Yevhen Nakonechny (Ukrainian: Євген Петрович Наконечний) (June 18, 1931 – September 14, 2006) was a Ukrainian historian, librarian, library scientist, linguist, and a teenage prisoner of the Soviet Gulag forced labour camp system during postwar Stalinist period for his involvement with the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).[1]

Life

Nakonechny was born in the village of Czerepin (uk), Second Polish Republic, the interbellum Poland (today in Lviv Raion, Ukraine). Nakonechny grew up in Lviv (part of the Ukrainian SSR after World War II). Soon after his high school graduation in January 1949 when he was only 17, Nakonechny was arrested by the KGB secret police for his associations with the youth wing of OUN.[2] As a teenager he was convicted to capital punishment, but later changed to a 25 year of Gulag imprisonment (colloquially known as Stalin's Quarter). He was released in 1955 after six years without rehabilitation,[2] during a wave of releases from Gulag after Stalin's death. At his 24 years Nakonechny returned to Lviv where he eventually graduated in the Lviv University Department of Linguistics and Philology.

For a long time he worked as a head of Ukrainian Studies Department at the Stefanyk National Science Library. Nakonechny was married to a ceramic artist Valentyna Kukharska and had two children.

Controversies

In his writings, Nakonechny was a staunch defender of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). In his memoir (Shoah in Lviv) about the Holocaust in Lviv he attempted to rebuff the claims by Polish, Jewish, German and American historians that OUN in particular, and Ukrainian nationalists in general, were complicit in the Holocaust. In some extreme cases he denied what he saw with his own eyes. – "Nakonechny wrote positively of the Ukrainian militia in Lviv, organized by OUN and later dissolved by the Gestapo and replaced by the Ukrainian auxiliary police. He did not consider that the militiamen might have been involved in the pogroms, although this is what Holocaust scholars generally think." Prof. John-Paul Himka referred to him as a type of traditionalists for whom Ukrainians remained an immaculate nation free of any form of wrongdoing in World War II whatsoever.[1]

In spite of well-proven and widely known historical facts about the Final Solution in the territory of modern-day Ukraine,[3][4][5][6][7] Nakonechny rejected the notion that Ukrainian nationalists participated in the destruction of the Jews. "For Nakonechny, it was 'various Ukrainophobes' who manufactured tales about Ukrainian participation in the Holocaust. Anti-Ukrainian ideology is more important for them than historical truth" according to him.[8]

Published works

Over the years Nakonechny wrote many historical publications on history of Ukraine, librarian studies, history of Lviv, Ukrainian - Jewish relations during World War II and others.

References

  1. 1 2 Prof. John-Paul Himka (July 2013). "The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Ukraine". Bringing the Dark Past to Light. The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe. Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the Holocaust Educational Foundation: 635–637. ISBN 978-0-8032-2544-2.
  2. 1 2 3 Василь Горинь (Vasyl Horyn), "Переслідуваний за правду" ("Persecuted for Truth"), Львiвська газета ("Lvivska hazeta"), October 23, 2006 (Archived May 18, 2016, at the Wayback Machine). Quote: За Шоа у Львові в Ізраїлі Є. Наконечному ладні були присудити ступінь доктора наук, а тут, у рідній академічній бібліотеці, книжку не вважали науковою, і під час атестації дві руки піднялося проти не атестувати.
  3. ↑ Yad Vashem (2016). "Goering orders Heydrich to prepare the plan for the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem". The Holocaust Timeline 1940-1945. The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority. Archived from the original on 2018-07-15. Retrieved 2016-05-20.
  4. ↑ Desbois, Patrick (2009). "Places of Massacres by German Task Forces between 1941 - 1943" (PDF). Germany: TOS Gemeinde Tübingen. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-10-09. Retrieved 2016-05-20.
  5. ↑ Weiss, Jakob (2011). "Introduction". The Lemberg Mosaic. New York: Alderbrook Press.
  6. ↑ Löw, Andrea (10 June 2013). "Stanislawów (now Ivano-Frankivsk)". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived from the original on 20 May 2014. Retrieved 29 January 2016. From The USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945.
  7. ↑ Pohl, Dieter. Hans Krueger and the Murder of the Jews in the Stanislawow Region (Galicia) (PDF). pp. 12–13, 17–18, 21 – via Yad Vashem.org. 'Bloody Sunday' massacre of 12 October 1941.
  8. ↑ John-Paul Himka; Joanna Beata Michlic (2013). Bringing the Dark Past to Light. U of Nebraska Press. p. 639. ISBN 978-0803246478. Note 33. Nakonechnyi, Shoah u L'vovi, 6-7.
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