Stepan Bandera short biography. "real" biography of Stepan Bandera

On the first day of each new year, torchlight processions take place in the cities and towns of Western Ukraine. People take to the streets to honor the memory of Stepan Bandera, the most controversial figure in modern Ukrainian history. Many consider him a real hero who gave his life for the independence of the country, others consider him a criminal and traitor, because of whom thousands of people died. He himself did not have to kill people, but his supporters, blindly obeying orders, carried out genuine terror in the western regions of Ukraine in the post-war years.

Stepan Bandera was born in Stary Ugrinov in 1909. In the documents about the place of his birth there is a record of a no longer existing state ─ the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, which was then integral part Austro-Hungarian Empire. Stepan Bandera is destined to absorb the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism from childhood. His father, Greek Catholic priest Andrei Bandera, firmly believed in the realization of the then unrealizable dream of Ukraine gaining independence.

During the First World War, Galicia became a gigantic battlefield. My father, having been submitted to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, went to fight at the front. After the defeat of the Austrians in the war, he became a member of the parliament of the independent Western Ukrainian people's republic and joined the Ukrainian militia ─ the Galician Army, the predecessor of future armed formations of Ukrainian nationalists. Stepan Bandera met the end of the war with relatives in the city of Stryi near Lvov. Western Ukraine came under Polish rule and my father, who served as a chaplain in the Galician army that fought against the Poles, had to hide from the occupation authorities for some time.

At the age of twelve, Stepan Bandera joined an underground organization of Ukrainian schoolchildren. Thus began his journey into politics and the struggle for independence, which lasted almost 40 years. most of which he will have to spend in captivity or in an illegal position. He can safely be called a fanatic or obsessed with an idea. Even as a child, he began to prepare himself for future difficult trials.

Stepan Bandera often went with scouts on long forest hikes, played sports, and in winter he hardened himself in the cold by dousing himself with water. He overdid it a little. From hypothermia he will develop rheumatism in his legs, from which he will suffer greatly throughout his life. In the post-war years, Poland began to pursue a policy of forced assimilation in Ukrainian territories, supporting the resettlement of Poles in Western Ukraine. So the Polish authorities became the main enemy for Ukrainian nationalists.

In 1927, Stepan Bandera joined the Ukrainian Military Organization, and 2 years later he found himself in a newly organized Organization Ukrainian nationalists (OUN). While studying at the Lviv Polytechnic to become an agronomist, he free time devoted to underground activities. Throughout his life, Bandera had many nicknames ─ Fox, Gray, Kruk, Baba, Rykh. In those years, he wrote a lot for illegal newspapers, signing the pseudonym Matvey Gordon.

The life of an underground worker is the same in all countries and at any time. Secret meetings, posting leaflets, distributing illegal newspapers, propaganda among the masses, organizing strikes and boycotts of elections - he had to do all this. The active young nationalist was quickly noticed. In 1933, he was appointed “regional guide” ─ head of the regional organization of the OUN.

Stepan Bandera nationality

The political struggle gradually became radicalized. Ukrainians began to take up arms. In 1932, Stepan Bandera was trained in sabotage methods at a German intelligence school in Danzig. Thus began his collaboration with German authorities, in those years, trying to cultivate an internal enemy for neighboring unfriendly Poland. In 1933, the OUN decided to eliminate the Minister of Internal Affairs of Poland, Bronislaw Peracki.

The organization of the operation was personally led by Stepan Bandera. In mid-June 1934, in Warsaw, the Polish minister was shot by OUN member Grigory Matseiko. He managed to successfully leave both the crime scene and Poland, but the organizer of the action was unlucky. They were all arrested, including Stepan Bandera. A court in Warsaw found him guilty and sentenced him to death by hanging. During the trial, Bandera was removed from the courtroom several times for shouting “Long live Ukraine.” The death penalty was replaced with life imprisonment. In prison, Stepan Bandera showed himself to be a very restless prisoner, constantly participating in protest hunger strikes. From there, he continued to lead the activities of the OUN in Western Ukraine.

In addition to Poland, the gaze of Ukrainian nationalists often turned to the east. In the early 1930s, famine broke out in Soviet Ukraine due to crop failures. Ukrainians often call those events the “Holodomor,” still considering it artificially inspired by Stalin’s circle. Stepan Bandera shared the same views. He decided to take revenge on the Soviet authorities for the “mockery” of the Ukrainian people.

In the fall of 1933, the secretary of the USSR Consulate in Lvov, Alexey Mailov, died at the hands of a sent one. With this event, the war of Bandera and the OUN against the USSR began. The release of the prisoner was helped by the outbreak of the Second World War. He met her at the Brest Fortress. The Poles housed a maximum security prison within its walls. As Soviet troops approached, moving to the West according to the Molotov-Ribbentropp plan, the prison guards fled. Stepan Bandera immediately headed home to Lviv. These were several months that he lived under Soviet rule, naturally, in an illegal situation. If the NKVD had arrested him then, he would have rotted in Kolyma or even been immediately shot in the basement, but Bandera managed to secretly cross the border and get out into the territory occupied by Germany.

Bandera movement

Poland disappeared from the map of Europe. Western Ukraine was divided between Germany and the USSR. The enemy for Bandera has changed. Germany took Poland's place. While he was in prison, big changes took place in the OUN. The former leader, Evgen Konovalets, was blown up by a bomb in Rotterdam. Andrey Melnik laid claim to unconditional leadership. Their meeting took place in Italy. Stepan Bandera demanded that Melnik stop all contacts with Germany. He refused. The OUN split into two parts. Bandera headed the OUN (Bandera movement).

Actually, after a quarrel between the two OUN leaders, the definition of “Bandera” came into play. He still had to begin cooperation with Nazi Germany. He met the German attack on the USSR in Krakow, while under vigilant police surveillance. He was strongly discouraged from visiting his native places. The German troops that entered Lvov at the end of June 1941 included 2 battalions staffed by his supporters. On the same day, one of the leaders of the OUN (b) Yaroslav Stetsko read out the “Act of Revival of the Ukrainian State” in Lviv. The Germans had absolutely no need for an independent Ukraine. They had plans that were not their own. They did not recognize any “independence”, and all its guardians were quickly arrested.

Stepan Bandera with his wife and daughters were placed in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. There he soon met Andrei Melnik, who always relied on Germany. In the concentration camp, Stepan Bandera had some privileges compared to other prisoners. He was fed a little better and was sometimes allowed to meet his family. The Germans have always been very calculating.

Andrey Melnik in old age

Bandera was remembered in 1944, when Soviet army approached the lands of Western Ukraine. According to the calculations of the German command, Ukrainian nationalists were supposed to start a partisan war in the liberated areas. Bandera put prerequisite further cooperation, recognition by Germany of the “Act of Revival of the Ukrainian State”. He never managed to achieve this.

Back in 1942, in Galicia, without the participation of Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army of the UPA began to form, which became the core of the resistance and received assistance from the Germans in the form of weapons. Stepan Bandera from Germany tried to lead the “abroad” nationalist formations.

Within the OUN, especially among its members hiding in the forests of Ukraine, opposition grew, accusing it of being out of touch with real life and dogmatism.

Stepan Bandera met the end of the war in the part of Germany occupied by the British. The British intelligence services quickly found him. In turn, the Americans continued to look for Bandera as an accomplice of Nazi Germany and he had to hide from them for a couple of years.

