How Ukrainian nazi collaborators smuggled into the US after World War II have created racist enclaves in our country, and developed influence over US politics for the past 86 years.

Part I: Nazitown, USA

Now, I’ve got no connections to Russia or Ukraine, but I became curious about the situation there since 2013. Followed it, again, just out of curiosity since. And one day, a couple years ago, I stumbled across an article in the Wisconsin Examiner that started this whole affair.

Long story short, it was about the Ukrainian Youth Association summer camp in the small town of Baraboo, Wisconsin. Just on the surface, a camp devoted to the culture of a foreign state wouldn’t be such a concern, but the headline itself “Ukrainian Association in Baraboo honors nazi collaborators with statues at children’s summer camp” - well - that was worth delving into, I thought.

You see, Baraboo - a small town with a population of around 12,000 and a 88% white population, nestled on the Canadian/American border - It’s got problems. And by problems, I mean, a suspiciously repetitive pattern of racist incidents over the past decade. You may remember a very widely-disseminated national story from 2018 where a group of schoolchildren took a prom photo with many of the students pictured doing a nazi salute. It provoked a lot of outrage at the time, but was quickly forgotten, and excused mainly as students performing the salute as a very unfunny joke. School officials said they investigated, but never took any action.

But, curious as I am, I decided to dig further into it and found very many such racist incidents happening in such a small town, incidents in the city and nearby areas where nazi flyers have been distributed in sandwich bags, weighted down with birdseed and thrown into people’s yards (with no culprit ever caught in subsequent investigations). Then, an incident in 2018 where a video was posted on Youtube where local LGBT and Jewish teachers in the school district were mocked and slurred, and subsequently taken down.

And it goes on, and on, and on, to the point that listing all such incidents I found examples of in the past two decades would be too exhaustive.

In 2012, a convoy of teenagers drove around Baraboo in trucks, each flying Confederate battle flags, in an effort to memorialize a student killed in a car accident.

In 2020, there was a federal lawsuit filed against the school district where a black student, Dasia Banks, alleged that school officials would openly allow slurs to be used against her faced constant harassment since 1st grade. The lawsuit was settled out of court.

In another incident in 2024, a school superintendent, Rainey Briggs, filed a restraining order against a white parent who jumped onstage at a graduation ceremony to shove Briggs (who is black) away from a handshake with his daughter, telling Briggs that he did not want him touching her.

Seeing a pattern? I did. And that a Ukrainian Youth Camp was in the area with statues glorifying Ukrainian nazi collaborators, I decided to dig into that and will describe what that led to in part II:

Part II: The Camps

For anyone who has followed the conflict in Ukraine, even mildly, you have surely seen allegations hurled at groups such as Azov adopting nazi symbols, performing torchlight parades, ceremonies, etc. openly. You may dismiss them, but for someone who is well-versed in the conflict, you shouldn’t. It’s a real phenomenon and cannot be ignored.

The Ukrainian Youth Association, abbreviated as ”CYM” in Ukrainian (which I will refer to it as going forward) was founded in 1925 as an underground nationalist movement against Soviet control as a way to preserve Ukrainian culture. Broken up by the Soviets, with many members sent to the gulags thereafter, it was brought back into life post-WW2 in German refugee camps by Ukrainians who had cooperated with the nazis during the war. These were people who fought against the Soviets on the side of Nazi Germany as part of the OUN (the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) and their militant wing, the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army), who feared retribution for their collaboration with Germany and had participated in atrocities and pogroms against Jews within Ukraine and Poland (If you’ve heard the name Stephan Bandera in relation to Ukraine and the neo-nazi Azov Battalion, he is one of the founders of that group).

