Volhynia, Holocaust, and Fascism

The events in Volhynia (Volyn) in 1943 have played a key role in dis­cussions. Since 2006, the UPA leader Roman Shukhevych and OUN leader Stepan Bandera have had streets named after them, monu­ments erected to them, and the honor “Hero of Ukraine” bestowed upon them (in 2007 and 2010, respectively).

Since the Poles constituted only 17% of Volhynia’s population, histori­ans are in agreement that the responsibility for their forcible removal in 1943 lies with the local Ukrainian population and the leadership of the OUN(B), which controlled the UPA after 1943. By the same standard, the Polish underground and the majority Polish population are consid­ered responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Ukrainians in the territories west of the Curzon line, which is to say in Chelm, Podlasie, Nadsianie, and the Lemko region (Kholm, Pidliashshia, Nadsiannia in Ukrainian) (Iliushyn 2009, 22).

Viatrovych has attempted to mitigate the responsibility for anti-civilian violence on the part of the OUN and UPA both by defending the sym­bolic role of the underground and by emphasizing the weight of wartime contingencies. He has stated:

The struggle of Ukrainians for independence is one of the corner­stones of our national self-identification. Therefore, without the UPA, without Bandera, without [Roman] Shukhevych there would be no contemporary Ukrainian state, no contemporary Ukrai­nian nation. The fundamental values of the Ukrainian movement, expressed in the manifesto of the OUN under the leadership of Ste­pan Bandera in December 1940 in the slogan “Freedom for nations! Freedom for the individual!” are values on which the contemporary united Europe rests.

(Viatrovych 2010)

He has attributed some of the violence to undisciplined and uncontrolled peasant gangs, but blames the decision to initiate attacks against the Pol­ish population on Klym Savur (real name Dmytro Kliachkivskyi), the UPA commander in Volhynia, who “ceased to subordinate himself to the central command” (Viatrovych 2012, 142). However, Viatrovych does not explain why in subsequent months the UPA’s central command acqui­esced to the policy of attacking the Poles in Volhynia.

Several Ukrainian scholars are in agreement that the leadership of the OUN and the UPA took a decision to unleash the violence (Hrytsak 2004, 104; Iliushyn 2009, 23, 30-32). Although a conflict was inevita­ble, since both undergrounds were developing military formations in the same place and saw Volhynia as part of their reconstituted state after the war, it is generally recognized that the desertion of Ukrainian policemen from German service in the second half of March and first half of April 1943 escalated the conflict to the level of a local war. When the former policemen escaped to the forests, it has been argued, they had to be given a task that would keep them under control. This was one reason why influential members of the OUN(B)'s Volhynian leadership dropped their reservations about unleashing a partisan struggle against “all enemies” (Isaievych et al.

This leadership was also pressured by other circumstances. Former members of the OUN and UPA have reported that the Polish under­ground provoked reprisals against Ukrainian villages, knowing that any act of sabotage would be answered by the Germans (Semeniuk 2010, 47-48). Ukrainian historians have lamented the fact that postwar Polish society appears poorly informed about these provocations (Isaievych et al. 2003, 29, 39, 55).³ Although overall they were a minority in Volhynia, Poles dominated the cities and, like Ukrainians, were infiltrating the Ger­man police and administration to gain weapons and influence.⁴ After Ukrainians left the police, they were replaced by 1,500-2,000 Poles, thus raising the total number of Polish police in Volhynia to around 4,000 (Bolianovskyi 2005, 87). These men cooperated with the Polish under­ground and with the German army in committing atrocities. At the time, the Germans were supplying the AK (Armija Krajowa, Home Army) and other Polish forces with arms and ammunition. In the light of these cir­cumstances, it has been suggested that the large-scale action by the UPA on 11 July 1943 was a pre-emptive move against a planned attack.