Since then, the only enemy for Ukrainian nationalists has been the Soviet Union. The guerrilla war in Western Ukraine continued until the mid-50s.

Many years after the destruction of the main forces of “Bandera,” former UPA fighters were found in villages hiding in the cellars of relatives. Such tenacity was only demonstrated by Japanese soldiers who did not recognize surrender, and who continued to be captured in the jungles of the Philippines until the 70s.

Murder of Stepan Bandera

The recognized leader of the nationalist movement inevitably became a target for the Soviet intelligence services. In 1947, an assassination attempt was made by Yaroslav Moroz, and a year later by Vladimir Stelmashchuk. In 1952, German citizens Leguda and Lehmann were convicted of preparing a murder. A year later, Stepan Libgolts tried to get to Bandera. The OUN's own security service and the German police were on alert, exposing the agents. The OUN leader lived with his family under the surname Poppel in Munich. He was so reliably hidden that his own children for a long time believed that Poppel was their real name.

In October 1959, KGB agent Bogdan Stashinsky found out Stepan Bandera and the address of his house. 2 years earlier, he successfully eliminated another OUN leader, Lev Rebet. For the new murder, Stashinsky used a special syringe pistol loaded with potassium cyanide. He was waiting for Bandera at the entrance of the house with a newspaper bundle in which a weapon was hidden. Poppel-Bandera returned home for lunch. Stashinsky fired a shot in his face and disappeared. The true cause of death was determined only by an autopsy. Initially, doctors suspected a heart attack.

Stepan Bandera was buried in the Waldfriedhof cemetery in front of a huge crowd of Ukrainian emigrants. Stashinsky would flee to the West in 1961 from the GDR with his German wife. He frankly admits to the murders of Rebet and Bandera. After 6 years, he will be released early from prison and disappear. He will undergo plastic surgery, after which Stashinsky will live in South Africa under an assumed name.

Every year on January 1, on the territory of now independent Ukraine, Ukrainian nationalists organize a Sabbath, in the form of a torchlight procession along the central streets of Kiev, dedicated to the birthday of Stepan Bandera. Ukrainian nationalists conduct a torchlight procession in the same way as they once did in Nazi Germany The Nazis held torchlight processions through the central streets of Berlin.

In 2005, on December 25, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a decree according to which the centenary of the birth of Stepan Bandera will be celebrated on January 1. A number of events were dedicated to the solemn date in Ukraine, in particular the release of a coin with his image, as well as the construction of a memorial complex in Ivano-Frankivsk. Deputies of the legislative council of Ternopil (western Ukraine), in turn, proposed to the country's leadership to award the OUN leader the title of Hero of Ukraine...

But who is Stepan Bandera?

In terms of his cruelty, he can be placed on a par with the most bloodthirsty tyrants. If, by the ill will of fate or an absurd accident, Stepan Bandera came to power in Ukraine or, God forbid, after the Great Patriotic War the subversive activities of the Bandera gangs would have been successful, the purpose of which was to spread their influence deep into Soviet territories - conducting anti-Soviet propaganda and mobilizing into their ranks a population dissatisfied or agitated against the Soviet regime on the order of Western masters and, as a result, creating a real military force, capable of crushing the Soviet Union, then rivers of blood would flood the entire Eurasian continent.

Stepan Bandera was born on January 1, 1909 in the village of Ugryniv Stary, Kalush district in the Stanislav region (Galicia), part of Austria-Hungary (now the Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine), in the family of the Greek Catholic parish priest Andrei Bandera, who received theological education at Lviv University . His mother, Miroslava, also came from the family of a Greek Catholic priest. As he later wrote in his autobiography, “I spent my childhood ... in the house of my parents and grandfathers, grew up in an atmosphere of Ukrainian patriotism and living national-cultural, political and social interests. There was a large library at home, and active participants in the Ukrainian national life of Galicia often came together”...

Stepan Bandera began his revolutionary path in 1922 by joining the Ukrainian scout organization “PLAST”, and in 1928 the revolutionary Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO).

In 1929, he joined the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) created by Yevgeny Konovalets and soon headed the most radical “youth” group. On his instructions, the village blacksmith Mikhail Beletsky, professor of philology at the Lviv Ukrainian Gymnasium Ivan Babiy, university student Yakov Bachinsky and many others were killed.

At that time, the OUN established close contacts with Germany; its headquarters were located in Berlin, at Hauptstrasse 11, under the guise of the “Union of Ukrainian Elders in Germany.” Bandera himself was trained in Danzig, at an intelligence school.

From 1932 to 1933 - deputy head of the regional executive (leadership) of the OUN. He organized robberies of postal trains and post offices, as well as the murder of opponents.

In 1934, on the orders of Stepan Bandera, an employee of the Soviet consulate, Alexei Mailov, was killed in Lvov. The facts become interesting that shortly before this murder was committed, the former resident of German intelligence in Poland, Major Knauer, appeared in the OUN and, according to Polish intelligence, on the eve of the murder the OUN received 40 (forty) thousand marks from the Abwehr.

With Hitler coming to power in Germany in January 1934, the Berlin headquarters of the OUN, as a special department, was included in the Gestapo headquarters. In the suburbs of Berlin - Wilhelmsdorf - barracks were also built with funds from German intelligence, where OUN militants and their officers were trained. Meanwhile, the Polish Minister of the Interior - General Bronislaw Peracki - sharply condemned Germany's plans to capture Danzig, which, under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, was declared a "free city" under the administration of the League of Nations. Hitler himself instructed Richard Yarom, a German intelligence agent who oversaw the OUN, to eliminate Peratsky. On June 15, 1934, Peratsky was killed by the people of Stepan Bandera, but this time luck did not smile on them and the nationalists were captured and convicted. For the murder of Bronislav Peratsky, Stepan Bandera, Nikolai Lebed and Yaroslav Karpinets were sentenced to death by the Warsaw District Court, the rest, including Roman Shukhevych, were sentenced to 7-15 years in prison, but under pressure from Germany this penalty was replaced by life imprisonment .

In the summer of 1936, Stepan Bandera, along with other members of the Regional Executive of the OUN, appeared in court in Lvov on charges of leading the terrorist activities of the OUN-UVO - in particular, the court considered the circumstances of the murder by members of the OUN of the gymnasium director Ivan Babii and student Yakov Bachinsky, accused by nationalists in connection with Polish police. At this trial, Bandera already openly acted as a regional leader of the OUN. In total, at the Warsaw and Lvov trials, Stepan Bandera was sentenced to life imprisonment seven times.

After the murder of Yevgeny Konovalets in 1938 by NKVD officers, OUN meetings took place in Italy, at which Yevgeny Konovalets’ successor Andrei Melnik was proclaimed (his supporters declared him the head of PUN - Seeing Off Ukrainian Nationalists), with which Stepan Bandera did not agree.

When Germany occupied Poland in September 1939 and Stepan Bandera, who collaborated with the Abwehr, was released.

Irrefutable proof of Stepan Bandera's collaboration with the Nazis is the transcript of the interrogation of the head of the Abwehr department of the Berlin district, Colonel Erwin Stolze (May 29, 1945).

