Today, the network got instructions for the Ukrainian media by May 9 - how to cover the events of the Second World War, and the recently finally rehabilitated OUN-UPA.

The main messages - Ukraine was liberated from the Nazis not by the Soviet Army, but by the Ukrainian people, and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Bandera) contributed a lot to this. In addition, it is recommended to focus on the number of Russians who fought in the ROA (Vlasovites), and on Russia's deliberate underestimation of the role Ukrainian people in the victory in the Second World War (that's right - the Second World War, the Second World War cannot be used).

Copies

I won’t publish everything, I think the essence is already clear ... Plus, the Ukrainian authorities recommend proceeding from the fact that “May 9 is not a Victory Day, but above all a lesson for Ukraine, Europe and the whole world,” and also call for equalizing Putin’s Russia and Hitler’s mode.

In principle, nothing new - Kiev continues to impose a mutilated version of history on Ukrainians and promote Russophobia. Actually, for this, it was necessary to glorify the chronic Russophobes of Bandera, who allegedly fought simultaneously against two totalitarian regimes (Soviet and Nazi) for independent Ukraine. But it is very difficult to combine the incompatible, 6 million Ukrainians who fought against the Nazis in the ranks of the SA, and 300 thousand Galician nationalists who fought with the Germans against the Soviet Union, i.e. AGAINST HIS PEOPLE. Therefore, one has to lie so much and ignore historical facts.

Let me remind you that the crimes of Ukrainian nationalists have been proven in trials, just as their direct connection with the Nazis has been proven (this exists great amount photo and video evidence, see below). In contrast, the German archives did not record A SINGLE FACT of serious clashes between Bandera and the Nazis, except for minor skirmishes, which the Germans themselves described as rare and not worthy of attention.

In 1941, Galicia greeted the Germans with flowers, bread and salt, and solemn parades, Ukrainian nationalists were promised an independent Ukraine, so they not only welcomed the Nazis, but also actively joined the police and regular military formations. On the very first day of the creation of the SS Galicia, more than 20 thousand Ukrainians voluntarily enrolled in it, during the week another 40 thousand applications were sold.

Photo chronicle: Galicia meets the Nazis, and SS volunteers Galicia

A little about the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism and the slogans that are chanted today

Taken almost one in one of the Nazi….

And how these slogans were used by the "fighters against Nazism" of that time

In addition to the SS division Galicia, there were other formations of Ukrainian nationalists, who until the age of 43 unequivocally fought as part of or in direct interaction with the Germans:

Nachtigall Battalion(German "Nachtigal" - "Nightingale")

The unit was formed mainly from members and supporters of the OUN (b) and trained by the military intelligence and counterintelligence agencies of Nazi Germany, the Abwehr, for operations on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR. Which he headed. It was Nachtigal, together with the German troops, who took part in the invasion of the territory of the Ukrainian SSR, acting as part of the Brandenburg regiment. On the night of June 29-30, 1941, the battalion was the first to enter Lvov.

Now Ukrainian propaganda trying to portray Shukhevych as such

In the form of a UPA warrior and Ukrainian symbols. But really it was

Battalion Roland(German "Roland")

It was formed in 1941 with the sanction of the head of German military intelligence V. Canaris for training and use as part of the Brandenburg-800 special reconnaissance and sabotage formation during the German attack on the USSR. Subordinated to the 2nd department of the Abwehr Directorate (Amt Abwehr II) ( special operations) under the High Command of the Wehrmacht.

Unlike Nachtigall, its personnel were mostly represented by Ukrainian emigrants of the first wave. In addition, up to 15% were Ukrainian students from Vienna and Graz. A former officer was appointed commander of the battalion Polish army Major E. Pobigushchiy. All other officers and even instructors were Ukrainians, while the German command was represented by a communications group consisting of 3 officers and 8 non-commissioned officers. The training of the battalion took place in the Zaubersdorf castle, 9 km from the city of Wiener Neustadt. In early June 1941, the battalion departed for Southern Bukovina, and then moved to the Yass region, and from there through Chisinau and Dubossary to Odessa, acting as part of the 6th Wehrmacht Army on the territory of first Western and then Eastern Ukraine in June −July 1941.

In October 1941, the Nachtigal and Roland were relocated to Frankfurt an der Oder, sent for retraining for use as parts of the security police.

But soon sobering up came - the Ukrainian state, which Bandera proclaimed on June 30, 1941 in Lvov, lasted only 17 days, after which Bandera was arrested, and Hitler essentially declared Ukraine his colony, in which nationalists were assigned only police functions.
At the end of 1942 and the beginning of 1943, part of the Galician nationalists (OUN b, followers of Bandera) “bucked up”. Refusing to follow the orders of the Germans. Nominally, the reasons were the deception with independent Ukraine (a year and a half later), and the terror that the Germans staged on the civilian population, incl. and in Galicia. They drove to Germany, took away food and livestock, not really understanding where the owner was fighting - in the Red Army or in the SS ... But the main reason was that the Germans were losing the war, there was no longer any hope not only for an independent Ukraine, but even for some privileges in the Nazi ...
Refusing to carry out the direct orders of the Reich, the OUN-UPA, from the point of view of the Germans, became gangs of Ukrainian nationalists (that is what they were called in the reports), but there was no reason to destroy them, like the OUN-UPA, there was no reason to start a war against the Nazis , they would thereby take the side of the Union, which by that time was already winning. And in Soviet Ukraine, nothing but camps awaited them.

Actually, the UPA itself appeared only in February 1943. Help

February 17-23, 1943 in the village. Ternobezhye, on the initiative of Roman Shukhevych, the III OUN Conference was held, at which a decision was made to intensify activities and start an armed uprising.

The majority of the conference members supported Shukhevych (although M. Lebed objected), in whose opinion the main struggle should not be directed against the Germans, and against Soviet partisans and Poles - in the direction already carried out by D. Klyachkivsky in Volyn.

At the end of March 1943, supporters and members of the OUN who served in the German paramilitary and police forces were instructed to go into the forests along with weapons. According to the order intercepted by the Soviet partisans, the actual beginning of "the formation of the Ukrainian national army at the expense of policemen, Cossacks and local Ukrainians of the Bandera and Bulbov direction" fell on the second decade of March 1943.

The ranks of the future UPA in the period from March 15 to April 4, 1943 were replenished from 4 to 6 thousand members of the "Ukrainian" police, whose personnel in 1941-42 were actively involved in the destruction of Jews and Soviet citizens

From that moment on, the nationalists of the UPA allegedly ceased to obey the Germans, and then fought against them and against the Soviet regime. Although, as I wrote above, there is no evidence of large-scale hostilities of the UPA against the Germans, some minor skirmishes (release of relatives of those driven to work, protection of their own homes, property, attack on food warehouses / carts) cannot be considered as such, this forced measures of self-survival.
Even in the collections of documents “UPA in the light of German documents” (book 1, Toronto 1983, book 3, Toronto 1991), compiled by the descendants of nationalists who emigrated to Canada (and therefore hardly impartial) - there are very few examples of clashes between the UPA and the Nazis, and most of them are like this

Negotiations with one of the gangs of nationalists not far from Rovno brought the following results: the gang will continue to fight against the Soviet bandits and the regular units of the Red Army. She refuses to participate in battles on the side of the Wehrmacht, as well as to hand over her weapons ... In recent weeks the actions of the Ukrainian gangs were directed not so much against the Wehrmacht as against the German administration. Ukrainian gangs still oppose Polish, Soviet gangs and Polish settlements.

Actually, the UPA did not fight against the regular Soviet Army either. By this time they were living the dream of the mutual destruction of the Soviets and the Reich. Meanwhile, they themselves were concerned about their own survival and continued the work that they had begun under the leadership of the Nazis - the genocide of the civilian population, primarily supporters of the Soviet Power, and the ethnic cleansing of Poles and Jews, including together with the Nazis. Here are a few episodes:

Tragedy of Janova Valley

On the night of April 22-23, 1943 (on the eve of Easter), detachments of the 1st UPA Group under the command of I. Litvinchuk ("Oak") entered the village. Janovaya Dolina and began to set fire to all the buildings. Some of the inhabitants died in the fire, those who tried to get out were killed.

The German garrison stationed in the village - a company of the Lithuanian auxiliary police under German command - was in the village during the attack, but did not leave its location. The Nationalists did not attack the garrison. The police did not try to oppose the nationalists, and opened fire only when the nationalists approached his location.

As a result of the action, from 500 to 800 people died, including women and children. Many were burned alive

The tragedy of Guta Penyatskaya

As of the beginning of 1944, there were about 1000 inhabitants in the village of Guta Penyatskaya. The settlement of Guta Penyatskaya supported the Polish and Soviet partisans in their actions to disorganize the German rear.
On February 28, 1944, the village was surrounded by the 2nd police battalion of the 4th regiment of the SS Volunteer Division "Galicia" with the support of the local UPA and was completely burned - only the skeletons of stone buildings remained - the church and the school. Of the more than a thousand inhabitants of Guta Penyatskaya, no more than 50 people survived. More than 500 residents were burned alive in the church and their own homes.

Tragedy Podkamenya

On March 12, 1944, a unit of the SS division "Galicia" entered the town of Podkamen under the pretext of searching for weapons and partisans. On the eve of the Polish self-defense of the town, an attack by a UPA detachment was repelled.
The soldiers of the SS "Galicia" who entered the territory of the monastery began to kill all the Poles who had taken refuge on its territory. Others, searching the place, demanded identity cards from the people they found. Whoever had it indicated in the "Ausweiss" that he was a Pole - they killed him. Those who could prove the opposite were left alive ... During the action, more than 250 people were killed by the military of the 4th regiment of the SS Volunteer Division "Galicia" with the participation of UPA units ...

—————-

There are many such examples, and all of them confirm the cooperation of the UPA with the Nazis, including with the SS Galicia, which continues to fight as part of the Wehrmacht.
And by the way, SS Galichna, which Ukrainian propaganda very rarely mentions, was also staffed to a large extent from Galician nationalists, incl. and members of the OUN. The division was created in March 1943, and what is called, at the urgent request of the patriotic public, I quote:
At the beginning of March 1943, the newspapers of the Galicia district published the "Manifesto for the combat-ready youth of Galicia" by the governor of the Galicia district Otto Wächter, which noted the devoted service "for the good of the Reich" of the Galician Ukrainians and their repeated requests to the Führer to participate in the armed struggle - and the Fuhrer, taking into account all the merits of the Galician Ukrainians, allowed the formation of the SS Rifle Division "Galicia»

I wrote above that in the very first week after the publication of the manifesto, 60 thousand volunteers applied to the division, and in total - about 80 thousand. It should be added that the SS Galicia was involved in punitive operations not only in Ukraine, but also in Slovakia and Yugoslavia. More information about their "exploits".

Separately, in the activities of the Galician nationalists, one can single out the genocide that they staged for the Poles. According to various sources, from 30 to 60 thousand people were killed, mostly women, children of the elderly (Poland insists on the figure of 100 thousand). Now Kiev is trying to justify the "Volyn Massacre" by the fact that the Poles also killed ethnic Ukrainians. This is true, but on their part it was a retaliatory measure, in the hope of thereby pacifying Bandera and stopping the massacre in the territory of Galicia, and the number of victims is completely incomparable.

Volyn Tragedy (Massacre)

There are many similar facts of UPA crimes (), and it is pointless to reject them. According to individual photos, modern followers of Bandera give rebuttals (they were not taken there, or they did not die at the hands of Bandera), but they refute only a few, but thousands of documents.
Attempts to attribute all this to the lies of Soviet propaganda are also untenable - the facts are confirmed by Polish, German, Israeli historians.

And finally, a little video, for those who have the time and desire to understand the topic thoroughly.

Chronicle. SS Division Galicia. Kolomia. Hutsuls

Followers of Bandera, OUN UPA, SS Division Galicia (from 8.30 minutes photo and video chronicle)

OUN-UPA, Facts of History Today and the Past!

German State. channel: Bandera collaborated with the Nazis and was involved in the extermination of Jews

VOLYN without a statute of limitations - a film about the crimes of the OUN-UPA

POLICEMANS (2014) BANDEROVTS. UPA Army. It's hard to watch, but useful. 16+

PS
Galician nationalists unequivocally fought on the side of Nazi Germany, as long as they believed that Ukraine would be given to them for this, while they were used mainly to perform police functions and in punitive operations AGAINST CIVIL POPULATION, including AGAINST UKRAINIANS.
From the fact that they wanted to get Ukraine, it does not follow that they fought for freedom for the Ukrainian people, even 2-3 years before these events they were citizens of Poland, and before that for hundreds of years they were part of Austria-Hungary, which suited many of them.
It is terrible to imagine what would happen if Germany won that war and kept its promise to give power over Ukraine to Bandera, and what fate would await the families of those 6 million Ukrainians who went to fight in the Red Army, what would await Russians, Poles, Jews living in Odessa , Kharkov, Donetsk…. However, it is not difficult to imagine this, looking at the photos published above, and remembering Babi Yar in Kiev, where from 70 to 200 thousand racially incorrect citizens were shot with the active participation of nationalists.

On this terrible frame - Kiev, September 1941. Babi Yar. The mother, a second before death, presses the child to her. The man in SS uniform who would kill her and the baby in a second or two was not German. He is Ukrainian, more precisely, a native of Western Ukraine, from Zhytomyr. He served in the division "Galicia", and since 1943 he participated in the work of the Einsatz groups.
Where do these details come from? Almost from himself. This photograph was confiscated by partisans along with documents and an army dog ​​tag. They seized it when they searched his body.

Bandera hoped to get Ukraine for themselves from the hands of the Nazis, but when they were denied this, they still considered them their allies.
In addition, by the middle of 1944, the Nazis were forced out of Western Ukraine - the Bandera people were no longer physically able to fight against them.
In fairness, it should be noted that the hatred of Bandera towards the Poles and the Soviet government did not appear out of nowhere - this was preceded by the Polish-Ukrainian war, the forced Polonization of Galician Ukrainians, then the deportation of 200-300 thousand nationalists and their families, accompanied by bacchanalia of the NKVDs. All this can to some extent explain why the Galicians met the Nazis as liberators, but this cannot justify the inhuman reprisals against women, old people and children.
And of course, Ukrainian nationalists did not fight against Nazism, or even more stupidly, against totalitarian regimes. Some of them fought for their own, racially pure Ukrainian Reich, others for the German...

For writing the article, only sources confirming the information with documentary evidence were used: Wikipedia, materials from the book of the Polish historian Alexander Korman "UPA Genocide", the Canadian collection "UPA in the light of German documents".

Part II. Crimes of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army

… you who did iniquity.

(Gospel of Matthew) ( .To the memory of the victims of the OUN-UPA I dedicate this work.)

About the crimes of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army

Those who do not remember the lessons of history are doomed to experience them again. Is the Ukrainian Insurgent Army a good or bad lesson for Ukrainians? Should we include it in textbooks as an example of heroism and glory, or should we be ashamed of the activities of the UPA, repent?

Victims of the UPA. Lyuboml. In the area of ​​Ostrowki near Lyuboml, in Ukraine, the remains of Poles shot by the UPA on August 30, 1943 are being exhumed. On that day, more than 1,700 Poles from the villages of Ostrówka died in Ostrówki. Will of Ostrovetska, Yanovets and Kuty. Their remains will be transferred to the Polish cemetery in Rymachi near Yahodyn (Gazeta, Toronto, August 24-25, 1992).

“Before the war, I finished 9 classes. When the Germans took young people to Germany for hard labor, they took me too. But I was lucky enough to escape, and I joined the partisans. He ended up in the partisan association of M. Shukaev, which fought on the rear from Chernigov to Czechoslovakia. That is, through the Zhytomyr region, Rivne region, Ternopil region, Lviv region, Prykarpattya ... So, I had to meet with Bandera (OUN, UPA) more than once or twice. And not at the table, but in battles ... God forbid it was to fall into their hands! They mocked worse than the Germans. They carved stars on their chests or on their foreheads, twisted their arms and legs, and tortured them to death. And how many Polish villages they burned and slaughtered the Poles with “sacred knives”! How many civilians, employees, teachers were killed after the war! This is what their struggle for a free Ukraine was like (Robitnicha Gazeta, Kiev, September 29, 1992).

The conference “Ukrainian Insurgent Army and National Liberation Struggle in Ukraine 1940-1950”, which was held in Kiev in August 1992, recommends to the President of Ukraine: “The conference raises the question of whether the legislative bodies new Ukraine recognized the OUN, UPA, UGOR (Ukrainian Main Liberation Rada) as the most consistent fighters for the independence of Ukraine, and the fighters of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army as a belligerent." ("New Way"; Toronto, September 26, 1992)

M.Zelenchuk, chairman of the All-Ukrainian Brotherhood of the UPA on Sophia Square 26.08. 1992 demanded: “Recognize the struggle of the UPA as a just liberation struggle of the Ukrainian people for their Independent Power” (“Homin of Ukraine”, Toronto, September 16, 1992) ...

So what is the UPA?.. Was it the army that brought glory to Ukraine?

Evidence of UPA crimes

If one were to describe all the atrocities of the UPA against the Polish and Ukrainian people, about which there is evidence, then it would be necessary to publish a separate book, citing only the facts without comments on hundreds of pages in small print. I myself collected more than a hundred, signed specific people, indicating the address. But first, let me give you some personal evidence.

In the summer of 1943, my maternal aunt Anastasia Vitkovskaya went with a Ukrainian neighbor in the afternoon to the village of Tarakanov, located three kilometers from the city of Dubno. They spoke Polish, because my aunt, an illiterate woman, originally from the Lublin region, could not learn the Ukrainian language. They went to change something for bread, as the aunt had six children. Neither she nor her uncle, Anton Vitkovsky, who is also a completely illiterate person, never interfered in any politics, but had no idea about it either. And she, as well as her Ukrainian neighbor, was killed by Bandera from the UPA or Self-Defense Bush Departments (they included local peasants, often armed with pitchforks, knives, subordinates of the OUN-UPA) just because they spoke Polish. They were brutally killed with axes and thrown into a roadside ditch. Another aunt told me about this - Sabina, who was married to a Ukrainian Vasily Zagorovsky.

My wife's parents lived before the war in Polissya. Her father is Czech and her mother is Polish. The family spoke Polish. When, in early 1943, massacres of Poles began in southern Polissya, the whole family fled to their father's parents in the village of Ugorek near Dermani.

One day, a familiar Ukrainian told his father-in-law that the UPA was preparing to destroy his family. They fled to Kremenets. Someone overheard the conversation of this young Ukrainian with my wife's father. Suspecting him of "treason", they hung him in the center of the village and attached a sign to his chest: "So it will be with all traitors." The hanged man was not allowed to film for several days.

Two facts that took place in different places at different times. They are united by one thing: the authorship of the OUN-UPA, the causelessness of the murders. My father had a brother, Yarokhtey, who lived in the village. Lipa Dubno district. For the fact that he openly branded the UPA, he was shot in the mouth. Uncle Yarokhtey was an ordinary illiterate peasant.

It is not possible in one book to tell about all the individual massacres of Poles and Ukrainians committed by the OUN-UPA, so I will limit myself to only a few.

A person very close to me, M.S. said: “On March 24, 1944, on a frosty night, Bandera attacked our huts, set fire to all the buildings. We lived in the village of Polyanovytsia (Tsytsivka) of the Zborovsky district (the author named the old administrative division - ed.) of the Ternopil region. My father, a Pole, married a Ukrainian. We lived in peace with Ukrainians from neighboring villages. We heard about the killings in Volhynia, but at first we did not think that we could be killed. Somewhere in February 1944, the Bandera people (we didn’t figure out who was in the UPA, who was in another group - everyone was called Bandera, since they themselves glorified the “leader” Bandera) put a ransom demand in front of our village. The peasants collected the money and gave it to Bandera. But it did not help. At night, all the men, that is, father, younger brother and I, as on other nights, slept in a shelter under the outbuildings. Mother (Ukrainian) with my two sisters and my father's sister, who married a Ukrainian from near Kharkov, spent the night in a hut. Immediately after midnight, we smelled smoke and guessed that the UPA had set fire to the houses. I jumped out of the cellar, lifting the lid. They shot at me, who was running away, but did not hit. Father also tried to get out of the cellar, but could not - burned down. My little brother was suffocated by the smoke. The mother, who was running away from the burning house, was wounded, but she escaped. A seven-year-old sister also ran away, although she was wounded in the knee. The father's sister also ran away, who was wounded by a shot in the arm, as a result of which the arm had to be amputated. The second 13-year-old sister, while running away, caught the eye of a Bandera man who pierced her chest with a bayonet, and she died on the spot. On the same night, Bandera burned and killed our neighbors - Beloskursky and Baranovsky and others from our small village "...

