Like I said, if you scratch the Ukrainian Basher, you usually find leftist propaganda worthy of the LA Times.
Did you write the LA Times article that accused Bandera of being a Nazi?
And I see you now choose Demjanjiuk - isnt he the Uke that was set up by a phoney ID card forged by the KGB - wasn't he found not guilty by the Israel Supreme Court?
Bandera's grandson reacts
Dear Editor:
I would like to take personal issue with Mr. Tim Rutten's article of Saturday, June 14: "The Blair affair fuels a 70-year-old scandal." In that article, Mr. Rutten writes:
"This week, the Los Angeles Times asked officials of the leading U.S. and Canadian Ukrainian émigré organizations whether they ever had censured or condemned the Galician Brigade or Bandera's followers for their participation in genocide."
"Followers of the Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera enthusiastically joined the Nazis."
"Curiously, the same organizations and commentators who are pressing the issue of Duranty's prize have been resolutely silent about one of the Holocaust's darkest chapters - the collaboration by tens of thousands of Ukrainians with the Nazi murderers of Eastern European Jewry."
First, Ukrainians have not been silent. We have been working for decades to set the record straight on the alleged collaboration between Ukrainians and Nazis.
The Nazis arrested my grandfather, Stepan Bandera, in July 1941, after the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) proclaimed Ukrainian independence as Stalin's troops retreated in front of Hitler's advancing divisions.
He spent the remainder of the war in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Two of my grandfather's brothers - Oleksa and Vasyl - were killed by the Nazis in Auschwitz.
Recall that like Jews, Slavs were considered untermenschen [racially inferior persons], and thousands of Ukrainian nationalists were incarcerated alongside the victims of the Holocaust in places like Dachau, Mauthausen and Buchenwald.
Also, it may surprise those unacquainted with Eastern European history to learn that there were Jewish Ukrainians who participated in the national liberation struggle from 1939 to 1953, including within military formations created by the OUN during its two-front struggle against both Hitler's Nazis and Stalin's Soviets.
I would be glad to introduce Mr. Rutten to Mr. Alex Epstein, a Jewish Canadian lawyer who helped our family present the case for grandfather Bandera in front of the Deschenes War Crimes Commission in Canada in the mid-1980s, in response to similar claims by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. We won our case in front of an impartial judge.
In addition, I would be glad to put Mr. Rutten in touch with Mr. Herbert Romerstein, who for the last 15 years has been engaged in research of the dual Soviet active measures campaign of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s against "Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists" and "Zionists." In his well-considered opinion, the campaign's intention was to keep the Ukrainian dissidents and Jewish refusenik movement from coalescing into a united front against the repressive apparat of the Soviet Union during the said period. Mr. Romerstein, a former Professional Staff Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, is best known for his work with Eric Breindel, "The Venona Secrets, Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors." Mr. Romerstein's latest article is titled "Divide and Conquer: The KGB Disinformation Campaign against Ukrainians and Jews."
I fear that Mr. Rutten has not been diligent in his background work. He may in fact be unduly influenced by Soviet apologist materials of the '60s, '70s and '80s.
Stephen Bandera
New York, NY
PS: I would be glad to forward a copy of Mr. Romerstein's latest article