"...after the end of the war with Poland, Germany was intensively preparing for a war against Soviet Union and therefore, through the Abwehr, measures are being taken to intensify subversive activities, since those activities that were carried out through MELNIK and other agents seemed insufficient. For these purposes, a prominent Ukrainian nationalist, Bandera Stepan, was recruited, who during the war was released from prison, where he was imprisoned by the Polish authorities for participating in a terrorist act against the leaders of the Polish government. I was the last one in touch". .

After the Nazis released Stepan Bandera from prison, a split in the OUN became inevitable. Having read the works of the ideologist of Ukrainian nationalism Dmitry Dontsov in a Polish prison, Stepan Bandera believed that the OUN was not “revolutionary” enough in its essence, and only he, Stepan Bandera, was able to correct the situation.

In February 1940, Stepan Bandera convened an OUN conference in Krakow, at which a tribunal was created that handed down death sentences to Melnik’s supporters; the confrontation with Melnik’s supporters took the form of an armed struggle. Bandera’s members kill members of the “Melnikovsky” line of the OUN - Nikolai Stsiborsky and Yemelyan Senik, as well as a prominent “Melnikovsky” member Yevgeny Shulga.

As follows from the memoirs of Yaroslav Stetsk, Stepan Bandera, through the mediation of Richard Yary, shortly before the war, secretly met with Admiral Canaris, the head of the Abwehr. During the meeting, Stepan Bandera, according to Yaroslav Stetsko, “very clearly and clearly presented the Ukrainian positions, finding a certain understanding... with the admiral, who promised support for the Ukrainian political concept, believing that only with its implementation is a German victory over Russia possible.” Stepan Bandera himself indicated that at the meeting with Canaris, the conditions for training Ukrainian volunteer units under the Wehrmacht were mainly discussed.

Three months before the attack on the USSR, Stepan Bandera created the Ukrainian Legion named after Konovalets from members of the OUN, a little later the legion will become part of the Brandenburg-800 regiment and will be called “Nachtigal”, in Ukrainian “nightingale”. The Brandenburg-800 regiment was created as part of the Wehrmacht - it was special forces, the regiment was intended to conduct sabotage operations behind enemy lines.

Not only Stepan Bandera negotiated with the Nazis, but also persons authorized by him, for example, in the archives of the Security Service of Ukraine documents were preserved that Bandera themselves offered their services to the Nazis, in the interrogation report of Abwehr employee Lazarek Yu.D. it is said that he was a witness and participant in negotiations between Abwehr representative Eichern and Bandera's assistant Nikolai Lebed.

“Lebed said that Bandera’s followers would provide the necessary personnel for saboteur schools and would also be able to agree to the use of the entire underground of Galicia and Volyn for sabotage and reconnaissance purposes on the territory of the USSR.”

To carry out subversive activities on the territory of the USSR, as well as conduct intelligence activities, Stepan Bandera received two and a half million marks from Nazi Germany.

On March 10, 1940, Bandera's OUN headquarters decided to transfer leading personnel to Volyn and Galicia to organize a rebellion.

According to Soviet counterintelligence, the mutiny was planned for the spring of 1941. Why spring? After all, the leadership of the OUN had to understand that open action would inevitably end in complete defeat and physical destruction of the entire organization. The answer comes naturally if we remember that the original date of Nazi Germany’s attack on the USSR was May 1941. However, Hitler was forced to transfer some troops to the Balkans in order to take control of Yugoslavia. Interestingly, at the same time, the OUN gave the order to all OUN members who served in the army or police of Yugoslavia to go over to the side of the Croatian Nazis.

In April 1941, the Revolutionary Conduct of the OUN convened a Great Gathering of Ukrainian nationalists in Krakow, where Stepan Bandera was elected head of the OUN, and Yaroslav Stetsko was elected his deputy. In connection with the receipt of new instructions for the underground, the actions of OUN groups on the territory of Ukraine intensified even more. In April alone, 38 Soviet party workers died at their hands, and dozens of sabotage were carried out in transport, industrial and agricultural enterprises.

After a meeting in April 1941 organized by Stepan Bandera, the OUN finally split into OUN-(m) (Melnik’s supporters) and OUN-(b) (Bandera’s supporters), which was also called OUN-(r) (OUN-revolutionaries).

Here's what the Nazis thought about this: from the transcript of the interrogation of the head of the Abwehr department of the Berlin district, Colonel Erwin Stolze (May 29, 1945)

“Despite the fact that during my meeting with Melnik and Bandera, both of them promised to take all measures for reconciliation. I have personally come to the conclusion that this reconciliation will not take place due to significant differences between them.

If Melnik is a calm, intelligent person, then Bandera is a careerist, a fanatic and a bandit.” (Central State Archive of Public Associations of Ukraine f.57. Op.4. D.338. L.280-288)

During the Great Patriotic War, the Germans pinned their greatest hopes on the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists - Bandera OUN-(b) in comparison with the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists - Melnik OUM-(m) and the "Polesskaya Sich" of Bulba Borovets, also striving for power under a German protectorate. Ukraine. Stepan Bandera could not wait to feel like the head of the Ukrainian independent state and he, abusing the trust of his masters from Nazi Germany, without asking them much, decided to proclaim the “independence” of the Ukrainian state from the Moscow occupation, independently creating a government and appointing Yaroslav Stetsk as prime minister. But Germany had its own plans regarding Ukraine; it was interested in free living space, i.e. territories and cheap labor.

The trick of establishing Ukraine as a state was necessary in order to show the population its importance; personal ambitions came into play here. On June 30, 1941, Stepan Bandera publicly decided to announce the “revival of the Ukrainian state,” assigning the role of proclaimer to his comrade-in-arms Yaroslav Stetsk. On this day, Yaroslav Stetsko voiced the will of Stepan Bandera and the entire OUN line from the city hall in Lviv.

Residents of Lvov reacted sluggishly to information about the upcoming event regarding the revival of Ukrainian statehood. According to the words of the Lvov priest, doctor of theology Father Gavril Kotelnik, about a hundred people from the intelligentsia and clergy were brought to this gathering as extras. The city residents themselves did not dare to take to the streets and support the proclamation of the revival of the Ukrainian state. The statement about the revival of the Ukrainian state was accepted by the group of forcibly rounded up listeners who gathered that day.

The Act of “Revival of the Ukrainian State” of June 30, 1941, paradoxically, went down in history. The Germans, as mentioned above regarding Ukraine, had their own selfish interest and there could be no revival and granting of state status to Ukraine even under the patronage of Nazi Germany out of the question.

It would be reckless for Germany to give power in the territory that was captured by regular German military formations to Ukrainian nationalists just because they, too, in small numbers, took part in the hostilities, but mostly did the dirty work of punishing civilians and policemen. Which of the Ukrainian nationalists asked the population of Ukraine whether the people want their power? Moreover, as it turns out, it is not an independent government, but under the patronage of Nazi Germany. This is evidenced by the main text of the Act of “Revival of the Ukrainian State” dated June 30, 1941:

“The newly reborn Ukrainian State will closely interact with the National Socialist Great Germany, which, under the leadership of its Leader Adolf Hitler, is creating new order in Europe and the world and helps the Ukrainian people free themselves from Moscow occupation.

The Ukrainian National Revolutionary Army, which is being created on Ukrainian soil, will continue to fight together with the ALLIED GERMAN ARMY against the Moscow occupation for a Sovereign Conciliar Ukrainian State and a new order throughout the world.