T. G. from Glukholazy (Poland) writes: “We lived in the Polish village of Chaikov, Sarny county. In June or July 1943, before dinner, Bandera on horseback arrived. They surrounded the houses, set them on fire, and those who ran away were killed with axes, bayonets ... The UPA did not fight the Germans. Before the war, we had no enmity between Ukrainians and Poles.”

E.B. from the USA: “We lived in the village of Radokhovka. In March 1943, at midnight, the Upovites set fire to the house of Yancharek's neighbor. Those who ran away from it were shot. Only son Jan survived, the rest died: Yakov Jancharek, his wife, mother, son Janusz, daughter Ledzya, second daughter with a baby. Bandera's victims were thrown into a well. My mother was killed in May of the same year - she was going to the village, and she was shot dead.

Before the war, Ukrainians and I lived in harmony...

3-X. from Poland, Valch: “The village of Nikolaevka in Volyn. The Bandera attack was on 04/24/1943 at dawn. Bandera entered our hut and began torturing us with bayonets. They brought straw and set it on fire. I was also pierced with a bayonet, and I lost consciousness, falling on my aunt. When the flames got to me, I came to my senses and jumped out the window. Bandera was no more. My groan was heard by a Ukrainian neighbor Spiridon, he brought me to another Ukrainian - Bezukha, who took me to the hospital on a horse. As a result of the attack, 14 people died, among them was a pregnant woman "...

G.K. from the USA: “On July 14, 1943, Bandera tortured 300 people in Kolodna. Having driven them away, they ordered to lie down, they say, they will do a search. They started shooting at those who were lying down. The witness is Antek Polyula. Bandera from Kolodnya: Andrei Shpak, Semyon Koval, Volodya Snichishin, from Oleshkov - Pavel Romanchuk. The priest called for the murder, who said: “We will sanctify the knives so that we can cut the kukel out of wheat.”

V.V. from the UK reports that on July 12, 1943, in the village of Zagai, Bandera people were killed - and here is a list of 165 surnames, including infants, pregnant women, and the elderly. He says that before the war there were normal relations with the Ukrainians, hostility began when Hitler began to promise a free Ukraine.

G.D. from Poland: “On Tuesday, July 14, 1943, in the village of Selets, Vladimir-Volyn region, Ukrainians killed two elderly people - Jozef Witkowski and his wife Stefania. They were shot dead in their own hut, which was then set on fire. In the afternoon, the same axes killed two elderly people of the Mihalovičs and their 7-year-old granddaughter, the husband and wife of the Gronovičs, the housekeeper of a priest named Zofia. Ivan Shostachuk took part in the murders, who before the war was a corporal in the Polish army and changed his religion to Roman Catholic. His younger brother Vladislav, an Orthodox Christian, warned the Morelevsky and Mikhalkovich families. There was a Ukrainian in the gang - Yukhno, who killed the Poles, and his father saved the Stichinsky family. Before the war, relations with the Ukrainians were good, they began to deteriorate in early 1943, when agitators began to arrive from the Lviv and Stanislav regions, who rebelled among the Ukrainian youth, promising a free Ukraine. Not everyone succumbed to whispering, in particular, older people did not succumb. teacher elementary school Maya Sokoliv, the wife of the head of the school, who was sent from the Soviet Union, Russian, together with her husband, mother and one-year-old son Slavik, were drowned in a well. From the Morelevsky family, Bandera killed their parents, daughter-in-law Irena (19 years old) and son Jozef (20 years old). All but Irena were killed near the forest. Irena was taken to the hut by the leaders of the gang, kept in the basement, raped, and then thrown into the well. Irena was pregnant. Mixed families were also killed."

I. from Canada: “On the night of December 28, 1944, Bandera attacked our village of Lozov in the Ternopil region, above the Gnezdechnaya River. About 800 people were tortured. The first group of Bandera, after the signal of the rocket, broke windows and broke down doors, the second group killed, and the third robbed, after which they set fire to houses ... "

V.M. from Canada: “The village of Grabina, Vladimir-Volyn region. On Sunday, August 29, 1943, the news came that the Bandera people were being killed: Father ordered me to hide. When they entered our yard, my mother was there, who was immediately shot with a pistol. The father saw this and, going out, said: “What do you need, because I didn’t do anything wrong to you?” Bandera in response hit him with an ax in the head. The father fell, then the bandit also shot him. The mother was killed immediately, and the sister on the third day.

E.P. from Poland sent an extract from the parish book of the village of Mosty Velikie near Zhovkva, in which 20 dead were indicated. In the village of Rokitna on Palm (Catholic) Sunday, 16 people were killed with axes, and three people: Kazimir Vititsky, a palamar, his wife and child were drowned in an ice hole.

K.I. from the UK: “Germanovka. The attack took place in September 1943 at dawn. I was attacked by close neighbors - Kostecki. Headed and Braided. They beat me and robbed me. February 14, 1944 was my wedding cousin, not far from me, on our street. The young one worked at the post office and invited his boss, and when he was driving away, the Bandera people shot him dead. Shooting began, grenades were thrown. All the wedding guests were killed, the hut was burned down. The musicians were also killed, there were six of them, among them there were several Ukrainians. There were also several Ukrainians among the guests, they were also killed. 26 people were killed. One Ukrainian, a neighbor, allowed me to spend the night in his hut, but one day, coming from the church, he said that he could no longer hide me, as the priest said: “Brothers and sisters, the time has come when we can repay the Poles, Jews and Communists” . And my neighbor worked at the state farm, so he was considered a communist. The surname of this priest is Voloshin. There was one Polish-Ukrainian family, so she, like all Poles, was destroyed. Before the war, life together with the Ukrainians was good, enmity came, as they began to organize the UPA. At the end of November 1944, a leaflet was nailed to the gate, on which it was written that I should get out of the village in three days, otherwise they would kill and burn me. I left everything and ran away."

And so on and so forth. I repeat: it is not possible to publish all the facts. I did not have the opportunity to receive information from Ukraine, in particular from Volyn and Galicia regarding the Ukrainians tortured there by Bandera. When I applied to Ukraine, they did not answer my letters or kept silent about the essence of the matter. I can’t understand - either they are still afraid of Bandera, or they are already afraid of them again. If I lived in Ukraine, I would get such information. I consider it necessary, while some witnesses of these atrocities are still alive, to create a joint Polish-Ukrainian, and perhaps also a Polish-Ukrainian-Jewish commission or committee to obtain facts from direct witnesses of the murders. So that you can combine this data with those that already exist, and print at least a small circulation of a document so that such a book is in scientific institutions in Poland and Ukraine, in libraries. Those who live in Poland and Ukraine should take care of this...

On August 30, 1943, Kupy, a Polish village in the Lyuboml district, was surrounded in the morning by UPA “archers” and Ukrainian peasants, mainly from the village of Lesnyaki, who carried out a massacre of Poles. Everyone was killed, including women, children, the elderly. They killed in huts, in yards, in utility rooms, using axes, pitchforks, dryuchki, and they shot at those who were running away. Whole families were thrown into wells, covered with earth. Pavel Pronchuk, a Pole who jumped out of the shelter to protect his mother, was caught, put on a bench, cut off his arms and legs and left him to suffer longer. The Ukrainian family of Vladimir Krasovsky with two children was brutally tortured there. Of the 282 inhabitants of the village, 138 people were killed, including 63 children.

In Wola Ostrovetska on the same day, out of 806 inhabitants, 529 were killed, including 220 children (the author quotes data from the book of Polish authors Yu. Turovsky and V. Semashko about the atrocities of the OUN-UPA - ed.).

In the book of Turovsky and Semashko, on 166 pages of small print, the names of villages are listed, the number of inhabitants, the number of those killed, the methods of murder, the number of children killed, and the help of Ukrainians are called. The authors at the same time each time turn to the sources of information. The description of the atrocities of the OUN-UPA has the form of a calendar, starting in September 1939 and ending in July 1945. The authors are notable for their objectivity, many times describe the assistance provided to the Poles by Ukrainians, write about the murders of Ukrainians. They calculated that 60,000-70,000 Poles died at the hands of Ukrainian nationalists in 1939-1945 in Volyn alone, which was about 20% of the then Polish population of this region.

Against the backdrop of these facts, the multi-year campaign that the Ukrainian diaspora in the West is conducting to protect Ivan Demjanjuk (a sadistic overseer in one of the Nazi concentration camps, the trial of which took place in Israel - ed.) is striking. Many millions of dollars were spent on this action. Since this process is allegedly directed against all Ukrainians, why does the Ukrainian nationalist diaspora, which has such political and financial opportunities ... not bring Oleksandr Korman (author of a book about the crimes of Bandera, published in London - ed.) to justice for him, as she believes , false allegations about the atrocities of Ukrainian nationalists, why not involve the priest Vatslav Shetelnitsky, Bishop Vincent Urban for their allegations that the OUN-UPA brutally tortured tens of thousands of Polish civilians. Now there are all the possibilities of such prosecution before the court in Poland, where there are many Ukrainian lawyers. At the same time, it is possible to hold publishing houses accountable, to seek a court decision to stop the distribution of books ... But Ukrainian nationalists are doing nothing in this direction. And the authors of the books, I think, would be glad to appear before the court, to provide evidence of the truth of what they wrote. And the court, having established the facts of the murder of the Poles, would simultaneously recognize the guilt of the OUN-UPA. This is what Ukrainian nationalists are afraid of. And the named authors did not dishonor the Ukrainian people in any way, they did not tarnish their honor. They all say: Ukrainian nationalists, OUN-UPA, Nachtigal (a battalion formed by the Nazis from nationalists - ed.), the SS division "Galicia" and others killed and tortured.

That is why the Ukrainian nationalists are silent. People say: "The cat knows whose fat it ate." They will not do anything to bring about a trial... The book by Y. Turovsky and V. Semashko should be purchased by former members of the UPA. Maybe after reading them, a conscience will wake up? Maybe someone will remember those terrible years, that "heroism", that spilled blood of the defenseless. The book contains the names of localities, the names of the victims, in some cases the names of the perpetrators.

Since 1946, I have been convinced that the UPA, Bandera and other nationalists killed Poles and Ukrainians who did not support them ...

Soon I also learned about how they killed Ukrainians sent by the Soviet government to Western Ukraine, often against their will. So far, these terrible murders have been written about by Polish authors, as well as Soviet ones, including Ukrainian ones. However, the latter wrote under severe censorship. And they were not very interested in killing Poles. They were not very trusted. The Poles did not believe, because they are Poles. The communists did not believe, because they are communists. But how can one not believe when there is so much evidence presented by living witnesses.

Although the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism, like German National Socialism, is far from Christian ideals, Ukrainian nationalists love to turn to God, rely on the Greek Catholic Church, which is subordinate to the Pope of Rome, like the Polish one. Therefore, we read what the Catholic priest Vatslav Shetelnitsky writes about the crimes of the OUN-UPA. There will be only fragments from his book published in 1992. If you do not believe him, then who to believe then at all?

“... in 1943 and at the beginning of 1944, very often (in Terebovelskaya paraffin - V.P.) funerals of the victims of the murders committed by Bandera took place. In particular, the population was shocked by the murder of 11 Poles - residents of the village of Plebanovka, 2 km from Terebovlya, committed late in the evening on November 24, 1943. A Jew was hiding in a brick factory in Plebanovka. Somehow, the Ukrainian police found out about this, and they turned to the local Pole Yan Yukhnevich, demanding that he take the Jew out of the hiding place. When Yukhnevich entered the territory of the plant, a policeman shot him. Bandera drove up two trucks with extinguished headlights on the street. Zofia Chrzanowska... We went to the village on foot. After some time, a cry was heard from Plebanovka. The Pole Polishevsky, a resident of Terebovlya, saw and heard this. That night, together with the Ukrainians, he was on duty on the railway. He warned him: "If you want to live, then remember - you have not seen or heard anything."

Bandera dispersed in groups around the village, entered some huts and tortured people there. With axes and knives, they then killed Jan Gliva, Jan Krukovsky ... (hereinafter referred to as V.P.). On the day of the funeral, the vicars from Terebovlia then arrived: priest Peter Lewandowski and the author of this message, who sent prayers over the bodies of the dead. Before us was a terrible picture of human remains, cut with knives, chopped with axes, with severed legs and arms ...

A few kilometers from Terebovlya is the village of Bavoriv, ​​where priests Karol Protsik and Ludwik Rutina were shepherds. The organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in Smolyants at a meeting on 10/28/1943 issued a death sentence to these priests and the organist Wisniewski for taking part in the funeral of the Poles tortured to death by members of this organization. The execution of the sentence took place on November 2, 1943. Around 6 pm, a group of murderers broke into the church. The organist was shot dead on the spot, priest Protsik was dragged out of the room. Priest Rutina escaped through the window, a grenade was thrown at him, but it did not explode. Priest Protsik began to scream, they pierced him with a bayonet, tied him up and took him into the forest. The body was never found."

From the author's data, it is known that on January 21, 1945, Bandera killed priest Wojciech Rogowski from the parish in Maidan near Kopichynets. On February 10, priest Jan Valnichka, brutally murdered, was buried - before the murder they mocked him, ordered him to dance before his death. They killed him with a shot in the mouth. He was from the parish in Kotsiubyntsy… The author writes that on 03/19/1989 in Wroclaw in the Church of Christ the King a memorial service was held for the Poles of the village of Verbovets killed on the night of 03/19/1944. After the memorial service, Anthony Gomulkevich, a witness to the events, said: “Forty-five years have passed since those tragic events in our village, which is located between Terebovlya, Chortkiv and Buchach ... For a long time, our relations with Ukrainians have developed normally, as usually happens between neighbors. We visited each other, helped in various works, and mixed Polish-Ukrainian families were common.

In the meantime, already in the first days of July 1941, the Ukrainian police, who were called “Schutzmanns”, took away the first Pole from Verbovets, twenty-seven-year-old Maciej Bielsky, under the pretext of interrogation. He was bullied and died from beatings. Then, during an attack on the neighboring Tomb, they tortured Leon Sonetsky, Stanislav Gotz, as well as the families of Malinovsky, Mazurov, Yanitsky and others. In the neighboring village of Lyaskovtsy, having destroyed the Jews, the Schutzmanns and Bandera took up the Polish population. On the basis of the verdict of the chief of the gang in Lyaskovtsy, Nikolai Poperechny, Bronislav Grushetsky, Michal Grushetsky, Nikolai Friedrich, Piotr Ovsyansky, Vladislav Ovsyansky and Kazimierz Snezhek were martyred in the parish house of the Greek Catholic parish. Everyone was stripped, tied with barbed wire and beaten to death. Even before they died, they drove nails into their heads, cut off their arms and legs with an ax or cut off their arms and legs with a saw, and pierced their stomachs with a bayonet ... they tortured them for "independence" ... On May 18, 1944, eleven o'clock in the evening was approaching. A rocket was fired from Lyaskovtsy in the direction of Verbovets ... we guessed that it would begin soon ... And then the first houses of Polish residents caught fire. Bandera poured gasoline on the houses and set them on fire. People ran away. In the open space, they became victims of Bandera. Those who hid suffocated from the smoke ... In the morning the shooting stopped. Survivors began to come from the fields. They told about the death of their loved ones (the following is a list of families who died at the hands of the OUN - ed.). We have gathered today at the Church of Christ the King in Wroclaw to take part in a memorial service on the forty-fifth anniversary of the burning of the Polish part of our Verbovets and the murder of our mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends and acquaintances by Ukrainian nationalists. We came here without hatred... We, Poles from the Ternopil land, do not want to take revenge. Even now, after the tragedy, there was not a single case of revenge on the part of the Poles who survived. Immediately after the tragedy, the Germans arrived in cars at the burnt Verbovets crime scene. They pointed their machine guns at the Ukrainian population and asked the barely alive Vincent Sedlyak whether to shoot at the Ukrainians. He replied: "No, don't shoot!"

Let this fact be an answer to those who abroad in various newspapers are increasingly writing about the Ukrainians of Podolia and Volhynia allegedly destroyed by the Poles ... Priest Zugeniusz Butra from Verbovets escaped only because he was warned by a local Greek Catholic priest. He managed to leave for Budzanov.

In the eyes of the Poles - OUN, UPA, Bandera - are synonymous. Volodymyr Mazur, deputy chairman of the OUN-b Wire at the great veche in honor of the UPA in Kiev on Sophia Square on August 9, 1992, said: “In the 20th century, the UPA, more than any other Ukrainian institution or formation, contributed to the education of the Ukrainian people national consciousness, national dignity and national pride… The UPA and OUN declared to the whole world that the Ukrainian nation lives and it is the only master in its native land, with the right given to it by God to its own national state.”

And not a word about the murders of Poles. These facts are hushed up by the historian Myroslav Prokop, an active figure in the OUN, who published a study “Ukrainian anti-Nazi. underground 1941–1944”… The murders of Poles in Volhynia and Galicia are not mentioned in the publications of 1992 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the UPA, at a scientific conference dedicated to this date.

In confirmation of the evidence of the killings of the Polish civilian population in Volyn, I will cite absolutely objective sources - Czech authors, formerly residents of Volyn. My friend, a Czech, a colonel, answered my question: “Is it true that Ukrainians killed Poles in Volhynia?” - answered: "They killed. But not all Ukrainians. There were those who did not approve of the killings, but were silent, since the terror of the OUN-UPA reigned. Many Ukrainians paid with their lives for the resistance of the OUN-UPA. The UPA, the OUN Security Service terrorized the Ukrainian population of Volhynia. “This Czech pointed to a number of facts of Ukrainian assistance to the Poles in the form of a warning about planned attacks. Pointing to Vasil from Kozakova Dolina, not far from Boremlya, who, under the Bolsheviks, said: "The Germans will come - there will be a free Ukraine." And as soon as Bandera began to exterminate the Polish population, the same Vasil said: "So we will not build Ukraine." People heard it. Two days later, his body was found in a well with a wire around his neck, and his wife, aged 24–25, was also found there...

The book “Volyn Czechs” by Józef Foitikai and four other authors fell into my hands. Describing the years of the German occupation, the authors write: “When the Russians left, Bandera began - it was the same fascism only in the nationalist Ukrainian form ... On the feast of Peter and Paul, June 29, 1943, a gang passed through the village strangers with axes. The next day, we learned that at night they attacked the Polish colony of Zagai and brutally killed all its inhabitants ... In the village of Rachin ... in 1943, Ukrainian nationalists killed a Polish citizen Golyakovskaya ... In 1942, Bandera began to kill Polish citizens of Volhynia ...

Bandera burned Polish villages: Marusya, Vydumka, Maryanovka and part of Skurchev. And here is another Czech book by the author Vaclav Shirz "The Past, Closed by Time", which also describes the life of the Czechs in Volyn. By the way, it says here. “When the Red Army retreated in June 1941, the Ukrainians began to settle scores among themselves. On Boyarka, the chairman of the village council and his 14-year-old son were killed with a pitchfork. Several Ukrainians were shot dead... Together with the Germans, Ukrainian nationalists returned home, who had previously fled to Poland occupied by the Germans, where they underwent special training at a school in Krakow. In Krasnaya Gora, they staged something like a people's trial of Soviet activists in 1939-1941. The enmity manifested itself with such force that the mother did not protect her daughter or son, the son - father, brother - brother.

... A week later (in July 1941 - V.P.) the Gestapo front-line troops came after the front-line troops and with it Ukrainian nationalists trained at a school in Krakow: one of them was a soldier of the Polish Army Dmytro Novosad from Krasnaya Gora ... Together with The Germans disarmed the policemen, put them in a car, took them to the forest, and there they shot. They also took young Pole lads from Ludvikovka to work in Germany and shot them in the forest. Without any trial, Polish intellectuals were shot dead in Mlinov - 41 Poles and 20 Jews. This is how the Ukrainian police began to operate, the "shutsmans" under the leadership of Dmitry Novosad ... During 1941-42. the Ukrainian police, together with the Gestapo, staged several pogroms in the vicinity.

... During the winter of 1942 until 1943, it came to single, then mass killings of Poles, before Easter they called out: “Remove Poles and Jews from Ukraine”, that is, drive them out or kill them ...

