Collection of Materials of the OUN-UPA (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-Ukrainian Insurgent Army) Operating in the Territory of the Rovno Region

Collection

Holding institution (official language):: Державний архів Рівненської області

Postal address:: 26-a Stepan Bandera Str., Rivne, 33014 (building 1); 8 Kavkazka St. Rivne, 33013 (building 2), Ukraine

Title:: Collection of Materials of the OUN-UPA (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-Ukrainian Insurgent Army) Operating in the Territory of the Rovno Region

Title (official language):: Коллекция материалов ОУН-УПА, действовавших на территории Ровенской области; Колекція матеріалів ОУН-УПА, що діяли на території Рівненської області

Creator/accumulator:: OUN-UPA (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-Ukrainian Insurgent Army)

Scope and content:: Among materials included in the fonds is a copy of the minutes of a conference of petty officers of the by-then formally disbanded Polesskaia Sich Ukrainian Insurgent Army (18 November 1941), chaired by General-Cornet [general-khorunzhii] T. Bulba (Borovets), with the agenda of “Shooting all Jews in Olevsk,” on an SS representative’s forcible mobilisation of two petty officers and sixty Cossacks to take part in shooting the Jewish population of Olevsk (19 November 1941), and on the discussion of this fact by the council of petty officers of the Polesskaia Sich. There is also the journal of an unidentified member of the OUN, a resident of the village of Derman’ (Rovno region), with a description of the destruction of the Jews of the town of Mizoch (after an uprising in the local ghetto) and of the plundering of the property of those killed by local residents (13-14 October 1942).

Archival history:: The collection initially comprised materials seized by district departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Rovno region. The first documents to come in to the fonds (in fragmentary form) date to February 1944.

Administrative/biographical history:: This collection constitutes materials on the history of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). The OUN, a public-political organisation aimed at establishing an independent Ukrainian national state, was founded in 1929; the so-called “revolutionary OUN,” led by S. Bandera, split off from it in 1940. The UPA was a title borne by various partisan groups fighting for Ukrainian independence in the 1940s-50s. The first UPA, the Polesskaia Sich, which answered to the State center of the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR) in exile, was established by T. D. Borovets (pseudonym: Taras Bulba; 1908-81), who announced its founding 22 June 1941. The collection initially comprised materials seized by district departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Rovno region. The first documents to come in to the fond (in fragmentary form) date to February 1944.

Subject terms:: Cossacks; Diaries; Holocaust; Holocaust--Ghettos; Holocaust--Rescue and resistance; Mass murder; Military; Nazism; Nazism--Nazis; Occupation (military); Plunder

System of arrangement:: The fonds includes three inventories systematised chronologically.