by New Worker
correspondent
ANTI-FASCISTS from a broad political spectrum
gathered in Whitehall opposite the Cenotaph to make a silent and dignified
protest to show their outrage as Ukrainians living in Britain staged a memorial
ceremony for Ukrainian soldiers “fallen in all wars”.
This includes members of the Galician SS division
who, collaborated with the Nazis and who, as members of the Organisation of
Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), took part in murdering Jews, Poles and Communists
before Nazi troops had even occupied Ukraine and who served as concentration
camp guards at Auschwitz.
It was even more shocking as the event came just two
hours after the Union of Jewish Ex-Servicemen had held their annual remembrance
event at the Cenotaph and their wreath ended up overlapping the UJEX wreaths.
The Association of Ukrainian Former Combatants in
Great Britain was amongst a number of organisations calling for the march on
the Cenotaph in London.
This organisation was created by former members of
the Galician SS who settled in Britain after the Second World War. As the war
ended they fled the oncoming Red Army and opted to surrender to American forces
in Germany.
They were transferred to a prison camp in northern
Italy and then taken to America, Sweden and Britain. Those who came to Britain
were given work clearing mines from beaches and farm work.
Many were also employed in the construction and
operation of nuclear power stations because they would never go on strike. As
fascists they were totally opposed to the principles of trade unionism.
They maintained strong links with US intelligence,
acting as an intermediary for money, weapons and propaganda being fed back to
contacts within the Soviet Union to undermine it.
Through organisations like the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc
of Nations and the World Anti-Communist League they used funding supplied by
the US, Saudi Arabia and the Sultan of Brunei to attack the Soviet Union and to
maintain their Nazi culture and ideology in exile.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990 some members
of this community returned to Ukraine and their links with US intelligence
continue to be very strong.
The Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain (the
main organiser of the memorial service) made no secret of the fact that they
were commemorating both the SS Galicia Division as well as the anti-communist
Ukrainian Insurgent Army (which also collaborated for a period with the Nazis
and carried out atrocities).
In response to an enquiry from a Spanish journalist,
Wolodymyr Pawluk, chair of the AUGB London branch said: “We remember the
thousands who fought in the Waffen-SS Division Galicia” and then went on to try
to downplay the Nazi character of the Division: “Many who joined the Galician
Division did so not because they supported Hitler.
“They enlisted to get military training. Many
remembered the atrocities committed by Stalin in other words Holodomor
(famine), murders and repressions. Many would have been conscripted into the
Red Army which would have meant certain death.
“There are many issues which have to be explored
regarding this matter. In war the instinct is to survive. The war on the
Eastern front was brutal and Ukraine was the battleground.”
This is typical of the type of historical
revisionism which is common in Ukrainian far right nationalist circles. The
members of the SS Galicia Division were volunteers who took the following very
clear oath: “I swear before God this holy oath, that in the battle against
Bolshevism, I will give absolute obedience to the commander in chief of the
German Armed Forces Adolf Hitler, and as a brave soldier I will always be
prepared to lay down my life for this oath.”
There are many myths about the famine in Ukraine in
the 1930s but it did not affect Galicia, at that time was part of Poland.
Despite minor scuffles when Ukrainian nationalists
attempted to wrest away one of the protesters banners’, the silent and
dignified action went peacefully.
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