Let the Ukrainian Sovereign Conciliar Power live! Let the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists live! May the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian People STEPAN BANDERA live! GLORY TO UKRAINE!

Thus, the OUN members, not authorized by anyone, themselves proclaimed their own state.

Having carefully analyzed the actions of the OUN members during the Second World War and the text of the Act, we can confidently say that the so-called independent state of Ukraine, proclaimed on June 30, 1941, by Bandera, Shukhevych and Stetsko, was an ally of Hitler in the Second World War.

An interesting fact is that among Ukrainian nationalists and many officials at the head of the state of modern Ukraine, the Act of June 30, 1941 is considered the Act of Independence of Ukraine, and Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych and Yaroslav Stetsko are considered Heroes of Ukraine.

Simultaneously with the proclamation of the Act, supporters of Stepan Bandera staged a pogrom in Lvov. Ukrainian Nazis acted according to blacklists compiled before the war. As a result, 7 thousand people were killed in the city in 6 days.

Here is what Saul Friedman wrote about the massacre carried out by Bandera’s followers in Lvov in his book “Pogromist”, published in New York: “During the first three days of July 1941, the Nachtigal battalion destroyed seven thousand Jews in the vicinity of Lvov. Before execution, Jews - professors, lawyers, doctors - were forced to lick all the staircases of four-story buildings and carry garbage in their mouths from one building to another. Then, forced to walk through a line of soldiers with yellow-blakite armbands, they were bayoneted."

Bypassed by a younger competitor, Andrei Melnik was offended and immediately wrote a letter to Hitler and Governor General Frank saying that “Bandera’s people are behaving unworthily and have created their own government without the Fuhrer’s knowledge.” After which Hitler ordered the arrest of Stepan Bandera and his “government.”

At the beginning of July 1941, Stepan Bandera was arrested in Krakow and, together with Yaroslav Stetsko and his comrades, was sent to Berlin at the disposal of Abwehr 2 to Colonel Erwin Stolze.

After Stepan Bandera’s arrival in Berlin, the leadership of Nazi Germany demanded that he abandon the Act of “Revival of the Ukrainian State” of June 30, 1941. Stepan Bandera agreed and called on “the Ukrainian people to help the German army everywhere to defeat Moscow and Bolshevism.” After which, on July 15, 1941, in Berlin, Stepan Bandera and Yaroslav Stetsk were released from arrest. Yaroslav Stetsko in his memoirs described what was happening as an “honorable arrest.” Yes, it’s truly an honor: “From the wilderness to the court,” to “the supposed capital of the world.”

It is also an amazing fact that after his release from arrest in Berlin, Stepan Bandera lives at the Abwehr dacha.

During their stay in Berlin, numerous meetings began with representatives of various departments, at which Bandera’s supporters insistently assured that without their help the German army would not be able to defeat Muscovy. There was a numerous stream of messages, explanations, dispatches, “declarations” and “memoranda” addressed to Hitler, Riebentrop, Rosenberg and other Fuhrers of Nazi Germany, constantly making excuses and asking for assistance and support. In his letters, Stepan Bandera proved his loyalty to the Fuhrer and the German army and tried to convince of the urgent need for the OUN-b for Germany.

Stepan Bandera’s labors were not in vain, thanks to him, the Germans took the next step: Andrei Melnik was allowed to continue to openly curry favor with Berlin, and Stepan Bandera was ordered to portray an enemy of the Germans so that he could, hiding behind anti-German phrases, restrain the Ukrainian masses from a real, irreconcilable struggle with the Nazi invaders, from the struggle for the freedom of Ukraine.

With the emergence of new plans of the Nazis, Stepan Bandera is transported from the Abwehr dacha to the privileged block of Sachsenhausen, out of harm's way. After the massacre that Bandera’s followers carried out in June 1941 in Lvov, Stepan Bandera could have been killed by his own people, but Nazi Germany still needed him. This gave rise to the legend that Bandera did not cooperate with the Germans and even fought with them, but documents say otherwise.

In the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Stepan Bandera, Yaroslav Stetsko and another 300 Banderaites were kept separately in the Cellenbau bunker, where they were kept in good conditions. Bandera's members were allowed to meet with each other, and they also received food and money from relatives and the OUN-b. Not infrequently, they left the camp for the purpose of contacts with the “conspiracy” OUN-UPA, as well as with the Friedenthal castle (200 meters from the Tselenbau bunker), which housed a school for OUN agent and sabotage personnel.

The instructor at this school was a recent officer of the Nachtigal special battalion, Yuri Lopatinsky, through whom Stepan Bandera made contact with the OUN-UPA.

Stepan Bandera was one of the main initiators of the creation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) on October 14, 1942; he also achieved the replacement of its main commander Dmitry Klyachkivsky with his protege Roman Shukhevych.

In 1944, Soviet troops cleared Western Ukraine of fascists. Fearing punishment, many members of the OUN-UPA fled with the German troops, plus the hatred of local residents for the OUN-UPA in Volyn and Galicia was so high that they themselves handed them over and killed them. In order to activate the OUN members and support their spirit, the Nazis decide to release Stepan Bandera and 300 of his supporters from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. This happened on September 25, 1944, after leaving the camp, Stepan Bandera immediately went to work as part of the 202nd Abwehr team in Krakow and began training OUN-UPA sabotage detachments.

Irrefutable proof of this is the testimony of former Gestapo and Abwehr officer Lieutenant Siegfried Müller, given during the investigation on September 19, 1945.

“On December 27, 1944, I prepared a group of saboteurs to transfer them to the rear of the Red Army on special missions. Stepan Bandera, in my presence, personally instructed these agents and through them conveyed to the UPA headquarters an order to intensify subversive work in the rear of the Red Army and establish regular radio communications with Abwehrkommando-202. (Central State Archive of Public Associations of Ukraine f.57. Op.4. D.338. L.268-279)

Stepan Bandera himself practical work He did not participate in the rear of the Red Army, his task was to organize, he was generally a good organizer.

An interesting fact is that those who fell into the clutches of Hitler’s punitive machine, even if the Nazis later became convinced of the person’s innocence, did not return to freedom. This was common Nazi practice. The unprecedented behavior of the Nazis against Bandera indicates their most direct mutual cooperation.

When the war approached Berlin, Bandera was tasked with forming detachments from the remnants of the Ukrainian Nazis and defending Berlin. Bandera created the detachments, but he himself escaped.

After the end of the war, he lived in Munich and collaborated with British intelligence services. At the OUN conference in 1947, he was elected head of the conduct of the entire OUN (which actually meant the unification of the OUN-(b) and OUN-(m)).

As we see, there is a completely happy ending for the former “prisoner” of Sachsenhausen.

Being in absolute safety and leading the OUN and UPA organizations, Stepan Bandera shed a lot of human blood with the hands of his executors.

On October 15, 1959, Stepan Bandera was killed in the entrance of his house. He was met on the stairs by a man who shot him in the face from a special pistol with a stream of soluble poison.

During the Great Patriotic War, at the hands of members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), about 1.5 million Jews, 1 million Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, 500 thousand Poles, 100 thousand people of other nationalities.

