Roman-Taras Yosypovych Shukhevych (30 June 1907-5 March 1950) was a Ukrainian nationalist leader who served as a commander of Nazi Germany's Nachtigall Battalion and Schutzmannschaft 201 auxiliary police battalion and of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army during World War II. In spite of his collaboration with Nazi Germany and his involvement in genocides against Eastern European Jews and Volhynian Poles, Shukhevych was hailed as a hero by the post-Euromaidan Ukrainian government and by the Ukrainian nationalist movement as a whole.
Biography[]
Roman-Taras Yosypovych Shukhevych was born in Lemberg, Eastern Galicia, Austria-Hungary on 30 June 1907. He was raised in a nationalist family, and his political views were influenced by his father's associate Yevhen Konovalets. He graduated from the Lwow Polytechnic Institute in 1934 and organized scouting groups before serving in the Polish Army from 1928 to 1929, serving as a private in the artillery in Volhynia. He joined the Ukrainian Military Organization in 1925 and assassinated the Lwow school superintendent on 19 October 1926 for "Polonizing" the Ukrainian education system. In 1929, he became a member of the executive of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, and he took part in attacks on Polish property and homes in Galicia in 1930, leading to the Polish regime's pacification of Ukrainians in Eastern Galicia in 1930. He went on to take part in several more terrorist attacks and assassinations, including the assassination of Polish Interior Minister Bronislaw Pieracki; he sought to further an all-Ukrainian revolt through a "permanent revolution". He was arrested for Pieracki's assassination but acquitted in December 1935 due to insufficient evidence. He was again imprisoned from 1935 to 1937 for his leadership role in the OUN, and he continued his activism after his release and organized financial aid for the fledgling state of Carpathian Ruthenia. He was forced to flee after Hungary occupied the state, and he moved to Krakow in the autumn of 1939 and became a member of the Revolutionary Command of the OUN under Stepan Bandera. During World War II, he led the collaborationist Nachtigall Battalion in support of Nazi Germany during Operation Barbarossa, directing the mass killings of Jews as the Germans advanced into Ukraine. After Germany annexed Ukraine rather than restore its independence, the Nachtigall Battalion was transferred to Germany, and, from 1942 to 1943, he commanded the Schutzmannschaft 201 auxiliary police battalion in Belarus and took part in the fight against Soviet partisans and the killing of Jews. After its members refused to renew their service in 1943, Shukhevych joined the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, and, from the spring of 1943 to early 1944, he and the UPA took part in the ethnic cleansing of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. Up to 100,000 Poles were killed and another 300,000 made refugees by the UPA, with Shukhevych taking over from Dmytro Klyachkivsky in November 1943. In August 1944, following the Soviet Union's capture of Ukraine, Shukhevych directed the guerrilla resistance against the USSR, and he shot himself on 5 March 1950 as Soviet agents attacked his hiding place in Lviv.