Ukrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust. John-Paul Himka

that the Poles, not the Ukrainians, were the real antisemites (e.g., 116). In her opinion, while the Polish and Jewish press printed tendentious accounts of the pogroms of 1917-20, Ukrainian publications offered “objective information” (29-30). She stated (29) that the “educated, tolerant Greek Catholic clergy was in its large majority free of antisemitic superstitions,” but see the attempt in 1930 to prove the reality of the blood libel by the young Basilian monk Irynei Nazarko, “Piznaimo zhydiv!” (After World War II Nazarko became an influential church historian in the Ukrainian diaspora.)

98 Kovba, Liudianist’ u bezodni pekla, 224, 228-29.

99 I have explored this theme also in “Debates in Ukraine,” 354, 356.

100 Polishchuk, Hirka pravda, 30-39, 215-16.

101 Ibid., 20-22, 25-26, 57, 245, 437-38.

102 Ibid., 10.

103 Kulińska, “Dowody zbrodni.”

104 Polishchuk, Integralny nacjonalizm ukraiński, vols. 3-5 (these volumes bear an additional title: Nacjonalizm ukraiński w dokumentach).

105 Polishchuk, Hirka pravda, 12, 26.

106 E.g., ibid., 22. His insistence on the innocence of the local Volhynian population and the guilt of the Galician nationalists led him to state categorically, and unfortunately incorrectly, that the local population of Volhynia took no part in the mass murder of the Jews, only the auxiliary police set up by OUN. Ibid., 342.

107 Marples, Heroes and Villains, 208. I also had been dismissive of Polishchuk’s publications until I began my own research on the role of OUN and UPA in the Holocaust; before then I had absorbed the negative opinions of colleagues in Ukrainian studies and had only consulted his works superficially. I changed my thinking about Polishchuk when I read him carefully and with an open mind.

108 Serhiichuk, Nasha krov—na svoii zemli, 4.

109 Shapoval, “Chy podolano ‘volyns’kyi syndrom’?”

110 Isaievych, “1943 rik.”

111 Torzecki, “Mav ia do dila z endets’kym murom.”

112 Wnuk, “Recent Polish Historiography,” 10.

113 Polishchuk in fact criticized Prus more than once in his publications. For example, he wrote that Prus was wrong to seek the reasons for Ukrainian nationalist atrocities “in genetic or cultural factors of the Ukrainian people.” Polishchuk, Integralny nacjonalizm ukraiński, 2:486.

114 The destruction battalions were militias that the Soviets organized to fight the nationalist insurgency after the reconquest of Western Ukraine. Many of the fighters were recruited from the Polish minority. On the battalions, see Statiev, Soviet Counterinsurgency, 209-29. Although these units are usually referred to as destruction battalions in the English-language literature, a more literal translation from the Russian would be exterminatory battalions.

115 Prus, Holocaust po banderowsku, 186-87.

116 Ibid., 156.

117 HDA SBU, fond 13, spr. 372, vol. 1, ff. 21-59.

118 “Vytiah z protokolu dopytu chlena tsentral’noho provodu OUN M. Stepaniaka,” Pol’shcha ta Ukraina u trydsiatykh-sorokovykh rokakh XX stolittlia, 220-72, 442-44.

119 As we will see below, 112-15, Stella Krenzbach and her memoir were Ukrainian nationalist fabrications.

120 Prus, Holocaust po banderowsku, 164.

121 Ibid., 189.

122 The Polish version appeared first, in 2000, the English version a year later.

123 Boll, “Złoczów” (2002); Bechtel, “De Jedwabne à Zolotchiv” (2005); Carynnyk, “Zolochiv movchyt’” (2005); Struve, “Ritual und Gewalt” (2005); Pohl, “Anti-Jewish Pogroms in Western Ukraine” (2007); Himka, “Dostovirnist’ svidchennia” (2008); Kopstein and Wittenberg, “Deadly Communities” (2010); Kruglov “Pogromy v Vostochnoi Galitsii” (2010); Himka, “The Lviv Pogrom of 1941” (2011); Lower, “Pogroms” (2011); Struve, “Rites of Violence?” (2012); Prusin, “A ‘Zone of Violence’“ (2013); Rossoliński-Liebe, “Der Verlauf und die Täter” (2013); Struve, “Tremors in the Shatter-Zone of Empires” (2013); Kopstein and Wittenberg, Intimate Violence (2018).

124 Struve, Deutsche Herrschaft (2015).

125 Himka, “Ethnicity and the Reporting of Mass Murder” (2013); Kiebuzinski and Motyl, The Great West Ukrainian Prison Massacre (2017); Struve, “Masovi vbyvstva v”iazniv.” Among earlier works on the same subject are Gross, Revolution from Abroad (1988), 144-86, and Romaniv and Fedushchak, Zakhidnoukrains’ka trahediia (2002).

126 “The Ukrainians had never been considered pro-Jewish. Ukraine had been the scene of intermittent pogroms and oppression for 300 years. On the other hand, these people had no stamina for the long-range systematic German destruction process. Short violence followed by confession and absolution was one thing, organized killing was quite another.” Hilberg, Destruction, 545. Aside from the essentialism here, Hilberg seemed unaware that some Ukrainians had proven quite capable of long-range systematic and organized killing—of the Polish population of Volhynia and Galicia.

127 Shortly after Ordinary Men was published, Browning visited Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, where Israeli scholars questioned his neglect of survivor testimony. Browning’s arguments in defense of his approach are well laid out