. So in 1941 when the Nazis unleashed Operation Barbarossa, Lvov was one of the first cities to fall to the Germans.

Now the Soviet occupation from 1939 to 1941 was relatively benign. The Soviets really went out of their way to try to win the hearts of the Ukrainians and Poles in that particular neighborhood. However, they did arrest thousands of what they considered to be the bourgeoisie. And amongst them were many Jews, because most Jews were considered to be bourgeoisie. So that they sent both Ukrainians and Poles and Jews to Siberia. Now many of the people who were sent to Siberia were eventually grateful to the Russians for doing it to them because they were able to come back after the end of the war. But in the Ukrainian mind, the Russians and the Bolsheviks were all Jews, and therefore it was the Jews who took the blame for having organized these transports to Siberia.

Now, it's not unusual in the Ukraine for Jews to be the victims. There's a long history of pogroms in the Ukraine. Some of you know the history. You may have heard of the name Khmelnytsky, who in the middle of the seventeenth century, in the 1650s, slaughtered some 200,000 Jews. Then there was a peasant revolt a century later in which some 50,000 Jews were slaughtered. And in the 19th century, pogroms became almost a regular feature under the Czarist regime. And in 1881 after the assassination of the Czar, by anarchists, the Jews again were the victims. It was assumed that it was all a Jewish plot, and the Jews had to be punished for it.

Anti-Jewish pogroms

In 1904 and 1905 there was a famous Kishinev massacre. And in 1919, or the period between 1918 and 1921, there were actually 1,200 large and small pogroms against Jews. And there is a name that's very closely associated with those pogroms of 1918 to 1921, and that's the name of General Petliura. And Petliura, as you may remember, was a Ukrainian general who attempted to set up an independent Ukrainian state. He was beaten by the Communists. He was exiled. He ended up in Paris where eventually he was shot by a Jewish radical.

Roland and Nachtigall

Now I mentioned there were two branches of the OUN, one that remained behind in Galicia and carried on sabotage and assassination, and another group that had fled to Germany and Austria. Now the German Abwehr, or the German Secret Service, was led by a very cunning man by the name of Admiral Canaris. And Canaris had no hesitation in recruiting the Ukrainians who were in Germany and Austria into what was known as the Brandenburg Regiment. This was a group of people trained in sabotage, in assassination, and disruption, and so on — they were spies, and all the other things that you could be trained for.

Now Canaris recognized that there were these two branches of the OUN that was operating, and he of course was a great opportunist, so he decided rather than choosing one branch as opposed to the other branch, he recruited both branches, and he called Melnyk Consul Number 1, and he called Bandera Consul Number 2.

Now in 1939, when Germany went to war against Poland, and the campaign lasted only some six weeks, the Ukrainians who had been recruited into the Brandenburg Regiment had very little opportunity to show their stuff. The war was over before they could really get going. But in 1940, Canaris organized the Ukrainians into two groups, two battalions, by the strangely romantic names of Roland and Nachtigall. Roland was under the command of Melnyk, Nachtigall was under the command of Bandera. In addition to that he recruited a large number of exiled Ukrainians for what he called Marchkessen. These were marching groups. Once the German army had passed through the territory, they were supposed to go in and set themselves up as mayors, as police chiefs, as town clerks, and so on, and to help organize the massacre of the Jews.

In 1941 when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa, Nachtigall, Bandera's group, headed for Lvov on the heels of the German army. In fact, they got there before the German army did. Roland, under the command of Melnyk, headed for Kiev and the Crimea.

Now no sooner did Nachtigall arrive in Lvov, than the killing began. First of all, they came with a ready-made blacklist of people whom they intended to arrest and execute. It consisted largely of Jewish intellectuals, Jewish political leaders, members of the Communist party and Communist officials, as well as Polish intellectuals, and some priests, and so on. Hundreds were rounded up in the first days of the invasion. They were shot, they were hanged, they were beaten. Some six thousand Jews lost their lives in a period of five days in the Lvov and surrounding territory.

A Petliura day is followed by a Petliura week

But worse was yet to come. Three weeks later, the OUN decided to celebrate Petliura day, to honor their fallen general who had been assassinated by a Jewish student. So, how do you celebrate Petliura day? You go out and you kill Jews! An additional five thousand Jews were killed in a two-week period during which it was sort-of Petliura week. There were similar massacres not only in Lvov, but in Dobromil in Yavarov, in Ternopil, in Shlokov, and Sambor. At least another 15,000 Jews were killed in these surrounding communities.

The Einsatzgruppen

Now, I think a group like this, you've all heard about the Einsatzgruppen, haven't you? Let me just summarize it very quickly for those of you who may not have been familiar with it. When the German armies marched into the Soviet Union, there were four special — we're going to call them mobile killing units — that accompanied the German armies. There were four such units, each one attached to one of the four German armies that moved eastward. Their job was to seek out Communist functionaries, to round up the Jews in the small towns and push them into ghettoes, and eventually shoot them, and they did their job very, very efficiently. They certainly managed in a period of about a year and a half to kill off close to a million Jews in the Soviet Union.

Now the four Einsatzgruppen were essentially drawn from German police units and German military units and Gestapo units and so on. But there were only about three thousand men all together. And here you had a population of something like — what was it? — three million or four million Jews on Soviet territory that they intended to execute. So they recruited locals to help them with this. They recruited them and put them in police uniforms, or gave them armbands as police auxiliaries, so that in Lithuania you had Lithuanian groups, in the Ukraine, you had thousands of Ukrainians who volunteered to serve in these various police units.

Now there's a point that I have to make here. These were not ordinary policemen. These were not traffic cops, or people who went out to look for people who robbed somebody of sixteen kopeks. Their job was very, very specific. It dealt with Jews. It dealt with rounding them up, ghettoizing them, and then massacring them. Also, the Germans didn't recruit just anybody. All these people were volunteers. But the Germans were selective. Now what were their criteria? Well, they wanted to know first of all that the person had some political experience in which they demonstrated they were pro-Nazi and pro-German. And for this, the OUN members were the most qualified, because they were certainly pro-Nazi and pro-German. So in the Ukraine, most of the people who served in police auxiliary units were ideologically OUN members.

Now these police auxiliaries were the trigger men for the Germans. The German commanders of the Einsatzgruppen very frequently stood aside and let the Ukrainians do their dirty work for them. Sometimes the Germans even consented to shoot the men in a village, but left the women and children to their Ukrainian auxiliaries. They served as the trigger men. They did the dirtiest jobs. They guarded ghettoes. They guarded transports on the way to the various concentration camps and death camps. And they were guards in the concentration camps.

Now the Germans had a standard procedure that they employed. And it was all thought up by Heydrich before the invasion took place. They knew that in the Soviet Union, Jews were widely distributed. They were not originally allowed to live in the large cities, so Jews were very frequently scattered in many of the small towns, the shtetlock, and so on. The idea was to herd them together, so they emptied one town after another, and placed them in a ghetto in a larger town.

Now Heydrich recognized that having such a concentration of Jews was possibly dangerous, that this might encourage resistance activities, partisan activities. So the idea was that you would nip rebellion in the bud. The first thing you did when you established a ghetto was to somehow rather select the best educated, the healthiest, the strongest young men in the community, and take them out, and kill them first. And this was done over and over again.

The Riga archives incident

For example, in the area of Kovno, in Lithuania, as soon as the Germans had established themselves, they put out a call for three hundred young men, well-educated, well-dressed, to work in the Riga archives, saying that the Latvians had been very sloppy about keeping the archives. The Germans were neat and sober, you know, the Jews could help them maintain the Riga archives, so please, you know, come, volunteer, and we'll send you to the Riga archives. It so happened that on the morning that the Germans came to collect their three hundred archivists, the boys looked around and suddenly realized they were being conned.

There were a battalion of Lithuanian policeman waiting for them at the gate, so they began to melt into the side streets, into the lanes and alleyways of the town. So the Germans got very, very angry, and said, "Look, we came here to collect 300 people, we're gonna do it." So they took approximately 200 of the young men who were still there, who hadn't gotten the hint and hadn't started running, they took them out, and then they went into the town, and they dragged Jews out of their houses, out of their basements, out of anywhere they could find them, and it so happened they took a surplus, they took something like an additional 35 people. But the Galeleiter who was organizing this campaign said, "Look, this is punishment for having failed to come up with the 300 that we requested."

Now what happened to these 335? Well, about three weeks later, a peasant found a bunch of identity cards sitting in a field. And he brought them to the head of the Jewish community, a Dr. Elkis. And Elkis looked at them, and these were the identity cards of the 335 young men who had been taken away by the Germans. Now nobody wanders around without an identity card in that situation, so he knew that they were dead.

