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Lev Rebet Лев Ребет | |
|---|---|
 Lev Rebet inAuschwitz, 1941 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 3 March 1912 |
| Died | 12 October 1957(1957-10-12) (aged 45) |
| Manner of death | Assassination byhydrogen cyanide gas |
| Nationality | Ukrainian |
| Political party | Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists |
| Spouse | Daria Rebet |
| Residence(s) | Ukraine, West Germany |
| Occupation | Politician |
Lev Rebet (Ukrainian:Лев Ребет; 3 March 1912 – 12 October 1957) was a Ukrainian political writer and anti-communist duringWorld War II. He was a key cabinet member in theUkrainian government (backed byStepan Bandera's faction ofOUN), whichproclaimed independence on 30 June 1941. For a time, Rebet was the leader of the Ukrainian government.
Rebet was born inStryi in Western Ukraine, to a Ukrainian father and a mother ofJewish origins.[1][2][3] His father was a postal official. Rebet was both deeply religious as aByzantine-rite Catholic and very physically active from an early age. He was a member of "Plast", the Ukrainian scout organization.
Rebet attended the Stryi Gymnasium, which offered parallel Ukrainian classes, and joined the Ukrayinska Viyskova Orhanizatsiya, UVO (Ukrainian Military Organization;Ukrainian:Українська Військова Організація) at age 17. Soon after its founding in 1929, he became an active member of theOrganization of Ukrainian Nationalists, the OUN (Ukrainian:Організація Українських Націоналістів), whose activities at that time were mainly focused against the Polonisation efforts of theWarsaw government in easternGalicia.[4]
Rebet became a key writer and thinker in theOUN, quickly rising to the rank of "Holova Krayovoyi Ekzekutyvy" (Regional Commander,Ukrainian:Провідник Крайової Екзекутиви), a post which he held from 1934 to 1938.[5] He was repeatedly arrested for his activities and spent two and a half years in prison in Stryi and Lviv.[6]
When the OUN split in 1940 into OUN-Melnyk and OUN-Bandera, Rebet joined the OUN-Bandera group.
On 30 June 1941, when the OUNproclaimed independence inWehrmacht-occupied Lviv (renamed "Lemberg" until late 1944), Rebet became the deputy prime minister of theUkrainian government, appointed by the prime ministerYaroslav Stetsko.
The German occupying forces did not recognise the OUN move for independence. They successively arrested Bandera and Stetsko, leading to Lev Rebet briefly becoming acting prime minister of the Ukrainian national government.
In August 1941, Rebet was himself arrested by theGestapo. He spent the next three years in theSachsenhausen concentration camp in Zellenbau; a section where political prisoners were kept.[7] After the war, he moved to Munich in theAmerican occupation zone, then a centre of the Ukrainian diaspora.
Rebet continued his political activity in exile with a varied number of publications. He worked as the editor of multiple Ukrainian-language periodicals and took up research and scholarship in the fields of law, politics and sociology. In 1949, he completed his doctoral dissertation and was appointed Professor of State Law at theUkrainian Free University.[8] His major academic works included "The Formation of the Ukrainian Nation" (1951) and "The Theory of Nations" (1956). On the editorial pages of theUkrainian Independist [uk], he also engaged critically with theOUN, its wartime activities and current direction. On his former associate Bandera, for instance, he wrote:
He [Bandera] was arrested in 1934 and afterwards he never returned to Ukraine: apart from a brief period in 1940 and 1941 he had no direct connection with the organization, being as he was either in prison, or in a concentration camp, or in exile abroad. However, for a whole series of reasons, it is his name (mainly after the OUN split in 1940...) that turned out to be most closely associated with the history of the organization, much more closely than the work he contributed to it could really justify.[9]
In 1956, this eventually led to a split between Bandera's OUN-B and the more moderateOUN-Z [uk], jointly led by Rebet andZinoviy Matla [uk].[10]
He wasassassinated on 12 October 1957 in Munich by aKGB agent,Bohdan Stashynsky, using a hydrogen cyanide atomizer mist gun.[11] After Rebet was assassinated, his widowDaria Rebet [uk] and his colleagueBohdan Kordiuk [uk], who succeeded him as editor of the "Ukrainian Independist", continued his work.
Stashynsky would go on to assassinate Rebet's associateStepan Bandera by similar means in 1959.[12]
Rebet's death was at first believed to have been from natural causes. However, Stashynsky defected toWest Berlin in 1961, voluntarily surrendered and testified to theWest German prosecution.
Explaining what motivated him to kill Rebet, Stashynsky told a court that he had been told that Rebet was "the leading theorist of the Ukrainians in exile," since "in his newspapersSuchasna Ukrayina (Contemporary Ukraine),Chas (Time), andUkrayinska Trybuna (Ukrainian Tribune) he not so much provided accounts of daily events as developed primarily ideological issues."
According to formerNazi military intelligence officer andWest German Intelligence chiefReinhard Gehlen,
...Bohdan Stashinskyi, who had been persuaded by his German-born wife Inge to confess to the crimes and take the load off his troubled conscience, stuck resolutely to his statements. His testimony convinced the investigating authorities. He reconstructed the crimes exactly as they had happened, revisiting the crumbling business premises at the Stachus, in the heart of Munich, where Lev Rebet had entered the office of a Ukrainian exile newspaper, his suitcase in his hand. And he showed how the hydrogen cyanide capsule had exploded in Rebet's face and how he had left him slumped over the rickety staircase. The case before the Federal court began on October 8, 1962, and world interest in the incident was revived. Passing sentence eleven days later, the court identified Stashinskyi's unscrupulous employerShelyepin as the person primarily responsible for the hideous murders, and the defendant -- who had given a highly credible account of the extreme pressure applied to him by the KGB to act as he did -- received a comparatively mild sentence. He served most of it and was released...[13]
In 1984,Associated Press reported that Bohdan and Inge Stashinsky had been given new identities and had been provided asylum by the Government ofSouth Africa.[14]
The short filmCritical Condition, inspired by the life and death of Rebet, premiered at Cannes in 2025.[15]
