From: cberlet@igc.apc.org (NLG Civil Liberties Committee)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: Bellant: Old Nazi Networks in US
Date: 12 Dec 92 02:28:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #R:cdp:1299600110:cdp:1299600125:000:13380
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!cberlet    Dec 11 18:28:00 1992


/* Written  9:10 pm  Dec  8, 1992 by cberlet in igc:publiceye */
/* Written  8:30 pm  Dec  6, 1992 by cberlet in igc:p.news */
/* Written  7:23 pm  Mar  4, 1990 by nlgclc in igc:publiceye */
Bellant: Old Nazis/Allies 3
     
PART THREE - SECTION 3
		
ALLIES AND ALLEGIANCES
	
     - Ukrainian Nationalism and Nazi Collaboration -
	
      In 1983, the White House proved that a Nazi whose 
organization collaborated with SS units and mass murder, and who 
helped maintain a Nazi organization for four decades, can still 
be an honored guest of the President. [f-256]
	
      Yaroslav Stetsko was the source of that lesson. Stetsko, 
who died in July 1986, worked with intelligence agencies of Nazi 
Germany, and briefly established himself as a pro-Nazi premier of 
the Ukraine under German military occupation. [f-257]
	
      The Ukraine, now a Republic of the Soviet Union, is an 
Eastern European region of lush farmland that has a long history 
of nationalist fervor. During the rise of European fascism after 
World War I, some Ukrainian nationalist groups tied their hopes 
to fascism as an ideology, and then collaborated with Hitler and 
Nazism in World War II.
	
      One Ukrainian nationalist group was the Organization of 
Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) which split into two organizations: 
a less militant wing, led by Andrew Melnyk and known as OUN-M, 
and the extremist group of Stepan Bandera, known as OUN-B. The 
Nazis preferred the radical nationalist OUN-B. [f-258] During the 
German military occupation, the Ukraine witnessed terrible 
atrocities against Jews and other groups targeted by Nazi 
policies. The OUN-B organized military units that participated in 
these atrocities. With the collapse of the Third Reich, many 
Ukrainian collaborationists fled their homeland.
	
      After the war, the Organization of Ukrainian 
Nationalists-Bandera (OUN-B), a clandestine group financed in 
part by German intelligence and led by Stetsko, accelerated its 
work in the West. A secretive group, OUN-B's tracks are difficult 
to follow. "You have to understand. We are an underground 
organization. We have spent years quietly penetrating positions 
of influence," explained an OUN-B member who insisted on 
anonymity. The positions of influence under discussion were 
Reagan Administration appointments. All of the OUN-B's key 
Administration contacts were through an organization called the 
Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), headquartered in 
New York City.
	
      The UCCA is described as heavily influenced but not totally 
controlled by the OUN-B. Supposedly an umbrella organization of 
Ukrainian-American groups, there are groups within UCCA that are 
complete OUN-B fronts. [f-259]
	
      The White House had looked favorably on the Ukrainian 
Congress Committee of America, appointing its chairman, Lev 
Dobriansky, Ambassador to the Bahamas in 1983. Dobriansky is a 
longtime ASC official. His daughter Paula was put on the National 
Security Council.  George Nesterczuk, former director of the 
Ukrainian National Information Service (UNIS), which is the 
Washington, D.C. affiliate of the UCCA, was appointed deputy 
director of the Office of Personnel Management. In 1984 he became 
Deputy Director of the U.S. Information Agency. [f-260]
	
      In 1984, Bohdan Futey, head of the Cleveland branch of the 
UCCA and a Republican Heritage Groups Council activist, was 
appointed head of the U.S. Foreign Claims Commission. [f-261] 
Futey and Nesterczuk are described as the contact points between 
the OUN-B and the White House. [f-262] The top OUN-B leader for 
external affairs in the United States is Bohdan Fedorak, who also 
chairs the Southeast Michigan UCCA branch. He maintains contacts 
with Futey and Nesterczuk. It was through this network that 
arrangements were made for Reagan to make a campaign stop in 
October, 1984 at the Ukrainian Cultural Center in the Detroit 
suburb of Warren, Michigan. [f-263] The Center is headed by 
Fedorak, who has been a delegate to WACL conferences for many 
years as a lieutenant of the Stetskos. [f-264]
	
