Into Auschwitz, for Ukraine

Myroslav Shkandrij is head of the Department of German and Slavic
Studies at the University of Manitoba and editor of The Cultural
Renaissance in Ukraine: Polemical Pamphlets, 1925–1926.

This harrowing personal account by a Ukrainian holocaust survivor
describes more than life in Auschwitz. The author was recruited into the
Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) as a
teenager in the prewar years. He describes this episode, the atmosphere
in Lviv before and during the Second World War, his ordeal in Auschwitz
from October 1, 1943, until January 19, 1945. In the last months of the
war, Petelycky was made to work on the complexes that were to
manufacture the V–2 rockets. In 1947, he secretly entered
Czechoslovakia as an OUN courier and tried to contact the resistance
fighters who had broken out of encirclement by Soviet forces and were
fighting their way to the West. Arrested by the Americans, he was
questioned and released.

These and other incidents are recalled by the author, who has spent the
rest of his life in Canada. The historical and political background to
events is provided. Petelycky’s description of his service in the OUN
will be useful to readers who are interested in the relations between
the Nazis and Ukrainian nationalists. (It was the stated intention of
the SS to liquidate the OUN.) The complexities of interethnic relations,
particularly among Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians, are revealed through
numerous episodes. Petelycky bears testimony to the existence of
principled and courageous individuals, as well as sadists, within all
three groups. He staunchly maintains that the temptation to assign
collective guilt must be resisted, however difficult, and provides
numerous examples of the consequences of falling away from this
principle.

Petelycky insists on uncomfortable truths being told. He describes the
Jewish cooperation with the Soviet occupiers of Western Ukraine in 1939
and the later lack of sympathy for these same Jews felt by Ukrainians.
The brutal behavior of German soldiers, the denunciations made to the
secret police by Poles and Ukrainians, the complicity of local recruits
in German policing of the ghettos, the cruelty of Jewish kapos in
Auschwitz—all are described unflinchingly. Extensive footnotes as well
as photographs and documents from the period supplement this invaluable
eyewitness record.