Gareth Jones Society responds to British Banderites
Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain demands explanation about Nazi collaborators and continued existence of OUN
This open letter by Philip Colley has been republished from the website of the Gareth Jones Society, which is managed by Colley, the great-nephew of the Welsh journalist who first reported in 1933 that there was an extreme famine in the Soviet Union. Colley has rustled the feathers of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists for countering its falsification of his relative’s memory. Jones, he writes, was “kidnapped in life by bandits, and kidnapped in death by Banderites.”
I received an email last Friday* from the Chief Executive of the Association of Ukrainians (AUGB) in Great Britain, Mr Fedir Kurlak in which he misquoted a tweet from the Gareth Jones Society and demanded a full explanation for its contents. He also defamed me, calling me racist.
This is the tweet he objected to: “Much of the [Ukrainian] diaspora, though they didn’t advertise the fact, were made up of Nazi collaborators. The Nazi Party was disbanded at the end of the Second World War, but the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists [OUN] carried on, in exile, undercover pretty much, and is still with us today. It’s all a very long and very interesting story. I mention it because it’s very much connected with how Gareth’s story has been changed and falsified.”
In fact, Mr Kurlak misrepresented my statement by cobbling together two ends and missing out the middle. This was the quote he attributed to me: “much of the (Ukrainian) diaspora were made up of Nazi collaborators... [and are] still with us today.” This is not what I said. Please read above what I wrote. Now for the explanation...
Of the 33,000 Ukrainians who came to the UK after the war, 8,570 were from the 14th Waffen-SS Galicia division and had fought for Hitler. Some 21,000 others were recruited from displaced persons (DP) camps mainly in Germany and Austria. According to expert on Ukrainian history Dr Rossolinski-Liebe (‘Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist. Fascism, Genocide and Cult, p.468) roughly 50% of those in the camps “had left Ukraine with the retreating German army in the summer of 1944 because they were afraid of the consequences of their collaboration with the Germans.” The CIA’s estimate, also according to Rossolinski-Liebe, was that 80% of the Galician DPs, from western Ukraine, were followers of Stepan Bandera’s OUN.
Mr Kurlak also took exception to my statement that the anti-Semite and fascist Stepan Bandera’s Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) are “still with us today”. If they don’t still exist why was its then leader Stefan Romaniw addressing the Bradford branch of the AUGB in 2009 in the photo (above), now-deleted from the AUGB’s website? The OUN were an extreme Far Right organisation, modelled on Hitler’s Nazi Party, who wanted an ethnically pure Ukraine. In the words of Professor Per Anders Rudling, the OUN “collaborated with Nazi Germany and carried out ethnic cleansing and mass murder on a massive scale”. After the Nazi invasion in 1941, local OUN militias helped begin the Holocaust by identifying and rounding up Jews in Lviv, Zolochiv and elsewhere, humiliating them, forcing them to scrub the streets and then assisting the Nazis in murdering thousands in pogroms that lasted days.
The collaboration of OUN members with the Nazis ultimately lead to the deaths of some 1.5 millions Jews in Ukraine’s ‘Holocaust by Bullets’. And yet the AUGB continues to honour Stepan Bandera and the OUN. Outrageously, it attends Holocaust Memorial Day whilst at the same time celebrating as heroes those criminals who helped perpetrate it. Why is that?
It is worth noting that Mr Kurlak’s predecessor, Chief Executive of the AUGB Swiatomyr Fostun, was a guard at the notorious Trawniki concentration camp and implicated in the massacre of 56,000 Jews during the Warsaw ghetto uprising. And also that those Waffen SS troops who were secretly brought to Britain in 1947 went on to form the backbone of the AUGB in its early days.
Why has Mr Kurlak not condemned his predecessor? Or sanctioned the Leeds branch of the AUGB when in 2022 they were caught flying the ‘Blood and Soil’ red and black flag of the OUN, the same one that was raised and fluttered above Lviv the day the pogroms began? Where are the apologies? Why is it the AUGB does not feel the need to make amends for its past associations? Is it because they don’t believe they have anything to apologise for? Perhaps Mr Kurlak would like to make the AUGB’s position clear by making a statement today to publicly condemn the racist murderers of Bandera’s OUN once and for all?