      In 1985 the UCCA's Committee on Foreign Affairs, chaired by 
Fedorak, continued pressing Congress against the Office of 
Special Investigations, the Justice Department unit charged with 
bringing action against suspected Nazi war criminals and 
collaborators in the United States. Futey and Nesterczuk are also 
members of that committee. [f-265] Such agitation on behalf of 
suspected war criminals and mass murderers did not deter the 
State Department's Committee for Security and Cooperation in 
Europe (CSCE) from working with the National Captive Nations 
Committee, co-sponsoring a series of hearings on human rights 
problems in the Soviet Union in June, 1986. [f-266]
	
      The Captive Nations Committee is essentially an OUN-B front 
that operates out of the UNIS office in Washington, D.C. It has 
local affiliates around the country (Fedorak chairs the Detroit 
committee), but the UNIS office told an interviewer that the 
National Captive Nations Committee had been inactive. Committee 
literature available in the office was at least four years old. 
No current board of directors was available. A UNIS employee 
considered it a paper organization. The hearings held jointly by 
the State Department and Captive Nations in Detroit were hosted 
by Fedorak at his Ukrainian Cultural Center. [f-267]
	
      The UCCA is also a member of ASC's Coalition for Peace 
Through Strength. Like so many elements of the Coalition and the 
American Security Council, it is networked into the World 
Anti-Communist League (WACL). The masthead of the UCCA's 
<Ukrainian Quarterly> lists several representatives from Taiwan 
and Korea, both major funders of WACL. [F-268]
	
      Wherever the OUN-B has political involvement, the UCCA 
seems to be its representative. In the U.S. Council for World 
Freedom, chaired by Singlaub, the OUN-B is represented by 
Secretary-General Walter Chopiwskyj (who has also organized the 
Republican Heritage Groups Council in Arizona and is president of 
the national Captive Nations Committee). [f-269] The only public 
indication of the OUN-B presence in the UCCA is in the U.S. 
Council for World Freedom's political arm, the Coalition for 
World Freedom, of which the UCCA is a member. [f-270] The Council 
is the U.S. branch of the World Anti-Communist League, in which 
the Stetskos play a major role. [f-271]
	
      The UCCA has also played a leading role in opposing federal 
investigations of suspected Nazi war criminals since those 
queries got underway in the late 1970's. [f-272] Some UCCA 
members have many reasons to worry--reasons which began in the 1930's.
	
      Even before Hitler came to power, the German Nazi Party was 
seeking and working with like-minded political groups around the 
world. By the time the Nazis came to power, the OUN was one group 
that received money and training from Germany. [f-273] The OUN-B 
was not only an instrument to aid Hitler's war aims against the 
Soviet Union, but also to serve his intelligence agencies in the 
United States.
	
      There are Ukrainian communities within most large urban 
population centers in the United States. In the 1930's, German 
military intelligence worked with the OUN as it established and 
financed a variety of front organizations to provide cover for 
propaganda and espionage activities in the United States. In each 
city with a Ukrainian community, the OUN established cells. The 
great majority of Ukrainian-Americans had no idea of the OUN 
agenda. Newspapers and organizations were taken over--one such 
newspaper even printed instructions on how to make a homemade 
bomb. 
	
      According to <Sabotage>, a 1942 book on Axis spy and 
sabotage operations in the U.S., the OUN was "set up under the 
supervision of the Intelligence Department of the German War 
Office." Other authors argue that the OUN was not controlled by 
>German Intelligence to this extent, although OUN's military and 
financial links to the Nazis are not in dispute. One U.S. Army 
captain who got involved in stealing military secrets for the 
OUN lost his commission. [F-274]
	
      By far the greatest crimes of the Ukrainian nationalists 
were against other Ukrainians. The OUN-B internalized the 
ideology of their Nazi mentors, which included viewing the world 
in terms of racial nationalism. "Nationalism is based on 
feelings, which are carried by the racial blood," was the way one 
OUN-B publication explained their views on the subject. [f-275] 
In John Armstrong's <Ukrainian Nationalism>, OUN-B's views are 
described as having "tended to drive the movement still further 
in the direction of deification of the mystic concept of the 
nation, even to the point of racism." [f-276] For those judged 
not to be pure Ukrainians, this meant trouble.
	