Prepared by Igor Cherkashchenko, member of the Supreme Council of the “SELF-DEFENSE” movement, assistant to the deputy of the Kharkov Regional Council of Natalia Vitrenko’s Bloc “People’s Opposition”

For comprehensive coverage of the issue

Dr Alexander Korman.
135 tortur i okrucieństw stosowanych przez terrorystów OUN - UPA na ludności polskiej Kresów Wschodnich.
(Translation from Polish - navigator).

135 tortures and atrocities applied by OUN-UPA terrorists to the Polish population of the Eastern outskirts.

The methods of torture and atrocities listed below are only examples and do not cover the full collection of methods of death in agony applied by OUN-UPA terrorists to Polish children, women and men. The ingenuity of torture was rewarded.

Crimes against humanity committed by Ukrainian terrorists can be the subject of study not only by historians, lawyers, sociologists, economists, but also by psychiatrists.

Even today, 60 years after those tragic events, some people whose lives were saved are worried when they talk about it, their hands and jaws begin to tremble, and their voice breaks in the larynx.

001. Driving a large and thick nail into the skull of the head.
002. Ripping off hair and skin from the head (scalping).
003. Hitting the skull with the butt of an ax.
004. Hitting the forehead with the butt of an ax.
005. “Eagle” carving on the forehead.
006. Driving a bayonet into the temple of the head.
007. Knocking out one eye.
008. Knocking out two eyes.
009. Nose cutting.
010. Circumcision of one ear.
011. Cropping both ears.
012. Piercing children through with stakes.
013. Punching through with a sharpened thick wire from ear to ear.
014. Lip cutting.
015. Tongue cutting.
016. Throat cutting.
017. Cutting the throat and pulling the tongue out through the hole.
018. Cutting the throat and inserting a piece into the hole.
019. Knocking out teeth.
020. Broken jaw.
021. Tearing the mouth from ear to ear.
022. Gagging of mouths with oakum when transporting still living victims.
023. Cutting the neck with a knife or sickle.
024. Hitting the neck with an ax.
025. Vertical chopping of a head with an axe.
026. Rolling the head back.
027. Crush the head by placing it in a vice and tightening the screw.
028. Cutting off the head with a sickle.
029. Cutting off the head with a scythe.
030. Chopping off a head with an axe.
031. Hitting the neck with an ax.
032. Infliction of stab wounds to the head.
033. Cutting and pulling narrow strips of skin from the back.
034. Infliction of other chopped wounds on the back.
035. Bayonet strikes in the back.
036. Breaking rib bones chest.
037. Stabbing with a knife or bayonet in the heart or near the heart.
038. Causing puncture wounds to the chest with a knife or bayonet.
039. Cutting off women's breasts with a sickle.
040. Cutting off women's breasts and sprinkling salt on the wounds.
041. Cutting off the genitals of male victims with a sickle.
042. Sawing the body in half with a carpenter's saw.
043. Causing puncture wounds to the abdomen with a knife or bayonet.
044. Piercing a pregnant woman's stomach with a bayonet.
045. Cutting open the abdomen and pulling out the intestines of adults.
046. Cutting the abdomen of a woman with an advanced pregnancy and inserting, for example, a live cat instead of the removed fetus, and suturing the abdomen.
047. Cutting open the belly and pouring boiling water inside.
048. Cutting open the belly and putting stones inside it, as well as throwing it into the river.
049. Cutting the stomach of pregnant women and rash inside broken glass.
050. Pulling out veins from groin to feet.
051. Placing a hot iron into the groin – vagina.
052. Inserting pine cones into the vagina with the top side facing forward.
053. Inserting a pointed stake into the vagina and pushing it all the way to the throat, right through.
054. Cutting the front of a woman's torso with a garden knife from the vagina to the neck and leaving the insides outside.
055. Hanging victims by their entrails.
056. Putting a glass bottle into the vagina and breaking it.
057. Inserting a glass bottle into the anus and breaking it.
058. Cutting open the belly and pouring food inside, the so-called feed flour, for hungry pigs, who tore out this food along with intestines and other entrails.
059. Chopping off one hand with an ax.
060. Chopping off both hands with an ax.
061. Piercing the palm with a knife.
062. Cutting off fingers with a knife.
063. Cutting off the palm.
064. Cauterization inside palms on a hot stove in a coal kitchen.
065. Chopping off the heel.
066. Chopping off the foot above the heel bone.
067. Breaking of arm bones in several places with a blunt instrument.
068. Breaking leg bones with a blunt instrument in several places.
069. Sawing the body, lined with boards on both sides, in half with a carpenter's saw.
070. Sawing the body in half with a special saw.
071. Sawing off both legs with a saw.
072. Sprinkling hot coal on bound feet.
073. Nailing hands to the table and feet to the floor.
074. Nailing hands and feet to a cross in a church.
075. Hitting the back of the head with an ax to victims who had previously been laid on the floor.
076. Hitting the entire body with an ax.
077. Chopping a whole body into pieces with an ax.
078. Breaking alive legs and arms in the so-called strap.
079. Nailing the tongue of a small child, who later hung on it, to the table with a knife.
080. Cutting a child into pieces with a knife and throwing them around.
081. Ripping the belly of children.
082. Nailing a small child to the table with a bayonet.
083. Hanging a male child by the genitals from a doorknob.
084. Knocking out the joints of a child's legs.
085. Knocking out the joints of a child’s hands.
086. Suffocation of a child by throwing various rags over him.
087. Throwing small children alive into a deep well.
088. Throwing a child into the flames of a burning building.
089. Breaking a baby's head by taking him by the legs and hitting him against a wall or stove.
090. Hanging a monk by his feet near the pulpit in a church.
091. Placing a child on a stake.
092. Hanging a woman upside down from a tree and mocking her - cutting off her breasts and tongue, cutting her stomach, gouging out her eyes, and cutting off pieces of her body with knives.
093. Nailing a small child to the door.
094. Hanging on a tree with your head up.
095. Hanging from a tree upside down.
096. Hanging from a tree with your feet up and scorching your head from below with the fire of a fire lit under your head.
097. Throwing down from a cliff.
098. Drowning in the river.
099. Drowning by throwing into a deep well.
100. Drowning in a well and throwing stones at the victim.
101. Piercing with a pitchfork, and then frying pieces of the body over a fire.
102. Throwing an adult into the flames of a fire in a forest clearing, around which Ukrainian girls sang and danced to the sounds of an accordion.
103. Driving a stake through the stomach and strengthening it in the ground.
104. Tying a person to a tree and shooting at him as if at a target.
105. Taking one out into the cold naked or in underwear.
106. Strangulation with a twisted, soapy rope tied around the neck - a lasso.
107. Dragging a body along the street with a rope tied around the neck.
108. Tying a woman’s legs to two trees, as well as her arms above her head, and cutting her stomach from the crotch to the chest.
109. Tearing the torso with chains.
110. Dragging along the ground tied to a cart.
111. Dragging along the ground a mother with three children, tied to a cart drawn by a horse, in such a way that one leg of the mother is tied with a chain to the cart, and to the other leg of the mother is one leg of the eldest child, and to the other leg of the eldest child is tied youngest child, and the leg of the youngest child is tied to the other leg of the youngest child.
112. Punching through the body with the barrel of a carbine.
113. Constricting the victim with barbed wire.
114. Two victims being pulled together with barbed wire at the same time.
115. Pulling together several victims with barbed wire.
116. Periodically tightening the torso with barbed wire and pouring cold water on the victim every few hours in order to regain consciousness and feel pain and suffering.
117. Burying a victim in a standing position in the ground up to his neck and leaving him in this position.
118. Burying someone alive up to the neck in the ground and later cutting off the head with a scythe.
119. Tearing the body in half with the help of horses.
120. Tearing the torso in half by tying the victim to two bent trees and then freeing them.
121. Throwing adults into the flames of a burning building.
122. Setting fire to a victim previously doused with kerosene.
123. Laying sheaves of straw around the victim and setting them on fire, thus making the torch of Nero.
124. Sticking a knife into the back and leaving it in the victim's body.
125. Impaling a baby on a pitchfork and throwing him into the flames of a fire.
126. Cutting off the skin from the face with blades.
127. Driving oak stakes between the ribs.
128. Hanging on barbed wire.
129. Ripping off the skin from the body and filling the wound with ink, as well as dousing it with boiling water.
130. Attaching the body to a support and throwing knives at it.
131. Binding - shackling hands with barbed wire.
132. Inflicting fatal blows with a shovel.
133. Nailing hands to the threshold of a home.
134. Dragging a body along the ground by legs tied with a rope.

