Dear Editor:
The study of history is a deeply flawed subject because it is very often written by the victorious side and thus unfair to the victim. World War II was very complicated in this regard. We Americans should understand this very well since we were both victors over one brutal regime and collaborators with another even more grotesque. Hitler was evil incarnate, but our ally Stalin was ultimately responsible for more brutality in terms of sheer numbers. Suffice it to say that Josef Stalin and Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceasescu murdered more Romanians, including gypsies, than the Nazis.
One thing is certain. Malicious disregard for the truth is never justified.
I certainly do not know Romanian history sufficiently to cast aspersions against Romanian anti-communist freedom fighters even if they were accused of war crimes during World War 2 because the accusers were the Soviets who were among the victors. Naming streets after them is an internal matter for the Romanian people.
Americans frankly sold out Central and Eastern Europe to Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. I certainly did not nor will I ever examine the evidence against these anti-communists. I am certain that neither did Mr. Andrew Wiggins who wrote the piece “Romanian Fascist and Communist Past Colors its Politics.”
I do know that people who fought the communists were brought up on specious charges very often by the Soviets.
It is one thing to report on controversial contemporary matters and quite another to gratuitously and maliciously malign heroes of other nations without a scintilla of evidence. I do not know the motivation or rationale but Mr. Wiggins does exactly that. He writes:
“Many countries in Central and Eastern Europe, where fascist terror before and during World War II gave way to communist tyranny after 1945, have rallied to defend war criminals as patriots because they opposed communism. Ukraine honors Stepan Bandera, a nationalist responsible for the slaughter of Jews and Poles.”
Who was Stepan Bandera? These are undisputed facts. He was a leader of one faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). He left the territory of Ukraine before 1939 before the Soviets invaded Western Ukraine pursuant to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. He did write to Hitler prior to the German invasion of Western Ukraine warning Hitler that the OUN would be proclaiming an independent Ukraine. He stressed that if the Germans stand in their way, Ukrainians will be Germany’s worst enemy.
On June 30,1941, the Bandera OUN faction proclaimed an independent Ukraine. The Germans insisted that the proclamation be withdrawn. Ukrainians refused. Thereafter the Nazis began to arrest the Ukrainian nationalists. Among them they arrested my father. They also arrested two of Bandera’s brothers They were taken to the notorious German concentration camp at Auschwitz where both of Bandera’s brothers were murdered by Polish capos. My father survived weighing 90 pounds.
Bandera himself was interned in the Sacksenhausen concentration camp where he remained until the end of the war. After the war he remained in Germany as a migrant. On October 15, 1959, Bandera was assassinated by a Soviet agent in Munich, ostensibly because the legend of Bandera became the incentive for the Ukrainian dissident movement. The name actually became synonymous with Ukrainian patriot. That euphemism remains to this day.
Bandera was never brought up on charges at Nuremberg or anywhere else for war crimes. Mr. Wiggins’ quote is taken directly out of Soviet and Russian disinformation.
Unfortunately, this is not new for The New York Times. In 1932-33, 7-10 million Ukrainians were starved to death by Josef Stalin and his henchmen. This was one of the largest genocides perpetrated in the modern era. Walter Duranty was a journalist working for The New York Times in the USSR. He sided with Josef Stalin in a cover-up of this atrocity. The New York Times carried his disinformation and has never apologized.
December 12, 2024 Askold S. Lozynskyj