Stepan Bandera was born on 1 January 1909 and died on 15 October 1959. He was a revolutionary and gifted strategist of the struggle for Ukraine's statehood.
Born into a clerical family (his father Reverend Andriy was a priest in the Ukrainian church), from his early days Bandera was always active in Ukrainian community affairs, was a member of the Ukrainian scouting organization Plast, and an agronomy student at the Lviv Politechnical Institute.
He became a member of the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO) in 1927, and of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in 1929. In the OUN he rose very quickly to top positions of leadership in the Homeland Executive of the organization, namely: chief of the Directorate for Publications and Propaganda (1930-32); deputy head of the Homeland Executive (1932); and head of the Homeland Executive (1933-June 1934).
For his revolutionary activities he was incarcerated several times in the 1930s by the Polish occupation authorities of western Ukraine, and ultimately sentenced to death on 13 January 1936 at the so-called Warsaw Trial. However, his death penalty was commuted to life imprisonment. He was freed from prison on the fall of the Polish state when World War II broke out on 1 September 1939.
From his position of leadership in the 1930s, Bandera expanded the OUN network in western Ukraine, directing its revolutionary militancy against both Polish and Soviet Russian occupation of the western and eastern parts of Ukraine respectively. Thus, in October 1933 an OUN operative, Mykola Lemyk, assassinated Joseph Stalin's personal envoy, Alexander Mailov, in Lviv in protest against the Holodomor – the Famine Genocide unleashed by Moscow in Soviet Ukraine in 1932-1933. In October 1941, Mykola Lemyk, a leading member of the OUN resistance against the Nazis, was executed by the Gestapo in the town of' Myrhorod, Poltava province, eastern Ukraine. In June 1934 an OUN operative, Hryhoriy Matsieiko, assassinated Poland's Minister of Internal Affairs, Bronislaw Pieracki, in Warsaw for his repressive anti-Ukrainian policies.
On the eve of the beginning of the German-Soviet war in 1941, by staying in contact with those German military circles favorably disposed to Ukrainian statehood, Bandera initiated the formation of a Ukrainian military legion, the Nachtigall and Roland battalions (of which Hitler and the Nazi party leadership were not aware). The OUN under his leadership also organized Expeditionary Groups (some 2,000 strong) with the aim of penetrating every possible region of Ukraine to promote with active members Ukraine's independence and statehood -- just as it happened in Lviv on 30 June 1941 with the Act of Proclamation of the Restoration of Ukrainian Statehood, and the formation of a Ukrainian government headed by Yaroslav Stetsko.
Taken by surprise, the Germans demanded that Bandera and Stetsko rescind the Act of Proclamation. For their refusal to do so, Bandera was arrested by the Nazis on 5 July 1941 and Stetsko on 12 July 1941-along with other key members of the Ukrainian government.
Bandera (and Stetsko) spent most of World War II in Nazi prisons, in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp (1941- 27 September 1944), and then in Berlin until their escape (with the help of the OUN underground in Germany) in 1945 from Gestapo custody during an Allied bombing raid in the city.
Stepan Bandera remained leader of the OUN until his violent death on 15 October 1959 in Munich, Germany. He was assassinated by Soviet agent Bogdan Stashynsky on direct orders from the top leadership of the Soviet Union - Secretary-General Nikita Khrushchev and KGB chief Alexander Shelepin.
In Ukrainian national memory, Stepan Bandera and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists under his leadership - the OUN (B) - became symbols of the revolutionary struggle for Ukraine's independence and statehood.
On the fate of Stepan Bandera's family: After Stepan Bandera's death, his wife Yaroslava and their three children settled in Canada for personal safety reasons. Stepan Bandera's father, Reverend Andriy Bandera, was executed by the Soviet secret police (NKVD)
in Kyiv on 10 July 1941 (A version has it that he was actually crucified by his executioners for being a priest in the Ukrainian church.). Stepan Bandera's two brothers, Alexander and Vasyl, perished in a Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz;
his sisters Volodymyra, Marta-Maria and Oksana were sent to Soviet concentration camps and exiled without the right to ever return to Ukraine.