In the history of the Ukrainian nationalist movement of the 20th century, there is hardly a person who has earned such a controversial assessment of his activities as Stepan Andreevich Bandera. If for some he is a hero who laid down his life for the fatherland, then for others he is a traitor and accomplice of the enemy. Avoiding any bias, we will turn only to the facts related to his life.

The village priest's son

The biography of Stepan Bandera originates in the kingdom of Galicia, which was once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. There, on January 1, 1909, a son named Stepan was born into the family of a Ukrainian priest of the Greek Catholic Church in the village of Stary Ugrinov. He was the second child in the family; in total, his father (Andrei Mikhailovich) and mother (Miroslava Vladimirovna) had eight children. The house where Stepan Bandera was born has survived to this day.

Nationalist sentiments in Galicia

In those years, Ukrainians living in Galicia were discriminated against by the Austro-Hungarian government, which supported the Poles, who made up the majority of the region’s population. This caused a backlash and became the reason for the widespread spread of nationalist sentiments among Ukrainians.

One of the most active participants in the Ukrainian nationalist movement of that time was Andrei Mikhailovich Bandera, Stepan’s father, in whose house relatives and friends who also shared his views often gathered. Among them one could often see Pavel Glodzinsky, a well-known entrepreneur and founder of the Maslotrest union in those years, a member of the Austro-Hungarian parliament Yaroslav Veselovsky and many other prominent figures. There is no doubt that the entire future fate of Stepan Bandera largely depended on these circumstances.

Years of the First World War

The indelible impression of Stepan’s childhood was the battles of the First World War, which he witnessed, as the front repeatedly passed through the village of Stary Ugrinov. One day, their house was partially destroyed by a shell explosion, but, fortunately, no one from the family was injured.

The defeat of Austria-Hungary and its subsequent collapse gave impetus to the intensification of the national liberation movement among the Ukrainian part of the population, which was joined by Stepan’s father, who became a member of the parliament of the self-proclaimed Western Ukrainian People’s Republic (WUNR) in those years, and then a chaplain (military priest) ) in the ranks of her army.

Studying at the gymnasium and first political experience

When Stepan was ten years old, he entered the classical gymnasium of the city of Stryi, where he settled with his father’s parents. Despite the fact that almost all schoolchildren were children from families belonging to the Ukrainian community, local authorities tried to introduce educational institution“Polish spirit”, which became the cause of constant conflicts with the students’ parents.

The schoolchildren themselves did not stand aside, actively joining the ranks of the underground youth organization “Plast”, created on the principles of nationalism and being part of the international scout movement. In 1922, thirteen-year-old Stepan Bandera became a member, whose nationality (he was Ukrainian) opened the door for him to this illegal organization.

Creation of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists

The defeat of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic in the war with Poland (1918-1919) led to the occupation of all of Eastern Galicia by Polish troops and the almost complete loss of civil rights of Ukrainians living on its territory. Their language was deprived of official status, all positions in local government were provided exclusively to Poles. In addition, a stream of Polish immigrants rushed to Galicia, whom the authorities provided with housing and land, while infringing on the rights of local residents.

The response of Ukrainian nationalists was the organization of armed units on the territory of Czechoslovakia, which carried out raids on the territory of Galicia and carried out military operations directed against the Polish authorities. In 1929, on their basis, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) was created, which subsequently became widely known for its underground activities aimed at overthrowing the Polish dictatorship.

Head of the regional branch of the OUN

One of its first members was Stepan Bandera, whose life story is inextricably linked with the national liberation struggle of his people. At this stage, his duties included distributing illegal literature among the population, working in the monthly magazine “Pride of the Nation,” and also working in the propaganda department of the OUN. The police, suppressing the activities of this organization, repeatedly arrested Bandera, but each time he managed to be released again.

In 1929, Bandera headed the radical wing of the OUN, and soon became the leader of the entire regional branch. With his participation, numerous expropriations were organized and successfully carried out, or, more simply put, robberies of banks, postal trains, post offices, as well as the murders of a number of politicians who were enemies of the nationalist movement. He improved his skills as an illegal underground worker by completing a training course at a German intelligence school in Danzig in 1932.

Death sentence, prison and... unexpected freedom

Back in 1928, he became a student at the Lvov Higher Polytechnic School, majoring in agronomy, but was never able to defend his diploma. In 1934, for organizing the murder of the Minister of Internal Affairs of Poland B. Peratsky, Stepan, along with other participants in the attempt, was arrested and sentenced to death by a court decision. Later, capital punishment was replaced by life imprisonment.

Stepan Andreevich Bandera was released completely unexpectedly. This happened in September 1939, when, after the retreat of the Polish army, the guards of the prison in which he was kept fled. Having made his way illegally to Rome, he met with the new head of the OUN, Andrei Melnikov, who replaced Yevgeny Konovalets, who was killed by NKVD officers, in this post. Despite the commonality of interests, serious disagreements arose between them from the first day, as a result of which the organization itself soon split into two opposing groups: Bandera and Melnik.

A political failure that resulted in a new arrest

Having united his supporters, Stepan Andreevich formed combat units from them, and at a rally held on June 30, 1941 in Lvov, he proclaimed the independence of Ukraine. The reaction of the occupation authorities, who in no way intended to recognize the sovereignty of Ukraine, followed immediately. Bandera and the head of the government he formed, Yaroslav Stetsko, were arrested and taken to Berlin.

In the capital of the Third Reich, they were forced to publicly renounce the idea of ​​Ukrainian sovereignty and annul the act of creating an independent state promulgated at the Lviv rally. The same failure befell the Melnikites - the attempt to proclaim the independence of Ukraine failed, after which the leadership of both groups ended up in prison.

During this period, Stepan Bandera suffered a misfortune, news of which came from the zone of Soviet occupation: NKVD officers shot his father, Andrei Mikhailovich, and all his relatives were arrested and sent to camps in Siberia and Kazakhstan. Stepan Andreevich himself ended up a prisoner of the German concentration camp Sachsenhausen, where he stayed until the end of 1944.