Whatever the correct explanation, it is clear that the anti-Polish attacks were conducted with frightening ruthlessness. They included murders with axes and scythes, and the robbing of property (Isaievych et al. 2003, 37). One captured Ukrainian partisan confessed that in the summer of 1943, his unit “destroyed all the Polish population” in its region of opera­tion, “including women, children and the old” (“Protokol” 2011, 583). Another stated that on the order of his superior his group on 29-30 August 1943 “put to the knife the entire Polish population” in five regions (“Protokol” 2007, 442).⁵

Whereas scholars in Ukraine have focused on the underground’s prior­ity of national liberation and the Polish government-in-exile’s refusal to discuss any change in postwar borders, scholars in Poland have empha­sized ethnic cleansing as the chief motivation on the Ukrainian side.

The argument of equivalency is, however, widely rejected by Pol­ish scholars. Viatrovych sees the Volhynian massacre as a response to earlier atrocities committed by Poles in Chelm. By contrast, Polish researchers, while conceding that there may have been a few excep­tions, reject the accusation of genocidal intent on the part of Polish forces.⁶ Grzegorz Motyka, the leading Polish scholar in this field, has assessed Polish losses in Volhynia at 50,000-60,000 and Ukrainian at 2,000-3,000, and has estimated that in the period 1943-47 a total of 80,000-100,000 Poles and 10,000-20,000 Ukrainians were killed in the Polish-Ukrainian conflict, while more than 1 million Poles and 630,000 Ukrainians and Lemkos were displaced (Motyka 2008).⁷ Polish schol­arship has presented the large number of Polish victims as evidence of ethnic cleansing, and has generally refused to consider the attacks on Ukrainians in Chelm in 1942-43 to be of a comparable scale and nature (Motyka 2012, 395-97).

By contrast, Viatrovych places the figures for Polish and Ukrainian deaths at 39,000 and 16,000, respectively (Viatrovych 2012, 241-42).⁸ He also provides the figure of 543 murdered prominent figures, includ­ing priests, in the Chelm region between August 1942 and August 1943 (Viatrovych 2012, 126, 128).⁹ Although some Polish commentators have argued that these individuals should be seen as German collabora­tors, there is evidence of a deliberate Polish policy to remove Ukrainian community leaders.

It has been pointed out that the motivation of Polish actions also requires scrutiny. While the Ukrainian underground was expelling Poles from Volhynia, the latter were attacking Ukrainians in Lublin Province. In May 1943 in Hrubieszow Voievodeship (County) alone, fifty-two vil­lages were destroyed and 4,000 Ukrainians were killed (Rapawy 2016, 159-60). These acts could also be described as ethnic cleansing:

During the interwar period, the Chelm and Podlasie districts in the eastern portion of the Lublin Province had been targeted for Poloni- zation since the Ukrainian identity in this area was weak. During the German occupation, the growth of Ukrainian nationalism increased and more people began calling themselves Ukrainians (instead of Rusyns), a name that Polish elites perceived as being linked with irredentism. In addition, many Poles perceived wartime Ukrainian cooperation with the Germans as Nazi collaboration. Their reaction to these phenomena was emotional and they sought to reverse the process by eliminating community leaders who in their opinion were at the forefront of the Ukrainian nationalist movement.

(Rapawy 2016, 157-58)

Therefore, although Ukrainian and Polish scholars have reached a con­sensus on many aspects of the past, Motyka has admitted that the Vol- hynian episode remains the most contentious, unresolved issue (Zinchuk 2012, 314).

Holocaust researchers have also accused the OUN of organizing anti- Jewish pogroms that took place when Germany overran Western Ukraine in June and July of 1941 (Himka 2012, 430). According to this view, the organization was most likely responsible for the violence because it had a network, was preparing itself to take over the militia and local admin­istration, and insisted that Jews were “agents of Bolshevism.” However, other factors were probably equally significant in triggering the attacks. Although the OUN should be held partially responsible for the spread of antisemitic feelings in the population, it was explicit German policy to incite race hatred as a way of manipulating local populations.¹⁰ Snyder has noted that, although existing research makes clear that “Ukrainian nationalists do not have clean hands,” this does not at all mean that the Germans needed Ukrainian nationalists to perpetrate a Holocaust.

