Ukrainian National Organizations 1941

[Orlov]

My family lived in the middle of that shit.

What does the argument about the Polish family have in common in the context of the discussion about the OUN in 1941? Only Polish resentment.
No knowledge, which you confirmed with WM opinion about Kuklinska's poor book - "because I like it" - or Munich agreement. No critical look, no contact with archival documents - only internet sources at WM-vision. Even Ringelblum docs off the topic activity of the OUN in "Selbstreninigungsaktion" in Lemberg.
No use argumentum ad personam - because it proves a lack of historical knowledge to pick on the person of the debater - only about the post, poor VM-man obsessed with anti-Ukrainianism and anti-Semitism.
I give always the source more clearly and refers to scientific monographs, and don't write pseudo-historical emotional screeds - WM ignorance is visible every now and then. I will never answer this ignorant person again, no matter how WM will provoke me to answer.
WRITE ABOUT "Ukrainian National Organizations 1941" - this is the basic rule of this forum - on subject without discussion about everything under yours "only right" thesis.

The OUN apparently considered all Jews to be communists. The claim is regularly made that the Jews had welcomed the communists and no doubt some had but so had Ukrainians and Byelorussians. it is worth trying to work out if claims of Jews in particular being communist sympathisers have any foundation in fact. [...]
I am sure this link will interest you Orlov.
https://archive.org/stream/GrzegorzRoss ... 4_djvu.txt

Thanks for the link - interesting author of academical articles - but he has filled with typical hipster obsession about fascism and fascist - it's easier that way.

If you want to know who voted communist in pre war Poland this link will tell you.
https://cpb-us-e2.wpmucdn.com/faculty.s ... munist.pdf

Thanks for the next link - Jeffrey S. Kopstein and Jason Wittenberg are astute historians.
Probably, however, it will not be possible to return to the main topic of discussion because of an ignorant person breaking up a sensible discussion. Please although you do not succumb to the shallows of discussions not about the OUN 1941- you can always make a new topic about the "overrepresentation of Jews" or other equally intriguing topics.

[wm]

Here are some quotes from the article published in the Slavic Review (link previously given) for those who may not have read it. This hopefully puts to bed the idea that most Jews supported the Communists in pre war Poland.

But nobody said that (although the Communist Party of Poland was 30 percent Jewish). For example, the Revisionists delivered identified Jewish communists to the Polish Police (although the communists faced the death penalty), and Agudat Yisrael collaborated with Sanacja.

The point is Jews highly visibly collaborated with the Soviets in all occupied territories, and that (+ Soviet genocidal crimes) led to acts of revenge later.
Even more important is the fact you didn't have to be a communist to collaborate. Many weren't and still collaborated because the Soviet Union offered excellent career opportunities. From rags to riches (or rather to nomenclature) was very real and easy.

"Bank clerical staff in the occupied territories was 90% Jewish",
"They succeeded only with the help of Jewish artisans because, to the very end, both Ukrainian and Polish craftsmen refused to be drawn into the production movement."
Those people weren't communists, workers, or lumpenproletariat. They were middle-class folks without any inhibition to collaborate.

“Only 7 percent of Jewish voters supported the communists in 1928.”

I don't know; it looks fishy. The voter's identity was anonymous, and nobody declared her nationality or religion during voting, and of course, there were no exit polls.
Such numbers were impossible to know.

That Bandera and his government collaborated with the Polish underground is not something I have heard about before, could you give more detail wm.When the Soviets set up a militia the OUN it would seem extensivly infiltrated the organisation does anyone have any information on the Soviet militia.

Here.

[Steve]

Wm wrote “Such numbers were impossible to know.” They used the 1922 and 1928 parliamentary elections and the 1921 and 1931 census data where people declared their religion. That was the starting position and then they used the ecological inference model which I am sure we are all familiar with. Though the election and census data is not completely accurate they claim that is was good enough to give a valid picture of how minorities voted in 268 out of 272 districts in pre war Poland. Communist organisations never had more than 10% of the overall vote in Poland.

