I hope this will help to heal some of the rifts between the Ukrainian and Jewish communities ... rifts which were deliberated cultivated by external forces intent on dividing opposition to their respective invasions.
The Nazis and Soviets alike knew that if Jews united with Ukrainians, Poles and others to oppose them, they would lose. So the only way they could win was "divide and conquer."
It took a sovereign Ukraine 17 years to uncover the truth and make it available to the public. (I wonder how much more chicanery by foreign oppressors will be revealed in years to come.)
The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) has declassified documents, proving that OUN [the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists] is not connected with the anti-Jewish action in Lviv in 1941. ...
In particular, according to O.Ishchuk, the declassified documents of SBU indicate that on July 4-7 of 1941, representatives of Gestapo, who arrived in Lviv, turned to Ukrainian circles with demand to carry out a three-day massacre of Jews. “The OUN leadership, having got to know about that, informed its members that it was a German provocation in order to compromise Ukrainians with massacres”, the document reads.
“The SBU documents confirm that OUN members were trying to avoid taking part in actions against the Jewish population in Lviv, there were no official instructions on this issue”, O.Ishchuk stressed...
Full document here. Original Ukrainian version here.
H/T Cybercossack.
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In addition to these documents, which are very important, there are very many documents out there -- both Nazi and Soviet -- that very clearly show the Ukrainian opposition to both invaders. How many Nazi posters are there with lists of Ukrainians wanted and to be executed, and the reasons given for what (including harboring Jews). The names are there, and these lists were posted in practically every city, town, and probably village. The gallows in the centre of the town or city square had the Ukrainian OUN and UPA individuals left hanging for days, as an reminder to others. The documents have been there -- the books on UPA reproduce them. More and more material needs to be available in English -- and a lot of it already is. More and more material is being added to
http://www.infoukes.com/upa/
and the books are also out there. People just need to go to the right sources (not depend on Soviet-produced or -influenced material)
Hi Orysia,
Thanks for the info and I agree it's good that more and more is coming out.
Unfortunately most people don't want to be bothered to go looking for accurate information, but are happy to enough to accept whatever is spoonfed to them by media, teachers and profs, and other vested interests.
It is those vested interests that put the pejorative spin on the word "nationalist."
Or, maybe they left it for their "useful idiots" to do ... those naive idealists so enamoured of the idea of world socialism...
Maybe its time we changed from being Ukrainian Nationalists to Ukrainian Patriots
That day that this information was made public I was speaking to Stepan Bandera, the grandson the leader of OUN(B), he was tell me that the same researcher who unveiled these facts mentioned that they have millions of pages of documents to sift through and lack the man power.
An interesting observation made by a colleague of mine was that when the Berlin Wall came down, East German Stasi agents took the effort to try to shred all documents about the GDR's past, particular work that was carried out against individuals, such as Ulrike Poppe.
More about here: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/16-02/ff_stasi?currentPage=all
When Germany was reunited a special institute was set up in order reassembly all the shredded documents. "Some 16,250 sacks containing pieces of 45 million shredded documents were found and confiscated after the reunification of Germany in 1990. Reconstruction work began 12 years ago but 24 people have been able to reassemble the contents of only 323 sacks."
Yes, it must have been a painstaking job indeed, but then technology kicked in.
See: http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2007/05/a_jiggsaw_puzzl.html
The Germans understood that in order to move forward as part of Europe they had to understand their past, including the past that was the legacy of the GDR, and they had a political will to do so.
It has only been under President Victor Yushchenko that such a political will to do so has existed. How much more will we learn about Ukraine's past under the Soviets, and under Nazi occupation when all these SBU files are finally studied? I think it will help rewrite history!
Orest, I don't know if it makes any difference what the label is. At any rate, it's hard to control what labels are created by other people.
Vasyl, thanks for sharing the details of this conversation, as well as the links.
It is very sad that there was such a rush on to destroy those documents. Can you imagine the state of mind of those scrambling to hide their misdeeds? What pathetic examples of humanity.
Contrast that to Pres. Yushchenko who, as you rightly noted, has done much to raise the self-awareness as well as the self-image of Ukrainians. It is remarkable that he continues to do this, despite the fact that many of his former supporters blame him for the slow pace of political change in Ukraine.
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