Now the community was confused because parents were still getting postcards from these young men saying, you know, "Life in Riga is good, we're healthy, we're well fed, the work is easy, it's clean" — because the Germans, when they had gathered them up and put them on trucks, issued them with postcards and told them to date them, give them various dates, and then the Germans were sending back the postcards to the Kovno ghetto while these boys were already dead.

Now I'm telling you in this kind of detail because this was all part of a plan that operated in every community from Archangel in the north to Sevastopol in the south. Every community was subjected to the same routine and the same organization. And it was these policemen who executed these plans, these recruited, auxiliary policemen.

Now let me mention some of the Ukrainian police groups that are of special interest to us tonight, because we're going to be discussing the Ukrainian Waffen-SS division. Amongst them was what we know as SS-102 which was very active in the Ternopol region, Roland and Nachtigall after their early forays in Lvov and surrounding territories, the two units were disbanded by the Germans, but the personnel was taken and transferred into this new Waffen-SS division that Himmler had created. And they went willingly. They were not conscripted, they were not forced. They were very happy to go because it meant an increase in prestige for them. They were no longer auxiliary policemen, they were now in an SS uniform. The carried full weapons, and so on.

They became, the Roland and Nachtigall battalion became, the nucleus for this new Ukrainian Waffen-SS division that was organized in March of 1943. There was also the Ukrainian police battalion number 204. There was the 31st Vikahaikin from the area of Lutsk. There were ... well, there were quite a number of them. Let me just rhyme them off early. There was the 201st. Uh, there was um, well, I, I'll find them in my notes. But all of these police units, thousands of Ukrainian policemen, were transferred into this new Waffen-SS division.

German defeat at Stalingrad

Now why was the Division organized? The answer is, Stalingrad. The Germans took a terrible beating at Stalingrad. Not only were they defeated militarily, but there was an enormous drain of German manpower. Something that really frightened the Nazis, and particularly frightened Himmler, who was always concerned that we not run out of German genes, that we don't destroy ourselves, we don't destroy the Aryan race in the process of this war. That we keep our best material.

So, there was a need to add to the German fighting strength. Ordinarily, Himmler would never have considered having a Ukrainian Waffen-SS division. These guys weren't Aryans. They were Ukrainians. They were Slavs. And Slavs rated just a little bit higher than Jews and Gypsies in the attitude of the Nazis. In fact, Himmler had a plan of destroying about one-third of the Slavs in the area, replacing them with German farmers instead of Ukrainian farmers, and enslaving pretty much the rest of them to serve the German settlers. In spite of this, although the German plans were fairly clear, these Galician Ukrainians decided that their fate lie with the Nazis, that they would rather be with Hitler than with the democracies.

Two Polish uprisings

Now one of these groups, the 31st SD which came from the Lutsk area is interesting in a peculiar way. There were two uprisings in Warsaw. One was the Jewish ghetto uprising in 1943, and the other was the Polish uprising in 1944. Now in 1943, the accounts of the German forces, or the German general who suppressed the uprising, indicate that there were many Ukrainians among Bakhvalevsky's troops. Vakhvalevsky was Hitler's favorite general because he was in charge of putting down any rebellions that took place. And Bakhvalevsky organized groups of very, very strange and bitter and savage people to serve in putting down these rebellions.

So in 1943 when the Jewish ghetto uprising broke out there were a series of what there was known as Trawniki men. Trawniki men. These were people who were trained in a town called Trawniki to be camp guards and police auxiliaries, and so on. It consisted not only of Ukrainians, but it consisted also of Latvians and Lithuanians, but the majority were Ukrainians, and the records indicate that many Ukrainians participated in putting down the Jewish ghetto uprising.

In 1944, when the Poles rose, Bakhvalevsky again brought in his forces and this time he took two thirds of a group called the 31st SD which came from the town of Lutsk which was in the Volhynia section of Galicia, and he brought them to Warsaw to help put down the Polish uprising. The record of their activity there is utterly brutal. They set fire to hospitals. They torched people in courtyards by drenching them in gasoline. They were among the most feared of the troops that came to put down the uprising. After they finished that job, they were then transferred back into, they were put into, the Waffen-SS division, the Ukrainian Waffen-SS division.

Now the division was essentially a police unit, and as I said, Roland and Nachtigall became its nucleus. But as time went along, a variety of other police units was added to the division. Police units 29, 30 and 31. Police battalions 4, 5, 6, 17 and 8. Police regiment number 32, with some 1,200 members of that battalion were transferred into the Division. So that the Division essentially was a police battalion composed of policemen who had a vicious record of massacre and torture and burning before they even became Waffen-SS members.

Now the Division did not have a brilliant fighting record. Their greatest successes were against what they called, "the partisans." These were the people who had fled to the forests. These were the people who attempted to maintain some sort of guerrilla warfare against the Germans. The people who fled to the forests were virtually unarmed. Maybe they had one rusty pistol amongst them, and there were two or three hundred people huddling in the forest trying to survive the Russian winters. The partisans, even though they were somewhat better supplied were basically under-armed, with very little ammunition, so that any decent military unit could cope with them very, very effectively. And there were not heroes in this battle against the partisans. Some of the officers of the Division, the German officers of the Division, found the men rather brutal and careless, and they did not think they made very good soldiers.

Two-thirds of the Division were actually sent off for a period of six months to fight the partisans, and when they came back, the stories that were brought back by them and about them indicated that they had massacred ruthlessly, had done terrible things, and really did not deserve to be considered soldiers at all.

The Battle of Brody

Now the Division eventually engaged the Russians, the full force of the Red Army, at a place called Brody. Brody is about sixty miles, I think, east of Lvov. And there, there was a pitched battle between German forces and the Red Army, and the Red Army smashed the German forces very, very thoroughly, and the Ukrainian Division was caught in the cross-fire, and they suffered very heavy casualties. Somewhere between two-thirds and three-fifths of the Division were killed or wounded in that engagement.

Now normally, under normal circumstances, this would mean the end of the Division. Once it had suffered a calamity like that, there would be nothing left of it. But this wasn't true of the Galician Division. Within six weeks, they were back up to strength, they were re-armed and training again. Now how did this happen? Well, it happened this way. When the call went out in March of 1943 for people to join the Division, thousands — some thirty thousand — Ukrainians volunteered. Now the Germans only took 16,000 of them. That was divisional strength. The others were converted into various kinds of police units that patrolled their own territory back home. After the Battle of Brody, when the Division was decimated, the Germans then called on those people who had been in reserve, and brought them into the Division. They also brought concentration camp guards who were no longer needed for camps which had already been overrun by the Russians. They brought in all kinds of the dregs of society, as long as they were Ukrainian, and shoved them into the Division. So that actually, after the Battle of Brody, the reconstituted Division had as bad or worse a record of individual atrocities than the original members of the Division.

The Galicia Division had several names

Now there is some confusion about this Division. Historians sometimes fumble and do badly, because the Division had a variety of names. Those of you who have seen military service know that the army almost arbitrarily changes the names of your regiment, or changes the name of your division, and normally it's not terribly significant. So the Division began as the 14th SS Volunteer Division Galitzien. It went on to become the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division der SS Galitzien number one. It eventually ended up, in the last two weeks of the war being called the First Ukrainian Division of the Ukrainian Army.

Now the names have some significance. The Ukrainians who joined the Division very badly wanted the Division to be called The Ukrainian Division, because they hoped that it would be the beginning of a military force that would serve as a Ukrainian army for an independent Ukraine. Himmler, however, did not want them to be called Ukrainians because he didn't want to fortify, he didn't want to encourage, any national strivings on their part. So he gave them a more provincial name. He called them Galicians. Because after all, in the German army, there was a regiment of Pomeranians, there was a regiment of Swabians, and so on. So he wanted them to be content with that. So when eventually in the last days of the war, in the last weeks of the war, when it really didn't matter any more, the Germans said, "OK, you want to be Ukrainians, be Ukrainians!" and they allowed them to change the name to the First Ukrainian Division of the Ukrainian National Army. Where in reality, there never was such an army. And it was never entered officially into the German roster.

