This is the sort of company John McCain keeps, or, to speak in the Palinesque, palls around with.
Dr. Yaroslav Stetsko (1912-1986), executive board member, of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) was a former Nazi collaborator from the Ukraine who in July 1941 presided over the extermination of 7,000 Jews being held in concentation camps.
John McCain was, as we know, a member of this same organization.
And yet, Barack Obama sides with terrorists?
Yaroslav Stetsko was a WWII era Ukranian nationalist and Nazi collaborator; the Nazis were at war with the Russians, and the Ukranian nationalists thus became their allies.
Wikipedia has this about The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists
Unlike the latter organizations, however, the OUN did not emphasize antisemitism in its ideology. Indeed, three of its leaders, General Mykola Kapustiansky, Rico Yary, and Mykola Skyborski, were married to Jewish women ". It's primary enemies were considered to be Poles and Russians, with Jews playing a secondary role. German documents of the period lead to the impression that extreme Ukrainian nationalists were indifferent to the plight of the Jews; they were willing to either kill them or help them, whichever was more appropriate for their political goals. The OUN was willing to condone Nazi policies if doing so would result in an independent Ukrainian state. For example, a resolution of the Second General Congress of OUN-B (April, 1941, Krakow) called the "Jews of the USSR the most faithful supporters of the Bolshevik regime and the vanguard of the Muscovite imperialism in the Ukraine." A slogan put forth by the Bandera group and recorded in the July 16, 1941 Einsatzgruppen report stated: "Long live Ukraine without Jews, Poles and Germans; Poles behind the river San, Germans to Berlin, and Jews to the gallows", and the OUN members who infiltrated the German police were involved in clearing ghettoes and helping the Germans to implement the Final Solution. Once the OUN was at war with Germany, such instances lessened and finally stopped. There were many cases of Jews having been sheltered from the Nazis by the OUN's military wing UPA and Jews fought in the ranks of UPA . Although its ideology advocated achieving national independence, power and unity by any means necessary (thus setting the stage for the mass killing of Polish population in the territory OUN deemed Ukrainian as a means of preventing the Poles from taking control over those Ukrainian lands after the war), it did not advocate the killing of people as a goal unto itself.
In its original statement of purpose in 1929, the OUN offered the following racist, genocidal, fascistic proclamation.
"Do not hesitate to commit the greatest crime, if the good of the Cause demands it ... Aspire to expand the strength, riches, and size of the Ukrainian State even by means of enslaving foreigners." This sentiment was echoed in a 1941 letter to the German Secret Service from the OUN's dominant Bandera wing: "Long live greater independent Ukraine without Jews, Poles, and Germans. Poles behind the [river] San, Germans to Berlin, Jews to the gallows."
Public Eye links Stetsko, along with a number of other notorious extremists,to this League and to its roots in Eastern European, WWII era fascist/nationalist/anti-communist political ideologies.
A list of persons involved over the years with WACL is printed on the back cover of Inside the League. Among the more notable: Yaroslav Stetsko, a Nazi collaborator who in July 1941 presided over the extermination of 7,000 Jews; Stefano delle Chiaie, a fugitive Italian terrorist wanted for robbery, kidnapping and murder; Mario Sandoval Alarcon, architect of the Guatemalan death squads; Chirila Ciuntu, a Romanian fascist who participated in a 1941 massacre of Jews; Ray Cline, former deputy director of the CIA; Jess Helms, Republican Senator from North Carolina; Fred Schlafly, Phyllis' husband; General Jorge Rafael Videla, former Argentine dictator, imprisoned for mass-murder; and Roger Pearson, a scientific racist whose books on racial superiority are still distributed today by American neo-Nazi groups.
WACL also served as an international umbrella group for several Eastern European emigre groups founded and lead by wartime Nazi collaborators, according to Russ Bellant, in The Coors Connection.
Bellant chronicled why it was a problem that the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) was the Eastern European branch of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL):
The ABN was founded in 1943 in alliance with Hitler's war on the eastern front. It was composed of political and paramilitary units that had aided Hitler's occupation of the region, including forces from the Ukraine, the Baltic region, Hungary, Byelorussia, and Bulgaria. Some ABN leaders were implicated in war crimes. The leadership of the ABN did not change dramatically after World War II, nor did the group's expressions of national socialist ideology....
