June 10, 2016

Nationalists on trial

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Not all of us have the time or patience to watch a couple of talking heads on YouTube for close to an hour. It’s faster and more efficient to scan a transcript and pick out anything worth reading. But the recent Uke Tube debate between historian John-Paul Himka and attorney Askold Lozynskyj on “OUN, UPA, Jews and Ukrainians,” dated May 12 and published May 16, is exceptional (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYdEnjconjk).

For one thing, these heads talk well. A veteran lecturer, Prof. Himka is articulate and clear. Mr. Lozynskyj, an experienced lawyer, knows how to hammer home an argument. They take turns presenting their cases, only rarely interrupting each other. Moderator William Szuch intervenes very little, but helps summarize the debate.

For another thing, the subject of the debate is compelling: were the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) heroic organizations of which all Ukrainians should be proud, or were they anti-Semitic Nazi collaborators guilty of war crimes or crimes against humanity and thus a cause for national shame?

Among the factual questions debated is what exactly happened in eastern Galicia in the wake of the German attack on the USSR and Soviet-occupied territories on June 22, 1941. We all know about the OUN-sponsored Nachtigall and Roland units that accompanied the German advance, about how the retreating NKVD massacred Ukrainian and other prisoners in Lviv, and about the declaration of Ukrainian statehood, with Yaroslav Stetsko as prime minister, in that city on June 30. We also know that the inevitable tension between the OUN and the Germans led to a falling out and the arrest of Stetsko and Bandera soon after. Nevertheless, some scholars have alleged that, in the first days of July, OUN members participated in a pogrom of the Jewish population of Lviv and that later in the war, especially in 1943-1944, the OUN and the UPA massacred Poles and Jews. Prof. Himka takes this position and has supported it with articles citing voluminous documentary evidence and eyewitness testimony.

One issue in the debate is the reliability of these types of evidence. Both debaters are aware, of course, of the problems of eyewitness testimony, such as bias, poor memory, false memory and contemporary pressure. Documents present no fewer problems. In his presentation, Prof. Himka produces several documents from the summer of 1941 to prove that the OUN was anti-Semitic. Mr. Lozynskyj counters that they need to be authenticated, for many documents from the former Soviet archives are in fact fabrications. Prof. Himka replies that the sheer mass of both documentary and eyewitness evidence points to OUN anti-Semitism, collaboration and war crimes.

Another issue is the difference between the legal and the historical approach to evidence. In the adversarial common law system, the defense attorney seeks to admit favorable and exclude harmful evidence. Historians, by contrast, gather all available evidence, then submit it to careful scrutiny. As the debaters acknowledge, the rules of evidence and the standard of proof in law and history are different. One cannot provide the same degree of authentication for a historical document as one can for a contemporary writing. Yet archival documents are regularly admitted in court.

A key problem with the terms of the debate is whether one can condemn an organization for war crimes or crimes against humanity perpetrated by some of its members. Granted that members of the OUN joined the militia or auxiliary police, even on OUN orders – and that former policemen who had served the Germans later joined the UPA – does that make the OUN or the UPA responsible for crimes committed outside Ukrainian command structures? I think not.

Let us assume for the sake of argument that the OUN or the UPA actually ordered the commission of war crimes. Compare the crimes of the Royal Air Force and the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II, such as the fire-bombing of civilians in Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo, or the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There is no doubt that the respective commands ordered these actions. Yet neither Great Britain nor the United States shrinks from celebrating the heroism of its air force.

Perhaps an example from irregular warfare is more apposite. On April 9, 1948, during the struggle for Israeli statehood, the terrorist organization Irgun, led by Menachem Begin, participated in the murder of 245 men, women and children in the Arab village of Deir Yassin near Jerusalem. The Israeli government repudiated this atrocity, and Begin himself had reportedly opposed a massacre. But the fact is that less than 30 years later, Begin became prime minister of Israel. By this standard, even if the OUN and the UPA involvement in war crimes should be proven, would Ukraine be so wrong to posthumously honor Bandera, Roman Shukhevych and the organizations they led?

Perhaps, as Prof. Himka advocates, we should adhere to a higher standard. Perhaps we should emulate the Germans, who now honor the non-violent anti-Nazi Scholl sisters of the “White Rose” and the martyred Austrian conscientious objector Franz Jägerstätter. Germany has regained world respect. It may well be better to stop honoring military heroes altogether – though in the midst of Russia’s ceaseless war against Ukraine, this would be self-defeating. Humanity may be better served by praising not the violent, but the peaceful. A higher standard would be a good idea – if only it weren’t a double one.

Who won the debate? It depends on whether you see it as a criminal trial or a scholarly disputation. If he were defending the OUN and the UPA in court, Mr. Lozynskyj would at least have raised a reasonable doubt about guilt in the mind of the trier of fact, and thus won an acquittal. But in an academic forum, Prof. Himka’s theory could appear quite plausible. Whether Ukrainians should regard these organizations and their leaders as heroes or villains is not, however, either a legal or a historical question. It is a moral and political question, which Ukraine alone must decide.

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