CAMPAIGN TO DELEGITIMIZE THE NATIONAL STRUGGLE FOR UKRAINE’S LIBERATION
The spurious allegation that the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its members in the Nachtigall Battalion carried out pogroms in Lviv in the summer of 1941, continues to be dredged up to defame the Ukrainian liberation struggle during WWII.
Despite having been authoritatively exposed as part of a Soviet disinformation campaign from 50 years ago, it is again being forced on unwitting media outlets to discredit Ukrainian President Yushchenko’s decision to confer a posthumous medal “Hero of Ukraine” on Stepan Bandera, leader of OUN during and after WWII.
Five separate and exhaustive investigations established that neither the OUN nor its members in the Nachtigall Battalion participated in the heinous war crimes/pogroms in Lviv in July of 1941.
First, the investigation of the Extraordinary State Commission on German atrocities, created by the Soviet government in 1944, identified the specific individuals and the branches of the German security services, who perpetrated the killings. The findings contained no direct or indirect reference, much less accusations against members of the OUN or Nachtigall. Subsequently, the Nuremberg war crimes trials, again, exhaustively reviewed the evidence concerning the pogroms in Lviv and, again, made no mention of OUN or Nachtigall.
The conspiracy to discredit the OUN and Nachtigall was actually concocted in 1959, following the assassination of Stepan Bandera by a Soviet Russian KGB agent. The KGB plot was an elaborate attempt to compromise Theodor Oberländer, the then Minister for Displaced Persons for West Germany and to delegitimize the OUN as a national liberation movement. The allegation was that Oberländer, as the commanding German officer of the Nachtigall Battalion in Lviv in 1941, launched the pogroms against the Jews and Poles. However, the KGB intrigue was exposed when, after an extensive trial, the West German court concluded that there were no grounds for accusing Oberländer, Nachtigall, or OUN of any criminal acts against Jews or Poles in Lviv in July of 1941. On the contrary, the court established that it was the German Security Service (SD), the Security Police, and the Einsatzkommando 5 that had perpetrated the mass murder of Jews and Poles in Lviv in 1941.
The fourth investigation was conducted at the request of Oberländer, himself, by an international commission of eminent and unimpeachable international jurists who met in The Hague from November 1959 to March 1960. They unanimously concluded “that the accusations against the Battalion Nachtigall and against the then Lieutenant and currently Federal Minister Oberländer have no foundation in fact.” The commission further concluded that the KGB disinformation campaign was primarily designed to deflect attention away from the KGB itself for the assassination of Bandera, by casting blame on Oberländer and the Germans.
Finally, at the request of Stepan Bandera’s family in Canada, the Canadian Government’s Commission of Inquiry on War Crimes in Canada conducted its own investigation and, in 1985, cleared Stepan Bandera of any direct or indirect involvement in war crimes.
Let the record also show that recently uncovered and authenticated documents in the archives of the Ukrainian National Security Service show that the OUN leadership in Lviv in 1941 issued specific instructions to its members not to participate in any German actions against Jews and Poles.
Despite all of the evidence to the contrary, the campaign to delegitimize the national struggle for the independence of Ukraine, by demonizing the OUN and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), continues. The Kremlin rulers in Moscow and their fellow travelers abroad still cannot come to terms with their lost empire. Nor can they countenance a free, independent and democratic Ukraine, where its citizens of all religious and ethnic backgrounds, be they Jews, Poles or Russians, enjoy greater freedom, security and opportunity than in any other country of the former Soviet Russian Empire.
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