Underground Force Fights In Carpatho-Ukraine

Tenold Sunde, staff correspondent of the N.Y. News, reported from Humenne, Czechoslovakia, in last Monday's issue of that daily, that a queer secret, savage war is being fought in Carpatho-Ukraine "by Ukrainian irredentists called Benderovci," assisted, he says, by followers of the White Russian General Vlassov, the Polish General Anders and by Germans as well.

Aside from the fact that the dispatch seems confused and garbled, it is also written in a somewhat pro-Communist and anti-Ukrainian tone, perhaps due to the fact that it was written in the area within the sphere of Soviet influence and therefore had to pass Soviet controlled censorship.

The "Benderovci," Sunde writes, "are named for one Bender, a prewar Ukrainian leader who fought for the Nazis." Evidently the News correspondent has in mind Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist leader who, it is worth noting, did not fight for the Nazis but from the summer of 1941 to near war's end spent his time in a German concentration camp, together with other Ukrainian nationalist leaders. Moreover, the attempt to link the "Ukrainian irredentists" with Vlassov is evidently intended as a smear, as according to reliable reports reaching here Vlassov's overtures to Ukrainian nationalists to collaborate with them were always curtly rebuffed.

The "Benderovci," the News dispatch reports, are said to number about 20,000, and they are organized into regiments and operate as disciplined and highly trained assault forces. Their identifying insignia is a three-pronged fork of Neptune on their tunics.

"The stated purpose of the powerful outlaw organization," the dispatch states, "is to achieve the independence of the Ukraine."

The subject of the Banderivtsi, Sunde writes, "has been a hush matter in official Czech circles and this correspondent, Arthur Gaeth of the Mutual Broadcasting System and Otto Zaussmer of the Boston Globe, the first American correspondents to visit eastern Czechoslovakia, learned of the true extent of their operations only by being prohibited from examining them closely."

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, February 2, 1946, No. 5, Vol. XIV

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