The connections between the militia, local police, the OUN, and the killing of Jews still require research (Golczewski 2010, 132, 138, 140). Nonetheless, there is no dispute among Holocaust scholars that members

The Ukrainian Underground of the 1940s 117 of the OUN participated in the hastily created militia and then, after mid­August 1941, in the German-organized police force.¹¹ Nor is there any disagreement that just before Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, the OUN(B) made some chilling statements about Jews. At its Second Con­gress, held in April 1941, it identified Jews as pro-Soviet. The relevant resolution reads:

Jews in the USSR are the most devoted supporters of the ruling Bol­shevik regime and the avant-garde of Muscovite imperialism. The anti-Jewish mood of the Ukrainian masses is being exploited by the Muscovite-Bolshevik government in order to distract their attention from the true cause of the hardship and to direct them to carry out pogroms against the Jews. The Organization of Ukrainian Nation­alists struggles against the Jews as props of the Moscow-Bolshevik regime, while at the same time it makes the popular masses aware that Moscow is the main enemy.

(Postanovy 1941)

Although the OUN(B) issued no call for violence against Jews, by equat­ing Soviet rule with Jewish domination and by identifying Russian, Poles, and Jews as hostile to the establishment of a Ukrainian state, it helped to create the murderous atmosphere that led to attacks on Jews (Struve 2012, 265).

Another key document, also produced in April 1941, has often been cited as evidence of the OUN(B)'s antisemitism. The “Guidelines for the First Days of the Organization of State Life” reflects the organization’s hopes for Nazi support. It calls for the liquidation of Moscow’s agents, but whether it provides evidence of a project to remove all Jews, or to commit mass murder, is far less clear. Here is the relevant section on minorities:

National minorities are divided into a) those that are friendly to us: namely, members of heretofore enslaved nations: b) those that are hostile to us: Russians [Muscovites], Poles, Jews.

With respect to a) they have rights on par with Ukrainians: we enable their return to their fatherland.

With respect to b) destruction in the struggle particularly of those who defend the [Soviet] regime; resettlement in their lands; destruc­tion mainly of the intelligentsia, which may not be allowed into any positions; and in general we hamper the production of the intelli­gentsia, that is, access to schools, etc. For example, so-called Polish peasants are to be assimilated, making them realize, all the more so during this hot period full of fanaticism, that they are Ukrainians, but of the Latin rite, who were forcibly assimilated. Leaders are to be destroyed. Jews are to be isolated, dismissed from positions in

order to avoid sabotage; all the more so, Russians [Muscovites] and Poles. If there would be an unavoidable need to leave a Jew—e.g., in the economic apparatus—place one of our militia men over him and liquidate him for the slightest infraction.

Only Ukrainians may be heads of individual branches of life, not foreigners who are enemies.

Assimilation of the Jews is excluded.

(Vkazivky na Pershi Dni 1941).

The local police were tasked by the Germans with guarding ghettoes, providing cordons during mass shootings, moving Jews to killing sites or trains, searching houses, and combing forests in the search for fugi­tives. In addition, some men were deployed in mass shootings. Under these conditions, it is inconceivable that members in the police could have avoided some level of participation in the Holocaust. Dieter Pohl has stated that between May and November 1942, the local police in Volhynia-Podilia was used systematically in the massacres of Jews: “In almost every town or village where Jews were still living, the Gendar­merie and its auxiliaries took part in the killing” (Pohl 2010, 55). He indicates that the precinct level (where Jews were registered and ghettoes established) was predominantly staffed by Ukrainians, whose role still requires research (ibid.).