I wrote that this hopefully puts to bed the idea that most Jews supported the Communists in pre war Poland. Wm replies “But nobody said that” this is from wm’s post of 16 November “It is generally believed that the Jews betrayed Poland and the Poles, that they are basically communists,” If they betrayed Poland then unless there was a mass conversion to communism on 17 September they must have been basically communists before the war.

I would guess that more Ukrainians collaborated with the communists than Jews as a percentage of each group. Wm wrote "Bank clerical staff in the occupied territories was 90% Jewish", not surprising really as the communists fired Poles and replaced them with Jews and Ukrainians who had been discriminated against under Polish rule. These figures are for teachers in Volhynia and in Drobhobych, pre war there were 19 Jewish teachers in April 1940 there were 568, pre war there were 1,207 Ukrainian teachers in April 1940 there were 2,138. The Jews had been over represented in the professions and business in pre war Poland and the mass nationalisation of the communists ensured many lost everything. What better way to help insure the loyalty of these people than to give them jobs in banks etc after firing the Poles. No doubt many Jews enjoyed the turnaround in their situation much to the chagrin of Poles.

The Jews in eastern Poland may have lived in the Polish state after 1919 but did the Poles see them as being of equal standing to them or did they think it unfortunate that they were in the Polish state? If an ethnic minority believes the state treats them as second class citizens it will have no great loyalty to the state. Jews were indeed over represented in the post war Polish communist security apparatus and quite likely the Kielce pogrom was a great recruiter for the communists.

This is going a long way off topic.

[Orlov]

Is the discussion going off-topic - I thought, Steve, that you could argue on-topic, but it's better to occupy everything but the OUN in 1941. I wish you a successful cabaret.
I am also surprised by no reaction of the moderator - he sees that the discussion is off-topic, which is one of the guiding principles of this forum, and does not react.
PS: Please discuss about role fo Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the Uman slaughter, and you can still jump to the founding of Kievan Rus and the role of the Vikings in its creation.

[wm]

I wrote that this hopefully puts to bed the idea that most Jews supported the Communists in pre war Poland. Wm replies “But nobody said that” this is from wm’s post of 16 November “It is generally believed that the Jews betrayed Poland and the Poles, that they are basically communists,” If they betrayed Poland then unless there was a mass conversion to communism on 17 September they must have been basically communists before the war.

Not it means the Jews generally didn't have any inhibition to collaborate. That you had to be a true believer to collaborate with the Soviets is untrue and unsupported by any evidence (for comparison - most Nazi collaborators weren't Nazis pre-war.)
Jan Karski wrote that the common people - the Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, believed the Jews betrayed them - not that it was true.
The idea that most Jews supported the Communists is a strawman, especially employed by Jewish chauvinistic historians who love to deny the reality and the reasons for the subsequent attacks on Jews. They say the majority of Jews weren't communists, so nothing happened.

But it happened. Common people in their village or God-forgotten town didn't know if all or a majority collaborated. Still, they saw those their neighbors that invariably did with devastating for them and their families results.

I would guess that more Ukrainians collaborated with the communists than Jews as a percentage of each group

The Ukrainians were Nazis co-belligerents (for a relatively short time). They had common enemies but no common political goals.
In this case, you have to have some respect for people who fought so doggedly and persistently for their freedom as Mr. Solzhenitsyn had for them in his "The Gulag Archipelago."

The Jews were collaborators, people who valued the genocidal ideology of a foreign entity over the well-being of their own people and their own neighbors.
The difference was as simple as that.

[Georg_S]

Stay on topic!

