A Banderist proclamation in April 1941 claimed that “Jews in the USSR constitute the most faithful support of the ruling Bolshevik regime and the vanguard of Muscovite imperialism in the Ukraine.” Stetsko, even while under house arrest in July 1941, said that
“I…fully appreciate the undeniably harmful and hostile role of the Jews, who are helping Moscow to enslave Ukraine…. I therefore support the destruction of the Jews and the expedience of bringing German methods of exterminating Jewry to Ukraine….”
In Lwów, a leaflet warned Jews that, “
You welcomed Stalin with flowers [when the Soviets occupied East Galicia in 1939]. We will lay your heads at Hitler’s feet.” At a July 6, 1941, meeting in Lwów, Bandera loyalists determined that J
ews “have to be treated harshly…. We must finish them off…. Regarding the Jews, we will adopt any methods that lead to their destruction.”
Indeed pogroms in East Galicia in the war’s first days killed perhaps 12,000 Jews. Back in Berlin, Stetsko reported it all to Bandera.
Nazi authorities mobilized Ukrainians into auxiliary police units, some of which cleared ghettos. Few such auxiliary police belonged to Bandera’s group, which operated independently. But Banderist guerrillas in western Ukraine often killed Jews.
Historian Yehuda Bauer writes that
Banderists “killed all the Jews they could find,” surely “many thousands” in all. Moshe Maltz, a Jew living in hiding in Sokal, heard from a friendly Polish contact “about 40 Jews who were hiding out in the woods near his home …
the Bandera gangs came and murdered them all.”
When the Soviets reconquered East Galicia in November 1944, there were few Jews there left alive. But Maltz recorded that, “
When the Bandera gangs seize a Jew, they consider it a prize catch. The ordinary Ukrainians feel the same way…. they all want to participate in the heroic act of killing a Jew. They literally slash Jews to pieces with their machetes….”
When the war turned against the Germans in early 1943, leaders of Bandera’s group believed that the Soviets and Germans would exhaust each other, leaving an independent Ukraine as in 1918.
Lebed proposed in April to “cleanse the entire revolutionary territory of the Polish population,” so that a resurgent Polish state would not claim the region as in 1918.
Ukrainians serving as auxiliary policemen for the Germans now joined the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Maltz recorded that “
Bandera men … are not discriminating about who they kill; they are gunning down the populations of entire villages.… Since there are hardly any Jews left to kill, the Bandera gangs have turned on the Poles. They are literally hacking Poles to pieces. Every day … you can see the bodies of Poles, with wires around their necks, floating down the river Bug.” On a single day, July 11, 1943, the UPA attacked some 80 localities killing perhaps 10,000 Poles.
As the Red Army moved into western Ukraine (it liberated Lwów in July 1944) the UPA resisted the Soviet advance with full-scale guerrilla war. Maltz noted that, “Most of the Bandera gangs, men and women, from the villages … are still hiding out in the woods, armed to the teeth, and hold up Soviet soldiers. The Soviets may be the rulers of the towns, but the Bandera gangs reign supreme in the surrounding countryside, especially at night. The Russians…have their hands full…. Hardly a day passes without a Soviet official being killed….”
The Banderists and UPA also resumed cooperation with the Germans. Though the SD was pleased with the intelligence received from the UPA on the Soviets, the Wehrmacht viewed Banderist terror against Polish civilians as counterproductive.
…A feud erupted in 1947 between Bandera and Stetsko on the one hand, and Hrinioch and Lebed on the other.
Bandera and Stetsko insisted on an independent Ukraine under a single party led by one man, Bandera.
Hrynioch and Lebed declared that the people in the homeland, not Bandera, created the UHVR, and that they would never accept Bandera as dictator.
At an August 1948 Congress of the OUN Foreign Section, Bandera expelled the Hrinioch-Lebed group from the party and ordered his own followers in their organization to resign.
Bandera still controlled 80 percent of the party and claimed exclusive authority to direct the Ukrainian national movement at home and in the emigration. He also continued terror tactics against anti-Banderist Ukrainian leaders in Western Europe and maneuvered for control of Ukrainian émigré organizations. U.S. intelligence officials estimated that up to 80 percent of all Ukrainian DPs from Eastern Galicia were loyal to Bandera.