SBU declassifies documents proving OUN-UPA not connected with anti-Jewish actions

 In Lviv in 1941

The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) has declassified documents, proving that OUN [the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists] is not connected with the anti-Jewish action in Lviv in 1941.

According to an UNIAN correspondent, SBU archive representative, candidate of historical sciences Oleksander Ishchuk showed the declassified documents, which provide an objective basis to state that OUN is not connected with violent actions against the civil population of Lviv in July 1941.

In particular, according to O.Ishchuk, the declassified documents of SBU indicate that on July 4-7 of 1941, representatives of Gestapo, who arrived in Lviv, turned to Ukrainian circles with demand to carry out a three-day massacre of Jews. “The OUN leadership, having got to know about that, informed its members that it was a German provocation in order to compromise Ukrainians with massacres”, the document reads.

“The SBU documents confirm that OUN members were trying to avoid taking part in actions against the Jewish population in Lviv, there were no official instructions on this issue”, O.Ishchuk stressed.

At the same time, the historian pointed out that none of the Soviet criminal cases, brought against OUN-UPA members, and kept in the SBU archive, has ever mentioned murdering civil population.

The scientist stressed that thanks to declassifying the documents, now historians have grounds to state that the OUN leadership refused to take part in Jewish massacres in Lviv in 1941.