Bandera's extremists said: "We need blood up to our knees, so that Ukraine will be free." At the end of 1942 or at the beginning of 1943, unknown people killed Ukrainian Nikolay Dombrovsky in Turetskaya Gora. He was not a communist, but he was an intelligent, logically thinking man, a good friend of the Czechs. He bravely expressed views that did not coincide with the official ideology of the Bandera underground. He was neither the first nor the last. Bandera terror strangled the voices of reason. Bandera focused on arson and murder - of entire Polish families, later of entire villages. The spring of 1943 passed in continuous fires. Rural villages burned at night. The Poles, expelled from their villages to the cities, entered the service of the Germans, the police and took revenge on the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians fled into the forest. Several Ukrainians were killed. Bandera killed several Czechs in the vicinity, mostly Catholics or from families mixed with Poles. Polish departments attacked the families of active Ukrainian nationalists at night ... In the winter of 1943, in the evening, on the road from Uzhintsy, Bandera attacked a cart with Polish women from Karolinka, who were going to Maslenka to spend the night at Poloshchansky, hoping that it was not so dangerous there. They shot Yuzef Poloshchansky's wife and another woman. At the end of 1943, a miller, a Pole Stets, who had a Ukrainian wife, was attacked, and her five-year-old daughter was also killed. Before the winter of 1942, there was a pogrom of Jews in Mlinov. They went to their death like a flock of sheep, without resisting. Many fled, hiding with the Poles, Czechs, and in some cases with the Ukrainians. The occupiers and the Ukrainian police threatened with death those who hid the Jews, hunted them through the forests and villages. In the estate of Volodymyr Vostroy from Frankiv, a 14-year-old Jewish boy was caught, driven all the way to Karolinka, and shot dead. 14 Jews who were hiding in a bunker were shot dead in the Grafchina forest near Frankiv... Four boys aged 12-14 were shot dead in the Czech forest near Frankov. The head of the Mlinovsky policemen - "shutsmans" Dmitry Novosad became a bunch - an ensign. He boasted: “I destroyed the entire Polish intelligentsia in Mlinov. He personally shot 869 Jews. I made a promise to myself that I would shoot a thousand.”

The London Polish publishing house publishes the memoirs of witnesses of the Bandera murders, edited by Endrzej Gertrich. On page 41, about a hundred testimonies are filed in small print, reading which it is impossible not to cry. The author also publishes letters from Ukrainians. One of them says: “I want to explain that on October 10, 1944, Bandera killed 55 Ukrainians, not Poles, with the exception of a few Roman Catholics. They killed those who went to work on collective farms, as Bandera wanted to starve out the Bolsheviks. The trouble is that the children of the rural rich were in the forest, like Bandera, and the rural poor could not survive, so they had to go to work on the collective farm. It was a struggle of Bandera, members of the UPA, for the land lost in favor of the collective farm morgues, and not for Ukraine.

P. Falkovskaya writes from Brazil: “Between Lutsk and Rivne there was the village of Palchi… In 1942-43, Bandera tortured 18 people from her husband’s relatives… they tortured, pulled out their tongues. An 86-year-old blacksmith was cut to pieces alive ... One Ukrainian had a Polish wife, so Bandera ordered his brother to kill him. The family fled from Kotov to Palchi, on the way they were attacked by Bandera, between them was that brother. They killed the whole family - a Ukrainian father, a Polish mother and children. In the village of Zverev, Bandera killed an entire family, then the Poles found a living baby suckling the breast of a murdered mother.

It will be justified if I also give at least some evidence that comes from the other side. I fell into the hands of the Bandera magazine "Do Zbroi" No. 6 (19) for August-September 1950. It contains a lot of interesting things under the heading "From the fighting of the UPA and the armed underground under the Moscow-Bolshevik occupation." Here are some facts. 01/01/47 in the village. Kalyniv ( Sambir district, Drogobitsk region), OUN militants liquidated the lieutenant of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Melnikov, a district police officer in the village. 01/02/47 in the village. Golyn (Kalush district, Stanislav region), the rebels of the "Lynx" department confiscated grain and flour at the state mill. On January 6, 1947, in Dorogiv (Galich district, Stanislav region), the rebels destroyed the first secretary of the district committee of the party ... On January 8, 1947, in the village. Borsch destroyed the selrada, burned the lists of "voters". 01/10/47, the rebels under room. hundred S. destroyed in with. Krylos 4 mvdist. 01/21/47 in the village. Ugrinov Dol, the rebels of the "Cranes" department destroyed 3 mvdists and wounded one. 03/23/47 in the village. Dear ... the rebels liquidated the sent party member - the chairman of the village council, who tried to organize a collective farm in the village.

And here is another issue of “To the rescue”: “04/02/48, the rebels burned the narrow-gauge railway bridge between the villages of Spas-Lugi. 02 04.48 in the forest near the town of Bolekhiv, underground members shot dead two party members, destroyed the club premises, set fire to the collective farm… destroyed the telephone line… shot the organizer of the collective farm… liquidated the mechanic of the Dolinsk motor depot… destroyed the film shifter… killed the head of the peat plant… punished the secretary of the primary Komsomol organization with death by hanging .

In the summer of 1948, the rebels held mass actions against the collective farms in the Volyn region ... liquidated the Bolshevik servants-activists ... "

And so on and so forth for 8 pages of the magazine. From the above it is clear what the UPA did after the war. This continued until 1950. And now they are making noise that the Bolsheviks took every tenth inhabitant of Western Ukraine to Siberia. Peaceful peasants were to be held accountable for their affairs. The activity of Bandera was a crime against the civilian population of Western Ukraine... I also want to turn to the works of Ukrainian writers known today (many of whom have changed their views by 180 degrees - ed.). Here I found a poem by Dmitry Pavlychko from his collection "Bistrina", Kiev, 1959, p. 138, which contains the following lines:

Budesh, Ukraine,
Long memory "yatati ...
Violet eyes,
Eyes-dawn.
Budesh pam "yatati
Dermansk krinitsy!

What is this "Dermansky krinitsy"? Yury Melnichuk writes about this in the book “Virvana heart”, Kiev, 1966, p. 147–157.

“The Bandera gang “Derzhach” in the Ostrog region brutally cracked down on the family of Ivan Raevsky. They tied his hands, put a loop of a telephone cable around his neck, hit him on the head with a rifle butt, hung him up, and to be sure, they decided to pierce his heart with a knife ...

Bandera in December 1943 in the village of Danidovtsy, Ostrozhsky district, shot the Goncharov family, threw the corpses into a well ...

In the village of Bokiymy, Demidov District, on one of the September nights of 1944, 12 local residents were tortured and thrown into a well. Among them was Larisa Rutkovskaya, born in 1940 ... During the massacre of the inhabitants of the village of Verba, Verbovsky district, Bandera tortured and threw 12 people into the well ...

In the village of Rokitnoye, Rokitnyansky district, Bandera hanged Tatyana Korzh, and strangled her husband and children ... To cover up the traces of their crime, they threw the corpses into the Goryn River ... "

“In the village of Maly Midsku, Stepansky District ... they killed an old mother and son ... in the family of Alexei Romantsev, they tortured their wife and four children. They cut off their arms and legs, cut open their stomachs. These horrors are described by Olga Romantseva, whom the bandits also cruelly tortured, pulled out her tongue and she is now dumb. Boris Kharchuk in the book “The Word about Derman”, Kiev, 1959, p. 7–11 writes: “Bloodsuckers threw Mary alive into a dark well, where her husband had been thrown earlier. Not only Mary, who once took living water from this springs... Both small children and old mothers were thrown into the spring by gangsters, filling it with sharp stones... The spring became the spring of death.

There are a lot of such descriptions - with the names of villages, with surnames, dates of crimes committed - in Ukrainian literature ...

This is what happened in Western Ukraine, in particular, in Volyn, in Derman, where Ulas Samchuk was born - the editor of the newspaper "Volyn" during the occupation, the one who "did not see" these atrocities, because the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism did not allow him to do this. Ulas Samchuk did not see these atrocities, and today they do not want to remember them in Volhynia. Moreover, in a report at a conference in Lutsk on October 8-10, 1992, L. Stepanov and L. Stepanova say that "Ulas Samchuk's memoirs are a historical source" ("Volin's past and present". Theses of additional reports, Lutsk, 1992) . With such theses, the named authors spoke at the Lutsk Pedagogical Institute. This is probably how future teachers are being taught now: “There were no OUN-UPA crimes, because Ulas Samchuk did not write about them” ... Additional information about the almost hopeless situation of Ukrainians in Western Ukraine during the war and after it can be New Days, a monthly magazine published in Toronto. The author's father, after the end of the war, was forced to hide from Bandera, as he "did not want to go to kill, he wanted to have a clear conscience." He was hiding from Bandera, and at that time the NKVD suspected that he was in the UPA, and tortured his mother to tell where her son was. It was not easy for the Ukrainians.

From eyewitness accounts and other materials, one can reproduce the following course of events in Volhynia and Galicia in 1941-45:

The OUN, prepared in advance, simultaneously with the advance of German troops to the east, organized its own police to help the Germans; - The OUN sent its emissaries to Volhynia, who, through propaganda and terror, forced many Ukrainian peasants of Volhynia to take part in robberies and brutal murders of the Polish civilian population; - Ukrainian police took part in the destruction of the Jewish and Polish population of Western Ukraine;

Part of the Ukrainian population did not take part in the killings, they helped Jews and Poles; Ukrainians who refused to take part in the killings were most often killed;

The killings were brutal, they were aimed at the destruction of the Polish population in Western Ukraine;

The destruction did not spare the mixed Polish-Ukrainian families; - the destruction had an organized, pre-planned character;

The organization and planning of the extermination is also indicated by the geography of the genocide: it began in the northeast of Western Ukraine, moved southwest, ending in Galicia; ..

The killing of Poles took place only in those territories of Ukraine where there was the influence of the OUN. This is evidenced by the facts that the Poles fled to the Zhytomyr region, trying to find and finding salvation from the Ukrainians;

The killing of Poles was not the work of Ukrainians as members of the nation, but of the OUN as a Ukrainian criminal ideology and policy.

Meanwhile, in Ukraine, a campaign is underway to rehabilitate the OUN-UPA, to recognize its "heroism." Some Ukrainian historians joined this campaign (probably not selfishly), a film was made about the “heroism” of the UPA, and the question of the mass extermination of Poles is systematically hushed up. Levko Lukyanenko, Ambassador of Ukraine to Canada (former - ed.), speaking on the occasion of the anniversary of the UPA in Hamilton (Canada), said: “Different fables have been spreading about the UPA for a long time in Ukraine. With the advent of democracy, with the opportunity to speak and spread the truth, our people were able to discover and re-read these glorious pages of Ukrainian history. On behalf of the people and the Representative of Ukraine (L. Kravchuk - ed.), I welcome the UPA fighters in Canada and I am proud of your contribution to the struggle for national independence.” Is it really possible to be proud of what the OUN-UPA did in the village of Palchi and a dozen others?! ..

“People! Know! Moscow, Poland, Madyari, Zhidva - Tse Thy enemies. Nishch ix! Lyakhіv, zhidіv, komunіstіv roam without mercy!..” (From the appeal of Stepan Bandera, distributed in Lvov since June 30, 1941. On this day, the OUN members adopted the “Act of Proclamation of the Ukrainian State”).

The “Nakhtigalevites” (fighters of the “Nakhtigall” battalion) were taken out of the houses of communists and Poles, who were simply hung on poles and balconies ... when the arrested person left the corridor, he was hit in the temple with a hammer outside the door. The arrested person fell, and the Ukrainian, armed with a carbine with a bayonet, pierced the heart and stomach of the one who fell. Others immediately pulled the body away and threw it onto a large cart… The residents of Lvov called the Ukrainian soldiers of the Nachtigall battalion “birdies” because of the signs that were on their cars and motorcycles. "Ptashniks" were in German clothes and with German military signs. They spoke Ukrainian, and they had blue and yellow bows on the handles of the bayonets, they did not communicate with the Poles at all, except for the fact that they took part in their executions ... We were brought to Lontskogo Street ... Together we were about 500 Jews, almost all of them were killed Ukrainians…”

The wife of Professor Casimir Bartel says: “I also visited Archbishop Sheptytsky, but he also replied that he could not do anything. In general, these terrible events were not the work of wild, drunken soldiers. I got the impression that everything was done in an organized manner.”

These were quotes from O. Korman's book, published in 1990 in London. If what is described here is an invention of the author, if it is slander, then the relevant OUN figures, in particular the OUN-b, should hold the author accountable for "insulting the honor of the Nation." However, this has not been done. Apparently, it is not in their interests to publicize these facts ...

The historian Richard Tootzky, known for his objectivity, wrote an extensive review of David Kagane's work on the Lvov ghetto. In it, Richard Tootsky writes: “The participation of extreme nationalists in searches, arrests and murders of Jews (in Lvov) was the reason for the first appeal of Rabbi Levin to Metropolitan Sheptytsky, known for his benevolent attitude towards believing Jews. The Metropolitan ... promised to proclaim a pastoral message, to warn Ukrainians not to commit murders, but at the same time admitted that he was powerless against the actions of the Nazis ... At the end of July, Ukrainian nationalists, mostly peasants from nearby villages, with the participation of the Ukrainian police, inspired by the Nazis, who were 2–3 in each group committed pogroms against Jews. It was an inspired action throughout Eastern Galicia ... All the men who were caught during the actions were immediately killed with bayonets or shot. Kagane, however, drew attention to the fact that the majority of the Ukrainian intelligentsia had nothing to do with these actions. Rabbi Kagane wrote: “I have great respect for a part of the clergy (Ukrainian priests - V.P.), Ukrainian monks who were in danger saving Jewish children. Unfortunately, these were the exceptions. Pastoral messages did not reach the consciousness of young Ukrainians.”

Directions of propaganda - who is the enemy?

The OUN painted the image of the enemy in front of the Ukrainians. Who was it? They were "invaders", "zaimantsi", "come in", "spiders". We find such a definition of the "enemies" of the Ukrainian people in the official documents of the OUN, starting from the resolutions of the First Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists. In the eyes of the OUN, the occupiers were not only representatives of the Polish authorities, but also the so-called “colonists” settled by it on the territory of Western Ukraine, as well as all other Poles, regardless of when and under what circumstances they ended up in Western Ukraine. Anyway, they were "zays". The dictionary of the Ukrainian language understands a “zayda” as a person who came from somewhere, not a local one. Everyone who was not a Ukrainian was considered a stranger, and a stranger was an enemy. This is a very primitive approach. Even in the days of Kievan Rus, princes gave their daughters in marriage abroad. And the Rurik princes themselves were not “tuteshnіmi”, that is, local Ukrainians, they came from Scandinavia. The development of means of transport has led to mass migration of the population. People mixed with each other, became relatives. Who then is considered an enemy? My father, who married a Polish woman? And her cousins ​​were Orthodox, they considered themselves Ukrainians - Nadezhda and Polina.

Are the children and grandchildren of my Pole aunt tortured by Bandera, who still live in Ukraine today - Adam, Roman, Peter, Regina and their children, to be considered enemies? But my wife's aunt considers herself Russian, since her mother was Russian, and her father is Czech. The mother of the famous Ukrainian director Les Kurbas was Polish. So Les Kurbas is also an enemy? ..

It is interesting what the OUN ideologists would say if the Indians created an organization that set itself the task of expelling with fire and iron all "foreigners" from Canada and the United States, and among them also Ukrainians who settled on this continent a hundred years ago or arrived after I and II World Wars?..

Without delving into the nuances, we can say that the Poles settled in Western Ukraine more than 500 years ago. They were also among the Zaporizhian Cossacks. Germans, Czechs, and many Jews lived on the territory of Ukraine.

The racial "cleansing" approach used by the OUN was a crime. It was a consequence of the program settings of the OUN.

Against whom did the OUN-UPA fight?

Today, when the OUN screams with all its might that it fought on two fronts - against the Nazis and against the Bolsheviks, the question arises: against whom did it actually fight? Until now, some say that the OUN-UPA fought exclusively against the Bolsheviks, collaborating with the Germans - this was claimed by Soviet historians, those who follow the OUN propaganda claim that the OUN-UPA fought simultaneously on two fronts - against the Germans and the Bolsheviks. Moreover, Ukrainian nationalist historians, as a rule, hush up the struggle of the OUN-UPA against the Poles. As a result of the disinformation activities of Ukrainian nationalist historians, as well as the propaganda of all three OUN factions, a false mode of action of the OUN-UPA is being created.

Dr. Volodymyr Kubiyovich, head of the UCC (Ukrainian Central Committee, a legal organization that operated during the Nazi occupation, one of the founders of the Galicia OS division) spoke on this topic: “We in the UCC urged our people to maintain their positions in the committees , not to provoke the Germans and remember that the anti-German action helps the Bolsheviks. Nationalist historian Petr Mirchuk, author of books on the history of the OUN-UPA, writes: “Naturally, the UPA departments avoided big fights with the German army. UPA strikes were directed primarily against the German administration and against the German police.

The Polish historian T.A. Olshansky writes: “It goes without saying that the UPA did not engage in sabotage on the railways, did not conduct actions supporting the actions of the Red Army, also avoided direct battles with the Wehrmacht due to the possibility, attacked the institutions of the occupiers, its police and auxiliary formations…”

The OUN-UPA had enough common sense to realize its strength in comparison with the forces of Germany and the USSR in the war. In that war, more than five million German army clashed with almost five million Soviet army. And the OUN numbered about 40 thousand. And then, probably, with the Self-Defense Bush Departments. “One UPA-SKO soldier with a rifle, more often with an ax, pitchfork or stick, without state supplies, against 250 armed modern technology soldier of the Wehrmacht and the Red Army.

There was no "war" of the UPA against the Germans, there was also no war against the Bolsheviks. This does not mean that the UPA did not have clashes with small German units or with the Red partisans. Their reason and purpose was to secure a certain territory for the OUN-UPA or to obtain the necessary weapons and ammunition.

The OUN-UPA at first counted on the victory of Germany, with which they absolutely groundlessly linked the hope of building a Ukrainian state. These hopes were associated more with the “brotherly” fascist ideology than with the strategy Nazi Germany And after the Stalingrad defeat of the 6th Army of Paulus, the OUN began to count on the mutual destruction of the two warring parties, as well as on the third world war. It was at the time of the clash between the Western allies and the USSR that the OUN-UPA was preparing a “clean” territory liberated from the Poles, so that there would not even be a thought of joining Western Ukraine to Poland ...

There are no facts in the literature that would prove the actions of the UPA against the Germans in order to destroy them. There is no information regarding such acts of sabotage as the undermining of railways, the destruction of military trains heading east ...

Mikola Lebed - chief architect of the assassinations

There was such an architect. He had his residence in Lvov and from there led the actions. His activities were strictly conspiratorial. It was Mikola Lebed, chief of the OUN security service. The headquarters of the UPA received from Lebed in June 1943 the following combat missions:

Immediately and as soon as possible end the action of total cleansing of the Ukrainian territory from the Polish population;

Consistently destroy the internal enemy, that is, all democrats from under the flag of the UNR (Ukrainian People's Republic) and other political groups;

Just as mercilessly destroyed were those of their own who did not agree with the methods of M. Lebed. So, Taras Bulba-Borovets, one of the organizers of the UPA, writes that when his negotiations with Lebed ended unsuccessfully, he “issued death sentences in absentia to the entire headquarters and ordered the Security Council to carry out these sentences by all means. Lebed's brethren agitated all our warriors caught to go over to their side, and those who refused were shot on the spot.

And a large-caliber nationalist Zinovy ​​Knysh simply writes "Swan is the executioner of Volhynia." Lebed now lives in the USA. And in 1992 he traveled to Ukraine, took part in scientific conferences, meetings on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the UPA.

Killing methods - number of victims

In the introduction to the topic of methods of extermination of the population, it is advisable to use motives from the underground writings of the UPA of that time. “In the dugouts, in the shade of the trees, the rebels cleaned their rifles and sharpened their sabers. And as at night the mother covered the villages and cities with darkness, they went out to their shelters. And the calm of the night was pierced by the whistle of bullets last time and having washed with his own blood, he said goodbye to the world.

After reading these lines, I made a note "That's the whole truth about the UPA." And a picture painted by a person close to me stood before my eyes. Night of March 24, 1944. Everyone is asleep. Houses caught fire after midnight. One of the sons jumped out of the hiding place, he was burned, but he ran away. His father burned to death in the fire of his own house. The other son was never able to get out of the hiding place and suffocated in the smoke. Mother, running away, was wounded by a bullet. A seven-year-old daughter, running away, stumbled upon a guardian. He pierced her chest with a bayonet. The girl screamed for the last time and, washing herself with her blood, said goodbye to life. The calm of the night was cut by the whistle of bullets.

And that was what the army did. An army that hid in the forest during the day, and at night went out to its unclean trade. Why did this strong army sit out during the day in their shelters? Why didn’t she fight with an open visor against the Germans and the Bolsheviks? Apparently, it was easier for her at night, like a thief, to go out, burn Polish villages, and kill those who were running away with shots and bayonets.

Reading the materials sent by witnesses of the murders, one can doubt the Christian faith, that God created man.

In Ukrainian nationalism there is no place for such Christian virtues as kindness, mercy, love for one's neighbor, nobility, respect for human dignity, pity. But hatred, bloodthirstiness, and disdain for human life dominate.

It hurts me, a Ukrainian, to write about the methods of murder used by the OUN-UPA. But it is impossible to remain silent about it. As a warning to future generations. Yes, and today's youth from the Ukrainian National Assembly - Ukrainian National Self-Defense.

So strengthen your nerves reader. I will give only a few examples here. All of them are documented.