Bellant reports that according to "an ABN publication," an advisor to Paul Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation, Laszlo Pasztor spoke at one ABN meeting as a representative of a "Hungarian organization." The same issue of ABN Correspondence has a full-page obituary for an official of a Nazi puppet government during WWII."
As the Anderson brothers wrote: "We have examined the World Anti-Communist League...because it is the one organization in which representatives of virtually every right-wing extremist movement that has practiced unconventional warfare are to be found. The League is the one constant in this netherworld; whether looking at Croation terrorists, Norwegian neo-Nazis, Japanese war criminals, or American ultra- rightists...." (p. x, Author's Note).
Here is an image of the the last Jew left alive at Vinica, Ukraine, as he kneels on the edge of a mass grave.
The year 1941 was year particularly filled with Nazi atrocities.
In Jan - Quote from Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer, published by Julius Streicher - "Now judgment has begun and it will reach its conclusion only when knowledge of the Jews has been erased from the earth."
In Jan - A pogrom in Romania results in over 2,000 Jews killed.
Feb 22, 1941 - 430 Jewish hostages are deported from Amsterdam after a Dutch Nazi is killed by Jews.
In March - Hitler's Commissar Order authorizes execution of anyone suspected of being a Communist official in territories about to be seized from the Soviets.
March 1, 1941 - Himmler makes his first visit to Auschwitz, during which he orders Kommandant Höss to begin massive expansion, including a new compound to be built at nearby Birkenau that can hold 100,000 prisoners.
March 2, 1941 - Nazis occupy Bulgaria (Jewish pop. 50,000).
March 7, 1941 - German Jews ordered into forced labor.
March 26, 1941 - The German Army High Command gives approval to RSHA and Heydrich on the tasks of SS murder squads (Einsatzgruppen) in occupied Poland.
March 29, 1941 - A 'Commissariat' for Jewish Affairs is set up in Vichy France.
April 6, 1941 - Nazis invade Yugoslavia (Jewish pop. 75,000) and Greece (Jewish pop. 77,000).
May 14, 1941 - 3,600 Jews arrested in Paris.
May 16, 1941 - French Marshal Petain issues a radio broadcast approving collaboration with Hitler.
June 22, 1941 - Nazis invade the Soviet Union (Jewish pop. 3 million).
June 29/30 - Romanian troops conduct a pogrom against Jews in the town of Jassy, killing 10,000.
Summer - Himmler summons Auschwitz Kommandant Höss to Berlin and tells him, "The Führer has ordered the Final Solution of the Jewish question. We, the SS, have to carry out this order...I have therefore chosen Auschwitz for this purpose."
In July - As the German Army advances, SS Einsatzgruppen follow along and conduct mass murder of Jews in seized lands.
In July - Ghettos established at Kovno, Minsk, Vitebsk and Zhitomer. Also in July, the government of Vichy France seizes Jewish owned property.
July 17, 1941 - Nazi racial 'philosopher' Alfred Rosenberg is appointed Reich Minister for the Eastern Occupied Territories to administer territories seized from the Soviet Union.
July 21, 1941 - In occupied Poland near Lublin, Majdanek concentration camp becomes operational.
July 25/26 - 3,800 Jews killed during a pogrom by Lithuanians in Kovno.
July 31, 1941 - Göring instructs Heydrich to prepare for Final Solution.
In Aug - Jews in Romania forced into Transnistria. By December, 70,000 perish.
In Aug - Ghettos established at Bialystok and Lvov.
Aug 26, 1941 - The Hungarian Army rounds up 18,000 Jews at Kamenets-Podolsk.
Sept 3, 1941 - The first test use of Zyklon-B gas at Auschwitz.
Sept 1, 1941 - German Jews ordered to wear yellow stars.
Sept 6, 1941 - The Vilna Ghetto is established containing 40,000 Jews.
Sept 17, 1941 - Beginning of general deportation of German Jews.
Sept 19, 1941 - Nazis take Kiev.
Sept 27/28 - 23,000 Jews killed at Kamenets-Podolsk, in the Ukraine.
Sept 29/30 - SS Einsatzgruppen murder 33,771 Jews at Babi Yar near Kiev.