Creation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army

Due to the atrocities committed by the Germans on the territory of Ukraine, thousands of its residents joined partisan detachments and fought the enemy. In the fall of 1942, Bandera’s supporters who were at large called on Melnik’s members, as well as members of numerous scattered partisan detachments, to unite in order to carry out joint military operations.

As a result, on the basis of the former Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, a formation was created called the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and reached 100 thousand people. This army fought in the territories of Polesie, Volyn, Kholm region and Galicia, trying to expel the Germans, Poles, and Russians from there. She left a dark memory of herself with innumerable crimes committed against civilians and captured soldiers.

After the fascists were expelled from Ukraine in 1944, the activities of the UPA took on a different character - units of the Red Army became its opponents, which it resisted until the mid-1950s. Particularly heated battles took place in 1946-1948. In general, during the post-war period between parts of the UPA and Soviet troops More than 4 thousand armed clashes were recorded.

Cooperation with the Abwehr and post-war activities

Despite the fact that the nationalists who fought both the Germans and the Red Army were called Bandera, Stepan Andreevich himself did not participate in the battles, since, as mentioned above, he was in a concentration camp until the end of 1944. He received his freedom only after the German command decided to use the imprisoned OUN members for their own purposes.

At the final stage of the war, Stepan Bandera's biography was tainted by collaboration with the fascists, against whom his comrades were waging a merciless struggle at that time. It is known that, having accepted the offer of the Abwehr leadership, he was engaged in preparing sabotage groups for several months remaining until the end of the war. Formed from among prisoners of war, they were intended to be sent to liberated territories, among which was Ukraine.

Stepan Bandera continued his activities as the leader of the OUN after the end of World War II. While in West Germany, he was re-elected to this post twice - in 1953 and 1955. Last years Stepan Andreevich spent his life in Munich, where he managed to take his family, who had previously been in East Germany.

Family of Stepan Bandera

His wife Yaroslava Vasilievna, like himself, grew up in the family of a priest, and from an early age was brought up in the spirit of patriotism and the ideas of creating an independent Ukrainian state. The entire biography of Stepan Bandera is connected with her, starting from the period of his studies at the Lvov Higher Polytechnic School, where they met. Being her closest comrade in the struggle during the years of her husband’s stay in the concentration camp, Yaroslava Vasilyevna maintained his connection with the OUN. In 1939, she spent several months in a Polish prison for her activities.

Stepan Bandera's children - son Andrei (b. 1944), as well as daughters Natalya (b. 1941) and Lesya (b. 1947) - were brought up in the same spirit as himself. As adults and living in different countries peace, they, nevertheless, remained patriots of Ukraine. Since their father, for purposes of conspiracy, lived after the war under the pseudonym Popel, the children learned their real name only after his death.

Liquidation planned by the KGB

In the second half of the 1940s, Bandera worked closely with British intelligence, in particular, selecting agents for it from among Ukrainian emigrants. In this regard, the Soviet intelligence services were tasked with eliminating him. The first time the murder of Stepan Bandera was planned to be committed in 1947, but then the UNO security service managed to prevent the attempt. The Soviet secret services made the next attempt a year later, also unsuccessfully. Finally, already in 1959, KGB agent Bogdan Stashevsky, who had previously committed the murder of another UNO leader, Lev Rebet, managed to complete the task.

Having ambushed Bandera on the landing, he shot him in the face from a silent syringe pistol with a charge of potassium cyanide, from which he died instantly. Stashevsky himself quietly fled the crime scene. At the moment of the shot, Stepan Andreevich was climbing the stairs, and the result of the fall of his already unconscious body was a crack at the base of the skull, which was erroneously recognized as the cause of death. This gave reason to consider the incident an accident. Only a detailed investigation conducted by German criminologists helped establish the fact of the murder.

Stepan Bandera - hero or traitor?

If in Soviet period While official propaganda clearly classified him as an enemy, and other assessments of Bandera’s activities were not allowed, today one can hear a variety of, sometimes diametrically opposed, opinions. Thus, according to a survey conducted in 2014 among residents of Western Ukraine, 75% of respondents reported their positive attitude towards him. For them, he is still a symbol of the struggle for the country's sovereignty. At the same time, residents of Russia, Poland and South-Eastern Ukraine see him as an accomplice of the fascists, a traitor and a terrorist. The crimes committed by Bandera’s supporters in his name are too memorable.

According to a number of historians, this diversity of opinions is partly explained by the fact that until now an objective and substantiated biography of Stepan Bandera has not been compiled, and most publications are clearly ideologically ordered. In particular, a number of negative episodes of activity previously attributed to him were subsequently refuted. In short, a comprehensive assessment of this personality will still require deep and serious research.

Stepan Bandera is one of the most controversial figures in modern history. His entire life and work are filled with contradictory facts.
Some consider him a national hero and fighter for justice, others consider him a fascist and traitor capable of atrocities. Information about his nationality is also ambiguous. So who was Stepan Bandera by origin?

Born in Austria-Hungary

Stepan Bandera was born in the Galician village of Stary Ugrinov, located on the territory of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father was a Greek Catholic clergyman. Mother came from the family of a Greek Catholic priest.
The head of the family was a staunch Ukrainian nationalist and raised his children in the same spirit. Bandera often had guests in her house - relatives and acquaintances who took an active part in the Ukrainian national life of Galicia.
As Stepan Bandera later wrote in his autobiography, he spent his childhood “in the house of his parents and grandfathers, grew up in an atmosphere of Ukrainian patriotism and living national-cultural, political and social interests. There was a large library at home, and active participants in the Ukrainian national life of Galicia often came together.”

True patriot of Ukraine

Beginning his active career, Bandera positioned himself as a true patriot of Ukraine. The Ukrainians who joined him, who shared his views on the political future of their country, were confident that they were acting under the leadership of a compatriot. For the people, Stepan Bandera was Ukrainian by origin. Hence the famous slogans, imbued with undisguised Nazism: “Ukraine is only for Ukrainians!”, “Equality only for Ukrainians!”
The nationalist Bandera sought to seize power as soon as possible and become the head of the Ukrainian state. His goal was to demonstrate his importance to the population. For this purpose, on June 30, 1941, the “Act of Revival of the Ukrainian State” was created. The document reflected the desire for independence from the Moscow occupation, cooperation with the Allied German army and the struggle for freedom and well-being of true Ukrainians: “Let the Ukrainian sovereign conciliar power live! Let the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists live! (an organization banned in the Russian Federation) Let the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian People, Stepan Bandera, live! Glory to Ukraine!"

German citizenship

This fact is not widely known, but Stepan (Stefan) Bandera lived his entire life with a German passport. He had no territorial relationship to Ukraine - neither to Petliura nor to pre-war Soviet Ukraine - for the liberation of which he supposedly fought fiercely.
An interesting fact is that German citizenship played a decisive role in the life of the leader of the Ukrainian Nazis. It was because of him that in 2011, President Viktor Yushchenko’s decision to award Badner the title of Hero of Ukraine was declared invalid. In accordance with Ukrainian legislation, the title of Hero can only be given to a citizen of Ukraine, and Stefan Bandera was a “European” from birth and died before the emergence of modern Ukraine, whose leadership could well have issued him a passport.