Z.D. from Poland: “Those who ran away were shot, chased on horseback and killed. On August 30, 1943, in the village of Gnoino, the headman appointed 8 Poles to work in Germany. The Ukrainian Bandera partisans took them to the forest of Kobylno, where the Soviet camps used to be, and threw them alive into a well, into which they then threw a grenade.”

Ch.B. from the USA: In Podlesie, that was the name of the village, Bandera tortured four of the miller Petrushevsky's family, and 17-year-old Adolfina was dragged along a rocky rural road until she died.

E.B. from Poland: “After the murder of the Kozubskys in Belozerka near Kremenets, the Bandera people went to the Giuzikhovsky farm. Seventeen-year-old Regina jumped out the window, the bandits killed her daughter-in-law and her three-year-old son, whom she held in her arms. Then they set the house on fire and left.

A.L. from Poland: “August 30, 1943, the UPA attacked such villages and killed in them:

1. Kuty. 138 people, including 63 children.

2. Yankovits. 79 people, including 18 children.

3. Island. 439 people, including 141 children.

4. Will Ostrovetska. 529 people, including 220 children.

5. Colony Chmikov - 240 people, among them 50 children.

M.B. from the USA: "They shot, cut with knives, burned."

T.M. from Poland: “They hanged Ogashka, and before that they burned his hair on his head.”

M.P. from the USA: “They surrounded the village, set fire to and killed those who were fleeing.”

F.K. from the UK: “They took me with my daughter to a collection point near the church. There were already about 15 people - women and children. The centurion Golovachuk and his brother began to tie their arms and legs with barbed wire. The sister began to pray aloud, the centurion Golovachuk began to beat her in the face and stomp her feet.

F.B. from Canada: “Bandera came to our yard, caught our father and cut off his head with an ax, our sister was pierced with a bayonet. Mother, seeing all this, died of a broken heart.

Yu.V. from the UK: “My brother’s wife was Ukrainian, and because she married a Pole, 18 Bandera people raped her. She never recovered from this shock, her brother did not spare her, and she drowned herself in the Dniester.”

V. Ch. from Canada: “In the village of Bushkovitsy, eight Polish families were herded into a stodol, where they killed them all with axes and set the stodol on fire.”

Yu.Kh from Poland: “In March 1944, our village of Guta Shklyana was attacked by Bandera, among them was one named Didukh from the village of Oglyadov. Five people were killed. They shot and finished off the wounded. Y. Khorostetsky was cut in half with an ax. A minor was raped."

T.R. from Poland: “The village of Osmigovichi. On July 11, 1943, during the service of God, Bandera attacked, killed the worshipers, a week after that they attacked our village. Small children were thrown into the well, and those who were bigger were locked in the basement and filled up. One Banderite, holding a baby by the legs, hit his head against the wall. The mother of this child screamed, she was pierced with a bayonet.

A separate, very important section in the history of evidence of the mass extermination of Poles carried out by the OUN-UPA in Volyn is the book by Y. Turovsky and V. Semashko "Atrocities of Ukrainian nationalists committed against the Polish population of Volyn 1939-1945". This book is distinguished by its objectivity. It is not imbued with hatred, although it describes the martyrdom of thousands of Poles. This book should not be read by people with weak nerves. It lists and describes the methods of mass murder of men, women, and children on 166 pages of small print. Here are just a few excerpts from this book.

On July 16, 1942, Ukrainian nationalists committed a provocation in Klevan and prepared an anti-German leaflet in Polish. As a result, the Germans shot several dozen Poles.

November 13, 1942 Obirki, a Polish village near Lutsk. The Ukrainian police, under the command of the nationalist Sachkovsky, a former teacher, attacked the village because of their cooperation with the Soviet partisans. Women, children and the elderly were herded into one valley, where they were killed and then burned. 17 people were taken to Klevan and shot there.

November 1942, near the village of Virka. Ukrainian nationalists tortured Jan Zelinsky by placing him bound in a fire.

November 9, 1943, the Polish village of Parosle in the Sarny region. A gang of Ukrainian nationalists, pretending to be Soviet partisans, misled the villagers, who treated the gang during the day. In the evening, the bandits surrounded all the houses and killed the Polish population in them. 173 people were killed. Only two were saved, who were littered with corpses, and a 6-year-old boy who pretended to be killed. A later examination of the dead showed the exceptional cruelty of the executioners. Babies were nailed to tables kitchen knives Several people were flayed, women were raped, some had their breasts cut off, many had their ears and noses cut off, their eyes gouged out, their heads cut off. After the massacre, they arranged a booze at the local headman. After the executioners left, among the scattered bottles of samogon and the remnants of food, they found a one-year-old child nailed to the table with a bayonet, and a piece of pickled cucumber, half-eaten by one of the bandits, stuck in his mouth.

March 11, 1943 Ukrainian village of Litogoshcha near Kovel. Ukrainian nationalists tortured a Pole teacher, as well as several Ukrainian families who resisted the destruction of the Poles.

March 22, 1943, the village of Radovichi, Kovelsky district. A gang of Ukrainian nationalists dressed in German uniforms, demanding the issuance of weapons, tortured the father and two Lesnevsky brothers.

March 1943 Zagortsy, Dubna region. Ukrainian nationalists stole the farm manager, and when he ran away, the executioners stabbed him with bayonets, and then nailed him to the ground, "so that he would not get up."

March 1943. In the outskirts of Huta, Stepanskaya, Kostopol region, Ukrainian nationalists stole 18 Polish girls by deception, who were killed after being raped. The bodies of the girls were piled in one row and a ribbon was placed on them with the inscription: “This is how Lyashki (Polish women) should die.”

March 1943, Mosty village, Kostopol region Pavel and Stanislav Bednazhi had Ukrainian wives. Both were tortured by Ukrainian nationalists. They also killed the wife of one. The second Natalka, escaped.

March 1943, the village of Banasovka, Lutsk region. A gang of Ukrainian nationalists tortured 24 Poles, their bodies were thrown into a well.

March 1943 locality Antonovka, Sarnensky district. Jozef Eismont went to the mill. The owner of the mill, a Ukrainian, warned him of the danger. When he was returning from the mill, Ukrainian nationalists attacked him, tied him to a post, gouged out his eyes, and then cut him alive with a saw.

July 11, 1943, the village of Biskupichi, Volodymyr Volynsky district Ukrainian nationalists committed a massacre, driving the residents into the school premises. Then the family of Vladimir Yaskula was brutally murdered. The executioners broke into the house when everyone was asleep. Parents were killed with axes, and five children were placed nearby, covered with straw from mattresses and set on fire.

July 11, 1943, Svoychev settlement near Volodymyr Volynsky. Ukrainian Glembitsky killed his Polish wife, two children and his wife's parents.

July 12, 1943 ... the colony of Maria Volya near Volodymyr Volynsky Around 15.00 Ukrainian nationalists surrounded it and began to kill Poles using firearms, axes, pitchforks, knives, dryuchki About 200 people died (45 families). Some of the people, about 30 people, were thrown into the kopodets and there they were killed with stones. Those who ran away were hunted down and killed. During this massacre, the Ukrainian Vladislav Didukh was ordered to kill his Polish wife and two children. When he did not comply with the order, they killed him and his family. Eighteen children aged 3 to 12, who hid in the field, were caught by the executioners, put on a cart, brought to the village of Chesny Krest and killed everyone there, pierced with pitchforks, chopped with axes. The action was led by Kwasnitsky...

August 30, 1943, the Polish village of Kuty, Lubomlsky district. In the early morning, the village was surrounded by UPA archers and Ukrainian peasants, mainly from the village of Lesnyaki, and carried out a massacre of the Polish population. Pavel Pronchuk, a Pole who tried to protect his mother, was laid on a bench, his arms and legs were cut off, leaving him to be martyred.

August 30, 1943, the Polish village of Ostrowki near Luboml. The village was surrounded by a dense ring. Ukrainian emissaries entered the village, offering to lay down their arms. Most of the men gathered at the school where they were locked up. Then five people were taken outside the garden, where they were killed with a blow to the head and thrown into dug pits. The bodies were piled in layers, sprinkled with earth. Women and children were gathered in the church, ordered to lie down on the floor, after which they were shot in the head in turn. 483 people died, including 146 children.

And this is on 166 pages! And this is only in Volyn. And there will be Galicia! Let the leaders of all three factions of the OUN sue the authors of this book!

UPA member Danilo Shumuk cites in his book the story of an upovite: “In the evening we went out again to these same farms, organized ten carts under the mask of red partisans and drove in the direction of Koryt ... We drove, sang Katyusha and from time to time cursed in Russian ... "

And now the OUN claim that the Red partisans killed the Poles, masquerading as the UPA.

A Czech friend of mine writes: “I was working at the local hospital then. One morning they brought a two-year-old boy with severed hands and gouged out eyes. The unfortunate child's body was covered in bruises. The child no longer even cried and did not call his parents. The child's parents were killed."

Attention is drawn to the fact that attacks on Polish villages were often carried out before major religious holidays.

Enough! Enough of these terrible descriptions! Thinking about them, I cannot understand the psyche of criminals. Those who cut off the arms and legs of children, gouged out their eyes, cut open the bellies of women - as they look into the eyes of their grandchildren, look at their little hands and feet. Do not images of the perfect 50 years ago arise before them? Can they sleep peacefully holding a knife, an ax in their hands? Don't they feel the warm blood of their victims on their hands then?

In the Malay language there is a word "amok", which means a kind of madness - a desire to kill a person. The causes of "amoka" have not yet been investigated. But the “amok” of the executors of the OUN-UPA directives was caused solely by the influence of criminal propaganda, the criminal ideology of the OUN. All this followed from the time of the UVO. A pamphlet published in 1929 states:

“Required blood? - Let's give a sea of ​​blood! Terror required? - Let's make it hellish!.. Don't be ashamed to kill, rob and set it on fire. There is no ethics in wrestling!”

Related to the issue of methods of murder is the issue of the number of victims of the OUN-UPA. No one is now able to establish the number of Jews killed by the Nazis with the help of the Ukrainian auxiliary police. I did not find any literature that would convincingly and exhaustively indicate the number of victims of the OUN-UPA. The truth about the Ukrainians killed by the OUN-UPA should be investigated by historians who live in Ukraine… But… But now there are Ukrainian historians who have set themselves the task of “scientifically” justifying, even praising the OUN-UPA.

It will be extremely difficult for honest historians. In Ukraine, especially in Western Ukraine, the fear of the OUN again dominates - before the Ukrainian National Assembly, before the Ukrainian National Self-Defense. People in Western Ukraine still remember the OUN-UPA...

Yu. Turovsky and V. Semashko name the figure of 70 thousand Poles who died in Volyn, which is about 20% of the then Polish population of the region. Moreover, they emphasize that their materials cover only 1/3 of all the victims of the Volyn pogrom.

Other sources also give figures of 100 and 200 thousand killed.

The terrible consequences of the atrocities of the OUN-UPA. I want these terrible years not to be repeated. However, I see that the OUN in Ukraine is beginning to revive. I see danger in this. That's why I can't be silent...

Help of Ukrainians to Poles

From the letters that I received from my respondents, it turns out that many of them do not identify Bandera or Bulbovites from the UPA with the Ukrainian people. A large percentage of respondents answer the question - did the Ukrainians help the Poles, in the affirmative. Here are just a few examples:

V.M. from Canada: My father was warned about the planned attack by a Ukrainian acquaintance. We managed to escape to Kremenets, and Bandera’s men hung him, this Ukrainian, in the middle of the village and attached an inscription on his chest: “For treason.”

G.H. from Poland: After the UPA attack, local Ukrainians took the wounded Poles to the hospital...

Yu.Kh. from Poland: Klimchuk, a resident of Lopatin, knowing that he was in danger of death for helping the Poles, hid us at night in his hut, when our hut was surrounded by the UPA gang...

G.I. from the UK: The Ukrainian neighbor was so brave that he let me spend the night in his hut, although they were already crowded.

Ya.P. from Poland: Throughout the winter of 1944/45, almost every night, our family left the hut, hiding with Ukrainian neighbors ...

From the book by Yu. Turovsky and V. Semashko:

The Ukrainian Kosyak hid a lad from the Yaglinsky family and helped him;

Many Ukrainians in Mezhyrich and Korets volosts protested against the killings and helped the persecuted;

They also killed (Bandera) two Ukrainian women who warned the Poles about the danger;

The three children of Jan Kshishtak were saved by an old Ukrainian woman, but the next day they were taken from her by force and drowned in a well. Daughter Apolonia was hidden by Ukrainian Muzyka.

Murders of Ukrainians

03/15/42, the village of Kosice. The Ukrainian police, together with the Germans, killed 145 Poles, 19 Ukrainians, 7 Jews, 9 Soviet prisoners;

On the night of March 21, 1943, two Ukrainians were killed in Shumsk - Ishchuk and Kravchuk, who helped the Poles;

April 1943, Belozerka. These same bandits killed Ukrainian Tatyana Mikolik because she had a child with a Pole;

May 5, 1943, Klepachev. Ukrainian Petro Trokhimchuk and his Polish wife were killed;

30.08.43, Kuty. The Ukrainian family of Vladimir Krasovsky with two small children was brutally murdered;

August 1943, Yanovka. Bandera killed a Polish child and two Ukrainian children, as they were brought up in a Polish family;

August 1943, Antolin. Ukrainian Mikhail Mishchanyuk, who had a Polish wife, received an order to kill her and a one-year-old child. As a result of his refusal, he and his wife and child were killed by neighbors.

They killed according to the postulate: "He who is not with us is against us." That's how D. Dontsov taught. After all, "The nation is above all." And the man? And God? What about universal, Christian values? But were they in the doctrine and practice of Ukrainian nationalism OUN-UPA? No, they had no place in this system ...

The clash of the OUN with the East of Ukraine

I have always been an opponent of the division of Ukrainians into “zahіdnyakіv” and “skhіdnyakіv”. For some reason, it seems to me that this terminology meets the requirements of the first, because then they, the "zahіdniki", seem to be half the people, and this is not true. However, here I will adhere to this terminology in connection with the topic.

First of all, it should be remembered that before the war, the OUN never expanded its influence to the east from Zbruch. The task of instilling the ideology of nationalism was given to the “marching groups” of the OUN-b and OUN-m. The first to understand the imperviousness of the ideas of the OUN were the members of the “marching groups” of the OUN-m, who managed to gain a foothold in Kiev before the OUN-b. Among them were such prominent figures of the OUN as O. Olzhych and Olena Teliga, receptive souls, for they were poets. “Skhidnyaks”, as I conditionally call them here, knew in practice what totalitarianism, mono-party system, leaderism means ...

The OUN-b felt the clashes with the “shidnyaks” more clearly, since it was she who had the most of her emissaries in Volyn. Although the OUN-b destroyed the wounded from the Red Army, however, a certain number of "shidnyakiv" fell into the UPA. As they did not hide with their thoughts, falling into the clutches of the UPA or other structures of the OUN, nevertheless, the "leaders" realized that with their nationalist slogans you would not go further than Zbruch. However, while they made such conclusions, many "skhidnyakiv" died at the hands of the OUN-UPA, in particular the OUN SB. Mikhail Podvornyak, an evangelical Christian from Volyn, writes about this: “... There were cases when prisoners, while they still had strength, ran away. Then they dispersed to the villages, began to work for the peasants, but many of them later died, but not from the Germans, but from their unreasonable and crazy party members (meaning the leaders of the OUN), who considered every prisoner from Greater Ukraine a communist. There was a case when several former prisoners who worked for the peasants went to the Bolshevik partisans. After that, the Bandera SB caught the former prisoners and took them with them. They were taken out into the forest and shot there, suspecting that sooner or later they would go to the Soviet partisans. They killed innocent Ukrainians from Greater Ukraine.”

After reading these lines, some Ukrainian women from Greater Ukraine will remember how they were waiting for their husbands, having received a “missing” notice from the military registration and enlistment office. And he disappeared from the OUN SB bullet, then the OUN-UPA ...

OUN Security Service

The Bolsheviks had their own Cheka, the Nazis SD, and the OUN - the Security Service - the Security Council of the OUN. It was a body with very large powers, which were limited to monitoring the political reliability of the members of the organization and the entire population, to the use of repressions, mainly executions (murders) of "traitors", Ukrainian and others, who did not act in favor of Ukrainian nationalists. The following Ukrainian authors speak about the correctness of such a definition:

Grigory Stetsyuk: “Bandera in the UPA needed official foremen. They learned that the Orthodox Bishop Manuel had the rank of captain, and therefore "offered" him a transfer to the UPA. The bishop explained that he had been given the rank of a priest-chaplain, and that he did not understand military affairs. The Security Service caught him, tried him as a traitor deserter. First they shot and then they hung.”

“...Bandera's Security Service non-stop either throws people into wells, or strangles them with fetters… The Security Service cleared the territory from the Melnikovs, Stundists, and 'shidnyaks'. In Volhynia, the intelligentsia, the clergy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church... Somewhere in the beginning of May 1944, one person was passing through the manor and he wanted to look into the well. He called people, and they pulled out the corpses of eight people who were no longer recognizable. Among these esbist victims, Alexandra recognized her father by his wooden leg. In January, he gave a ride to the lads from the Security Council ... Peter and his sister were in the club, hiding from the Security Service. Without the slightest explanation, they take the rest of the family members out of the hut and shoot them all near the hut ... Security Guards walk around the Volyn villages, killing right and left everyone who dared not submit to them ... Nadya Sobchuk met the UPA “Zozuleya”, got pregnant from him, but had an abortion . "Zozulya" reported such neglect to the SB - "she killed his child." The verdict was issued immediately - to shoot!”

And here are Danil Shumuk’s thoughts about the Security Council of the OUN, who from the end of the war until the middle of the 1980s. served a sentence for belonging to the OUN-UPA. He was a professor of politics at Upov schools. The author often expresses his thoughts in the form of dialogues.

Talking about the arrests made by the Security Council, the woman says: - ... These are terrible people, worse than the Gestapo and the NKVD.

In this village, 16 families completely disappeared (Ukrainians - V.P.) ...

I follow orders. And that's all. Understandably?

You decide the fate of people - to live or not to live, and to whom exactly. You are killing children. Do you understand what it's like to kill children? And more about this case:

What happened to your district security officer? Mitla asked. I told them everything from the beginning. About the fact that 16 families were liquidated without trial or investigation, along with small children, and about my conversation with the district security assistant Chumak ...

The Soviets will soon occupy all of Volyn, so would you like us to leave them a ready-made agent network? (said Krylach - V.P.) - While there is an opportunity, we must root out everything on which Soviet power can gain a foothold, - said Mitla. The author, Danila Shumuk, was a teacher at the UPA, in an underground school. Once he had to teach at a special school for district referents of the Security Council. Here is what he gives them: “There were 56 young, handsome and healthy boys in the school. They were all well dressed and pleased with themselves. I had the opportunity to take a closer look at who the organization instructed to decide - to live or not to live for one or another person. It was as if they were specially selected stupid people. Among the 56, only five learned the material and understood what in question(the author taught politics), and the rest… They were simply unable to think… I will continue to quote D. Shumuk.

Behind Turya, passing the village of Dominopol, they noticed that the village seemed to have died out, the doors and windows were open everywhere, and people were nowhere to be seen.

What happened in Dominopolis? I ask.

Three days ago, Dominopol was liquidated, - the bunker replied gloomily.

How was it liquidated? Were people eliminated? I asked.

Yes people! - Bending heavily, answered the Bunchu.

What were you guys talking about? asked Brova.

Yes, they told one another how the Poles were beaten in Dominopol, - Raven answered.

And what are those civilians with pistols near their waists? I asked.

These are the lads from the Security Service, - Raven answered, they are good lads, they clapped the Poles better than others. This one, - Raven nodded at the stocky brunette, - 27 drowned.

So tell us how it was with these Poles - I said.

At about twelve o'clock we surrounded Dominopop ... By morning there was not a single living Pole left, - the Raven said smugly ...

What you are doing with the Poles does not fit into any framework. Just recently in Lezhenya, a Polish teacher was tortured to death and thrown into a well ... And it was done by her former students…

Evangelical Christian Mikhail Podvoryak from Volyn writes: “Most of all we remember the Bandera Security Council. People were afraid of these two letters no less than the NKVD or the Gestapo, since whoever fell into their hands did not come out alive. They explained their cruelty by the fact that now there is a war, a revolution that requires a cruel hand, firm power. But that was no excuse, since sadists have always been sadists, in time of war and in time of peace."

How much inhumanity do you need to be in order to resurrect the OUN-UPA in Ukraine now, to glorify the "heroes" of the UPA and the Security Council...

The threat of a resurgence of Ukrainian nationalism

Canadian-American nationalist reality

When I was about to leave for Canada, I had no idea that here Ukrainians are divided into communists and nationalists, and those are again divided into Bandera and Melnyk, Catholics and Orthodox, “zahidnyakiv” and “skhidnyakiv”. I did not know that in Canada there are no or almost no democratic thinking people. Now I know that they are, but those whom I have known for almost twelve years, or whom I have heard about, can be counted on the fingers.