In Oct - 35,000 Jews from Odessa shot.
Oct 2, 1941 - Beginning of the German Army drive on Moscow.
Oct 23, 1941 - Nazis forbid emigration of Jews from the Reich.
In Nov - SS Einsatzgruppe B reports a tally of 45,476 Jews killed.
Nov 24, 1941 - Theresienstadt Ghetto is established near Prague, Czechoslovakia. The Nazis will use it as a model ghetto for propaganda purposes.
Nov 30, 1941 - Near Riga, a mass shooting of Latvian and German Jews.
Dec 7, 1941 - Japanese attack United States at Pearl Harbor. The next day the U.S. and Britain declare war on Japan.
Dec 8, 1941 - In occupied Poland, near Lodz, Chelmno extermination camp becomes operational. Jews taken there are placed in mobile gas vans and driven to a burial place while carbon monoxide from the engine exhaust is fed into the sealed rear compartment, killing them. The first gassing victims include 5,000 Gypsies who had been deported from the Reich to Lodz.
But going back to what happened in the Ukraine in the summer of 1941,
The onset of the Nazi regime let loose a wave of antisemitic feeling. Encouraged by the German army to perform violent and brutal attacks against the Jews of Lwów, local Ukrainian nationalists murdered about 4,000 Jews during a pogrom in early July 1941. On July 25-27, 1941, a second pogrom took place, known as the "Petliura Days", named for Symon Petliura. For three straight days, Ukrainian militants went on a murderous rampage through the Jewish districts of Lwów. Groups of Jews were herded out to the Jewish cemetery and to the Lunecki prison where they were shot. More than 2,000 Jews were killed and thousands more were injured.
In early November 1941, the Nazis closed off portions of the city of Lwów into a ghetto. German police shot and killed thousand of elderly and sick Jews as they crossed the bridge on Peltewna Street, while they were on their way to the ghetto. In March 1942, the Nazis began to deport Jews from the ghetto to the Belzec extermination camp. By August 1942, more than 65,000 Jews had been deported from the Lwów ghetto and killed. In early 1943, the Germans destroyed and liquidated the ghetto.
Here is an image of shoes of victims in the Janowska camp which were found by Soviet forces. This concentration camp was established on the outskirts of Lvov, Poland (today Ukraine) in 1941.
Again, Nazi collaborator Yaroslav Stetsko was a leader in these atrocities.
Finally, I want to make reference to an important and underutilized resource for showing the Nazi-GOP connection.
Bellant, Russ. Old Nazis, the New Right and the Reagan Administration. 2nd ed. Political Research Associates, 1989. 96 pages. (Reissued as "Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party" and available for $9 from South End Press, 116 Saint Botolph Street, Boston MA 02115, Tel: 800-533-8478.)
This publication first appeared during the 1988 Bush campaign, and with the help of a series of articles in "Washington Jewish Week" it provoked a minor scandal. At issue was the close association of the Republican Party with Eastern European nationalists who had emigrated to the U.S. when their pro-Nazi regimes collapsed. Pages 17-34 are on the National Republican Heritage Groups (Nationalities) Council, pages 35-50 on the American Security Council, and a final chapter on other "domestic fascist networks
Is it really any surprise that a cold warrior and Reaganite like McCain is tainted by such ties?
Some organizations now, such as the Anti Defamation League, which described the WACL in 1981 as "a gathering place, a forum, and a point of contact for extremists, racists, and anti-Semites" are making dismissing the Nazi roots the World Anti-Communist League and McCain's ties to it through an affiliate organization, claiming that, for example,
General Singlaub had made a concerted effort to rid WACL of anti-Semitism and that, 'While ADL doesn’t possess enough information to be able to give WACL a totally clean bill of health, we [were] satisfied that substantial progress has been made since 1981 in ridding the organization of racists and anti-Semites whose presence led us to publicly express our concern at that time.'
and that
ADL has no information that at that time John McCain was aware of or had any connections with the WACL."
But this is mere spin. The historical record shows that McCain joined an organization which has has its roots the genocidal acts of people like Yaroslav Stetsko. History has repeated itself in regards to McCain/the far right's support for terrorist death squads, including examples from many years after WWII.