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Who would've thought the DNC's "Trump/Russia research" & "ethnic outreach" chief in 2016 (@AlexandraChalup) was likely the granddaughter of a Ukrainian Nazi collaborator? Or that reading her sister (@AndreaChalupa)'s "Animal Farm" book would make that clear?
h/t @MarkAmesExiled
h/t @MarkAmesExiled
In a 2016 interview, @AndreaChalupa said, "All of my work is inspired by my grandfather Olexji Keis," whose unbelievable story is an integral part of "Orwell and the Refugees." What speaks volumes isn't just what Chalupa left out, but apparently tried to cover up, about Olexji.
We're told that Olexji fled eastern Ukraine with his family in 1941 rather than fight in the Red Army, and "they finally were stopped by the [advancing] Nazi line" in western Ukraine, but the Ukrainian Weekly's account of their odyssey contradicts @AndreaChalupa's story.
This 1959 "human interest story" about the Keises said they made their trek not in 1941 but 43-44, "precariously in between the retreating Nazis & the advancing Russians." @AndreaChalupa's retelling left out the Nazi convoy but seemingly made up a run-in with said Nazis. Compare:
But wait, there's more! Olexji "never wrote about the years after the war when he and his family lived in a 'displaced persons' [DP] camp in Heidenau, Germany." @AndreaChalupa doesn't really go there either in her book, "Orwell and the Refugees: The Untold Story..." Wonder why?
As told by Richard Breitman+Norman JW Goda, "In the early postwar years Ukrainian DP camps were hotbeds of nationalist proselytizing. [Stepan] Bandera was determined to assert control over the émigré community." He largely succeeded with the initial support of the US army's CIC.
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe wrote the 1st serious biography of Bandera, the wanna-be Hitler of Ukraine. But "The Life & Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist: Fascism, Genocide, & Cult" was only published in 2014, which tells you something about the historiography. (See my 📌 post)
According to Lubomyr Luciuk, "The politicization of many previously non-political Ukrainian DPs in these enclaves [dominated by Bandera's OUN-B] was to be one of the most important consequences of the Ukrainian refugee experience in the post-Second World War period."
@AndreaChalupa subtly alluded to this reality: "In the predominantly Ukrainian DP camps, the first thing they did was join together politically." But she made no mention of their far-right political orientation, or the OUN-B, the fascist group that ruled the camps with terror.
Olexji Keis was "a leading DP camp organizer in Heidenau." But even if he just "produced Ukrainian plays and operas" he must have been in the OUN-B's good graces, no? What's more, "the Ukrainian political organizations" saved @AndreaChalupa's grandmother from repatriation, but...
"Eastern Ukrainians would only be harbored and helped to escape the repatriation if they would accept the Bandera-Stetsko [OUN-B] leadership."
—Scott & @jonleeanderson
"In the Ukrainian DP camps, politics meant survival."
—@AndreaChalupa
—Scott & @jonleeanderson
"In the Ukrainian DP camps, politics meant survival."
—@AndreaChalupa
When @MarkAmesExiled told me he read that Olexji co-founded a US branch of the SVU, I could hardly believe it. But it's true: "The Society established its 1st branch in the United States in 1957. The managing office of the society was staffed by...O.Keis."
@AndreaChalupa mentioned that "my grandfather opened a Ukrainian-language printing press & led protests" against the USSR in NYC, but failed to elaborate about either—maybe because they were led by far-right nationalists affiliated with former Nazi collaborators? Just a guess...
Another thing... @AndreaChalupa said her uncle (Olexji's son) independently acquired a Ukrainian translation of Animal Farm, published by "a small press called Prometej—or Prometheus," which was described to Orwell as "the nucleus of a political group," but not just any group...
Prometej was said to represent a group "comprised of people who had been regional Bolshevik leaders in Ukraine and had done time in Siberian camps." That sounds like the original SVU which @timothysnyder_ wrote about in a book chapter "Promethean Ukraine."
Despite having no apparent ties to the original SVU, "The [post-WW2] rebirth of the Society [SVU] ... symbolized the continuity of the activities of Ukrainian patriots and anti-Communists in the 1920's [Soviet Union] who aspired to restore Ukraine's national independence."
The new SVU was affiliated with the Org. of Ukrainian Nationalists led by Stepan Bandera & Yaroslav Stetsko (OUN-B). In my opinion this SVU was a token eastern Ukrainian group meant to sustain the myth that western Ukrainian nat'lism/fascism had universal appeal among Ukrainians.
The OUN-B's hijacking of the Ukrainian diaspora is a largely untold history of the Cold War, the "blowback" of which is still playing out today. @AndreaChalupa & @AlexandraChalup's role in selling the Russia Scare is a good reminder of that.