First of all, I was struck by the low linguistic culture of Ukrainians. Not only in spoken language, not only in speeches, but also in writing. I affirm with full responsibility that more than 90% of editors who consider themselves journalists, people with higher education, those who graduated from the Ukrainian Academic Gymnasium in Lviv, a secret university, even writers, do not know the Ukrainian literary language. And they have the courage to criticize to some extent the Russified 11-volume Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language - one of the achievements of Ukrainian linguistics! And like highlights on a huge roll of lack of culture in the USA Dr. Peter Odarchenko and two or three other people who are fluent in the Ukrainian literary language; in Canada, Dr. Yar Slavutich and two or three other people; in Europe - Dr. Igor Kachurovsky and two or three other people. That's all! Even prof. Yuri Shevelev, a renowned linguist, makes language mistakes in published texts, writes, for example, “Canadian” instead of “Canadian”, not understanding the semantics of the word “dіlok”, etc.

And Professor, Doctor of Ukrainian Linguistics Dmitry Kyslytsya published the book “The Quiet World” (Toronto, 1987) with a huge number of gross language errors…

Semi-literate books are published here under the auspices of the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences, under the auspices of the Volyn Research Institute and other respected institutions. For the level of language in which books are often published here, not to mention newspapers, a fourth-grade elementary school student in Ukraine would get a deuce.

I state with great regret that the linguistic culture of the Ukrainian diaspora has lagged behind the linguistic culture of the Polish emigration by at least several decades. Let me give you one more example. Writer Dr Alexandra Y. Kopach, advocating the de-Russification of the Ukrainian language, herself in a short note allows Russisms: “stripe” instead of the Ukrainian “smuha”. In the same note, there are also such language errors: “live” instead of “alive”, “accumulative” instead of “tough”, “stretching a rich thousand rokiv” instead of “stretching a rich thousand rokiv” ...

I was looking for the reason for this situation, I was looking for an answer - why is the Ukrainian literary language alien to the Ukrainian diaspora? And he came to the conclusion that, according to the theory of the OUN, the Ukrainian literary language in Ukraine is Russified. That's why he didn't fit in here. Here - the obligatory Galician dialect, in which there are more Russisms than in the language common in Ukraine (air, victory, last, surround, everything, for example, a walk and many, many others). The Ukrainian nationalist diaspora itself voluntarily dissociated itself from modern Ukrainian literature, fearing its influence on the diaspora. Here is one of the proofs. Once, while editing one of the dictionaries for the Canadian-Ukrainian Arts Foundation, I met with Lyubov Drazhevskaya, who, it seems, studied Ukrainian literature at the Free Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. In conversation, I said. “When I am very tired, I take one of the works of Mikhail Stelmakh and, while reading, enjoy his wonderful language.” To this, Lyubov Drazhevskaya: “And who is this - Mikhail Stelmakh?” I'm numb...

A few years ago I wrote an extensive study on the subject of language, it was published in the New Days in Toronto, but apart from a few scolding letters, there was no reaction at the level of discussion. I also had weekly talks on the radio about language culture throughout the year and also no positive reaction.

Evidence of the linguistic lack of culture of the Ukrainian diaspora is the publication in the "New Days" of the article by Stepan Genik-Berezovsky "Mova about Mova", in which the author shows an example of total illiteracy. This is the Stepan Genik-Berezovsky, who, like a TV commentator, says: “This is the year”, “October”, “tert”, “vitati” instead of “vitati”. Horror! Shame!

I seem to know Ukrainian, Polish and Russian literary languages, I listen to broadcasts from Montreal in Polish, Ukrainian and Russian, and I assert that Polish and Russian radio broadcasts are in literary language, while Ukrainian ones are only attempts to speak in literary language. I think that the blame for such a state lies with the OUN, which did not recognize the Ukrainian language in Ukraine, which put the Galician dialect higher than the literary language. I have written so much here about the language of the Ukrainian diaspora to show that it has remained at the level of Galicia in the 1930s. And at this very level, the whole way of her thinking remained. The totality of the qualities of the Ukrainian diaspora, in which the Galician nationalist element is dominant, leads to an absurd conclusion: the diaspora, leading from afar, is moving towards the annexation of all Ukraine to Galicia!

The second thing that struck me was the absolute absence of self-criticism in the Ukrainian diaspora, the unwillingness to look at facts with other, non-nationalist eyes. The Ukrainian diaspora is characterized by a herd way of thinking, schematism, rejection of attempts to rethink the past ... She looked at everything through nationalist glasses. The only difference is that these were glasses of different nationalist production: Bandera or Melnikov ...

Expansion of Ukrainian nationalism into Ukraine

My erroneous conclusion was that I considered Ukrainian nationalism to be dying out. I even said in my conversations with the Poles in Canada: “... In another ten, another twenty years, and there will be no Ukrainian nationalism, its last bearers will die.” It was my biggest mistake in my life. Ukrainian nationalism survived in the West, its remnants smoldered all the time in Ukraine. During Gorbachev's perestroika, the expansion of Ukrainian nationalism to Ukraine was restored in the USSR.

The emissaries from the OUN-3 were the first to go there, and with them prof. Taras Gunchak. Instructions in this direction were given to him back in 1987 by the leader of the OUN-3, Anatol Kaminsky, during a conference in New York. Then he said: “... We need to concentrate, first of all, on the following: 1) create a headquarters for analyzing the current state of Ukraine and the Soviet Union in order to determine specific goals and develop practical ways influence on all aspects of life ... The Prologue is best suited for this, provided that its apparatus is strengthened. And the "Prologue" is Taras Hunchak. He began to travel often to Ukraine, got a job there as a teacher at the university and began to promote the ideas of the OUN, Donets integral nationalism. In an interview for “Democratic Ukraine”, as if justifying himself, he says that he personally does not share the views of Dontsov: “He was right only in the 30s.” It is a pity that the journalist did not ask: “And in the 40s, when the OUN-UPA tortured hundreds of thousands of civilians?”

But, knowing the activities of Taras Hunchak, I have no doubt that he approves of the activities of the UPA, because his boss and mentor was Nikolai Lebed (head of the OUN Security Service), one of the founders of "Suchasnosti", in which Taras Hunchak was the editor-in-chief. Soon the OUN-Z moved "Suchasnost" to Kiev. Here it is easier to promote the OUN-UPA. It is easier to prepare the ground for the seizure of power.

I have always wondered - on whose money Taras Hunchak and his comrades traveled to Ukraine many times, on whose money he organized publishing houses there, on whose money they live, leaving warm teaching positions in the USA? After all, OUN-W does not have a broad membership base that would finance this activity. And money doesn't fall from the sky.

The second moved to Ukraine OUN-m, which also transferred its organ "Ukrainian Word" from Paris. In Ukraine, the OUN-m organizes various kinds of conferences, the purpose of which is to rehabilitate the OUN and prepare the ground for seizing power at a convenient moment. For this purpose, the magazine "Rozbudova Natsi" was opened in Kiev, which repeats the name of the OUN organ at the beginning of its activity. The founders of this magazine were Mykola Plavyuk, the leader of the OUN, and Levko Lukyanenko, who was the Ukrainian ambassador to Canada. And again, I'm wondering - where does the money for the creation of the magazine come from? Is it really from the personal income of Nikolai Plaviuk and Levko Lukyanenko?

The OUN-b was the last to go to Ukraine, but it began to act more actively and rudely. Immediately she began to organize regional conferences of her supporters. The All-Ukrainian Conference was also held, the participants of which addressed on 29.03.1992 to the President of Ukraine and the Supreme Council with the demands:

1) to recognize at the state level the liberation struggle of the OUN-UPA as an armed struggle of one of the belligerents, and its members as participants in this struggle.

2) provide them with certain legal social rights participants in the war of 1941–1945.

Similar demands were formulated by regional conferences of Ukrainian nationalists. Members of the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (KUN) of the Podolsk Territory demanded:

restoration of the good name of the OUN-UPA as a political and military force that steadfastly bore the brunt of the struggle against oppression native land; recognition of the struggle of the Ukrainian people in 40–50 years. under the leadership of the OUN, the national liberation movement against the invaders.

Apparently, here the OUN identifies itself with the entire Ukrainian people. This noise is a sign of what, this fuss around the recognition of the OUN-UPA at the state level, which has been going on since 1991. Either this is the impudence of the OUN-b, which the political authorities of Ukraine treat lightly, or it is a sign of the weakness of this government. From propaganda, the OUN moved on to action. Parties emerged with clearly nationalistic programs. The Congress of the Christian Democratic Party repeats for the OUN the demands addressed to the President and the Supreme Council:

“... we appeal to you with a request to recognize the struggle of the OUN-UPA as a national liberation struggle. Veterans of the UPA should be rehabilitated and given equal rights with veterans of the Great Patriotic War and the Armed Forces.”

The scientific and theoretical conference "The Role of Nationalism in the Process of State Building in Ukraine", organized by the OUN, is attended by the head of the socio-psychological service of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, gen. V. Mulyava. In his speech, he states: “And I want to assure you that there are those in the Armed Forces who are ready at the right moment to raise another banner - not a white, capitulatory one, but a banner that all over the world means the fight to the end: freedom or death. And the color of this banner is red and black (nationalist flag - ed.).

The hint is expressive. And he points to an international context. Is there really a new fascist international? And said Gen. V. Mulyavay is no longer Slava Stetsko's propaganda, this is already a threat to Ukraine. From the forces of Ukrainian nationalism, which has made its nest in the Armed Forces of Ukraine…

As a result of the activities of the OUN emissaries in Ukraine, some press organs began to play the nationalist tune. The word “patriotism” disappeared from the Ukrainian political lexicon, it was replaced by the word “nationalism”. This is not an accidental substitution of these two concepts. All forces are connected to the deception of the people. The poet Rostislav Bratun, who has been barking at the OUN for decades, says in an interview with Robotnichiy Gazeta: “Nationalism is highest form patriotism." Many can be suspected that they really do not know the essence of Ukrainian nationalism, but the same cannot be said about Rostislav Bratun. He knows very well what he is talking about. And deliberately, acting criminally, he replaces the concept of "patriotism" with "nationalism."

One can hardly be surprised at the purely nationalistic Lviv newspaper For Vilnu Ukraina. The ideas of Ukrainian nationalism are disseminated by such publications as Literaturna Ukraina, Molod Ukraina, and the Ukraina magazine. The latter is financed by the same person who financed the campaign of Stepan Khmara (a member of the KUN secretariat) in the Crimea. Dmytro Pavlychko, whom for many years I considered the conscience of the Ukrainian people, writes the text of the march of the Ukrainian troops, in which there are words about the continuity of the UPA traditions in the Ukrainian army. Ex-President Leonid Kravchuk, speaking about the creation of the UPA, says: "This date should be celebrated as historical, whether someone likes it or not"...

The activities of OUN emissaries bring results. The Armed Forces of Ukraine, having such a head of the socio-psychological service as Gen. V. Mulyava, through his press, is clearly spreading the ideas of Ukrainian nationalism. According to the Lvov correspondent of the Pravda newspaper Viktor Drozd, the newspaper of the Carpathian Military District "Army of Ukraine" published materials on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the UPA that are just a copy of the ideas of the OUN, and even placed a map of Ukrainian ethnic lands that should become part of the Ukrainian state.

The expansion of Ukrainian nationalism was strengthened to a greater extent by the trips of politicians to Canada, the USA, Australia, where they were treated to banquets and outside banquets, from where they brought gifts.

There was (and is) another form of expansion. Here “Literary Ukraine” complained on its pages about financial difficulties, and the OUN-B body “Homin of Ukraine” immediately responded, collected money and by September 30, 1992 sent “Literary Ukraine” 14 thousand dollars. Literaturna Ukraina, immediately after the handout, called Gomin Ukraina a "brotherly weekly."

Some Kiev newspapers and magazines do not see the danger from Ukrainian nationalism. Their writings, as well as the support of the OUN-UPA by such figures as Dmytro Pavlychko, Ivan Drach, shut the mouth of those Ukrainians who suffered from Bandera, lost their loved ones. People again began to fear the OUN, just like 50 years ago...

The editors of Literaturnaya Ukraina and Molody Ukraina not only do not see a threat from the outside, they do not want to see it. I paid attention to this, wrote letters to Ukrainian intellectuals, but still have not received a response. Just for example, I will give a fragment of one of my letters to Kiev.

To the editor-in-chief of "Literary Ukraine", Kiev.

“I am a regular reader of Literary Ukraine. I wrote it out when I lived in Poland 10 years ago, but then I didn’t read it with such interest as now ... I am an opponent of all totalitarianism, including left - Bolshevik, and right - fascist, therefore, Ukrainian (Dontsovsky integral) nationalism. I see with concern in the Ukrainian press materials that rehabilitate the OUN, UPA, their "leaders". I was struck by the information that in Ternopil the main street of Lenin was renamed Stepan Bandera Street. It was necessary to replace Lenin Street with, say, Ivan Franko Street, Lesia Ukrainka Street, Volodymyr Vinnichenko Street, Mikhail Grushevsky Street. After all, Stepan Bandera is the head of the most radical wing of the OUN, which created the UPA, an organization that Ukrainians should be ashamed of for many years. And, pay attention, I say "UPA", not members of the UPA, since there were many honest Ukrainians in this organization who got into it one way or another.

But why am I writing to you? The reason for this is an interview with Dmitry Shtogrin. I am not against an interview with Bandera himself, if he were alive, but I am against the dissemination of disinformation in the materials you publish. I do not know the reasons for the appearance of an interview with Dmitry Shtogrin in this form, but I suspect that this happened due to the inability to interview. The one who does this must necessarily know about the person with whom he is talking, about his activities, views ...

Why do I say so? Look: “It is still impossible to say that during the Second World War some Ukrainians were collaborators, since this is not true.” These are the words of Prof. Dmytra Shtogrin. One should ask the question: “Does Oksana Logvinenko, who talked with the professor, not know the history, does not know the facts? "Hasn't she heard about the DUN - the Squad of Ukrainian nationalists who went along with the German fascists to the USSR in June 1941? Doesn't she know about the Roland and Nachtigal battalions? Finally, she doesn't know about the SS Galicia division?

So, maybe it’s true that these military units weren’t collaborators? In political literature, collaborators are not called those who cooperate at the same level, since then they are allies. Collaborators are servants, a lower category, those who, betraying the interests of their people, fulfill the tasks of their master. You shouldn't have asked Prof. Dm. Shtogrin: “So who were these units? Are they not collaborators? You, I think, see for yourself the "scientific character" of such professors as Dm. Shtogrin. He himself says that in the USA one can “buy” a chair at a university and spread “sciences” similar to the one presented by him. A little more, and it turns out that only the UPA fought for the interests of the Ukrainian people.

In this regard, I am sending you a copy of the part of the article about Ukraine in the Encyclopedia Britannica. It can be seen from the presented that during the Second World War Ukraine was represented only by the departments of the OUN-UPA. And, as can be seen from the article, no doubt prepared by such "scientists" as Dmytro Shtogrin, there were no millions of Ukrainians who died in the fight against Nazi Germany, there were no millions of Ukrainian soldiers, there were no Ukrainian officers, generals, marshals, there were no millions of orphans, widows, suffering mothers. It was not, because they fought against those who organized the OUN departments, who fought along with the Germans. And further. But this school for officers, organized in Zakopane, a Polish city, what was it? (The Nazis trained Ukrainian nationalists here to conduct combat and subversive actions against the Red Army - ed.). Is it an underground organization against the Germans? And what about the Ukrainian “auxiliary police”? My letter boils down to one thing: do not spread disinformation through the materials that some people from the diaspora slip to you. Do not support totalitarianism. I will always remember the words of the great Ukrainian General Petro Grigorenko, which he said at a scientific conference at McMaster University in Hamilton: “I would not like to wait for such a Ukraine, which is represented by Ukrainian nationalist thought…”

In the Canadian Bandera newspaper "Homin of Ukraine" I saw an article under the heading "Two Tarasiv: Shevchenko and Chuprynka" (Taras Chuprynka - commander of the UPA, previously served in the battalion

"Nachtigal" - ed.). I don’t know about anyone else, but for me this is a profanation of Taras Shevchenko, his life, love for his people, for Ukraine. If he had lived in Bolshevik Ukraine, Yezhov would have tortured him, and if he had lived under the rule of the nationalists “in the name of the national idea”, he would have been tortured by executioners from the Security Council, headed by the founder of “Suchasnosti” - Mykola Lebed ...

Viktor Polishchuk.

I repeat: I have not received a reply to this letter, nor to many others. My voice was the voice of one crying in the wilderness.

Ukraine is flooded with nationalist propaganda, nationalist ideology.

From propaganda to action. Such is the logic of the development of events. And now the first nationalist flower has appeared. Even in Rukh (Lvov, the most active), things came to a split. A new nationalist leader floats upstairs - Valentin Moroz, who declares:

“… salvation in the nationalist revolution. We still bear the burden of colonial dependence, and nationalism is precisely the dynamite that will finally undermine and bury this system. The resources of the democratic revival have been exhausted, there is a turn towards dictatorship, and we cannot accept this. The Nationalist plane is already in the air. It is impossible to stop him, you can only bring him down. Rukh will raise its authority only by relying on the nationalist movement.”

Valentin Moroz is not a citizen of Ukraine, he is a citizen of Canada. But, contrary to the charter of Rukh, he was elected co-chairman of the Lviv Regional Council of Rukh. It was his people who broke up the general meeting of Rukh under the leadership of Vyacheslav Chernovil, breaking windows, using physical strength. The same Valentin Moroz, in an interview for a Ukrainian television program in Toronto on November 14, 1992, did not want to answer the several times repeated question: “So, do you want to take power?” It’s a well-known fact that if his “lads” had the intention to reach power in a democratic way, then V. Moroz would have said this, and his avoidance of an answer means one thing: we will take power by force, as it should be for Ukrainian nationalists. In an interview, V. Moroz also said: "Bandera is Shevchenko of the 20th century." This is the same as if Goebbels said: "Hitler is the Christ of the 20th century."

The export of Ukrainian nationalism from the West to Ukraine, as we see, is bearing its first fruits. And the statesmen of Ukraine still, probably, do not understand that a real Ukrainian “lobby” does not exist either in the USA or in Canada. The power structures of the West are thoroughly aware of the essence of Ukrainian nationalism in its absolutely negative sense.

Some figures in Ukraine are hoping for economic assistance from the Ukrainian diaspora. They are wrong, such a possibility does not exist, if we take the needs of Ukraine. Not only the Ukrainian diaspora capital is not able to help Ukraine, but the multimillion-dollar appropriations of the West will not help it. West Germany spent $50 billion over the course of three years to boost the economy of East Germany after its reunification with the FRG, and this did not give the expected result. But Ukraine is not East Germany in terms of population and territory. And labor discipline in it is lower in comparison with East Germany. The West, if it helps, then only in own interests. This is understandable. Ukraine must rely on its own potential, on the wisdom and diligence of its people, on the wisdom of its non-imported nationalist elite.

Beware of false prophets in sheep's clothing. They have only one thing on their mind: take power! Rostislav Ogirko is already clearly asking: "Who should take power?" The very posing of the question - “to take power”, and not to whom the people will entrust it, is alarming, as it smacks of Ukrainian nationalism.

The author answers: “In our history, the UPA was such an original form of uniting the people in the conditions of a brutal war for survival.” Further, the author calls for the creation of the Popular Front of Ukraine, modeled after the UPA. So, power is in the hands of the OUN.

But the OUN is active. OUN-3 operates, so to speak, in the intellectual field. OUN-m in Ukraine was transformed into the Ukrainian Republican Party. When the OUN-b figured this out, when it failed to subdue the URP, a split occurred. Clearly Bandera, led by Stepan Khmara, separated from the URP. The OUN-b did not limit itself to organizing "scientific" and "theoretical" conferences, it has already found methods for actually creating its structures. Organizations of this party are already springing up in the localities. In Ukraine, the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (KUN) is already operating - the party of Bandera. Regional conferences of Rukh and URP were held in Borshchev on Ternopolitsyn. At the conferences, it was decided to dissolve the Rukh and Urp cells and, on their basis, create a regional organization of the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists. The adopted statement-appeal to all conscious Ukrainians states that its participants see the need for their organization to switch to nationalist principles ... the people can be united only on the basis of Ukrainian nationalism.

Some Ukrainian "scientists" also joined in the planting of nationalism in Ukraine. I write "scientists" in quotation marks, because a real scientist will never go for cheap propaganda. An example of such primitive, but seemingly "scientific" propaganda is Viktor Koval's article published in the respected journal Vitchizna under the meaningful title "Under the Red-Black Banners." The article was written on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the UPA. The article contains many absurdities, distortions of historical facts... The author justifies the OUN-UPA for the murders of Ukrainians: “Millions of pages have been written about the cruelty of Bandera. But this cruelty was directed only against those whom the OUN considered traitors to the nation.” And this is written by a person with an academic title, a historian, that is, a specialist in the humanities. V. Koval emphasizes the "heroism of the OUN-UPA." The entire article is a panegyric for the OUN-UPA.

