He was arrested in Lviv in 1934, and tried twice: first, concerning involvement in a plot to assassinate the minister of internal affairs, Bronisław Pieracki, and second at a general trial of OUN executives.

In instructions to its members concerning how the OUN should behave during the war, it declared that " in times of chaos ... one can allow oneself to liquidate Polish, Russian and Jewish figures, particularly the servants of Bolshevik-Muscovite imperialism " and further, when speaking of Russians, Poles, and Jews, to " destroy, in the struggle, especially those who defend the regime: send them to their lands, destroy them-especially the intelligentsia ... assimilation of the Jews is ruled out.

The OUN combats the Jews as the prop of the Muscovite-Bolshevik regime and simultaneously it renders the masses conscious of the fact that the principal foe is Moscow.

According to the OUN, Ukraine's primary enemies were considered to be Poles and Russians, with Jews playing a secondary role.

The OUN attitude towards the Jews was initially supportive in the early 1930s but grew more negative towards the end of that decade.

Stsyborsky wrote that Jewish rights should be respected, that the OUN ought to convince Jews that their organization was no threat to them, and that Ukrainians ought to maintain close contacts with Jews nationally and internationally.

Three years later, an article in the OUN journal Rozbudova Natsii (" Development of the Nation "), despite focused on the alleged exploitation of Ukrainian peasants by Jews, also showed that Jews as well as Ukrainians were victims of Soviet policies.

By the late 1930s, however, in OUN publications Jews were described as parasites who ought to be segregated from Ukrainians.

The OUN combats the Jews as the prop of the Muscovite-Bolshevik regime and simultaneously it renders the masses conscious of the fact that the principal foe is Moscow.

Despite its declared condemnation of pogroms in April 1941, when German official Reinhard Heydrich requested " self-cleansing actions " in June of that year the OUN organized militias who killed several thousand Jews in western Ukraine soon afterward that year.

Although most Jews were actually killed by Germans, the OUN police working for them played a crucial supporting role in the liquidation of 200, 000 Jews in Volyn in the beginning of the war ( although in isolated cases Ukrainian policemen also helped Jews to escape ) The OUN also helped some Jews to escape.

OUN bands also killed Jews who had fled into the forests from the Germans.

The organisation of Ukrainians desiring independent Ukraine ( the OUN ) was persecuted as " anti-soviet ".

The OUN, on the other hand, was originally a fringe movement within western Ukraine, condemned for its violence by figures from mainstream Ukrainian society such as head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Metropolitan Andriy Sheptytsky, who wrote of the OUN's leadership that " whoever demoralizes our youth is a criminal and an enemy of our people.

This view was compounded by the OUN's prior collaboration with the Nazis, that by 1943 no understanding between the Polish government's Home Army and OUN was possible.

Stepan Andriyovych Bandera () ( 1 January 1909 – 15 October 1959 ) was a Ukrainian politician and one of the leaders of Ukrainian national movement in Western Ukraine ( Galicia ), who headed the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists ( OUN ).

One of the most active of these groups was the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, the OUN ().

The most active of these organizations was the OUN, and the leader of the OUN was Andriy Melnyk.

The courier was intercepted by the NKVD, which had captured some of the OUN ( M )' s leaders.

Meetings of the OUN leadership held February 1943 led the creation of the military wing of the OUN-B, which was the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.

Meetings of the OUN leadership held February 1943 led the creation of the military wing of the OUN-B, which was the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.

In 1941-1942 while Bandera was cooperating with the Germans, OUN members did take part in anti-Jewish actions.

Andriy Bandera, Stepan's father was arrested in late May 1941 for harbouring an OUN member and transferred to Kiev.

Outside of Western Ukraine, support was minimal, and the majority of the Soviet ( eastern ) Ukrainian population considered the OUN / UPA to have been primarily collaborators with the Germans.

It was renamed the Ukrainian People's Revolutionary Army in July 1943 before being later partially and forcibly absorbed into the UPA of the OUN ( B ).

The UPA was responsible for military operations while the OUN was in charge of administrative duties ; each had its own chain of command.

Despite the division between the UPA and the OUN, there was overlap between their posts and the local OUN and UPA leaders were frequently the same person.

There was a much stronger national self-perception among the Galician Ukrainians increasingly influenced by OUN.

The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists ( OUN ) ( or ОУН ) is a Ukrainian political organization which as a movement originally was created in 1929 in Western Ukraine ( at the time interwar Poland ).

At the time of its founding, the OUN was originally a fringe movement in western Ukraine, where the political scene was dominated by the mainstream and moderate Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance ( UNDO ).

Because of his determined personality, Stepan Bandera quickly rose through the ranks of these organizations, becoming the chief propaganda officer of the OUN in 1931, the second in command of OUN in Galicia in 1932-33, and the head of the National Executive or the OUN in 1933.

After negotiations failed, the OUN commander Dmytro Klyachkivsky coopted the name of Borovets ' organization, UPA, and decided to accomplish by force what could not be accomplished through negotiation: the unification of Ukrainian nationalist forces under OUN-B control.

The OUN believed that a goal of professional revolutionaries was, through revolutionary acts, to awaken the masses.

OUN ( B ) sought support in Germany's military circles, while the OUN ( M ) sought connections with its ruling clique.

Under the command of the Western Ukrainian Territorial Executive ( established February 1929 ), the OUN carried out hundreds of acts of sabotage in Galicia and Volhynia, including a campaign of arson against Polish landowners ( which helped provoke the 1930 Pacification ), boycotts of state schools and Polish tobacco and liquor monopolies, dozens of expropriation attacks on government institutions to obtain funds for its activities, and some sixty assassinations.

According to its initial declaration, the primary goal of OUN was to establish an independent, united national state on ethnic Ukrainian territory.

Instead the OUN, particularly its younger members, adopted the ideology of Dmytro Dontsov, an émigré from Eastern Ukraine.

According to Timothy Snyder the OUN wanted to create a Ukrainian state consisting of Ukrainian territories, but only of Ukrainian people ; its first congress in 1929 resolved that “ Only the complete removal of all occupiers from Ukrainian lands will allow for the general development of the Ukrainian Nation within its own state .” OUN ’ s “ Ten Commandments ” stated: “ Aspire to expand the strength, riches, and size of the Ukrainian State even by means of enslaving foreigners .”

There were, however, significant differences within the OUN regarding the extent of its totalitarianism.

An article published in 1930 by OUN leader Mykola Stsyborsky denounced the anti-Jewish pogroms of 1918, stating that most of its victims were innocent rather than Bolsheviks.

For example, in late September 1943, the commandant " Lysyi " wrote to the OUN headquarters: " On September 29, 1943, I carried out the action in the villages of Wola Ostrowiecka ( see Massacre of Wola Ostrowiecka ), and Ostrivky ( see Massacre of Ostrowki ).