Above, I interview Professor Omer Bartov of Brown University, an expert on the Holocaust in Western Ukraine. At 11 years old, Bartov’s mother and her family narrowly escaped certain death by leaving her hometown of Buczacz in Western Ukraine (then Poland) in 1935, resettling in Palestine, where Prof. Bartov was born in what became Israel. Prof. Bartov has spent 20 years studying the Holocaust in Buczacz and Western Ukraine. In the interview, Prof. Bartov explains the origins of a black and red flag that flew in Parma, Ohio, on Feb. 27, only a month after the Times of Israel covered the same flag flying over a massive torchlight parade in Ukraine.
It was a shock to see that black and red flag of Ukrainian nationalist and Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera in local video coverage of the Feb. 27th Parma, Ohio rally in support of Ukraine. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so shocked, as downtown Cleveland real estate has been a favorite shell company tax haven for Igor Kolomoisky, the billionaire funder not just of Ukraine’s now notorious neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, but also Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. A Justice Department investigation into Kolomoisky’s tax evading Cleveland office tower holdings used to be a favorite topic of Sam Allard, reporter at Cleveland’s alt-weekly Scene Magazine. (I suspect that’s changed now, but I digress.) Upon seeing this flag in Parma, I dug deeper into Bandera’s role in the Holocaust, and his legacy amongst today’s neo-Nazi Ukrainian nationalists, including those in Parma, with Prof. Bartov.
Below are screen grabs of local video coverage from Dan Hanson’s Cleveland People YouTube channel, from the St. Vladimir’s Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral rally on February 27, 2022. The black and red flag of Bandera’s OUN-B Ukrainian Insurgent Army was flown outside over 6 uniformed Banderists…
…and inside the church service.
The Banderists at the Feb. 27 rally form a “living history” “re-enactor” group, introduced to Cleveland People’s Dan Hanson in this video of their leader explaining the Banderist flag in typically fascist “blood and soil” terminology, screen grabbed below. I am not publishing his face or name, as he is a high school student.
In the video, the young Banderist also introduces his “living history” group, whose Facebook page and Instagram celebrated Bandera’s birthday as below, complete with unmistakably Nazi imagery.
I emailed Dan Hanson to ask if he was aware who and what that flag meant. Dan told me via email he inquired with Andy Fedynsky of Tremont’s Ukrainian Museum and Archives who (unsurprisingly) said, “it was a legitimate group and never mentioned anything negative about it or the group.”
As in their lobbying for Kolomoisky’s Ohio shell company tax haven downtown real estate holdings (which also includes a steel mill in Warren, Ohio), Cleveland’s political establishment showed up in full force Feb. 27. Joining the Banderists were County Executive Armond Budish, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, Parma Mayor Tim DeGeeter, State Senator Nickie Antonio, all Democrats. Republicans included US Senator Rob Portman, and a candidate to replace the retiring Portman in this year’s election, State Senator Matt Dolan. Even Lee C. Shapiro, director of the Cleveland office of the American Jewish Committee, spoke at the event, screen grabbed below.
I emailed all the politicians listed above, the church leadership, and Ms. Shapiro for comment, asking if any of them were aware of the presence of Banderists and their flag on Feb. 27. No one replied.
In the interview above, I ask Prof. Bartov if these pillars of Cleveland’s establishment should be ashamed of themselves to be hanging around the flag of Stepan Bandera.
Ukraine's Holocaust collaborators