As for my great uncle, he was a hero to all the victims of Stalin’s crimes that he reported on, including Russians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs, German colonists and many others. He was a voice for them all. Gareth’s evidence clearly backs up the view of the leading independent scholars on the matter, Robert Davies, Stephen Wheatcroft, Lynne Viola, Michel Ellman and Mark Tauger, that the ‘Holodomor’ was not an ethno-genocide. Even the pioneer of research into the famine, Robert Conquest said, “It wasn’t a Russian exercise, the attack on the Ukrainian people... there are guilty people, but they aren’t the Russian nation or anybody else.”
However, Far Right Ukrainian nationalists are trying to change Gareth’s story to fit their ‘Holodomor’ narrative and to whitewash their own dark history. The only thing they will ever own about Gareth Jones though is the myth they have created. Attempts to ‘privatise’ him as just being a ‘hero of Ukraine’ are as bizarre and mistaken as they are unwelcome, especially when we look at the Holocaust links of some of those other ‘heroes of Ukraine’, not least Stepan Bandera. More than anything Gareth was a Welsh hero, and an inspiring, brave and honest journalist who belongs to the world.
The use of his good name, as a man of integrity, to honour historical distortionists and anti-Semites by the Far Right in Ukraine is disgraceful. The notorious Levko Lukyanenko is just one example. A white nationalist and admirer of David Duke, Lukyanenko was someone who once claimed that the ‘Holodomor’ was carried out by a “satanical” government controlled by Jews. Yet, last year at the National Library in Kiev he was awarded the so-called Gareth Jones Medal of Truth and Honour. It goes without question that my late mother and brother, not to mention Gareth himself, would be horrified by this association. We all are.
Gareth was a pacifist and an internationalist who worked to avoid war and warned about the disaster that the “follies of nationalism” would bring to the nations of those on whose behalf it is practised. Given all of the above, it is clearly the height of hypocrisy for Mr Kurlak to be throwing around accusations of racism.
Ukrainian refugees, and indeed all refugees fleeing war and persecution, should always be welcome in this country. What I have said in no way relates to them. My points are factual and fair. This conflation of the historical facts with people fleeing war today is a transparent attempt to whip up moral panic and distract from the truth. I don’t believe the Far Right racist politics of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists and the honouring of those involved in the Holocaust deserve to be associated with Great Britain. I also think the AUGB has questions to answer regarding its own past, and present, associations. Disgraceful smears will not deter me. The Gareth Jones Society is determined to defend Gareth Jones’ good name and set the historical record straight. It will not be intimidated or submit to threats by those trying to hide the truth.
Philip Colley
The Gareth Jones Society
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*Your allegations against Ukrainians
Friday, 1 March, 2024
Dear Mr Colley
We were deeply saddened to read the content of your posts on behalf of the Gareth Jones Society on X (Twitter), 28 February.
While the honour of speaking at the London Welsh Centre on the life of Gareth Jones is not in question, your assertion about “the deliberate falsification of his story by Ukrainian Far Right nationalists in support of their anti-Russian, ‘Holodomor’ ethnic-genocide myth” could have been written by the Kremlin. Judging by the reply of “Moss Robeson”, prompted by your post, your comment appears to have been directed at our organisation.
The Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain (and many other Ukrainian organisations and individuals in various countries) built up an extremely good relationship with your late mother and brother Nigel who dedicated years of their lives to collecting and publicising the diary and writings of Gareth Jones. Thanks to them, Gareth Jones’ work is recognised as valuable source material throughout the world and his courage has been honoured by historians and the Ukrainian and Welsh Governments, amongst others.
Your comments, which included the assertion that “much of the (Ukrainian) diaspora were made up of Nazi collaborators... [and are] still with us today” are outrageous, offensive and racist. They may, directly or indirectly, incite hatred or violence against Ukrainians living in this country, including those who have fled from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and been given refuge here.
We are writing to request a full explanation from you about your claims. ████████████████████████████, the Embassy of Ukraine, the Ukrainian World Congress, the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, the Australian Federation of Ukrainians, Mick Antoniw MS, Dr Lubomyr Luciuk and Russ Chelak are being blind copied in to this email.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely,
Fedir Kurlak
Chief Executive
Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain Limited (AUGB)