Ukrainian Youth Group's Memorial to Nazi Special Forces Commander
AFUO Member Group Honors Holocaust Participant Roman Shukhevych
On the 9th of March, the Sydney branch of the Ukrainian Youth Association (CYM) held a memorial for Nazi collaborator and war criminal Roman Shukhevych, also known by the pseudonym Taras Chuprynka.
CYM Sydney, who are part of the 22 organisations that make up the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations (AFUO) hold regular memorials in honor of Shukhevych, who is the Youth group’s patron.
In 1941, Shukhevych was the commander of the Nachtigall Battalion, a subunit in Nazi Germany’s special forces that participated in the murder of Jews in Lviv during the holocaust.
Holocaust survivor and former Chairman of Yad Vashem, the The World Holocaust Remembrance Center Joseph Lapid noted of Shukhevych and his Battalion:
"In a terrible pogrom the Nightingale Battalion of the Ukrainian legion participated in the murder of 4,000 Jews from Lviv between June 30-July 3, 1941. The Ukrainian commander of the battalion at that time was Roman Shukhevych, a Ukrainian nationalist. The units he commanded, supposedly fighting for Ukrainian independence, committed large scale murder during the war. He was a war criminal."
After the Nachtigall Battalion was dissolved Shukhevych became deputy commander of the Auxiliary Police, which was sent to Belarus where it fought against Soviet partisans and is believed to have participated in the murder of more Jews.
In 1942, Shukhevych became the Commander of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), founded by the Order of Ukrainian Nationalists - Bandera (OUN-B). Under his command they killed an estimated 100,000 Poles in the 1943 Volhynia Massacre.
During the memorial members of CYM Sydney also displayed the flag of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician), a mostly Ukrainian division which was part of the military wing of the Nazi Party and led by Heinrich Himmler. The flag was gifted to the Youth Group in 2007 by Australian members of the UPA who served in the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division during WW2.
The Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations website proudly mentions not only the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division flag, but the members of their community who served as part of the SS Division led by Himmler.
A memorial to the Ukrainian members of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division which features the same lion and crowns insignia as the flag has also been built in Wayville, South Australia.
The problematic whitewashing of Nazi collaborators is not something that is new for the Australian Ukrainian community, the previous chair to AFUO, Stefan Romaniw led the OUN-B from 2009-22. It is however deeply troubling to see Youth members being involved in the efforts to normalise those who collaborated with the Nazis.