      That trouble rolled in on the treads of German tanks in the 
Ukraine in June, 1941. Stetsko and German-commanded OUN-B militia 
arrived in the city of Lwow (Lvov) with them. [f-277] Stetsko 
declared a short-lived Ukrainian government, with himself as 
premier, pledged to fight as an ally for Hitler's "New Order."
	
     In <The War Against The Jews>, Lucy Dawidowicz writes 
that "In Lwow, the Germans and Ukrainians, in house to house 
hunts for Jews, shot them randomly on the spot." [F-278] 
She noted that later "the Ukrainians staged massive pogroms, 
slaughtering thousands and carrying off other thousands of Jews 
to [the German] <Einsatzgruppen> headquarters." [f-279] A 
concentration camp was also built in Lwow. An estimated 900,000 
Jews disappeared from the Ukraine during the German occupation. 
[f-280] Heavy persecution of Poles also took place in this 
region, mirroring the German policy in Poland.
	
      Militias and military units led by the OUN-B were involved 
with these crimes. [f-281] Although Stetsko was under an 
"honorary arrest" by the Germans because the creation of the 
Stetsko regime hadn't been cleared by Berlin, he was still active 
in OUN-B affairs and was even allowed to travel. [f-282]
	
      Ever the Nazi ally, Stetsko was released from his arrest 
near the end of the war to help organize resistance to the Soviet 
offensive that was rolling the German army back. The headlong 
retreat of the Germans began after their defeat at Stalingrad at 
the end of 1942. In 1943, the Germans inspired their 
collaborators from the Ukraine, Bulgaria, Byelorussia and the 
Baltic countries to form a Committee of Subjugated Nations to 
coordinate resistance activity against the Soviet army. [f-283]
	
      The Ukrainian Congress Committee of America chooses to 
ignore the Ukrainian collaboration with the extermination of 
Poles and Jews. A 1984 article in their <Ukrainian Quarterly> 
praised Pavlo Shandruk, who was the Ukrainian General (under 
the Division's Commander-in-Chief German General Fritz Freytag) 
of the 14th Waffen SS Galician Division during the final days 
of the war.
	
     The Galician division was renamed the First Ukrainian 
Division of the Ukrainian National Army in April, 1945--two 
weeks before the German surrender. The Division remained under 
complete German military control during WWII. [F-284] 
The Veterans of the First Ukrainian Division is a group member of 
the UCCA. [f-285]
	
      When the Stetskos visited the White House on July 19, 1983, 
Reagan told them that "Your struggle is our struggle. Your dream 
is our dream." [f-286] The Stetskos' dream, however, does not 
represent an alteration of their wartime goals. Slava Stetsko, 
for instance, wrote a forward to a book, <Captive Nations>, which 
offered a glossary of definitions of political terms:
	
     "Anti-Semitism: A smear word used by Communists against 
those who effectively oppose and expose them."
	
     "Fascist: An anti-Communist."
	
     "Nazi or Hitlerite: An active anti-Communist.[f-287]"
	
      Slava Stetsko, who is the editor of ABN and OUN-B 
publications, described the book as "objective, factual" and 
"highly recommended." [f-288]
	
      Further, the OUN-B "dream" includes a racial conception. 
Although it passes itself off as an anti-communist organization, 
its primary belief is anti-Russian. [f-289] As an OUN-B member 
described it: "The problem isn't 70 years of Communism, it's 300 
years of Russian imperialism." [f-290] Thus, Russian 
anti-communists are also seen as the enemy. Russians are not 
allowed to be part of the ABN, Captive Nations Committee, or 
World Anti-Communist League. <Captive Nations> says that "the 
Russian character" is to blame "for this overwhelming Russian 
desire for power, for expansion, for dictatorship." [f-291] 
Nicolas Nazarenko, the Cossack Republican organizer says, 
"Russian communists and anti-communists are all the same to me."[f-292]
	
      The  Ukrainian nationalists see a Ukrainian state under 
their control as having "ethnographic borders," as was originally 
proclaimed by a OUN-B Manifesto in December, 1940. [f-293] Put 
more simply, the OUN-B sees Ukrainians as a separate, 
classifiable race that have a right, when in power, to exclude 
others from the Ukraine's borders. The realities of that 
formulation were made bloodchillingly clear to the Poles and Jews 
in the region when the OUN-B had temporary power six months after 
the Manifesto was issued.