Everything about Stepan Bandera totally explained
Stepan Andriyovych Bandera (
January 1 1909–
October 15 1959) was a
Ukrainian nationalist leader who headed the
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).
Early Life
He was born in the village of
Uhryniv Staryi, in the
Kalush District in
Galiсia (
Stanyslaviv Oblast), which at that time was ruled by the
Austro-Hungarian monarchy. His father, Andriy Bandera, was a Ukrainian priest of the Ukrainian
Greek-Catholic rite in Uhryniv Staryi. His mother, Myroslava Bandera, was from an old clerical family, being the daughter of a Greek-Catholic priest in Uhryniv Staryi.
Stepan spent his childhood in Uhryniv Staryi, in the house of his parents and grandparents, growing up in an atmosphere of
Ukrainian nationalism.
In the spring of
1922, his mother died from
tuberculosis of the throat.
Nationalist activities
Starting in 1922, he was a member of
Plast – Ukrainian
Scouting Organization. From
1931 Bandera was deputy of regional
Scouts, then – head of regional executive of OUN and commandant of ULO. He was sentenced to death for the organization of the murder of
Bronisław Pieracki, the Home Secretary of
Poland in
1934, but the sentence was vacated and commuted to life imprisonment. Released by the
USSR when the Germans occupied
Lviv in
1939, in
1940 he headed the revolutionary group of OUN that broke away from
Andrii Melnyk's OUN.
Khrushchev commented in his memoirs "...we still showed a certain lack of judgment by freeing people like Bandera from prison without first checking up on them". On
June 30 1941, he was elected a member of the Government of the renewed Ukrainian State proclaimed in
Lviv following the German
invasion of the Soviet Union. After that he was in the
German Sachsenhausen concentration camp where he was placed in the "
Zellenbau Bunker". With Bandera were all the most important prisoners of the third Reich, such as ex-prime minister of
France,
Leon Blum, ex-chancellor of
Austria,
Kurt Schuschnigg. Prisoners of Zellenbau received help from the
Red Cross unlike common concentration camp prisoners and where able to send and receive parcels from their relatives. Bandera also got help from OUN including financial assistance. Germans permitted the Ukrainian nationalists to leave the bunker for important meeting with OUN representatives in
Fridental Castle which was 200 meters from Sachsenhausen. He was released in October
1944 and headed the West European units of OUN and
Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the
UPA. After 1945, UPA partisan units continued fighting the
Soviet Union and
communist Poland until the early 1950s, especially in the
Carpathian Mountains regions.
Murder Victim
On
October 15 1959, at the entrance of a house in Kreittmayr street, 7 (
Kreittmayrstraße), in
Munich, Stepan Bandera was found at 13:05, bleeding and barely alive. A medical examination established that the cause of his death was poison (
cyanide gas). Two years later, on
November 17 1961, the German judicial bodies proclaimed that the murderer of Stepan Bandera was
Bohdan Stashynsky who acted on the orders of Soviet
KGB head
Alexander Shelepin and Soviet premier
Nikita Khrushchev.After a detailed investigation against Stashynskyi, a trial took place from
October 8th to
October 15 1962. The sentence was handed down on
October 19th, in which Stashynskyi was condemned to 8 years of imprisonment. The German Supreme Court confirmed at
Karlsruhe that in the Bandera murder, the Soviet Government in Moscow was the main guilty party.
Legacy
In an interview with Russian newspaper
Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2005 former KGB Chief
Vladimir Kryuchkov claimed that "the murder of Stepan Bandera was one of the last cases when the KGB disposed of undesired people by means of violence." On
October 20 1959 Stepan Bandera was buried in the
Waldfriedhof Cemetery in Munich.
In late
2006 the
Lviv city administration announced the future transference of the tombs of Stepan Bandera,
Andriy Melnyk,
Yevhen Konovalets and other key leaders of
OUN/
UPA to a new area of
Lychakivskiy Cemetery specifically dedicated to Ukrainian national liberation struggle.
In October of 2007, the city of
Lviv erected, after many years of delays, a statue dedicated to the OUN and UPA leader Stepan Bandera. The appearance of the statue has engendered a far-reaching debate about the role of Stepan Bandera and UPA in Ukrainian History. On
October 18,
2007, the Lviv City Council adopted a resolution establishing the "Award of Stepan Bandera."
Further Information
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