Isn't what has been said here a real threat to Ukraine? After all, the OUN, despite the declarations of democracy, is a totalitarian, leader-type, that is, a fascist organization, it is a threat of war for "ethnic Ukrainian lands", for "expanding the territory of the state." This is again a sea of ​​blood, not a sea - an ocean of blood. This is a threat not only for Ukraine, but for the whole of Europe, the whole world!

Does the Ukrainian elite see this threat, does the President of Ukraine see it? To build constitutional state, the ideological ballast based on crimes must be thrown away, the filth must be got rid of.

It is with the aim of warning the people of that part of the world, which is my homeland, that this book was written.

In recent decades, especially with the collapse of the Soviet Union, both in the West and in a number of states that formed on post-Soviet space, everything possible is being done to rehabilitate war criminals. The authorities of the Baltic countries and Ukraine were especially successful in this, encouraging the perpetuation of the memory of the SS legionnaires and collaborators of other stripes who fought on the side of Nazi Germany.

With the coming to power in Kiev of the Nazi-oligarchic regime, the rehabilitation of war criminals reached new heights there. Monuments are erected to the head of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) S. Bandera and the commander of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) R. Shukhevych and their henchmen, streets and squares are named after them, and young people are educated by their example. On April 9 last year, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted a law recognizing the OUN-UPA militants as fighters for the independence of Ukraine in the 20th century and granted them the right to social guarantees.

Attempts by the junta to pass off punishers and murderers as fighters "for national independence" are accompanied by the humiliation of fellow citizens who fought in the Red Army and other formations on the side anti-Hitler coalition, the destruction of monuments to Soviet soldiers-liberators. These actions have already been summed up and the legislative framework- the infamous law of Ukraine "On the condemnation of the communist and national socialist totalitarian regimes and the prohibition of their propaganda." The authorities of the “independent”, so striving for Europe, are not even embarrassed by the fact that, according to the December 2015 assessment of the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, this law does not comply with European legislative standards.

Who is protected by the ideological structures of the new Kiev regime in the face of the so-called Ukrainian Institute national memory and other similar organs of "national unconsciousness"?

In April 1943, by decision of the German military authorities, the 14th SS division "Galicia" was created, staffed mainly by ethnic Ukrainians. She began her bloody path with fighting in the Carpathians against the partisans. After the "Galicia" in the summer of 1944 was thoroughly battered by the Red Army near Brody, destroying 7 out of 12 thousand people of its composition, the SS command moved the division to Slovakia, then to the Balkans, where it continued to fight against the Yugoslav partisans and Soviet troops .

And if you look at the OUN and its armed formation of the UPA? Despite the fact that Ukrainian nationalists happened to clash with the Wehrmacht, their appearance during the Great Patriotic War was determined by close cooperation with the German Nazi regime and a fierce struggle against the Red Army and Soviet power, launched from the first days of the war. What is the only instruction issued by the leadership of the OUN (b) in the spring of 1941, which directly stated: “Muscovites, Poles, Jews are national minorities hostile to us,” which must either be assimilated, or isolated, or destroyed. The instruction proclaimed terror as the main method of implementing such a national policy.

The arrival in Lviv on June 30, 1941, together with the German units of the OUN marching group led by J. Stetsko, was marked by mass pogroms, during which, according to various sources, from 4 to 7 thousand people died. Among the punishers were the soldiers of the Nachtigal battalion, formed by the Abwehr to act as part of the Brandenburg-800 sabotage unit, led by Shukhevych. The bloody trace of the Banderaites is also clear in the infamous Babi Yar near Kiev, which became in 1941-1943. the place of executions of at least 150 thousand civilians and prisoners of war.

On the territory occupied by the Germans, Bandera destroyed Poles, Jews, Belarusians, Gypsies, Russians. Ukrainians, suspected of sympathy for the Soviet regime, were not spared either. With the creation of the UPA in 1942, ethnic cleansing acquired a massive, systematic character. And today these sadists and murderers are passed off as "heroes" of the "national liberation movement".

Part of the blame for the current revelry of collaborator lawyers and the tolerant attitude of Ukrainian society must be taken by historians, including Russian ones. For too long, the criminal activities of the OUN-UPA were covered without proper systematicity and thoroughness, and only a few, the most bloody pages of their history were made public. However, the all-out offensive of the Ukronazis must be countered by an equally decisive counter-offensive with the weapons of truth.

In this regard, we consider it important to publish in 2015 by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation a collection of documents “The Liberation of Ukraine”, which tells about the true liberators of Ukraine from the German occupiers, and about those who are trying to pretend to be “liberators”. A significant section is devoted to the actions of the latter, which contains documents containing new and irrefutable facts of cooperation between the OUN-UPA and the Wehrmacht and the organizers of the Nazi occupation regime, the Ukrainian nationalists conducting an armed struggle against the Red Army and carrying out the most severe repressions against the civilian population.

Thus, the message of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR to the head of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army dated January 19, 1942 refutes the theses of OUN-UPA lawyers that the latter fought for "independent Ukraine" equally with the Red Army and the Wehrmacht. What kind of independence from the Germans could there be if the German command - just six months after the start of the war - began to create a "Ukrainian army". In Novograd-Volynsky, Zhytomyr region, from the captured commanders of the Red Army, special school. The occupying authorities also formed punitive detachments from persons of Ukrainian nationality, including deserters and prisoners of war. Such detachments were tasked with fighting the growing partisan movement in the rear of the German troops, "catching and destroying persons who are not desirable to the German authorities."

Cursing before the bearers of the German "new order", the Bandera went to any provocation, often putting on the Red Army uniform and posing as Soviet military units. Entering the confidence of the people, identifying partisans, underground workers, party and Komsomol activists, the punishers then mercilessly dealt with them. One of these atrocities was recorded in an act signed on April 11, 1944 by members of a special commission of the 1st division of the 206th guards light artillery regiment and several surviving residents of the village of Nova-Brikula, Strusovsky district, Ternopil region. Here, at the hands of Bandera, dressed in Red Army uniforms, 115 local residents were killed in one day.

According to the memorandum of the head of the Ukrainian headquarters partisan movement T.A. Strokach to the commander of the 1st Ukrainian Front, Marshal G.K. Zhukov dated May 10, 1944, one can judge how widely the Bandera movement in Volyn bred under the auspices of the Nazis. Parts of the Wehrmacht, the German secret services coordinated with the OUN joint actions against the advancing Red Army, supplied them with weapons, ammunition, and food. As follows from the order of the regional conductor of the OUN in the northwestern territories, D. Klyachkivsky (Klim Savur), intercepted by partisans, all the efforts of the nationalists were directed against the Red Army and Soviet partisans.

After the active army left the territory of Ukraine, proceeding to the liberation of Eastern Europe, OUN-UPA stepped up terror against the civilian population. Attacks on small garrisons, villages, individual military personnel and party and Soviet activists became more frequent. The philosophy of the killers is vividly conveyed by Shukhevych's call to his militants: “Do not intimidate, but exterminate! We should not be afraid that people will curse us for cruelty. Let half of the 40 million Ukrainian population remain - there is nothing terrible in this.” As you can see, the fanatics of "Ukrainian integral nationalism" used weapons not only against "Muscovites, Poles and Jews", but also against their fellow tribesmen, without looking at who was hit by a bullet or an ax - an old man, a woman or a baby.

Such a case is mentioned, for example, in the report of the head of the political department of the Kiev military district, Colonel Lukashuk, to the head of the GlavPU of the Red Army dated February 6, 1945, which provides details of a raid by a gang of 200 OUN-UPA militants on the regional center of Gorodnitsy, Zhytomyr region. Bandera exterminated many inhabitants, including infants, and left ashes behind them.

Viktor Polishchuk "The Bitter Truth. Crimes of the OUN-UPA (Confession of a Ukrainian)", published in Toronto. This book is unusual in many ways. And above all, the personality of the author and his position. Viktor Varfolomeevich Polishchuk was born in 1925 in Volyn, on the territory that until 1939 belonged to Poland. Comes from an ethnically mixed family (father - Ukrainian, mother - Polish), of which a great many lived in Volyn. By religion - Orthodox. In September 1939, when Soviet troops entered Western Ukraine, V. Polishchuk's father was arrested by the NKVD. Until now, nothing is known about his fate. Victor Polishchuk with his mother and sisters were deported to Northern Kazakhstan. In 1944-46. worked in the Vasilkovsky grain farm of the Dnepropetrovsk region. In 1946 he left for Poland, where he received a higher legal education. Since 1981 he lives in Canada, owns his own publishing company. He has Ph.D. in Law and Doctor of Political Science degrees, the author of a number of scientific and journalistic works. The book "The Bitter Truth" tells about the little-known events of the Second World War in Western Ukraine: massacres by members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army of the Polish civilian population, as well as Ukrainians who helped them. V.Polishchuk collected a huge number of documented facts about the atrocities of the fighters for the "Ukrainian idea". It is impossible not to pay tribute to the courage of this man. His desire to recall the bitter lessons of history, to prevent the revival of Ukrainian nationalism, in which he sees a terrible evil, caused the hatred of Bandera of different generations and the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada and the United States, for the most part, according to the author, controlled by the OUN. Far from the realities of modern Ukraine, V. Polishchuk sincerely cannot understand how historians, who yesterday stigmatized Banderaism, justify it today, how literary figures, who once shed poetic tears over the victims of nationalist criminals, now sing of their executioners. The Ukrainian people are not infected with nationalism, says V. Polishchuk in his book. They seek to revive nationalism, plant it in Ukraine. In response to the accusation of anti-patriotism, he remarks: "I do not blame my people, but I cleanse them from the filth that is the OUN-UPA."

I dedicate this work to the memory of the victims of the OUN-UPA

Section I

About the crimes of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army

Those who do not remember the lessons of history are doomed to experience them again. Is the Ukrainian Insurgent Army a good or bad lesson for Ukrainians? Should we include it in textbooks as an example of heroism and glory, or should we be ashamed of the activities of the UPA, repent?

Victims of the UPA. Lyuboml. In the area of ​​Ostrowki near Lyuboml, in Ukraine, the remains of Poles shot by the UPA on August 30, 1943 are being exhumed. On that day, more than 1,700 Poles from the villages of Ostrówka died in Ostrówki. Will of Ostrovetska, Yanovets and Kuty. Their remains will be transferred to the Polish cemetery in Rymachi near Yahodina (Gazeta, Toronto, August 24-25, 1992).

“Before the war, I finished 9 classes. When the Germans took young people to Germany for hard labor, they took me too. But I was lucky enough to escape, and I joined the partisans. Czechoslovakia, that is, through the Zhytomyr region, Rivne region, Ternopil region, Lvov region, Prykarpattya... So I had to meet with Bandera (OUN, UPA) more than once or twice. And not at the table, but in battles... God forbid it was to get They were mocked worse than the Germans. They carved stars on their chests or foreheads, twisted their arms and legs, tortured them to death. And how many Polish villages they burned and slaughtered with "sacred knives" of Poles! How many civilians, employees, teachers were killed after the war This is what their struggle for a free Ukraine was like ("Robitnicha Gazeta", Kyiv, September 29, 1992).

The conference "Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the National Liberation Struggle in Ukraine 1940-1950", which was held in Kiev in August 1992, recommends to the President of Ukraine: "The conference raises the question that the legislative bodies of the new Ukraine should recognize the OUN, UPA, UGOR (Ukrainian Main Liberation Rada) the most consistent fighters for the independence of Ukraine, and the fighters of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army - the belligerent." ("New Way"; Toronto, September 26, 1992)

M.Zelenchuk, chairman of the All-Ukrainian Brotherhood of the UPA on Sophia Square 26.08. 1992 demanded: "Recognize the struggle of the UPA as a just liberation struggle of the Ukrainian people for their Independent Power" ("Homin of Ukraine", Toronto, September 16, 1992)...

So what is the UPA?.. Was it the army that brought glory to Ukraine?

Evidence of UPA crimes

If one were to describe all the atrocities of the UPA against the Polish and Ukrainian people, about which there is evidence, then it would be necessary to publish a separate book, citing only the facts without comments on hundreds of pages in small print. I myself have collected more than a hundred, signed by specific people, with an address. But first, let me give you some personal evidence.

In the summer of 1943, my maternal aunt Anastasia Vitkovskaya went with a Ukrainian neighbor in the afternoon to the village of Tarakanov, located three kilometers from the city of Dubno. They spoke Polish, because my aunt, an illiterate woman, originally from the Lublin region, could not learn the Ukrainian language. They went to change something for bread, as the aunt had six children. Neither she nor her uncle, Anton Vitkovsky, who is also a completely illiterate person, never interfered in any politics, but had no idea about it either. And she, as well as her Ukrainian neighbor, was killed by Bandera from the UPA or Self-Defense Bush Departments (they included local peasants, often armed with pitchforks, knives, subordinates of the OUN-UPA) just because they spoke Polish. They were brutally killed with axes and thrown into a roadside ditch. Another aunt told me about this - Sabina, who was married to a Ukrainian Vasily Zagorovsky.

My wife's parents lived before the war in Polissya. Her father is Czech and her mother is Polish. The family spoke Polish. When, in early 1943, massacres of Poles began in southern Polissya, the whole family fled to their father's parents in the village of Ugorek near Dermani.

One day, a familiar Ukrainian told his father-in-law that the UPA was preparing to destroy his family. They fled to Kremenets. Someone overheard the conversation of this young Ukrainian with my wife's father. Suspecting him of "treason", they hung him in the center of the village and attached a sign to his chest: "So it will be with all traitors." The hanged man was not allowed to film for several days.

Two facts that took place in different places at different times. They are united by one thing: the authorship of the OUN-UPA, the causelessness of the murders. My father had a brother, Yarokhtey, who lived in the village. Lipa Dubno district. For the fact that he openly branded the UPA, he was shot in the mouth. Uncle Yarokhtey was an ordinary illiterate peasant.

It is not possible in one book to tell about all the individual massacres of Poles and Ukrainians committed by the OUN-UPA, so I will limit myself to only a few.

A person very close to me, M.S. said: “On March 24, 1944, on a frosty night, Bandera attacked our huts, set fire to all the buildings. We lived in the village of Polyanovitsa (Tsytsivka) of the Zborovsky district (the author called the old administrative division - ed.) of the Ternopil region. My father, a Pole, married in Ukrainian. We lived in peace with Ukrainians from neighboring villages. We heard about the murders in Volyn, but at first we did not think that they could kill us. Somewhere in February 1944, Bandera (we did not understand who was in the UPA, who was in to another group - they were all called Bandera, since they themselves glorified the "leader" Bandera) put a ransom demand in front of our village. The peasants collected the money and gave it to the Bandera. But it did not help. At night, all the men, that is, father, younger brother and I, like on other nights, we slept in a shelter under the outbuildings. My mother (Ukrainian), with my two sisters and my father's sister, who married a Ukrainian from near Kharkov, spent the night in a hut. Immediately after midnight, we smelled smoke and guessed that the UPA set fire to ma. I jumped out of the cellar, lifting the lid. They shot at me, who was running away, but did not hit. Father also tried to get out of the cellar, but could not - burned down. My little brother was suffocated by the smoke. The mother, who was running away from the burning house, was wounded, but she escaped. A seven-year-old sister also ran away, although she was wounded in the knee. The father's sister also ran away, who was wounded by a shot in the arm, as a result of which the arm had to be amputated. The second 13-year-old sister, while running away, caught the eye of a Bandera man who pierced her chest with a bayonet, and she died on the spot. On the same night, Bandera burned and killed our neighbors - Beloskursky and Baranovsky and others from our small village "...

T. G. from Glukholazy (Poland) writes: “We lived in the Polish village of Chaikov, Sarny district. In June or July 1943, Bandera on horseback arrived before dinner. They surrounded the houses, set them on fire, and those who ran away, they killed with axes, bayonets... The UPA did not fight the Germans. Before the war, we had no enmity between Ukrainians and Poles."

E.B. from the USA: “We lived in the village of Radokhovka. In March 1943, at midnight, the Upovites set fire to the house of a neighbor Yancharek. , daughter Ledzya, the second daughter with a baby. Bandera's victims were thrown into a well. My mother was killed in May of the same year - she was going to the village, and she was shot dead.

Before the war, Ukrainians and I lived in harmony...

3-X. from Poland, Valch: "The village of Nikolaevka in Volyn. The attack of Bandera was on 04/24/1943 at dawn. Bandera entered our hut and began to torture, stabbing with bayonets. They brought straw and set it on fire. They also pierced me with a bayonet, and I lost consciousness ", falling on my aunt. When the flame reached me, I came to my senses and jumped out the window. Bandera was gone. My groan was heard by a Ukrainian neighbor Spiridon, he brought me to another Ukrainian - Bezukha, who took me to the hospital on a horse. As a result of the attack, 14 people died, among them was a pregnant woman "...

G.K. from the USA: “On July 14, 1943, Bandera’s men tortured 300 people in Kolodna. Having driven them, they ordered them to lie down, they say, they would be searched. , from Oleshkovo - Pavel Romanchuk. The priest called for the murder, who said: "We will sanctify the knives so that we can cut the kukel out of wheat."

V.V. from the UK reports that on July 12, 1943, in the village of Zagai, Bandera people were killed - and here is a list of 165 surnames, including infants, pregnant women, and the elderly. He says that before the war there were normal relations with the Ukrainians, hostility began when Hitler began to promise a free Ukraine.

G.D. from Poland: "On Tuesday, July 14, 1943, in the village of Selets, Vladimir-Volynsky district, Ukrainians killed two elderly people - Jozef Witkovsky and his wife Stefania. They were shot dead in their own hut, which was then set on fire. In the afternoon, they killed two elderly people of the Mikhalovichi and their 7-year-old granddaughter, husband and wife of the Hronovichi, the housekeeper of a priest named Zofia. Ivan Shostachuk, who before the war was a corporal in the Polish army and changed his religion to Roman Catholic, took part in the murders. His younger brother Vladislav, Orthodox, warned the Morelevsky and Mikhalkovich families.There was a Ukrainian in the gang - Yukhno, who killed the Poles, and his father saved the Stichinsky family.Before the war, relations with the Ukrainians were good, they began to deteriorate in early 1943, when agitators began to arrive from the Lviv and Stanislav regions who rebelled Ukrainian youth, promising a free Ukraine. Not everyone succumbed to whispering, in particular, older people did not. Maya Sokoliv, the wife of the head of the school, who was sent from the Soviet Union, Russian, together with her husband, mother and one-year-old son Slavik, were drowned in a well. From the Morelevsky family, Bandera killed their parents, daughter-in-law Irena (19 years old) and son Jozef (20 years old). All but Irena were killed near the forest. Irena was taken to the hut by the leaders of the gang, kept in the basement, raped, and then thrown into the well. Irena was pregnant. Mixed families were also killed."

I. from Canada: “Our village of Lozov, Ternopil region, above the Gnezdechnaya river, was attacked by Bandera on the night of December 28, 1944. About 800 people were tortured. , after which they set fire to the houses ... "

V.M. from Canada: "The village of Grabina, Vladimir-Volyn region. On Sunday, August 29, 1943, the news came that the Bandera people were killing: My father ordered me to hide. When they entered our yard, my mother was there, who was immediately shot dead with a pistol. Father he saw this and, going out, said: “What do you need, because I didn’t do anything bad to you?” The Bandera man in response hit him in the head with an ax. The father fell, then the bandit also shot at him. day."

E.P. from Poland sent an extract from the parish book of the village of Mosty Velikie near Zhovkva, in which 20 dead were indicated. In the village of Rokitna on Palm (Catholic) Sunday, 16 people were killed with axes, and three people: Kazimir Vititsky, a palamar, his wife and child were drowned in an ice hole.

K.I. from Great Britain: "Germanovka. The attack took place in September 1943 at dawn. I was attacked by close neighbors - Kostetsky. Golovaty and Zapletny. They beat me and robbed me. our street. The young man worked at the post office and invited his boss, and when he drove away, the Bandera people killed him with a shot. Shooting began, grenades were thrown. All the wedding guests were killed, the hut was burned. The musicians were also killed, six of them were, among them there were several Ukrainians. Among the guests there were also several Ukrainians, they were also killed. 26 people were killed. One Ukrainian, a neighbor, allowed me to spend the night in his hut, but one day, coming from the church, he said that he could no longer hide me, since the priest said: "Brothers and sisters, the time has come when we can repay the Poles, Jews and Communists." And my neighbor worked at the state farm, so he was considered a communist. The name of this priest is Voloshin. There was one Polish-Ukrainian family, so she, like everyone else

And so on and so forth. I repeat: it is not possible to publish all the facts. I did not have the opportunity to receive information from Ukraine, in particular from Volyn and Galicia regarding the Ukrainians tortured there by Bandera. When I applied to Ukraine, they did not answer my letters or kept silent about the essence of the matter. I can’t understand - either they are still afraid of Bandera, or they are already afraid of them again. If I lived in Ukraine, I would get such information. I consider it necessary, while some witnesses of these atrocities are still alive, to create a joint Polish-Ukrainian, and perhaps also a Polish-Ukrainian-Jewish commission or committee to obtain facts from direct witnesses of the murders. To be able to combine these data with those that already exist, and print at least a small circulation of a document so that such a book is in scientific institutions in Poland and Ukraine, in libraries. Those who live in Poland and Ukraine should take care of this...