Purebred Jew

No matter how paradoxical it may sound, the ideologist of Ukrainian nationalism was a purebred Jew by origin. Research by the Dutch historian Borbala Obrushanski, who studied the biography of Bandera for three years, says that Stefan Bandera is a baptized Jew, a Uniate.
He came from a family of Jews baptized into the Uniate faith (converts). Father Adrian Bandera is a Greek Catholic from the middle-class family of Moishe and Rosalia (nee Beletskaya, Polish Jewish by nationality) Bander. The mother of the leader of the Ukrainian nationalists, Miroslava Glodzinskaya, is also a Polish Jew.
The meaning of the surname Bandera is explained quite simply. Modern Ukrainian nationalists translate it as “banner,” but in Yiddish it means “den.” It has nothing to do with Slavic or Ukrainian surnames. This is a tramp nickname for a woman who owned a brothel. Such women were called “banders” in Ukraine.
Stepan Bandera’s Jewish origin is also indicated by his physical characteristics: short stature, Western Asian facial features, raised wings of the nose, a strongly recessed lower jaw, a triangular skull shape, and a roller-shaped lower eyelid.
Bandera himself carefully hid his Jewish nationality all his life, including with the help of bestial, fierce anti-Semitism. This denial of his origins cost his fellow tribesmen dearly. According to researchers, Stepan Bandera and his devoted Nazis killed from 850 thousand to a million innocent Jews.

Poisonous jet

Munich, warm October day 1959. Local time 12.50. A young man with a rolled-up newspaper in his hand approached the entrance of a gray five-story building at 7 Kreutmeierstrasse and opened it with a key. front door and disappeared into the entrance doorway. A few minutes later, an elderly man with the remains of sparse hair on his almost bare skull appeared at the same entrance and, holding shopping bags in his right hand, opened the same door with his left key. Entering the entrance, he saw someone coming down the stairs young man with an impassive face, who, passing by him and already holding the door bracket, sharply raised his hand with the newspaper. The elderly gentleman did not have time to get scared, just as he did not have time to raise left hand(he was left-handed) to grab the Walther pistol, which he always had under his right armpit.

There was a barely audible bang - and a stream of instantly evaporated liquid hit the bald gentleman in the face. The young man, who already had one foot on the street, walked out of the entrance and slammed the door behind him. He did not hear the sound of a falling body, did not see the blood-red tomatoes scattering from the bag on the floor. The young man walked towards the city park, where he threw something metal into the stream.

This is how the death sentence of the Supreme Court of the USSR was carried out on the executioner of thousands of Soviet citizens, OUN leader Stepan Bandera.

The young man who carried out the sentence was Soviet agent Bogdan Stashinsky, who had the agent aliases “Oleg” and “Moroz”. He was not new to this business. In October 1957, there, in Munich, Stashinsky liquidated the famous theorist and ideologist of Ukrainian nationalism, Bandera member Lev Rebeta. The method of carrying out the sentence was the same, only this time Bogdan had a more advanced weapon: a syringe pistol, it was made by a special KGB laboratory. It contained ampoules of hydrocyanic acid, broken and pushed out by a piston under the influence of a micropowder charge. The coronary vessels of the heart instantly compressed, leading to cardiac arrest. Then the vessels were returned to their original state, and forensic experts could not find any signs of violent death.

OUN noose

Stepan Bandera was guilty of the mass extermination of Soviet citizens - Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, and therefore the death penalty was a fair punishment for him. He was a terrorist by vocation. A few years after graduating from the Higher Polytechnic School, Bandera was arrested. For what? For the murder of the Polish Minister of Internal Affairs Peracki. He was sentenced to death “for atrocities and bullying of the Ukrainian people.” Bandera faced the death penalty. But later it was changed to life imprisonment.

Bandera was released after five years in prison by the Germans who captured Poland. He immediately organizes a fight against Soviet power in Western Ukraine. Then he moves to Germany, where he proclaims himself the leader of the new revolutionary OUN. From now on, every member of the OUN must live by the principle: either you will “get a free and independent Ukraine,” or you will die in the fight for it.

But the Germans did not need “independent Ukraine”. When the Ukrainian legion “Nachtigal” (“Nightingale”), created by Bandera with the help of the Abwehr, burst into Lviv and Bandera proclaimed the restoration of the Ukrainian state, he was immediately arrested. And he was imprisoned. And, even while sitting in a concentration camp, Bandera created the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) of thousands. It was then that Hitler drew attention to him. Bandera was released for sabotage in the rear of the Red Army.

Everyone who opposed “independent Ukraine” and for an alliance with Russia was subject to destruction. The so-called security service of the OUN - SB - was especially zealous. Its militants killed thousands of people. This was usually done using a noose rope. To intimidate the population, sophisticated torture and executions were used - people sawed off their heads, hung them by their feet, and impaled them.

In 1945, in the village of Kravniki, Kalushsky district, Stanislavskaya (Ivano-Frankivsk region), members of the SB gang brutally raped an 18-year-old daughter in front of her mother, and then burned her alive, putting her head in a burning stove, just because she had returned from forced labor. working in Germany, the girl did not give her suitcase with things to the bandits. In 1947, in one of the villages of the Lviv region, in front of a six-year-old boy and his ten-year-old sister, militants from the Security Service strangled the parents with a noose, and then announced: “Live and tell your children about us”... These elderly people live today in Kiev.

After 1945, Bandera quickly found a new owner - American intelligence. The Americans completely took over the maintenance of the ZCH (Overseas Units) of the OUN who settled in Munich. They dropped paratroopers-emissaries of the OUN, radio operators, spies and saboteurs into the territory of Western Ukraine, and supplied the underground with weapons. The OUN leaders were ready to take any steps just to take Ukraine away from the “Bolshevik occupiers-Muscovites.”

The security officer turned out to be a traitor

For the liquidation of the OUN ideologist Rebeta, agent Stashinsky received from the KGB a monetary reward and a valuable gift - a Zenit camera, and for Bandera - the Order of the Red Banner. According to all the rules of the intelligence services, this should have been the end of the agent’s career. He should have settled in Moscow with a good pension and an apartment, but... Stashinsky was allowed to go to his German wife in Berlin.

And then what the Ukrainian security officers feared so much happened. On August 12, 1961, a day before the sectoral borders were closed in Berlin, Stashinsky... fled to the West! They were looking for him... The author of these lines with Stashinsky’s curator was sent to West Berlin in search of a traitorous agent.

As soon as we crossed the sector border, the curator said: “George, if we find Bogdan, leave. I will kill Stashinsky. And myself. I consider myself guilty of not recognizing the traitor.” Bogdan was never found...

In the memory of his supporters and followers, Bandera remains as a national hero and fighter for the liberation of Ukraine from the “Moscow occupiers”, for the creation of a free and “independent Ukraine”. In a number of cities in Ukraine there are his busts, the streets bear his name, and this cannot be ignored. The “leader’s” grandson, also Stepan Bandera, who lives today in Canada, is going to settle in Western Ukraine, where he plans to continue “Banderaism.”

...I don’t know where 70-year-old Stashinsky is now and whether he is alive, under what name he is hiding in the West from Ukrainian nationalists, who also sentenced him to death. But, I think, until the end of his days he will not forget the trusting eyes of the dog - on it, in front of me, he tested the effect of the weapon with which he killed Stepan Bandera...