Roman Shukhevych

Roman-Taras Yosypovych Shukhevych (Ukrainian: Рома́н-Тарас Йо́сипович Шухе́вич), also known by his pseudonym Taras Chuprynka (30 June 1907 – 5 March 1950), was a Ukrainian nationalist, one of the commanders of Nachtingall Batallion, a hauptmann of the German Schutzmannschaft 201 auxiliary police battalion, a military leader of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), and one of the organizers of the Galicia-Volhynia massacres of approximately 100,000 Poles.

Roman Shukhevych in 1944

Quotes

• We are all UPA soldiers and all underground fighters in particular, and I am aware that sooner or later we will have to die in the fight against brutal force. But I assure you, we will not be afraid to die, because when we die, we will be aware that we will become a fertilizer of the Ukrainian land. This is our native land that needs a lot of fertilizer so that in the future a new Ukrainian generation will grow up on it, which will complete what we were not destined to complete.
  • "Кулебська трагедія"

About

- For you personally, Roman Shuchevych is a hero? - He is a hero of Ukraine, that's the decoration he received! He is a person who has done a great deal for building the Ukrainian state.

Author: Ivanna Klympush-Cyncadze, 2016-2019 Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine. Source: Jędrzej Bielecki, Inspirator ludobójstwa na Wołyniu to bohater Ukrainy, rp.pl, 14 czerwca 2016. (Inspirer of genocide in Volhynia is a hero of Ukraine, rp.pl, June 14, 2016.)

In July 1944, at a congress of the Ukrainian Main Liberation Council - a body conceived as a supra- party political platform of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army - UPA commander Roman Shuchevych "Taras Chuprynka" admitted that in Volhynia there was a "liquidation of the Polish population...), which ended in the summer of 1943," and in Galicia "the UPA command issued an order to displace Poles if they did not resettle themselves. The attacks continue." He added: "We are creating comfortable positions for ourselves, which cannot be achieved at the green tables [of talks]. We will not let ourselves be lied to. The Ukrainian masses in our hands."

Author: Grzegorz Motyka, Zapomnijcie o Giedroyciu: Polacy, Ukraińcy, IPN. GW, 26 maja 2008.