Now the officers of the Division are very interesting. The officers were all German, with some rare exceptions. And what's interesting about them is that almost all of them had bad records before they joined the Division in 1943 and 1944. They were already wanted for war crimes in France. They were already wanted for a whole variety of events in Belgium and in Poland, even before joining the Division. The person who was the — what shall I call him? — the inspiration for the Division and its political mentor was a fellow by the name of Vekhter. A very bright, very handsome, Nazi. And he was the one who basically convinced Himmler to allow them, to allow the creation, of the Ukrainian Division. Vekhter was originally the governor of Krakow. And it was under his regime that 30,000 Jews were ordered out of Krakow, and then shortly later another 20,000 were ordered out of Krakow. In 1942, he was transferred to become the Governor of Galicia. Now the United Nations War Crimes Commission holds him responsible for events in Auschwitz and Birkenau. Acts of sadism and terrorism. Because he was the governor, he was the one who helped establish the camps, he was the one who could have interfered and made them different had he chosen to. He was also the commander, he was the administrative head and the commander of police, and he also persecuted a large part of the Polish clergy who was in his district. So the German officers of the Division were also war criminals from the start.

The Galicia Division embarks on trains

Now I have some film that I obtained from the Kiev archive which shows the Division shortly after it was organized marching off to boot camp heading for the trains that were gonna take them to where they were gonna be trained, where they got their basic training. And the film is interesting because it's captured German newsreel film. These were the films the Germans took to celebrate, to advertise, to promote the Division. And what you see are swastika banners all over the place. You also see the tryzub, the the Neptune's fork, which became the Divisional insignia, and the swastikas and the tryzub, and you see this massive group of Nazi dignitaries taking the salute as these boys marched by. And they get on to trains which are already chalked, there are chalk marks on the sides of the train showing cartoons of Jews hanging from nooses. This was gonna be their mission, this is what they were marching off to war to do.

The Huktyniachka Massacre

One of the atrocities that the Division committed which is probably best documented is what took place in a town called Huktyniachka. There were a triangle of three Polish towns east of Lvov. And in Huktyniachka during the winter, a few partisans began hiding in the barns, and trying to protect themselves against the brutal winter. I suppose they stole some potatoes and beets from the field as well, from the storehouses. And one day a German patrol went by and spotted them, and there was an exchange of fire, and two German soldiers were killed. Rather, two members of the Division, two Ukrainian soldiers were killed. The following week, a large contingent of German Wehrmacht, regular German soldiers, and a large contingent of Ukrainian policemen, and a large contingent from the Division, from the Waffen-SS Division, the Ukrainian Division, surrounded Huktyniachka. They gathered all the men in the village into the village square and they shot them there. Then they took the women and children and put them in the church. They had wooden churches in that area. They nailed all the doors and windows shut, and torched the building. And if anybody managed to get out, they were machine-gunned as they emerged from the smoke and flames.

The Himmler thank you

On May 16, 1944, Himmler visited the Division. And he made a speech, in which we have a record, the record of it in the National Archives in Washington. And in that speech, he congratulated the Division for having made the Ukraine a much more beautiful place than it had been previously by eliminating the Jews, who had been a blemish on the landscape.

The Galicia Division surrenders

Now, I'm gonna rush through their career in Slovakia, where they helped put down a Slovakian democratic uprising in 1944 — again, a very, very brutal procedure. I'm going to rush through their activities in Yugoslavia where they tried to take on Tito's men, and were badly beaten. And, we'll go to the surrender of the Division on May 8, virtually the last day of the war, in Klagensberg, Austria. They had retreated all the way to Klagensberg, Austria. And there, they surrendered to the British.

Now part of the Division, about 5,000 members of the Division, actually surrendered to the Americans in another location. The Americans kept them in a camp for about a year, then released them. Most of them went into Displaced Persons camps, and eventually came to America and Canada. Some of them actually served as guards for DP camps, housing Jews and others. The bulk of them, however, some 9,500 men surrendered to the British 8th Army, which had come up through Italy. And the British didn't know what to do with them. They didn't know who they were. They'd been fighting in the East, and the British were really badly informed, especially the troops who came up through Italy were so consumed with the Italian campaign, they knew very little about what had taken place on the Eastern Front.

Anyway, the British have a very strange way of being charmed by the wrong people. They found these guys quaint and cute, because they came in, a ragged army, in dilapidated limousines, nevertheless, they marched in, singing Russian songs, singing Ukrainian songs, and immediately asked permission to have a church service, and they sang beautifully. And the British were totally seduced by it.

Also, the commanding officer of the Ukrainians saluted very smartly, and said, "We have come to join you in your attack against the Russians! We're part of your army now!" The British thought that was cute too. So, instead of putting them in a prison camp in Austria, they marched them out to Italy, and put them in a prison camp in Rimini, Italy. And there they festered for two years. Some of them deserted the camp, and married Italian women, and disappeared in the landscape, others managed to make their way to Germany and Austria where they went into displaced persons camps. But the bulk of the Division retained its identity, retained its discipline, continued to serve under their original, Ukrainian non-commissioned officers.

But after the two-year period was up — they surrendered in 1945, so in 1947 — the British got very, very nervous. The British thought, "Maybe these guys would be useful, if ever we begin marching east again to recapture the captive nations, the people behind the Iron Curtain, wouldn't these anti-Bolshevik Ukrainians be very handy?" And as a matter of fact they even trained a few of them and parachuted them down into the Ukraine, where of course they were immediately picked up because, uh, well, its a long, complicate story of spy versus counter-spy. But Philby, the famous Russian spy, was the guy who organized the parachute drops, and he was informing the Russians of who he was sending in to parachute into the Soviet Union.

In any event, the British became very fond of these boys. They put their patronizing arm around them, and they felt that they were their responsibility. But by 1948, there was going to be a treaty with Italy, and the British troops would be leaving, and the Italians did not seem very happy to keep a Ukrainian Waffen-SS division on their territory, especially one of their favorite resorts, Rimini. So the British got very nervous that when they left, the Italians would hand the Division over to the Russians. And the Russians were dying to get their hands on them. So, instead, the British brought them to Britain. They loaded up seven ships at a time when shipping was very, very scarce, and in 1948 they brought them to Britain.

Now the British cabinet was divided on the issue of bringing them to Britain. They recognized the British trade unions would not be happy to have a Fascist group coming to England. There was a labor government at the time, and they were concerned about public reaction. But the British had another problem. They signed a peace treaty with the Germans. And the German prisoners of war who had become the mainstay of British agriculture during the course of the war. You know prisoners of war are sent out to work frequently, and the Germans were very happy to work on British farms rather than rot in camp. So the British needed to replace the German agricultural workers, and the myth was that all these Ukrainians were peasants, simple peasants, who would love to put their hands deep in British soil and cultivate it. So the British brought them to England, and the cabinet had to debate the issue. Finally a compromise was reached. They would bring the men to England, but because they would need, the British would need, the jobs by 1950 when the British troops were demobilized. You may not remember, but the British Army was engaged in Burma, it was engaged in Greece. The British army had not fully demobilized. But by 1950, all the boys were being brought home, and they would need all these jobs. So, the Ukrainians had to be gotten out of there by 1950.

Well, in 1948, shortly after they arrived, the British Dominion Secretary, that's an official position, or used to be an official position in the British Cabinet, wrote to what he called the White Dominion. That means Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and ironically enough at that time, South Africa, and asked that they take these Ukrainians off their hands. Now, there was a curious incident that took place. A labor member of parliament by the name of Tom Dryberg rose in the house and asked the question of Ernest Bevin who was then the Foreign Secretary, and said, you know, "Why are you bringing these Nazis into Britain? These war criminals? These cut-throats?" And Bevin, who read off a paper supplied to him by one of his assistants, said "These men are not cut-throats. They're Ukrainian nationalists. They have not committed any war crimes, and it's perfectly acceptable that they come to Britain."

The Haldane Porter report

Now some of the other civil servants, during Bevin reply, turned pale, because Bevin had implied that all of these men had been investigated and checked, and they knew that these men had never been checked, and they were afraid that one of these days the truth would come out — that they had never been checked — and that Bevin would be deeply embarrassed politically, having answered a question untruthfully in the house, a great sin in the British Parliament. So they had to investigate them quickly. So they sent a fellow by the name of Haldane Porter to Rimini to investigate these people.

Now Haldane Porter's report on the Division is a masterpiece of bureaucratic double-talk. On the one hand, he says, "Look, we didn't really have time to do the job. Number two, we didn't have anybody who spoke Ukrainian on the team. Number three, we don't know whether these guys were lying to us or not, but you know, it wouldn't be hard to lie to us, but we don't think they did. Next, we don't have any papers, there's no history, there're no war diaries, these guys don't have any personal papers. We can only speak to a few of the people." And then he says — knowing what his bosses really wanted the answer to be — "But on the whole I don't think they'll be a security threat to Britain."