In addition, the well-organized nature of anti-Polish attacks in 1943 has been presented as evidence that former policemen applied techniques of mass murder they had learned from observing the Germans murder some 200,000 Jews in 1942 (Snyder 2010, 94; 2003a, 198-99).

According to some accounts, when Volhynian policemen joined fight­ers in the forests in March and April of 1943, the UPA lured Jewish sur­vivors out of the forests and killed them (Himka 2010, 94).

However, many who deserted from the police did not join the UPA, which was forcibly absorbing other partisan groups and conscripting villagers. Moreover, the policemen were not an undifferentiated group; they had joined for various reasons and practiced different levels of col­laboration (Radchenko 2013, 455-59). Studies of groups involved in anti-Jewish violence show that distinctions should be made between per­petrators, among them the ideologically motivated and eager, the con­formist who undertook tasks without much questioning, and the evader who shirked assignments whenever possible.¹² At the local level, moti­vation for anti-communal violence was a broad spectrum. It included plunder, personal vendettas, and the whims of local power holders. As Max Bergholz has indicated in his study of wartime violence in the Bal­kans, a cleavage frequently exists between macro-historical accounts of a conflict and what occurs at the local level. Moreover, there are strik­ing geographical and temporal variations in behavior. He has called for employing wider conceptual and theoretical frameworks when exploring

The Ukrainian Underground of the 1940s 119 causes, and for a more intensive use of micro-level sources, such as local archives and interviews, to test macro-level argumentation (Bergholz 2018, 326-28).

Today, multiple conflicting memories of events reflect different experi­ences among Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews. Christoph Mick has shown how stereotypes inherited from the past and traumas caused by their own suffering made it difficult for Poles and Ukrainians to discuss Jewish suf­fering after the war (Mick 2011, 363; 2015). It has been estimated that in the territory of what is today Ukraine, 1.4 million Jews were killed, and 5.5-7 million Ukrainian citizens overall. Jewish deaths, therefore, account for 17-22% of people killed in Ukraine during the war (Brandon and Lower 2010, 11). The ramifications of the Holocaust in Ukraine, and especially its intersection with the history of the OUN and UPA, has now become a burgeoning area of scholarly study.¹³

As for the accusation that the OUN embraced a fascist and racist ide­ology, it clearly went through what has been described as a “totalitarian phase,” which peaked in the autumn of 1939 (Zaitsev 2013, 21). It has been suggested that if the OUN had been allowed to set up a state, it would have acted in a way similar to Croatia’s Ustashe (Ustase), and therefore the organization at that time should be described as proto­fascist (ibid., 29). Although in the 1930s, the OUN’s leadership refused the fascist label and was suspicious of German plans, the young members in Galicia were more receptive to fascist and racist views, which is why Dmytro Dontsov’s writings were popular among them.¹⁴ It should also be noted that antisemitic pronouncements became more frequent in the OUN’s publications in the years 1938-41, even though some leaders tried to combat them (Shkandrij 2015, 53-55, 112-22). Perhaps most telling, however, is the fact that when the “Holocaust by bullets” began in 1941, neither wing of the OUN issued a document opposing the murder of Jews, and after the war, Jews practically disappeared from the OUN’s accounts of the war.

The OUN’s flirtation with Germany was rewarded in 1939-41 with some military training for both wings of the organization. However, fol­lowing the invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, Hitler refused to recognize a Ukrainian government of any kind. By September, he was imprisoning and executing nationalists of all stripes. As a result, both wings of the OUN gradually committed themselves to an armed struggle against the occupation. Initially, they helped groups that were sabotaging the transportation of Ukrainian workers to Germany. After revising its program and ideology in August 1943 at the Third Extraor­dinary Grand Assembly, the OUN(B) called for armed resistance against both Stalin and Hitler.¹⁵ The UPA’s propagandists in Ukraine develop this anti-imperialist ideology in the later forties, as the writings of Osyp Diakiv (pseudonym Hornovyi) and Petro Fedun (pseudonym Poltava) indicate.¹⁶