/Georg

[Orlov]

After Hitler began planning the attack on the Soviet Union at the end of July 1940, talks with the OUN intensified. OUN-B and OUN-M both agreed to fight alongside the Germans against the Soviet Union, although they did not receive the desired political pledges. The Reichswehr had already given military training to Ukrainian nationalists in secret courses since 1923. Military units should now be formed from members of the OUN and volunteers. The German side hoped that this would have a great propaganda effect on the population of Ukraine in the planned war against the Soviet Union (and earlier against Poland - though it didn't work in 1939 according to plans). The Ukrainian nationalists, on the other hand, saw the formation of military units as an important step towards military independence. However, Hitler did not meet their national goals. In each case, one side tried to exploit the other for its own purposes.
The "Nachtigall" battalion was initially housed in barracks west of Przemysl and assigned to the I. Bataillon des Baulehrregimentes z. b. V. 800 (Brandenburg) for the attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.This regiment assumed, which in turn belonged to Army Group South. Compared to the Ukrainian battalion, this unit consisted of well-equipped and motorized commandos, making it impossible to have both units advance at the same pace. The "Nachtigall" battalion therefore followed the advancing German formations as a reserve and was not involved in any major battles. On June 30, 1941, the battle group together with a battalion of the Gebirgsjägerregiment 99 reached the western Ukrainian city of Lviv (Lviv/Lemberg), which was conquered without resistance (after the withdrawal of General Vlasov's motorized corps). There, members of the "Nachtigall" battalion and OUN members played a key role in "Selbstreinigungsaktion" against the city's Jewish residents and probably in the murder of Polish academical elites (professors of the prewar Jan Kazimierz University).
[in:] Kai Struve: Deutsche Herrschaft, ukrainischer Nationalismus, antijüdische Gewalt. Der Sommer 1941 in der Westukraine. De Gruyter, Berlin 2015, S. 354–360.

product_pages.jpeg

[Gorque]

Hi all:

Thank you for all of the information provided on this, which in my opinion, is an under represented area of the early portion Eastern Front of 2nd World War. I've been, unfortunately, preoccupied with other interests in the interim, but all of the above will help me in understanding the dynamics that were taking place before and during the invasion of the S.U.. I hope others will find the provided information useful as well. Once again, thank you.

[Steve]

The following comes from The Lands Between by Alexander V Pruskin page 158

..…….. “the OUN-M leader Andrij Mel’nyk admitted that “hundreds of thousands” of Ukrainians had served in the communist party and state apparatus. Those, however, who “retained national consciousness”, could be readmitted as full-fledged members of the new Ukrainian community, if they turned against “Jews, Poles, Muscovites, and communists.”

Same source page 157 “……………… a Ukrainian police office named Bilas, who commanded a police detail in the camp. During the talks in Bilas’s apartment, the officer got blind drunk and related to his vis-a- vis that in summer 1941, under supervision of an SS officer, the Ukrainian militiaman mutilated corpses in the Lacki prison where the NKVD had shot its victims. A recuperating German soldier passed similar information to a Polish nurse, alleging that he had walked into a Lwow prison and saw the “Osttruppen” (native auxiliaries) nailing a corpse to a door. It is also known that Jewish corpses were removed from prisons before the crowds were let in.”

When the OUN units moved into Galicia with the Germans as well as the underground organisation which though damaged had survived the NKVD they found a huge number of Ukrainians who now needed to prove their loyalty to the new regime. What better way to prove your loyalty then to help or join OUN units and start killing Jews, Poles, Muscovites (code for Russians) and communists.

There was an odd occasion when OUN forces engaged communist forces in Galicia in the summer of 1941. According to Wikipedia the Nightingale battalion suffered 39 dead and 40 wounded in the fighting it engaged in. Clearly it was much safer to attack unarmed Jews etc.

[wm]

That's a strange idea that the OUN should have engaged communist forces in Galicia (meaning the Red Army?) in the summer of 1941 and that they were cowards. The OUN was, by far, the weakest participant in the conflict and obviously needed to conserve its forces (especially since the OUN had no logistics worth speaking of.)
The OUN mostly laid low and only moved when the enemy became weak. As happened with the Poles (1939), the Soviets (1941), and the Germans (1943.)

Communist Party of Ukraine numbered about a million, and 60 percent of its members were Ukrainians.