Now by 1947, 1948 these people were certainly no security threat to Britain. There was nowhere else for them to go, nothing else for them to do. So, the Haldane Porter report was then used by the British Government to wave in the face of anybody who dared question Britain's good sense, humanity in bringing these cutthroats to Britain. And today, you can still look at British documents, and you can see the British cabinet members defending their action about bringing these guys to Britain by waving the Haldane Porter report around.

Sending the Galicia Division to Canada

Now the British Dominion Secretary wrote to Canada. And suggested that Canada had a lot of space and a big Ukrainian community, and wouldn't it be nice if Canada took two thousand of these guys? The Canadians were at first kind of hesitant. They weren't sure they really wanted an additional two thousand Ukrainians on top of all the Ukrainians they already had. And they said, "Look, can you assure us that there are no war criminals amongst them?" And the British lied through their teeth and said that, "Yes, we can assure you they have each been individually checked, and not a man of these has committed a war crime. There is no evidence against any of them."

Now the British knew this wasn't so, because we have documents we photostated from the British Archives which indicate that some of the top civil servants were very aware of the crimes committed by these people, but were quite prepared to cover it up because that was British policy at the time.

Now the Canadians were, as I said, hesitant. But there was one thing that really persuaded them. First of all, there was a big Ukrainian community in Canada, a pre-war Ukrainian community. The original two waves of Ukrainian immigration in Canada were largely what we call economic. These were poor people, poor peasants, who came to take up land to farm in Canada. The wave that came after the war from the displaced persons camps came for political reasons, not economic reasons. They were generally better educated. Many of them had been through high school at least, through "gymnasium." And they were welcomed by the Ukrainian community in Canada because their language was fresher, they knew all the dances, they could play the balalaika, and they knew how to make perogies, and they very quickly when they got there became leaders of the Ukrainian community in Canada. But the Canadian Government finally succumbed because there was one other point. This story is full of ironies. The pre-war Ukrainian community in Canada was divided up into thirds, approximately. One-third were Communists. They were members of the Canadian Communist party. The Ukrainian section of the Canadian Communist party was the largest section in any of the ethnic groups in the party. Bigger than the Jewish section, by far. One third were out-and-out Fascists. They had pictures of Hitler on the church wall. They were all members, supporters of one or of the other branch of the OUN. And there was one-third in the middle, a bunch of shleppers, they didn't know which way they went.

The Canadian Government wanted reactionary Ukrainians in order to counter the one-third of the Ukrainian community that was pro-Communist and pro-Soviet Union. And they turned these guys loose on the left progressive, as they called themselves "progressive Ukrainians." The Ukrainian left in Canada had a series of what they called "labor temples," one close to the other. The community had labor temples. These labor temples were bombed. In the city of Toronto where I come from a bomb was set off on a Sunday afternoon, fortunately before the children's concert that was supposed to take place. In North Bay and in Timmins, the right-wing Ukrainians invaded the labor temple with baseball bats and beat the hell out of the Ukrainians who had come there for a meeting. And today if you talk to left-wing, formerly left-wing, Ukrainians — because they've all gone to the wall, they've virtually disappeared by now — you will find that they have many, many stories to tell of the outright brutality exercised by these people who came from the Ukrainian Waffen-SS Division, from the OUN, and so on.

A vast conspiracy of silence

Well, we have a problem. None of this has ever come out before. Because the British Government doesn't want to talk about it. The Canadian government certainly doesn't want to talk about it. The Ukrainian community is very sensitive on the subject. Every time they hear I'm gonna make a speech, they usually send somebody to record it. Is there anybody in the crowd here recording for...? No? Maybe they haven't heard that I'm coming.

In any event, they hate the subject. They fought when we tried to get war criminals prosecuted in Canada because they felt that the finger not only pointed to the Division but it pointed to many of the present-day Ukrainian leaders in the community, the people who gave it its political thrust. And Ukrainian scholars, many of them at leading universities like Harbard — I mean Harvard — Yale, the University of Manitoba, the University of Alberta, people who have Ph.D.s and write the history of the Ukrainian community, they lie through their teeth about the Division. They re-write history. Because they hate to think that their fathers were really war criminals and not freedom fighters.

So we have two thousand of these people in Canada. Most of them are now receiving German disability pensions. They are still being paid by the German Government for the service that they offered. And we are now trying to get the Canadian Government to investigate them all over again, to get the real goods on them, to really do a job of research, and we hope if time allows and we can out-race the biological clock, that some of them may yet be brought to justice.

Thank you.



And in the end memoires....
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Night came to Ostrogi, dark, cold and without stars. The whole town was covered with a strange silence and it looked like there was no one alive. Whom ever thought that would be wrong. In hundreds of houses people were hiding, holding their breaths. They were waiting and listening if the fallen snow would give warnings that some one was coming, if by chance the clink of metal would signal the coming of armed men. They were listening for the sounds of guns, who yesterday they heard firing a distance away. But all was quiet. War, which somewhere in the East was being bloodily fought, which painted the white snow with the blood of dying men, and their dying breath was strangely quiet. Two days the last unit of "AK*" departed for the forests leaving them defenceless. The unarmed people of the towns demoralised by two occupying powers were in the mercy of local bands of murderers, who killed and burned the local towns.

In the large house of the Mirski family, which was in the vicinity of Tatarska Brama, were a number of families, friends from local villages and neighbours, who were afraid to spend the nights alone, and those who escaped from the local villages to get away from the Ukrainian killings. On the matteraces on the floor slept a dozen children. They didn't know of the dangerous situation. The adults were all in the kitchen, they were afraid to get undressed and go to bed. Banderowcy mainly attacked at night. Some of them were asleep on the floor leaning against the walls of the kitchen, the remainder were sitting around the kitchen table. It was very cramped in the kitchen. They all started to say their prayers, when Mr Mirski said ' snow is squeaking, they are coming'. Marysia his daughter looked out of the window and couldn't see anything,' you're dreaming dad go back to sleep'.

No sooner than she said that, then the front doors were thrown of their hinges and fell to the floor.

'Smert Lacham*' 'Smert, Smert', shouted a number of men as they all rushed into the house

Those in the kitchen didn't even have time to get to their feet. Only Mirski had time to grab hold of the pitchfork that he brought to the house, to late, he was pounced upon by a number of them, before he even had the time to use it he was hit by a number of axes. The second person to die was his wife. On her grey head fell an axe wielded by Myron who used to help her with chopping wood for the winter. She fell face down on the table, she didn't even have time to scream.

Soon the only thing that could be heard was the deep breathing of the attackers and swearing by the doors that were locked and couldn't be forced to the remainder of the house. In time even they gave in. In a few corners of the house could be heard the dull thud of an axe as it finished of the remaining adults. All of a sudden all was quiet, it looked as no one was left alive, then a frightened scream from Marysia was heard

"Don't kill the children, God will never forgive you for this"

The attackers were rooted to the spot, they were shocked by what they saw. By the door to the dining room holding a pitchfork in her hands which she took from the dead hands of her father, stood covered in blood a girl. Her eyes showed hate, as to the extent that some of the attackers felt goose bumps on their backs. First to compose himself was Mykola, commander of "Kuszowego Widdilu".

Take the lachy bi***, he barked his order, but as some of the men rushed towards her. Marysia managed to escape to the dining room and close the doors behind her. She closed the door and placed a chair to support the doors.

The children woken up were crying, Marysia broke the windows.

"Run - she started to scream at them - Run"

The men on the other side of the door heard the breaking glass and some of them rushed outside, those in the kitchen started hurriedly to hit the door with their axes. Marysia didn't have an inkling to surrender. She struck the first one that came in through the window. He didn't expect that and fell back out onto the snow screaming with pain.

Marysia didn't wait, she broke the remaining windows, and pushed through them the two oldest children. Others couldn't get out, she then jumped outside and leaning through the window tried to get the smallest ones out. In the mean time the doors to the kitchen were destroyed by the axe men. Few men run into the kitchen. They started to cut with axes and thrust with their pitchforks. The screams of the dying children took the heart from Marysia. She panicked and started to run, as far as possible from that terrible place. Chasing her were the last screams of Zosia, grand daughter of Gorski family. The Ukrainians saw her as she sat with her knees drawn under her chin in the darkest corner of the room. That didn't save her, she died from stab wounds of the asailants pitchforks.