On August 30, 1943, Kupy, a Polish village in the Lyuboml district, was surrounded in the morning by UPA "streltsy" and Ukrainian peasants, mainly from the village of Lesnyaki, who carried out a massacre of Poles. Everyone was killed, including women, children, the elderly. They killed in huts, in yards, in utility rooms, using axes, pitchforks, dryuchki, and they shot at those who were running away. Whole families were thrown into wells, covered with earth. Pavel Pronchuk, a Pole who jumped out of the shelter to protect his mother, was caught, put on a bench, cut off his arms and legs and left him to suffer longer. The Ukrainian family of Vladimir Krasovsky with two children was brutally tortured there. Of the 282 inhabitants of the village, 138 people were killed, including 63 children.

In Wola Ostrovetska on the same day, out of 806 inhabitants, 529 were killed, including 220 children (the author quotes data from the book of Polish authors Yu. Turovsky and V. Semashko about the atrocities of the OUN-UPA - ed.).

In the book of Turovsky and Semashko, on 166 pages of small print, the names of villages are listed, the number of inhabitants, the number of those killed, the methods of murder, the number of children killed, and the help of Ukrainians are called. The authors at the same time each time turn to the sources of information. The description of the atrocities of the OUN-UPA has the form of a calendar, starting in September 1939 and ending in July 1945. The authors are notable for their objectivity, many times describe the assistance provided to the Poles by Ukrainians, write about the murders of Ukrainians. They calculated that 60-70 thousand Poles died at the hands of Ukrainian nationalists in 1939-1945 in Volyn alone, which was about 20% of the then Polish population of this region.

Against the backdrop of these facts, the multi-year campaign that the Ukrainian diaspora in the West is conducting to protect Ivan Demjanjuk (a sadistic overseer in one of the Nazi concentration camps, the trial of which took place in Israel - ed.) is striking. Many millions of dollars were spent on this action. Since this process is allegedly directed against all Ukrainians, why does the Ukrainian nationalist diaspora, which has such political and financial opportunities ... not bring Oleksandr Korman (author of a book about the crimes of Bandera, published in London - ed.) to justice for him, as she believes, false claims about the atrocities of Ukrainian nationalists, why not involve the priest Vaclav Shetelnitsky, Bishop Vincent Urban for their claims that the OUN-UPA brutally tortured tens of thousands of the Polish civilian population. Now there are all the possibilities of such prosecution before the court in Poland, where there are many Ukrainian lawyers. At the same time, it is possible to hold publishing houses accountable, to seek a court decision to stop the distribution of books... But Ukrainian nationalists are doing nothing in this direction. And the authors of the books, I think, would be glad to appear before the court, to provide evidence of the truth of what they wrote. And the court, having established the facts of the murder of the Poles, would simultaneously recognize the guilt of the OUN-UPA. This is what Ukrainian nationalists are afraid of. And the named authors did not dishonor the Ukrainian people in any way, they did not tarnish their honor. They all say: Ukrainian nationalists killed and tortured, OUN-UPA, Nachtigall (a battalion formed by the Nazis from nationalists - ed.), the SS division "Galicia" and others.

That is why the Ukrainian nationalists are silent. People say: "The cat knows whose fat it has eaten." They will not do anything to bring about a trial... The book by Yu. Turovsky and V. Semashko should be purchased by former members of the UPA. Maybe after reading them, a conscience will wake up? Maybe someone will remember those terrible years, that "heroism", that spilled blood of the defenseless. The book contains the names of localities, the names of the victims, in some cases the names of the perpetrators.

I have been convinced since 1946 that the UPA, Bandera and other nationalists killed Poles and Ukrainians who did not support them ...

Soon I also learned about how they killed Ukrainians sent by the Soviet government to Western Ukraine, often against their will. So far, these terrible murders have been written about by Polish authors, as well as Soviet ones, including Ukrainian ones. However, the latter wrote under severe censorship. And they were not very interested in killing Poles. They were not very trusted. The Poles did not believe, because they are Poles. The communists did not believe, because they are communists. But how can one not believe when there is so much evidence presented by living witnesses.

Although the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism, like German National Socialism, is far from Christian ideals, Ukrainian nationalists love to turn to God, rely on the Greek Catholic Church, which is subordinate to the Pope of Rome, like the Polish one. Therefore, we read what the Catholic priest Vatslav Shetelnitsky writes about the crimes of the OUN-UPA. There will be only fragments from his book published in 1992. If you do not believe him, then who to believe then at all?

"... in 1943 and early 1944, very often (in Terebovelskaya paraffin - V.P.) funerals of the victims of the murders committed by Bandera were held. In particular, the population was shocked by the murder of 11 Poles - residents of the village of Plebanovka, 2 km from Terebovlya committed in the late evening of November 24, 1943. A Jew was hiding in a brick factory in Plebanovka.Somehow, the Ukrainian police found out about this, who turned to the local Pole Yan Yukhnevich, demanding that he take the Jew out of the hiding place.When Yukhnevich entered the territory plant, a policeman shot him. Bandera drove two trucks with headlights off on Zofia Khrzanowska Street .., went to the village on foot. After a while, a cry was heard from Plebanovka. A Pole Polishevsky, a resident of Terebovlya, saw and heard this. That night, he, along with Ukrainians were on duty on the railway, who warned him: "If you want to live, then remember - you have not seen or heard anything."

Bandera dispersed in groups around the village, entered some huts and tortured people there. They then killed Jan Gliva, Jan Krukovsky with axes and knives ... (hereinafter referred to as V.P.). On the day of the funeral, the vicars from Terebovlia then arrived: priest Peter Lewandowski and the author of this message, who sent prayers over the bodies of the dead. Before us was a terrible picture of human remains, cut with knives, chopped with axes, with severed legs and arms ...

A few kilometers from Terebovlya is the village of Bavoriv, ​​where priests Karol Protsik and Ludwik Rutina were shepherds. The organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in Smolyants at a meeting on 10/28/1943 issued a death sentence to these priests and the organist Wisniewski for taking part in the funeral of the Poles tortured to death by members of this organization. The execution of the sentence took place on November 2, 1943. Around 6 pm, a group of murderers broke into the church. The organist was shot dead on the spot, priest Protsik was dragged out of the room. Priest Rutina escaped through the window, a grenade was thrown at him, but it did not explode. Priest Protsik began to scream, they pierced him with a bayonet, tied him up and took him into the forest. The body was never found."

From the author's data, it is known that on January 21, 1945, Bandera killed priest Wojciech Rogowski from the parish in Maidan near Kopichynets. On February 10, priest Jan Valnichka, brutally murdered, was buried - before the murder they mocked him, ordered him to dance before his death. They killed him with a shot in the mouth. He was from the parish in Kotsiubyntsy... The author writes that on March 19, 1989 in Wroclaw, in the Church of Christ the King, a memorial service was held for the Poles of the village of Verbovets who were killed on the night of March 19, 1944. After the memorial service, Antoni Gomulkevich, a witness to the events, said: “Already 45 years have passed since those tragic events in our village, which is located between Terebovlya, Chortkiv and Buchach ... For a long time, our relations with Ukrainians have developed normally, as usually happens between neighbors. They visited each other, helped in various jobs, and mixed Polish-Ukrainian families were a common occurrence.

In the meantime, already in the first days of July 1941, the Ukrainian police, who were called "Schutzmanns", took away the first Pole from Verbovets, twenty-seven-year-old Maciej Bielsky, under the pretext of interrogation. He was bullied and died from beatings. Then, during an attack on the neighboring Tomb, they tortured Leon Sonetsky, Stanislav Gotz, as well as the families of Malinovsky, Mazurov, Yanitsky and others. In the neighboring village of Lyaskovtsy, having destroyed the Jews, the Schutzmanns and Bandera took up the Polish population. On the basis of the verdict of the chief of the gang in Lyaskovtsy, Nikolai Poperechny, Bronislav Grushetsky, Michal Grushetsky, Nikolai Friedrich, Piotr Ovsyansky, Vladislav Ovsyansky and Kazimierz Snezhek were martyred in the parish house of the Greek Catholic parish. Everyone was stripped, tied with barbed wire and beaten to death. Even before they died, they drove nails into their heads, cut off their arms and legs with an ax or cut off their arms and legs with a saw, and pierced their stomachs with a bayonet ... they tortured them for "independence" ... On May 18, 1944, eleven o'clock in the evening was approaching. A rocket was fired from Lyaskovtsy in the direction of Verbovets ... we guessed that it would begin soon ... And then the first houses of Polish residents caught fire. Bandera poured gasoline on the houses and set them on fire. People ran away. In the open space, they became victims of Bandera. Those who hid suffocated from the smoke ... In the morning the shooting stopped. Survivors began to come from the fields. They told about the death of their loved ones (the following is a list of families who died at the hands of the OUN - ed.). We have gathered today at the Church of Christ the King in Wroclaw to take part in a memorial service on the forty-fifth anniversary of the burning of the Polish part of our Verbovets and the murder of our mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends and acquaintances by Ukrainian nationalists. We came here without hatred... We, Poles from the Ternopil land, do not want to take revenge. Even now, after the tragedy, there was not a single case of revenge on the part of the Poles who survived. Immediately after the tragedy, the Germans arrived in cars at the burnt Verbovets crime scene. They pointed their machine guns at the Ukrainian population and asked the barely alive Vincent Sedlyak whether to shoot at the Ukrainians. He replied: "No, don't shoot!"

Let this fact be an answer to those who abroad write in various newspapers more and more often about the Ukrainians of Podolia and Volhynia allegedly destroyed by the Poles ... Priest Zugeniusz Butra from Verbovets escaped only because he was warned by a local Greek Catholic priest. He managed to leave for Budzanov.

In the eyes of the Poles - OUN, UPA, Bandera - are synonymous. Volodymyr Mazur, deputy chairman of the OUN-b Wire at the great veche in honor of the UPA in Kiev on Sophia Square on August 9, 1992, said: "In the 20th century, the UPA, more than any other Ukrainian institution or formation, contributed to the education of the Ukrainian people national consciousness, national dignity and national pride... The UPA and the OUN declared to the whole world that the Ukrainian nation lives and it is the only master in its native land, with the right given to it by God, to its own national state."

And not a word about the murders of Poles. These facts are hushed up by the historian Miroslav Prokop, an active member of the OUN, who published on twenty pages of "Suchasnost" a study "Ukrainian anti-Nazi underground 1941-1944" ... anniversary of the UPA, at a scientific conference dedicated to this date.

In confirmation of the evidence of the killings of the Polish civilian population in Volyn, I will cite absolutely objective sources - Czech authors, formerly residents of Volyn. My friend, a Czech, a colonel, answered my question: "Is it true that Ukrainians killed Poles in Volhynia?" - answered: "They killed. But not all Ukrainians. There were those who did not approve of the killings, but were silent, since the terror of the OUN-UPA reigned. Many Ukrainians paid with their lives for the resistance of the OUN-UPA. The UPA, the OUN Security Service terrorized the Ukrainian population of Volyn. "This Czech pointed to a number of facts of Ukrainian assistance to the Poles in the form of a warning about planned attacks. Pointing to Vasil from Kozakova Dolina, not far from Boremlya, who, under the Bolsheviks, said: "The Germans will come - there will be a free Ukraine." And as soon as the Bandera people began to exterminate the Polish population, the same Vasil said: "We won't build Ukraine like that." People heard it. Two days later, his body was found in a well with a wire around his neck, and his wife, aged 24-25, was also found there...

The book "Volyn Czechs" by Józef Foitikai and four other authors came into my hands. Describing the years of the German occupation, the authors write: "When the Russians left, Bandera began - it was the same fascism only in the nationalist Ukrainian form ... On the feast of Peter and Paul, June 29, 1943, a gang of strangers with axes passed through the village. The next day we learned that at night they attacked the Polish colony of Zagai and brutally killed all its inhabitants ... In the village of Rachin ... in 1943, Ukrainian nationalists killed a Polish citizen Golyakovskaya ... In 1942, Bandera began to kill Polish citizens of Volhynia .. .

Bandera burned Polish villages: Marusya, Vydumka, Maryanovka and part of Skurchev. And here is another Czech book by the author Vaclav Shirts "The Past, Closed by Time", which also describes the life of Czechs in Volyn. By the way, it says here. "When the Red Army retreated in June 1941, the Ukrainians began settling scores among themselves. On Boyarka, they killed the chairman of the village council and his 14-year-old son with a pitchfork. Several Ukrainians were shot dead ... Together with the Germans, Ukrainian nationalists returned home, who had previously fled to German-occupied Poland, where they received special training at a school in Krakow.In Krasnaya Gora, they staged something like a people's trial of Soviet activists in 1939-1941. The enmity manifested itself with such force that the mother did not protect her daughter or son, the son - father, brother - brother.

A week later (in July 1941 - V.P.) the Gestapo came after the front-line troops and with it Ukrainian nationalists trained at a school in Krakow: one of them was a soldier of the Polish Army Dmytro Novosad from Krasnaya Gora ... Together the Germans disarmed the policemen, put them in a car, took them to the forest, and there they shot. They also took young Pole lads from Ludvikovka to work in Germany and shot them in the forest. Without any trial, Polish intellectuals were shot dead in Mlinov - 41 Poles and 20 Jews. This is how the Ukrainian police began to act, the "shutsmans" under the leadership of Dmitry Novosad ... During 1941-42. the Ukrainian police, together with the Gestapo, staged several pogroms in the vicinity.

During the winter of 1942 until 1943, it came to solitary, then mass murders of Poles, before Easter they called out: "Remove Poles and Jews from Ukraine", that is, drive them out or kill them ...

Bandera's extremists said: "We need blood up to our knees, so that Ukraine will be free." At the end of 1942 or at the beginning of 1943, unknown people killed Ukrainian Nikolay Dombrovsky in Turetskaya Gora. He was not a communist, but he was an intelligent, logically thinking man, a good friend of the Czechs. He bravely expressed views that did not coincide with the official ideology of the Bandera underground. He was neither the first nor the last. Bandera terror strangled the voices of reason. Bandera focused on arson and murder - of entire Polish families, later of entire villages. The spring of 1943 passed in continuous fires. Rural villages burned at night. The Poles, expelled from their villages to the cities, entered the service of the Germans, the police and took revenge on the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians fled into the forest. Several Ukrainians were killed. Bandera killed several Czechs in the vicinity, mostly Catholics or from families mixed with Poles. Polish departments attacked the families of active Ukrainian nationalists at night... In the winter of 1943, in the evening, on the road from Uzhintsy, Bandera attacked a cart with Polish women from Karolinka, who were going to Maslenka to spend the night at the Poloshchanskys, hoping that it was not so dangerous there. They shot Yuzef Poloshchansky's wife and another woman. At the end of 1943, a miller, a Pole Stets, who had a Ukrainian wife, was attacked, and her five-year-old daughter was also killed. Before the winter of 1942, there was a pogrom of Jews in Mlinov. They went to their death like a flock of sheep, without resisting. Many fled, hiding with the Poles, Czechs, and in some cases with the Ukrainians. The occupiers and the Ukrainian police threatened with death those who hid the Jews, hunted them through the forests and villages. In the estate of Volodymyr Vostroy from Frankiv, a 14-year-old Jewish boy was caught, driven all the way to Karolinka, and shot dead. In the forest "Grafchina" not far from Frankov, 14 Jews who were hiding in a bunker were shot dead... In the Czech forest near Frankov, four boys aged 12-14 were shot dead. The head of the Mlinovsky policemen - "shutsmans" Dmitry Novosad became a bunch - an ensign. He boasted: "I destroyed the entire Polish intelligentsia in Mlyniv. I shot 869 Jews with my own hands. I promised myself that I would shoot a thousand" ...

The London Polish publishing house publishes the memoirs of witnesses of the Bandera murders, edited by Endrzej Gertrich. On page 41, about a hundred testimonies are filed in small print, reading which it is impossible not to cry. The author also publishes letters from Ukrainians. One of them says: “I want to explain that on October 10, 1944, the Banderaites killed 55 Ukrainians, not Poles, with the exception of a few Roman Catholics. They killed those who went to work on collective farms, because the Banderaites wanted to starve out the Bolsheviks. The trouble is that the children of the rural rich were in the forest, like Bandera, and the rural poor could not survive, so they had to go to work on the collective farm. for Ukraine."

P. Falkovska writes from Brazil: "Between Lutsk and Rivne there was the village of Palchi... In 1942-43 Bandera tortured 18 people from her husband's relatives... they tortured, pulled out their tongues. An 86-year-old blacksmith was cut into pieces alive... One Ukrainian had a Polish wife, so Bandera ordered his brother to kill him. The family fled from Kotov to Palchi, on the way they were attacked by Bandera, and that brother was among them. They killed the whole family - a Ukrainian father, a Polish mother and children. In the village of Zverev, Bandera killed an entire family, then the Poles found a living baby who was suckling the breast of a murdered mother.

It will be justified if I also give at least some evidence that comes from the other side. I fell into the hands of the Bandera magazine "Do Zbroi" No. 6 (19) for August-September 1950. It contains a lot of interesting things under the heading "From the fighting of the UPA and the armed underground under the Moscow-Bolshevik occupation." Here are some facts. 01/01/47 in the village. Kalyniv (Sambir district, Drogobitskaya region) OUN militants liquidated the lieutenant of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Melnikov, a district police officer in the village. 01/02/47 in the village. Golyn (Kalush district, Stanislav region), the rebels of the "Lynx" department confiscated grain and flour at the state mill. On January 6, 1947, in Dorogiv (the district of Galich, Stanislav region), the rebels destroyed the first secretary of the district party committee ... On January 8, 1947, in the village. Borsch destroyed the selrada, burned the lists of "voters". 01/10/47, the rebels under room. hundred S. destroyed in with. Krylos 4 mvdist. 01/21/47 in the village. Ugrinov Dol, the rebels of the "Cranes" department destroyed 3 militants and wounded one. 03/23/47 in the village. Darling ... the rebels liquidated the sent party member - the chairman of the village council, who tried to organize a collective farm in the village.

And here is another issue of "To Zbroi": "04/02/48, the rebels burned the narrow-gauge railway bridge between the villages of Spas-Lugi. On 04/02/48, in the forest near the town of Bolekhiv, underground members shot two party members, destroyed the club's premises, set fire to the collective farm ... destroyed telephone line... the organizer of the collective farm was shot dead... the mechanic of the Dolinskaya motor depot was liquidated... the film shifter was destroyed... the head of the peat plant was killed... the secretary of the primary Komsomol organization was punished by death by hanging.

In the summer of 1948, the rebels carried out mass actions against the collective farms in the Volyn region ... liquidated the Bolshevik servants-activists ... "

And so on and so forth for 8 pages of the magazine. From the above it is clear what the UPA did after the war. This continued until 1950. And now they are making noise that the Bolsheviks took every tenth inhabitant of Western Ukraine to Siberia. Peaceful peasants were to be held accountable for their affairs. The activities of Bandera were a crime against the civilian population of Western Ukraine... I also want to turn to the works of Ukrainian writers known today (many of whom have changed their views by 180 degrees - ed.). Here I found a poem by Dmitry Pavlychko from his collection "Bistrina", Kiev, 1959, p. 138, which contains the following lines:

Budesh, Ukraine,

Long memory "yatati ...

Violet eyes,

Eyes-dawn.

Budesh pam "yatati

Dermansk krinitsy!

What is this "Dermansky krinitsy"? Yury Melnichuk writes about this in the book "Virvane

June 22 marks the 75th anniversary of the start of the Great Patriotic War. In modern Ukrainian school textbooks, today this day is called the beginning of the battle between “two totalitarian regimes” for the enslavement of a free and democratic Europe, and the heroes who fought against the two occupation regimes for the liberation of Ukraine are members of the OUN-UPA. But all these books, newspapers, TV shows cannot overshadow archival documents and human memory - almost every family in Ukraine has the scars of that terrible war: graves on churchyards, yellowed field mail triangles, darkened orders. What is the baggage of "merits" in the fight against Nazism OUN "heroes"? Why do the Kiev authorities today call them true liberators, while banning the Victory Banner as an occupational communist symbol?