That Bilas' story looks like a nice case of the telephone game.

[Orlov]

There was an odd occasion when OUN forces engaged communist forces in Galicia in the summer of 1941. According to Wikipedia the Nightingale battalion suffered 39 dead and 40 wounded in the fighting it engaged in. Clearly it was much safer to attack unarmed Jews etc.

Dear Steve,
Please remember that both Ukrainian battalions ("Roland" and "Nachtigall") were used as sabotage units - actually light infantry, they probably had heavy machine guns, but I don't suspect mortars too. Hence the losses in the fight with the regular units of the Red Army - especially when they came into contact with the armored subunits of the Vlasov corps. As for the unarmed Jews, they were an excellent target, especially since the German Dienststelle "VINETA" – Propagandadienst Ostraum e.V. ran massive anti-Semitic propaganda.
As for the issue of Petlura's Days - Rossolinski-Liebe describes their effects (80.000 victims). However, there is still no scientific monograph based on German, Polish, Ukrainian (incl. Галузевий державний архів Служби безпеки України) and Israeli documents.
Bestreg Orlov

[Steve]

Hello Orlov, I never wrote that “the OUN should have engaged communist forces in Galicia” I wrote “Clearly it was much safer to attack unarmed Jews etc.” which obviously it was. But I can see why such an inference could be taken. Neither did I write “that they were cowards”; however it clearly is cowardly to kill unarmed civilians for no reason as I am sure you would agree. Due to the rapid retreat of the Red Army Nightingale battalion did not do much sabotaging if any. I think you would find it hard to fill an A4 piece of paper with a description of the fighting they did prior to their disbandment.

A small book could probably be written about how the OUN and others were fighting for Ukrainian independence in 1941. However, there would be a problem in explaining how after the first few weeks there were no communists to fight in Galicia and they were not fighting Germans. In fact there were no communists apart from an occasional partisan band to fight till 1944. But OUN and the units it had infiltrated managed to keep busy and in late 1942 OUN-B started to form a militia which became the UPA. It is quite surprising how many people seem to think that OUN and its offshoot the UPA were equivalent to say the French resistance only that they were fighting communists not Nazis.

If you go to the link below and scroll down to Ukraine there is an eye witness account which says that crucified men were found in a Lwow prison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD_prisoner_massacres

I don’t think you can have a discussion of the Western Ukraine in 1941 without it becoming a litany of war crimes. I shall now try and forget the horrors of 1941 Ukraine with a cup of tea and a digestive biscuit.

[Orlov]

I will never deny the participation of Ukrainians in crimes against Jews (especially in the framework of "Selbstreinigungsaktionen") - as well as the similar involvement of other Eastern Europeans encouraged to crimes by the Germans, who made it possible to murder Jews.
Only that, as I wrote, no one described the complex of crimes "Selbstreinigungsaktionen" often confused with pogroms. See that there is not even a definition of "Selbstreinigungsaktionen" on Wikipedia and massacres committed by local residents from the summer of 1941 to the fall of 1942.
I mentioned earlier that an interesting book about partisan activities in Ukraine (Soviet and Ukrainian) was written by Alexander Gogun, unfortunately this book about Ukrainian partisans (Между Гитлером и Сталиным. Украинские повстанцы, Petersburg, 2004) has not yet been translated into English.
However, back to the issue of the OUN in 1941 - I would like to read an article or a book one day about both the activities of both Ukrainian battalions and the Ukrainian Ordnungsdienst/Hilfspolizei recruited from both OUN (b) and OUN (m) members. Especially that the latter were more numerous in order and repressive structures in Distrikt Galizien and GK Wolhynien-Podolien. The OUN(b) went underground after Bandera was arrested.
Good tea is not bad (especially with a digestive biscuit)!

[WWII Germany were atheists]

In this thread is the OUN discussed , if you don't have anything to say about the OUN Don't reply!!

/Georg

[wm]

Another OFF TOPIC was deleted! Stay on topic or start another thread!!

/Georg