One of the men took a candle and started to look around the room, they couldn't find the body of Marysia so they went searching outside. In the fruit garden behind the pear tree they fund Janek, grandson of the Mirski family. He was shivering from cold and from fright. His pleading eyes looked with pity towards them and begged for mercy. He didn't understand what was happening, why did Marysia tell him to run from the warm house into the freezing garden. He looked with eyes wide open at the men that were gathering around him in a circle, and saw how they were raising their pitchforks. He was surprised that they wanted to hurt him. He had never seen any of them before and whenever he came home through the fields he never did any harm to the Ukrainian wheat fields. Why did they want to hurt him? The men didn't have the time to ask. Stepan with one quick hit of an axe split the boy's skull in two, two of his accomplices thrust him with their pitchforks, just for good measure. They were going after Marysia. They wanted to "play" with her, she was pretty, and then they'd cut her throat, slowly so that she could feel the knife until she died. Moments later they came upon Zosia Makowska. She didn't even have the time to scream, when Taras thrust his pitchfork into her.

The sky started to get lighter, and soon the first rays of the morning sun came through. On a gothic Cerkiew the crosses were seen to shine in the morning sunshine. Ukrainians knew that the time of killing was over, it was time to go home to their wives and children. They were mad as they couldn't catch the girl. Stepan swore, he was mad, whole night he "fought" for the independent Ukraine and chasing that girl proved fruitless. In the meantime those who stayed in the houses took all the possessions of the slain. To late, he must go home with empty hands.

When the men of the neighbouring village came to the house there were puddles of blood that had frozen on the ground and the bodies of the children were laid out in a circle around the table like a wreath.

http://www.kresy.co.uk/habitinagan.html

that is why they were SPECIAL.

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AdaOg
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#114

Post by AdaOg » 29 Dec 2005, 13:16

Image
Image
Image

Photos from Polish government site
http://www.ipn.gov.pl

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Askold
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#115

Post by Askold » 29 Dec 2005, 22:43

AdaOg:

As a grandson of UPA officer, I say you (like most of your compatriots) are very biased.

1. Contacts of OUN with Germans
- We are discussing WAR time cooperation between UPA and Germans, not OUN.

3. Before the war there were not Polish atroicies on Ukrainian Nation. There was stupid policy of closing shools and churches (after Ukrainian many terrosistic attacks and killing Polish Minister B. Piernacki). There was also jail for terrorists but after 11.09.2001 WTC everyone understans why...
- The issue of Pacification and other Polish atrocities against Ukrainians was already discussed. I don't think you bothered to read the topic.
4. Ukrainian guerillas were differ from other guerillas. I have never heard of such cruelty as Ukrainian (beofe Chmielnicki's and later UPA) .
- Hahahaha!
Acording to historian Norman Davies: "for the half of the century the World knew almost nothing about that events." He caunts up to 500.000 victims of Ukrainian Nationalists.
- The size of Polish pop. in Volyn' after influx of colonists swollen up to 300.000. Assuming Ukrainians killed every pole, thats still 200.000 overcount.

Among UPA members there was the crime solidarity. Each candidate was obliged first of all to kill „Lach” (Pole).
The variety of tortures and atrocities was not freely according to murderer’s mind. Mostly particular kind of tortures was established by „revolutionary committee”.
For instance there were such tortures committed by OUN-UPA on Poles (men, women, children):
1. Hammering in a big nail into skull....
- What, no Spanish boot! Assuming that only half of such tortures were carried out, it would take at least a month to finish up a single village (but I like that the list expanded to 125 different methods).


4. Jewish source of Ukrainian nationalists.
The interesting article of Sol Littman with Ukrainian "impartial" resume....
http://ukar.org/littma99.html

- I find Jewish sorces extremenly incorrect, considering there were Jews serving in UPA.

The Galicia Division had several names
- Again, nothing to do with the topic, just emply slandering of Ukrainians.

P.S. If you are interested in discussing the alleged war crimes of Galicia division or UPA, I suggest you start a thread in the Genoside section. Or beter yet, do a forum search and find out that this topic was already debated upon.

Your'e welcome.

Manweru
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#116

Post by Manweru » 30 Dec 2005, 13:27

Askold wrote:AdaOg:

As a grandson of UPA officer, I say you (like most of your compatriots) are very biased.
As a grandson of UPA officer, you are a grandson of a member of genocidal organisation, quite likely grandson of a war criminal guilty of mass murder of civilians- this makes you more likely to be biased, especially since facing the full extent of UPAs deeds would force you to look at your own family member as a likely war criminal and mass murderer.

This fully explains your problems with accepting reality about UPA- you must've been fed UPA Nazi propaganda by your family from your youngest years.

BTW according to some people researching the subject of genocide as such, the last stage of any genocide is denial [of responsibility] - do not expect any honesty or honor in this matter from your grandfather, just like don't expect honesty from nazis about Holocaust or their responsiblity in it or from communists about the Great Famine in Ukraine.
4. Ukrainian guerillas were differ from other guerillas. I have never heard of such cruelty as Ukrainian (beofe Chmielnicki's and later UPA) .
- Hahahaha!
Emotional rejection and mockery instead of facing facts.
- What, no Spanish boot! Assuming that only half of such tortures were carried out, it would take at least a month to finish up a single village (but I like that the list expanded to 125 different methods).
It's fully possible to cruelly murder the population of a entire village in one day - note that many of kinds of torture conducted by UPA could be done fast with sharp tools, it did't require hours of work.
4. Jewish source of Ukrainian nationalists.
The interesting article of Sol Littman with Ukrainian "impartial" resume....
http://ukar.org/littma99.html

- I find Jewish sorces extremenly incorrect, considering there were Jews serving in UPA.
There is no contradiciton actually. (Western) Ukrainians were largely rural people without much education - while the Jews were often educated - UPA simply needed the services of Jewish doctors who served UPA out of fear for their lives.


M.

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AdaOg
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#117

Post by AdaOg » 30 Dec 2005, 14:51

Ukrainian Nationalism,
Activities Sponsored by Nazi Germany (1)