In 1939, the population of Western Ukraine greeted the Red Army with bread and salt. Over time, the repressions of the NKVD began there. But the literature is silent about their cause and the role of the OUN in provoking them.

During the preparation of the German aggression against Poland, Hitler's intelligence service flooded the country with its agents, mainly OUN members. They were supposed to paralyze the resistance of the Poles to the Germans. The influential OUN member Kost Pankovsky, who during the Second World War was the deputy head of the so-called. Ukrainian Central Committee Vladimir Kubievich, one of the initiators and inspirers of the creation of the SS division "Galicia", in his work "The Rocks of the German Occupation" (1965, Toronto) writes that on the eve of the Nazi attack on Poland, "the OUN wire planned to raise an armed uprising in the rear Polish troops and formed a military detachment - "Ukrainian Legion" under the command of Colonel Roman Sushko. After the occupation of Poland, the Nazis invited them to work in the "Ukrainian police", intended to fight the Polish resistance.

The activities of the Ukrainian police on the teren [space] of Poland were highly appreciated by the German hosts. Therefore, shortly before the attack on the Soviet Union, the Nazis began mass training of OUN police personnel for the future occupation regime in Ukraine. The leaders of the OUN, with the money of Hitler's intelligence, created schools of the "Ukrainian police" in Kholm and Przemysl. They were led by Gestapo officers Müller, Ryder, Walter. A similar school was established in Berlin. At the same time, German military intelligence launched training for espionage and sabotage activities on the territory of the USSR. In a special camp on Lake Chiemsee (Germany), Ukrainian nationalists were trained as saboteurs, and in the Quinzgut military training center - spies (TsGAOOOU, f. 1, op. 4, d. 338, l. 22).

After September 1939, the activities of the nationalist underground became more covert. During the reunification of the western regions of Ukraine with the Ukrainian SSR, the leadership of the Krakow wire of the OUN instructed its underground links not to be hostile towards Soviet military personnel, to retain personnel, preparing them for future active action against the USSR. They also had to collect, using the collapse of the Polish army, to infiltrate local and party authorities. So, the former member of the Lviv executive A.A. Lutsky, for example, managed to get into the office of one of the district executive committees of the Stanislav [since 1962 Ivano-Franskov] region and even achieve election as a deputy to the People's Assembly. Fearing possible exposure, at the end of 1939 he fled to Krakow. Soviet authorities identified 156 OUN members in the Stanislav region alone, embedded in village committees.

The OUN leadership began to organize acts of sabotage and terror in Western Ukraine. According to incomplete data, in the second half of 1940 they carried out 30 terrorist attacks, and on the eve of the German attack on the USSR, there were 17 of them in just two months of 1941 (GDA SBU. F. 16, op. 39, l. 765). So they killed the instructor of the Stusivsky district committee of the CP (b) U of the Ternopil region I. Rybolovko, the prosecutor of the Monastyrsky district Doroshenko and other Soviet and party workers (Archive of the USBU for the Ternopil region, d. 72, v. 1, l. 1). In July 1940, a grenade was thrown into the cinema during a film demonstration in Lvov. As a result of the explosion, 28 people were injured (GDA SBU.F.16, op.33, b.n. 23, fol. 765).

The same actions, as well as acts of sabotage, were organized in many western regions of Ukraine. In addition, the Germans demanded that the leaders of the OUN intensify the organization of an armed uprising, which would serve as a pretext for war against the USSR. The preparation for it, as one of the leaders of the Abwehr, Colonel E. Stolze testified in Nuremberg (Military History Journal, 1990, No. 4), was directly supervised by his subordinate officers Dering and Market.

Communication between Stolze and Bandera was provided by Rico Yariy. On March 10, 1940, a meeting of the leadership of the OUN was held in Krakow, at which the following action plan was developed: 1. Prepare and in as soon as possible transfer to the territory of the Ukrainian SSR the leading cadres of the OUN in order to create headquarters in Volhynia and Lvov for organizing an armed uprising. 2. Within two months, study the territory, have a clear idea of ​​the presence of rebel forces, weapons, supplies, the mood of the population, the presence and location of Soviet troops (Ternopil oblarchiv, f. 1, op. 1-a, d.2, l. 125- 127).

Trusted members of the organization visited the OUN underground on Soviet territory. Among them was a member of the central wire, as well as an agent of the Abwehr A. Lutsky (Bogun). Being detained in January 1945, he testified that “the main task assigned to the wire was to prepare, by the end of the summer of 1940, an uprising against Soviet power throughout Western Ukraine. We carried out urgent military training for members of the OUN, collected and concentrated weapons in one place. They provided for the capture of military-strategic objects: mail, telegraph, etc. They made up the so-called. black book - a list of party workers and Soviet organs, local activists and workers of the NKVD, who immediately had to be destroyed when the war began ”(GDA SBU.F.16, op. 33, p. n. 23, l. 297).

Lutsky testified that “if the uprising provoked by us in Western Ukraine had lasted at least a few days, then Germany would have come to our aid.” The same testimony was given by his deputy Mikhail Senkiv. Well, just like the "call for help" of the Sudeten Germans! However, in the summer of 1940, at the direction of Canaris, the preparation of an armed uprising was removed from the agenda, since Germany was not yet fully prepared for an attack on the Soviet Union.

With the beginning of the war against the USSR, the OUN marching groups followed the advancing German units. “Ukrainian integral nationalists,” notes the Canadian historian O. Subtelny, “enthusiastically welcomed the German attack on the USSR, considering it as a promising opportunity to establish an independent Ukrainian state” (Subtelny O.Ukraina. Іstoriya. Kiev. 1993, p. 567).

In the OUN brochure entitled “For Ukrainian Statehood”, which is a review of the reports of a number of leaders of the territorial underground organizations of Bandera, it is recorded: “Before the start of the German-Soviet war, the OUN, despite incredible difficulties, organized a network of underground workers in the villages, which ... in general in a number of districts of the Ternopil region organized armed demonstrations by insurgent detachments, disarmed many military units. In general... our militants attacked all the towns and villages of the region even before the arrival of the German army.”

Similar crimes were committed by Ukrainian nationalists on the territory of Lvov, Stanislav, Drohobych, Volyn and Chernivtsi regions. So, on June 28, 1941, near the city of Przemyshlyany in the Lvov region, several OUN gangs attacked small detachments of the Red Army and individual vehicles that evacuated women and children. Over the Red Army and defenseless people, the militants committed a cruel massacre. The same gangs helped the Nazis capture Przemyshlyany. In the area of ​​​​the village of Rudka, a unit of the fascist army ran into the courageous resistance of the Soviet troops. The Nazis asked the OUN for help, and they, as this pamphlet says, accepted active participation"in the most victorious battles." The nationalists were also active in the Volyn and Rivne regions.

The atrocities of the OUN gangs are reported in the report of the headquarters of the South-Western Front dated June 24, 1941: “In the Ustlug area, enemy sabotage groups are operating, dressed in our uniform. Warehouses are on fire in the area. During June 22 and in the morning of June 23, the enemy landed troops on Khirov, Drohobych, Borislav, the last two were destroyed ”(GDA SBU, d. 490, vol. 1, l. 100).

The leaders of the OUN sent several so-called marching groups to Ukraine after the advancing units of the fascist army. These divisions, according to the definition of the OUN "guides", were "a kind of political army", which included nationalists who had experience of fighting in conditions of deep underground. The route of their movement was agreed in advance with the Abwehr. So, the northern marching group of 2,500 people moved along the route Lutsk - Zhytomyr - Kiev. Medium - 1500 OUN - in the direction of Poltava - Sumy - Kharkiv. The southern one - consisting of 880 people - followed the route Ternopil - Vinnitsa - Dnepropetrovsk - Odessa.

The activity of these groups was reduced to performing the functions of an auxiliary occupation apparatus in the occupied territory of the republic: they helped the Nazis form the so-called Ukrainian police, city and district councils, as well as other bodies of the fascist occupation administration. At the same time, the group members established contacts with various kinds of criminal elements, using them to identify the local underground and Soviet partisans.

From the very beginning of their existence, the mentioned self-government bodies were under the rule of the Nazi occupation administration. The materials available in the archives of Ukraine confirm this.

For example, in the instructions of the Reichskommissar of Ukraine Erich Koch for No. 119 “On the attitude of military units to the Ukrainian population”, it is emphasized: “The created Ukrainian national local governments or district governments should not be considered as independent administrations or authorized from higher authorities but as trusted to communicate with the German military authorities. Their task is to carry out the orders of the latter” (TsGAOOOU, f. 1, op. 1-14, item 115, fol. 73-76).

Unfortunate historians in modern Ukraine they are trying to convince its residents (the younger generation in the first place) that it was the OUN-UPA warriors who defended the population of the Ukrainian SSR from the invaders. I will briefly remind HOW they did it.

In punitive operations against the civilian population, military units were used, formed mainly from OUN members specially trained for this purpose: the legions named after Konovalets, the "Ukrainian Legion" and others. The notorious Nachtigal was especially "famous". One of the founders of the OUN, Bohdan Mikhailyuk (Knysh), a Melnikovite, wrote in his pamphlet Bandera's Revolt published in 1950: , since his task was to go behind the German troops, sing Ukrainian songs and create German-friendly moods among the Ukrainian population. How did the "nightingales" create "friendly moods for the Germans"?

Already in the first hours of the occupation of Lviv, massacres began against its inhabitants, accompanied by torture. To do this, special teams were created from the formed auxiliary police and legionnaires, which were engaged in the liquidation of local government employees, Poles and Jews. In the period from July 1 to July 4, 1941, with the participation of the Nakhtigalevites, outstanding Polish scientists and intellectuals were destroyed in Lvov - academician Solovy, professors Bartel, Boy-Zhelensky, Seradsky, Novitsky, Lomnitsky, Domasevich, Rentsky, Weigel, Ostrovsky, Manchevsky, Greek, Krukovsky, Dobzhanetsky and others (Alexander Korman. From the bloody days of Lvov 1941, London, 1991).

In a terrible situation in the Nazi-occupied territory were the Jews, on whom the fascist ideology of Dmitry Dontsov mechanically endured the German practice of complete physical liquidation. Simon Wiesenthal, a world-famous fighter against Nazism, witnessed the massacre of Jews in Lvov in the first days of the war.

How the massacres of Jews in Lvov took place was truthfully described by Julian Schulmeister in his book "Hitlerism in the Jews", which was published in Kiev in 1990.

Here are some excerpts from the memoirs of eyewitnesses of the mass crimes of fascism, published in Schulmeister's book.

Testimony of F. Friedman: “In the first days of the German occupation, from June 30 to July 3, bloody and brutal pogroms were organized. Ukrainian nationalists and organized Ukrainian police (auxiliary police) began to hunt Jewish residents in the streets. They broke into apartments, grabbed men, sometimes the whole family, not excluding children.

Testimony of Janina Hescheles: “Yellow-blue banners flutter. The streets are full of Ukrainians with sticks and pieces of iron, screams are heard ... Not far from the post office there are people with shovels, Ukrainians beat them, shouting: “Jews, Jews! ..” On Kollontai street, guys beat Jews with brooms and stones. They are taken to the Brigidki prison, to Kazimirovka. On the boulevard they beat again ... "

Testimony of Rubinstein: “The next day, the Germans, together with the Ukrainians, organize a pogrom. Then about three thousand Jews were killed ... "

Testimony of Ukrainian Kazimira Poray (from a diary): “What I saw today in the market could have happened in ancient times. Perhaps this is what wild people did ... Near the Town Hall, the road is covered broken glass... Soldiers with SS emblems who speak Ukrainian torture and mock Jews. They are forced to sweep the square with their clothes - blouses, dresses, even hats. They put two handcarts, one on the corner of Krakowska Street, the other on Halytska Street, forcing the Jews to collect glass and carry with bare hands to carts... beaten with sticks and pieces of wire. The road from Galicia to Krakow is flooded with blood that flows from human hands ... "

Thousands of innocent Soviet citizens were tortured by the Nakhtigalev executioners in Zolochev and Ternopol, Satanov and Vinnitsa, other cities and villages of Ukraine and Belarus, where the Abwehr unit was held. These executioners also committed bloody orgies and mass executions in Stanislav. There, in the first days of the Nazi occupation, 250 teachers, doctors, engineers, lawyers were destroyed.

The nationalists dealt particularly cruelly with the Jewish population. In the first months of the occupation of the western regions of Ukraine, the OUN, together with the Nazis, arranged "crystal nights" - they shot, killed and burned tens of thousands of Jews in Lvov, Ternopil, Nadvirna. In Stanislav alone, from July 1941 to July 1942, the Nazis, together with the OUN, destroyed 26 thousand Jews, which was confirmed in Munster (FRG) at the trial of former leader security police and SD in Stanislav G. Krieger in 1966 (Cherednichenko V.P. Nationalism against nations. K., 1970, p. 95).

For the armed struggle against the Belarusian partisans, the Nachtigal battalion was withdrawn from the front at the end of October 1941 and merged into one formation with the Roland battalion - the so-called Schutzmannschaft battalion. In mid-March 1942, the 201st Schutzmannschaft Battalion, led by an OUN member, Abwehr Major Yevgeny Pobigushchiy, and his deputy, Hauptmann Roman Shukhevych, was transferred to Belarus. Here it became known as a unit of the 201st Police Division, which, together with other brigades and operational battalions, operated under the leadership of SS-Obergruppenführer Bach-Zalewski.

What was the "fighting prowess" of Pobeguschny and Shukhevych, as well as the entire Schutzmanshaft of the battalion, is stated in the book of the famous Ukrainian researcher V.I. “Earlier today,” the author writes, “it is clearly indicated that the Schutzmannschaft battalion could not be buried in the partisan region, in Belarus, but at the warehouse of the penal formations of SS Obergrupenführer von Bach-Zalewski against Belarusian partisans and civilians, taking the fate of the penal operations “Swamp Fever”, “Trikutnik”, “Cottbus” and others” (p. 27). On their "combat account" dozens of burned farms and villages, an uncountable number of ruined lives of Belarusian citizens.

The Ukrainian policemen also left their bloody trail on Ukrainian soil, completely destroying the Volyn village of Kortelisy and 2,800 of its inhabitants, about which Volodymyr Yavorivsky, now a BYuT poet, wrote about in his book “Flamed Kortelisi,” who seeks honors and the status of heroes for these executioners.

The role of Ukrainian nationalists in the tragedy of Babi Yar is still terra incognita for researchers. In the Soviet period, this was done for the sake of the friendship of peoples, contemptuously called the former singer of this very friendship, Vitaly Korotich, vulgar. Today's "historians" are trying to "wash the black dog white."

September 20, 1941 Kiev was occupied by the Germans. And a few days later, the future participants in the bloody action at Babi Yar arrived in the city - Sonderkommando 4a, led by the sadist Paul Blobel, two punitive Ukrainian police battalions under the command of B. Konik and I. Kedyumich. And also the infamous "Bukovinian Chicken" under the leadership of the fanatic Pyotr Voinovsky, who had already managed to distinguish himself with bloody pogroms, executions and robberies on the way to Kiev in Kamenetz-Podolsky, Zhmerinka, Proskurov, Vinnitsa, Zhytomyr and other cities. By September 26, over 2 thousand policemen and SS men had gathered in Kiev (Kruglov A. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. K., 2000, p. 203).

A lie is the assertion that the UPA was created to fight the German occupiers. The French researcher Alain Guerin directly pointed out that the UPA is a product of the long-term activity of the German intelligence service (Guerin A. Gray Cardinal. M., 1971).

It was created entirely according to the Hitler model. Most of its leaders were trained by the Nazis in special military reconnaissance and sabotage schools in Germany on the eve of the war. Many were awarded military ranks of the Abwehr. For example, the UPA commander Klyachkivsky (Savur) had the rank of senior lieutenant of the Abwehr and at the same time was a member of the OUN central wire. Ivan Grinyokh (Gerasimovsky) - captain of the Abwehr, at the beginning of the war, chaplain of the Nachtigal battalion, then an official in the department of Rosenberg, and from February 1943 - an intermediary in negotiations between the commands of the UPA and the German occupation authorities. Negotiations on the interaction of the UPA and German troops against the Red Army were led by Alexander Lutsky (Bohun), a senior lieutenant of the Abwehr, a member of the main headquarters of the UPA, commander of the UPA "West-Karpaty"; Vasily Sidor (Shelest) - captain of the Abwehr, company commander of the Schutzmannschaft battalion, "famous" in Belarus, then commander of the West-Karpaty UPA (after leaving the post of Lutsky); Petr Melnik (Khmara) - company commander of the SS division "Galicia", commander of the UPA kuren in the Stanislav region; Mikhail Andrusyak (Rizun) - lieutenant of the Abwehr, served in the Nachtigall, commanded a detachment in the Stanislav region; Yuri Lopatinsky (Kalina) - senior lieutenant of the Abwehr, member of the central wire of the OUN, member of the main headquarters of the UPA. The heads of the security service (SB) of the UPA were, as a rule, former employees of the Gestapo, the gendarmerie, and the auxiliary Ukrainian police. All these and many other leaders were awarded German orders for the Eastern peoples.

The Nazis not only formed the UPA, but also armed it. This was done by the Abwehrkommando-202.

According to incomplete data, 700 mortars, about 10 thousand heavy and light machine guns, 26 thousand machine guns, 22 thousand pistols, 100 thousand grenades, 80 thousand mines and shells, several million rounds of ammunition, radio stations, portable cars and etc.

A characteristic example of the interaction of the OUN-UPA with German troops is the fact that on January 13, 1944, the German garrison in the town of Kamen-Kashirsky, Volyn region, was replaced by UPA units. He left 300 rifles, 2 boxes of cartridges, 65 sets of uniforms, 200 pairs of underwear and other equipment to the OUN people.

In March 1944, partisans of A.F. Fedorov’s formation, while repelling an armed UPA attack on one of the detachments, captured a document confirming the connection of the warriors with the Germans. Here is its content: “Friendly Bogdan! Send 15 people to our hut, who will work on the construction of the bridge. On March 3, 1944, I agreed with the German captain Oschft that we would build a bridge for the crossing of German troops, for which they would give us reinforcements - two battalions with all the equipment. Together with these battalions on March 18 with. we will clear the forest on both sides of the Stokhod river from the red partisans and give free passage to the rear of the Red Army for our UPA detachments, which are waiting there. We stayed at the negotiations for 15 hours. The Germans gave us lunch. Glory to Ukraine! Eagle Commander. March 5, 1944 "(Miroslava Berdnik. Pawns in someone else's game. Pages of the history of Ukrainian nationalism. 2010).

The cooperation of the UPA with the Germans was not an isolated fact, but was encouraged from above. Thus, on February 12, 1944, the Commander-in-Chief of the Security Police and the SD in Ukraine, SS Brigadeführer and Police Major General Brenner, on February 12, 1944, oriented the intelligence agencies subordinate to him in the western regions of Ukraine to the fact that in connection with the successful negotiations with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in the area of ​​the villages of Derazhnoe, Verba (Rivne region. - MB) the leaders of the UPA undertook to throw their intelligence officers into the Soviet rear and inform the department of the 1st combat groups located at the headquarters of the German armies "South" about the results of their work. In this regard, Brenner ordered to allow free movement of UPA agents with Captain Felix's passes, to prohibit the seizure of weapons from UPA members, and to use identification marks (spread fingers of the left hand raised in front of the face) when meeting UPA groups with German military units (TSGAVOVU, f. 4628, list 1, file 10, pp. 218-233).

During the defeat by the Soviet troops of the UPA grouping in the Rivne region in April 1944, 65 German military personnel operating as part of the structural units of the UPA were taken prisoner. This fact is mentioned in the collection of documents "Internal troops in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945". It also contains a statement by one German prisoner of war about the connections of the command of the German Wehrmacht and the UPA in the joint struggle against the Red Army and Soviet partisans.

Alain Guerin in the book "The Gray Cardinal" answers the question: did Bandera kill the Germans, and if they did, then under what circumstances? Yes, they did, writes Guérin, but only by misunderstanding or when they got rid of them as "unmasking material". The fact is that many German soldiers were seconded to the UPA units. Once surrounded by Soviet troops, Bandera in a number of cases destroyed their allies in order to cover up the traces of German-Ukrainian cooperation. By misunderstanding, if the means of identification did not work, for example, when the Germans dressed in the uniform of the Red Army, the Bandera people were mistaken for enemies.

Historians-falsifiers who offer a Ukrainian-centric concept of the history of the Second World War, and the leadership of Ukraine, by hook or by crook, are trying to whitewash both the OUN and the UPA. At the same time, they seek to take away Victory Day from the Ukrainian people. And in place of the common sacred symbol for the people, they seek to establish a symbol of oblivion - the poppy, so that later the people drunk with poppy infusion will be imposed with vicious false gods who flooded the Ukrainian land with the blood of its citizens.