After the Soviet Union extended their influence into Polish territories, there was an upsurge of Ukrainian Nationalism. This resurgence was not limited to Ukraine proper or to the German-occupied area, but manifested itself abroad in The Americas and Canada. The pro-German Ukrainian activist, Danile Skoropadski, was heavily engaged in the United States and Canada giving speeches to meetings of Ukrainian emigres. The main organ for the distribution of pro-German sympathies and propaganda was the Ukrainian magazine 'Na Vidsich', which was financed from German sources. (2)
In Germany, according to Confidential Press Reports (section re the Ukraine), the Headquarters of the Hetmanzy (nationalist group) – and presumably Hetman Pavlo Skorpadsky himself – moved from Berlin, where they were established since about 1920, to Krakow. (3)
Krakow now became the headquarters (or base from which operations were conducted) of other Ukrainian Nationalists movements or parties, i.e. the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (O.U.N.). The organ of the O.U.N. in Krakow was 'Kakowski Wisti'. (4) Reports being fed to British Intelligence (M.I.2b) in August 1940 confirmed continued German support for the Ukrainian Nationalists, quelling earlier reports that arrests and even executions had taken place. Later information confirmed that all the prominent OUN leaders were still in place, and the Hetman Skoropadsky's paper was still appearing in Berlin. (5)
An article in an emigre Russian newspaper published on the 26th April 1940 reported the efforts made by the German administration to encourage the Nationalists in their quest for a Greater Ukraina.(6) The same newspaper also reported that the majority of Ukrainian prisoners of war had been released and sent home, and the remainder were separated from the Polish prisoners and detained in a separate camp. In these Ukrainian camps propaganda was carried out under the supervision of Sevryuk, a leader of the OUN, who offered hope of the formation of a 'Greater Ukraina Army'. This all helped to engender hatred against the Jews and Poles. Another sign of continued German support was the transfer of Orthodox churches taken from the Roman Catholics and given to the Ukrainians.(7) This carrot to the Ukrainians continued:
But this is only one side of the question, and there is another more important one. The whole remnant of the former 'Little Poland' has been officially declared to be Ukrainian land. This German ' Ukraina' includes the territory of Sanok, Leszno, Krasno, Brzozow, Yaslo, Gorlice, and Nowy Sacz. In this territory the Ukrainian yellow and blue flag has been restored and all the administration handed over to the Ukrainians. A Ukrainian militia has been created which is regarded by the local population as 'the 'Cadres' of the future Ukrainian Army'. Many Ukrainians have fled to Przemyszl from Lvov. Walking in Przemyszl, the informant of Vakar saw on one side of the river San yellow and blue flags, and one quite small swastika over the German Commandant's office. The tiny 'Ukrainian' is bounded by the USSR and sub-Carpathian Ruthenia. A little to the west at Zakopane there has just been set up a separate 'state of Carpathian mountaineers' which Governor General Frank visited in February promising to the mountaineers 'a special regime'. (8)
The German view of the Ukrainian presence in Poland was greatly over estimated. This was particularly evident in the Zakopane region on the Slovakian frontier and in Krakow. Many reports suggest there was no Ukrainian question. However, Germany was undoubtedly encouraging the Ukrainians with an eye on the USSR at the same time.
The object of the O.U.N. was to establish an independent Ukraine State. To achieve this, counter-revolutionary activities were carried on in the Ukraine proper (under Soviet rule), which included the forming of military units. (9)
In addition to the O.U.N., there was a sister organisation known as the O.D.V.U, founded in 1929 in America. This sub-organisation was also supported and financed by various German governments, commencing from the government of 1914-18. The sole purpose of the O.D.V.U. was the collection of funds for the O.U.N, and propaganda: 'acquainting the world with the Ukrainian question and the right of Ukrainians for self-determination, etc.' (10)
There was an arm of the O.D.V.U. in South America with its headquarters in Buenos Aires, and in its organ 'Nash Klich' their sympathies were entirely with Germany. As a result of the outbreak of the Second World War, the Argentine government banned the organisation because of its close ties with Germany. In 1940, the American newspapers accused the O.D.V.U. of Fifth Column activities, with the result that the American government instigated an investigation of 'un-American' activities.(11)
In Canada, the Ukrainian newspaper 'Novy Shliah', on the surface, was loyal to Canada. However, the organ reproduced articles from the 'Krakowski Wisti', a defender of Ukrainian nationalism (pro German). The newspapers' activities extended to propaganda articles and was believed to be a base for the recruitment of Ukrainian emigres in Canada for the 'liberation' of Ukraina. (12)
The American and Canadian governments actively infiltrated these nationalist organisations and were able to obtain various intelligence which pointed directly to various groups organising themselves on a military bases in German occupied Poland. These reports revealed how these groups were being organised, their maintenance, equipment, and training in specially set up establishments near Krakow (SS/SD school in Zakopane/Rabka). It also revealed the treasonable activities of a Ukrainian minority during the war in Poland by acts of sabotage and mutiny in the Polish army, etc.(13)
In the United States, the O.U.N. did not openly declare its pro-German sympathies and policy of collaboration. They did it by inference in newspaper articles indirectly calling for the 're-birth' of national (Ukrainian) life, culture and economics in German occupied Poland. Also by inference, and in some cases more directly, made clear that such national life has been made possible since the time of the German occupation. Besides this, all nationalist Ukrainian newspapers in the occupied area did not hide their hatred of the ally of Great Britain and Canada, i.e. of Poland. Pro-German sympathies were openly discussed in correspondence and newspapers in South America, but not in The United States or Canada.(14)
In the occupied areas of Poland the O.U.N. were conducting violent anti-Soviet propaganda and shouted for the 'liberation of Ukrainian lands' by Ukrainian efforts and forces – which, on the face of it, was absurd as they could not move without their German masters. At one stage the Germans were considering the formation of a Ukrainian Brigade in German occupied Poland, but no doubt the Germans got 'cold feet' over this suggestion, as they were very wary and suspicious of the Ukrainians' proclaimed loyalty to the Reich. (15) Other intelligence reports report Hitler was considering setting up a Polish Government and Army of a million men, consisting of Poles and Ukrainians which was to be led by young peasant stock. (16) The point of these suggested measures was to exclude the intellectuals and create a Polish buffer state between Germany and the U.S.S.R.
In October 1940, a new figure entered upon the scene of Ukrainian politics – namely Nicholas Skoropadski, nephew of Hetman Skoropaski, who, at the end of the First World War, was for a short time, ruler of the 'Ukrainian Republic' under German auspices. At the beginning of the second World War, Nicholas Skoropadski was in Russia fermenting discreet trouble among his nationals. He then left hurriedly for Poland, then passed into Germany and was politically active from then on. Soviet sources at that time, reported that he had a secret meeting with Hitler, in Berlin, in October, 1940 and that a concrete plan of action in Ukraine was discussed. (17)
From intelligence sources gathered by the British, Nicholas Skoropadski was ready to play a quisling part in his country and was credited with having widespread influence and an organisation working steadily on the lines of the old 'Ukrainian Independence Party', spreading disaffection in Soviet Ukraina and the part of Poland recently occupied by the Russians. Through various intelligence channels reported to the British government, it was possible to gather some idea of the Skopodaski organisations intent should Germany begin an Eastern Drive. These Nazi sympathizers were to be ready to 'play their allotted part' when Germany was ready to move. Bearing in mind that this intelligence was gathered on the 15th and 16th October, 1940, there was time for the organisation to get its act together. The broad lines of Germany's aggression Plan were expected to materialise around March or April, 1941. (18)
German-Ukrainian collaboration was on high alert and had already made plans to make maximum use of the minorities in Bukovina, Ruthenia, the Balkans, as well as disaffection spread in Ukraine proper and in Soviet occupied Poland. Secret nuclei of 'Ukrainian Legions' such as Roland and Nightingale, were formed in the above territories. Personnel from these 'legions' were being trained in a number of centres in the occupied territories, the main centres being the SS/SD schools in Zakopane/Rabka, and in Pistanay, Slovakia.(19) The report also included reference to Ukrainian Priests being trained at Breslau, for what purpose it is not clear. German instructors and German equipment were supplied on a lavish scale. Recruits for the volunteers for these 'legions' going on in the areas where the Nazis had a sphere of influence over Ukrainian emigres, including those in the United States and Canada. (20)
German proposed expansionism eastward had her eye on the Black Sea ('Oil') which could either be obtained from Russia (amicably by overt threats), or Rumania (less amicably), and then by uprisings engineered in all Ukrainian territories under Soviet rule, as well as Soviet-occupied Poland. The 'Legions' would be used to bolster up the uprisings, preparatory to a formal German move 'to restore order'. The old story of 'self determination' and 'appeals to Germany for aid' to be revived. A policy that was to be perfected by the Soviets.
In the latter part of 1940, there were clear indications of a German build-up on the Soviet border, stretching from Eastern Prussia along the entire demarcation line of the Soviet-German Pact. Intelligence reports of the time refer to at least 46 German divisions in East Prussia, 24 divisions in Poland and a further 12 divisions in the strategic triangle of Krakow, Moravska Ostrava and Ilib. These military formations far exceeded the actual needs of occupation. (21) Again, intelligence reports refer to special winter equipment being used by the German troops on manoeuvres – 'winter clothing' of the type used in Finland – skis, etc. It was also reported that Germany had placed rush orders for ski-mounted aeroplanes in Czech aviation factories, plus large orders for skis for troops. (22) The Skoda works were experimenting with new types of light artillery mounted on special chain protected wheels for travel over ice, as well as 'glider undercarriages' for negotiating deep snow. (23) As a special 'treat' German troops flooded into Zakopane and Bad Rabka for ski-manoeuvres on the slopes of the Carpathians and in the rocky passes as soon as winter conditions permitted, which was usually late October. (24) This activity was described by the German propaganda machine as health sports for the troops. However, shrewd observers interpreted it differently. (25)
These were not the only military preparations that indicated some form of aggression against the Soviet Union, sooner rather than later, even to the untrained eye. Behind the scenes, intensive indoctrination courses were in progress in training of Ukrainians, Polish and SS/SD personnel in the training schools, particularly in Zakopane, and then Rabka.
To compound the confused assessment of the British Government (which will be referred to later), intense activity was taking place in Slovakia, from West to East, pointing directly towards the Soviet-Ukrainian border: strategic 'penetration' roads were being constructed, capable of bearing the accelerated tempo of heavy tanks and other similar vehicles – side roads linked to the former for lesser transport, supplies etc., – short, two-track railway lines, which stopped just short of the border, their exact proposed use was not known at that time. (26)
There is no doubt that the complete suppression of Poland was just the first project on the agenda by the Nazis. With the invasion of Great Britain put on hold, (the battle for the skies over GB had failed) priorities shifted to developments in the Balkans, Rumania and the Black Sea, and of course it was the controlling stake in the oil fields that was very tempting for the future of German expansionism.
All the indications from the intelligence sources at the disposal of the British Government indicated very strongly that Germany would make a push for the wheat-lands, the oil fields and the coal fields etc. of Russian (and Polish) Ukraina. Russia relied on dialogue with her German partners as she was in no way able to respond militarily at that time.
Moscow had received numerous warnings from London and Washington. At the beginning of January, 1941, Sumner Wells, the Under Secretary of State, passed on to the Soviet Ambassador in Washington information which had reached his Government about the Germans preparations for attacking the USSR., and he gave him further details on the 20th March. (27) Sir Stafford Cripps, (Ambassador to Moscow) as early as the 24th April, 1941, had to fight to get the ear of the Soviets to warn them of German intentions. His advice was brushed aside as Stalin had concluded it would have been madness for Hitler to undertake war against the USSR before finishing off the war in the West. (28)
There is no doubt that all governments were indulging in the art of bluff and counter bluff, and in this respect the German propaganda machine was well ahead of the field. Minds were concentrated on Germany: will she or won't she invade the USSR?
About the end of April 1941, in a conversation between Sir Stafford Cripps and General Sikorski, it was reported by Sikorski that the Polish government had received intelligence that German troops were concentrating in the strength of more than a hundred divisions and about 2,000 supporting aircraft, in the proximity of the Russian frontier, mass forces on the Finnish frontier and considerable forces on the Rumanian frontier.(29) Hitler was convinced that the war would be over quickly when he would turn to Great Britain and finish the job before winter. (30) Cripps reported that there were rumors that Rumania had already declared war on Russia, but he was of the opinion (by intelligence) that the anti-war party in Germany was prevailing and this indication was supported by the return to Moscow of the wives and children of the German diplomats.(31)
His Majesty's Britannic Government (Joint Intelligence sub-Committee of the War Cabinet), as late as May, 1941, (only weeks before the Nazi onslaught) was in possession of all the above facts and much more beside which were passed to Maisky, the Soviet Ambassador in London. Yet, despite overwhelming evidence and indications that such an assault was imminent, concluded:
"Whereas a few weeks ago rumours were current throughout Europe of an impending German attack on the U.S.S.R., the contrary is now the case. There are some indications which suggest that a new agreement between the two countries may be nearly complete". (32)
(Signed)




The conclusions of H. M. Government are briefly set out below. A more comprehensive assessment and the arguments on which they are based are set out in Appendix 1. (33)
Conclusions:
1. To pursue her present war aims, Germany needed economic assistance from Russia. Agreement with the Soviets or war.
2. War with the Soviets economically damaging to Germany. German air force in difficulties. An agreement was overwhelming.
3. Convincing threats by Germany on the Soviets. The danger point: The Soviets would not sign over control. The Soviets would avoid clash and yield to German demands, but at the same time prepare for the worst.
4. Politically, Germany to show her domination and influence the U.S.A. and a peace with G. B.
5. Germany must know immediately where she stands. Agreement or War, H. M. Government believes it will be by agreement. (34)
The Soviet Union (NKVD) were well aware of Ukrainian attitude towards them, and had for some time carried on a relentless opposition to the formations of Ukrainian Nationalist militias fermenting within her borders. The Soviets were attempting to minimise this danger by showing a more lenient approach to the Polish minorities in Volhynia and Galicia, or rather, what was left of the Polish minority. At the same time repressive measures against the Ukrainian nationalists was being intensified to a very marked degree.
At first the NKVD's activities had been directed mainly to liquidating the Ukrainian military organisation, which had been founded by Konovaletz, although the so-called middle class Ukrainians had also suffered considerably, whether on class or nationalistic grounds. (35)Further repressment by the NKVD gathered momentum with the elimination of any Ukrainian centres, by force if necessary, of an anti-Soviet nature which might possibly exist.
The Soviets knew that the Ukrainians within her own territories were in contact with their co-racialists across the border in German Poland and were being influenced by the reports of the privileged position which was accorded to the Ukrainians under German rule.
The Germans had made a special effort to foster a national spirit amongst the Ukrainians in Western Galicia, and the traditional subterranean existence, and extensive revolutionary practice, had resulted in communications between Western Galicia and Eastern Galicia being quickly placed on a regular basis. The population of Galicia had a highly developed sense of nationalism and in this area with ideological and propaganda centres close at hand, but out of Soviet reach, the Soviet authorities were confronted with a difficult problem.
The NKVD was prepared to go to even greater lengths than ever, in stamping out this subversive Ukrainian element, but the stronger the measures, the stronger became the opposition and hatred they evoked. (36)
The Soviets however, were no fools, and they were able to control the entire Soviet population with probably the most sophisticated civil intelligence yet devised by any government. In the main, the Western governments, including Germany, were ignorant of the power base from which the Soviet Union controlled all aspects of Soviet life. This was not only the case during the Second World War, but had been shaped from the very first, namely from 1917, and would continue until the fall of Communism in 1989.
Germany was the first Western government to infiltrate the Organisation of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) of the Soviet Union, and the power base behind it. Based on information captured during the 'Barbarossa Campaign', and on trustworthy evidence obtained from Soviet officials who had been captured or arrested, Germany responded.
On the 2nd April, 1942, Heydrich in his capacity of the Chief of the German Security and Intelligence Services (Sipo-SD), distributed this intelligence throughout the occupied areas. In the SS/SD school at Rabka, Dr. Schongarth regularly gave lectures to the students on the Soviet subversion of its own people.(37)
The United States Intelligence Agencies were more secure in their knowledge that Germany would strike at the U.S.S.R. The Americans knew at some stage they would be brought into the European War. They were correct in their assessment, that German-Soviet conflict would occur sometime in the spring of 1941, and the build up of her armaments commenced. (38)
The moment of truth, as history has recorded it, was the 22nd June, 1941, when Germany commenced her conquest of the Soviet Union.
Ukrainian National lists in Western Ukraine viewed the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union as a liberation, and welcomed the creation of a 'free' Ukraine within the fascist 'New Order' in Europe. Were they right? We shall see!

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________________________________________

Footnotes:
1. 1) Return
2. 2) Public Record Office (PRO). WO/208/1724. Return
3. 3) ibid. Corroboration of Hetman Skoropadski's move to Krakow is shown in another independent assessment intelligence report from Finland on the 24th September, 1940 (WO/208/1734 'Operations Intelligence Report No. 805, dated 24.9.40). The informant learnt from the Finnish wife of the United States Consul in Moscow that Hetman Skoropadski was operating in Krakow where he had set up his headquarters. That the Soviets were aware of this development and concluded that this action was not in the spirit of the Soviet-German Pact. Return
4. ibid. Return
5. ibid. 1734, MI2b report dated 3.8.1940. Return
6. ibid. Return
7. ibid. Return
8. ibid. Return
9. ibid. Intelligence report: in the publication, 'Novy Shilish', a Ukrainian Language newspaper representing nationalist policy, published in Canada, where articles reproduced from Ukrainian press in the U.S.A. proved the existence of such a movement, including military groups. Return
10. ibid. Return
11. ibid. Return
12. ibid. Return
13. ibid. Return
14. ibid. Return
15. British Intelligence Report from Berne, dated 3rd July, 1940. (WO/208/1734): quoting a conversation between H.M.R (not identified) and a Polish Minister to Switzerland. The latter told H.M.R of the reported formation of a Polish Government under a certain STUDNCKI, whom the Minister described as an honest old fool. The Polish Minister referred to the formation of the Ukrainian Brigade in Poland. Return
16. ibid. Return
17. ibid. Return
18. ibid. Return
19. ibid. Return
20. ibid. Return
21. Mark Goldfinger, (now living in Bournmouth) a young boy at the time living in Rabka at that time remembers the side roads stacked nose to tail with tanks and other armoured vehicles. This was confirmed on my visit to Rabka in November, 1997, with the help of the present secretary (Jan Krakowska) of the Catholic school (the building of the SS/SD school) acting as interpreter, we interviewed a number of elderly witnesses who also remembered the large German military presence in Rabka on the run-up to 22nd June, 1941. Return
22. British intelligence report dated 4th October, 1940. Return
23. ibid. The only unknown factor was Turkey who may object to a takeover of Ukraine. Turkey's political aspirations were not known. If Germany had designs on Turkey, the war materials being gathered would have been of little use due to the terrain. All indications were for a strike against the Soviets. Return
24. ibid. Similar reports were coming in from a number of sources, including the L.E.F (Free French) via their office in Istanbul, also dated 4.10.41. Return
25. ibid. Return
26. ibid. Undated report but believed October, 1940. Return
27. Peace and War: United States Foreign Policy, 1931-41, Washington, 1942, p. 105; Sumner Wells, The Time for Decision, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1944, p. 251. Return
28. In a statement to the American Press on the 31st December, 1941, M. Litvinov agreed that his government had received warnings but had dismissed them. Return
29. Doc. Polish-Soviet relations, vol, 1 p104. Return
30. ibid. Return
31. ibid. The two factions, one led by Goring (for war), and Schulenburg and Hess (anti-war) were both fighting for Hitler's ear. It was Goring that was to prevail. 'So far' – said General Sikorski – 'Germany has won on the land, lost on the seas, and there is a draw in the air'. Return
32. PRO. WO/208/1761, dated 23rd May, 1940, copy 36, marked 'Secret'. (My underline). Return
33. In retrospect, the authors of this report may well have wished the ground would open up and swallow them whole. His Majesty's Government assessment of German intentions against the U.S.S.R. was made just a month before the actual attack. Not three miles away, from the seat of government where a contrary assessment was made, at 12, Nevern Place, London, S.W . a self employed journalist, Marie Brett-Perring, undoubtedly an intelligence agent of some kind, had come to another conclusion. Over a period of months she had been feeding the British Security Services with information concerning German military activities in Eastern Europe, particularly in Poland and the Ukraine. Marie Brett Perring was surprisingly accurate. Return
34. WO/208/1734 (assessment report). Return
35. In June 1940, most of the active nationalists elements in Western Ukraine had gone to ground (M.I.6 Political Report dated in June, 1940). Return
36. PRO. WO/208/1734 – M.I.6 Political Report No. 123, dated 25.6.41. Return
37. See Appendix 'A'. Return
38. ibid. The USA – In several reports mention is made of strategic war materials destined for Sweden that were requisitioned by the USA for her own use. 110 pursuit planes and bombers manufactured for the Swedish air force were seized despite protests from the Swedish government. On the 23rd October, 1940, President Roosevelt issued an 'executive order', decreeing priority defence orders placed with private industry. It established the first government general control over private industry. The commission was headed by Donald M. Nelson.


Robin O'Neil: of Irish descent but very much an English individual by nature. A former police major crimes investigator who had for 30 years worked at the sharp end of major criminal investigations in the United Kingdom. Formerly of Scotland Yard, Metropolitan and Home Counties Police service before taking up the challenge of Academia. On leaving the police service he has launched a number of major investigations into the protagonists of the Shoah particularly those individuals who carried out and engineered the destruction of European Jewry, particularly in East Galicia. His police service and rank has enabled him to look closely into the characters of Christian Wirth and Franz Stangl, both commanders of death camps in Poland, who held similar rank and experience of police service as the author.
He is a reluctant academic whose mentor and friend for many years has been Sir Martin Gilbert. After obtaining his Masters at London University under Sir Martin he is having a bumpy ride with his Doctoral thesis on Belzec. He feels more at home chatting to the indigenous peasants over fences and garden walls in the quiet backwaters of Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine.
Robin O'Neil is universally acknowledged as the central research source for the Schindler story and the former death camp at Belzec of which he has been engaged for over 30 years. Historical consultant to several TV documentaries and radio broadcasts in the UK and abroad. Is an Honoured guest of Schindler's home town, Svitavy, Czech Republic and is a regular lecturer at universities in the United Kingdom, America, Israel and Eastern Europe.


Enough about Ukrainian relations during the war with Germans???




Here You have UKRAINIAN Professor's work. (ps. he had to escape to Canada against Your nationalists in order to stay alive).

ps. Before the war Urainians nationalists were PURE TERRORISTS!!!


"The Bitter Truth" by W.Poliszczuk has 424 pages.......(no "cut outs" shown
on internet page) and it mostly describes Polish - Ukrainian relations
between 1941-1945.
UWO - Ukrainian Military Organization (terrorist organization) was created in
July 1920 in Prague by Halician-Ukrainian officers to fight against Polish
government and Polish people by terror.
In the meantime joint armies of Ukrainian S.Petlura and J.Pilsudski were
fighting against bolshevic army under M.Tuchaczewski...... page 110.
UWO acts of terrorism , that tried at first to assassinate Marshal
J.Pilsudski (25.XI.1921) began with destruction and disorganization of
government offices and property and officials, communication lines, railways,
post offices, ambulances, military storehouses.... as well as setting up
fires to private properties that belonged to polish nobleman - manors and
other buildings including, as well as crops.
They're also killing and murdering Polish policemen and civilians including
Ukrainians who occupied government positions...... pages 113 - 117.
OUN was created during I Kongress of Ukrainian Nationalists in
January/February 1929 in Vienna.
In 1930 UWO joined OUN and since then there was only OUN and the acts of
terrorism continued in the 1930's...... pages 116 - 117.
Wolyn and Halicja were part of Poland up to river Zbrucz in western part of
Ukraine - (Riga Treaty, 1921) recognized by League of Nations...... page 233.
On September 1, 1939 OUN military unit under the command of Ukrainian colonel
R.Suszko took part in invasion of Poland. Other Ukrainians like W.Demura,
D.Hadzer, Iwasykow brothers, Borduna brothers, N.Szankowski - leaders of self
created paramilitary units were taking part in arresting and murdering of
Polish soldiers and policemen in Wolyn...... pages 140 - 141.
OUN Headquarter was in Krakow which was under German occupation and its
Ukrainian leaders were German collaborators, most of them Abwehr (German
Intelligence) agents - H.Frank (German Jew) was a head of GG...... page 149.
In summer of 1940 leaders of OUN and Abwehr talked about creating
"Nachtigal" and "Roland" battalions. "Nachtigal" battalion under the command
of Ukrainian R.Suchewycz took main part in murdering Polish and Jewish
civilians, including Polish professors in July 1941 in Lwow...... page 154.
There's more details about bloody masacre of Poles and Jews in book "Bloody
Days of Lwow 1941" by A.Korman.
Prof. A.Norden collected all possible evidence and proved, that between July
1-7, 1941 in Lwow battalion "Nachtigal" murdered with called blood , cruelty
and bestiality 3000 Polish and Jewish civilians...... even Germans were
frustrated and did't like what Ukrainians did...... and soon after that all
two Ukrainian battalions were dissolved...... pages 155 - 157.
In August 1941 OUN broke in half (OUNb and OUNm) and as a result
thousands of Ukrainian opponents from OUNm were murdered by S.Bandera and
his comrades form OUNb ...... page 177.
There was a letter found in German archives dated August 14, 1941 signed by
S.Bandera (leader of OUNb) where he offered his full readiness and service to
Adolf Hitler...... page 235.
To describe all UPA atrocities on Poles and Ukrainians based only on proven
material without any comments, a very big book having several hundred pages
has to be issued written with very small letters...... page 188.


Talk with UPA descendant is so happy for me as talk with SS man descendant. EQUALLY. Both SS and UPA wanted to kill whole my familly.

If ypu want more scientificc proofes just ask. Give me your INDEPENDENT SOURCES.

ps. My grandparents lived close to Lviv. Your UPA murdered Poles and Jews not only in Wolhynia.

My 80 old friend konws personally Ukrainian nurse who, by her own hands, put the hedgehog into the ripped pregnant woman's stomach. WITH ANY remorses now, after so many years...

paratatruc
Member
Posts: 162
Joined: 24 Nov 2004, 20:24
Location: Paris

#118

Post by paratatruc » 30 Dec 2005, 15:46

Hi Aadog,
It seams that you are contesting the investigation of the Canadian government that recently washed the 14 SS division Galicia from any war crimes.
Are you claiming that they merely didn't want problems with their huge Ukrainian community?

User avatar
AdaOg
Member
Posts: 134
Joined: 29 Dec 2005, 10:58
Location: Gdynia

#119

Post by AdaOg » 30 Dec 2005, 16:07

Hi

it is quite possible.
Many veterans of 14 SS division Galicia settled in Britain. From time to time scotland yard renewes investigations, but from year to year amount of vitnesses is getting down.

Poland officially leads two investigation against them
1. Known murdery of Huta Pieniacka
2. less known:
Investigation into the shooting at an unidentified date between 1 February 1944 and 31 March 1944 of at least fifty people of Polish nationality at Płotycz Mała in the Tarnopol county (presently in western Ukraine). An IPN prosecutor has determined that the crime could be committed by soldiers of the Ukrainian SS Galizien, on the instigation of local Ukrainian nationalists, or by German soldiers. The prosecutor will hear members of the families of the victims and eyewitnesses of the crime, who are now living in Lower Silesia.

I also received information to my private mail sent form Wisenthal Center according to my question of 14 SS division Galicia. Apart of Huta Pieniacka Wisenthal did not consider 14 ss dicision as criminal unit, but it consisted mostly by murderers of former Ukrainian auxiliary policemen -very cruel and brutal murderers.

User avatar
AdaOg
Member
Posts: 134
Joined: 29 Dec 2005, 10:58
Location: Gdynia

#120

Post by AdaOg » 30 Dec 2005, 16:11

And that is why Canada can be a little frightened

http://www.ukar.org/index.html

I have never seen so much hate on one site. And in Cana lives great Ukrainian dispora of such eagar people...

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