Flash forward to 1949, and as a result of “Operation Paperclip” (Wherein nazis and their collaborators were brought over to resettle in the US to be used for secret government operations against communism/labor organizing and for their technical knowledge), not all the fascist-sympathizers were German, but Ukrainians as well. This was against the wishes of President Truman at the time, who specifically issued orders than no nazi sympathizers would be brought into the US, but under the leadership of Edward O’Connor, the effort brought such people into the USA and helped them also settle in South American countries and elsewhere, “bleaching” their backgrounds and using them for various purposes, both scientific/technical and as a means to quell worker unionizing since they were ardent fascists who hated the idea of communism. O’Connor was described by many as a fascist himself for his efforts to hide their true identities and reform their image in the public eye.

CYM came along with them, and the American branch was first established in Philadelphia in 1949 (to this day, Philadelphia remains the 2nd highest concentration of Ukrainians in the US). The organization was then spread to include camps in Chicago, Wisconsin, and other camps/branches, primarily in the Northeastern States. In total, today, there are four main Camps, and 28 branches across 12 US States.

In a 2013 dedication of monuments at the Chicago branch to Bandera and Roman Shukhevych (the head of the UPA who held the rank of Captain in the German Wehrmacht and is on record as participating in pogroms against Jews and atrocities committed against Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia), the President of CYM confirmed that "The forefathers of CYM were members of OUN Banderivtsi and their supporters who developed a system to raise and develop youth to serve God and Ukraine".

And the organization is not limited to the US, either. Currently, CYM operates in 13 other countries across the globe, with branches/camps in Canada, Germany, the UK, Austria, France, and several other European countries, as well as including branches in Australia and Argentina. As a personal observation, it seems, the countries that host these “cells” (as their Ukrainian-language website calls them) seem to be some of the most ardent supporters of Ukraine in their current conflict against Russia.

Now, it’s sort of - on the face - perhaps not something to question so much, until you recognize what a “youth camp” means within Ukraine itself. I’ve found records going back far beyond the current conflict, before Ukraine’s Maidan revolution in 2014, where many of these camps were hosted by groups like C14, Svoboda, and the Azov Battalion (all considered to be neo-nazi, “nationalist” groups that have thrived in post-Soviet, sovereign Ukraine:

(Excerpt from a November 2018 Morningstar UK article, “Fascists in training: Ukraine's nationalist youth camps”, which detailed life in one such camp ran by the Svoboda “nationalist” organization)

In these camps, children receive military training, as well as indoctrination by the camp directors to hate people of different ethnicities, religions, and LGBT people. They’re also encouraged to swear oaths to uphold this nationalist ideology in torchlight ceremonies. Ukraine’s Ministry of Youth and Sports provided the funding for the above-referenced camp and others, and that Ministry of Youth and Sports has also been a recipient of US funding, courtesy of USAID since the Maidan Revolution in 2014. I won’t speculate on connections that CYM might have to the politics elsewhere, but I will use this to transition to part III of this piece, discussing how an associated Ukrainian lobbying organization and supporters of Ukraine here in the US have ties to our political establishment and both major parties to this day.

Part III: The Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA) and the Political Connection

Now, this is where my curiosity had truly reached it’s peak, and when I knew that, rather than continue down a bottomless rabbit hole, I should publish what I’d learned and perhaps expound upon future connections I might find or discuss in subsequent articles. I feel in context of the Ukrainian war, it should be put out there for others to perhaps build upon and be aware of.

The Ukrainian Congress Committee of America was initially established in the USA in 1940, only a year after the “official” beginning of World War 2. It’s goals were to represent Ukraine’s interests in American politics and CYM has deep connections to the UCCA. It’s generally considered a “feeder” group for the UCCA, with overlaps in membership and leaders over the years. It is also tied to the American Ukraine PAC (AmUkrPAC) which has funded US politicians and they’ve hosted events since the war in 2022 to drum up support for the war among the American public.

Just since 1991 (when Ukraine was established as a sovereign state after the fall of the USSR), it has honored a number of US politicians and government officials with it’s “Shevchenko Freedom Award”. Named after Taras Shevchenko, an early icon of the OUN/UPA as representing the spirit of Ukrainian nationalism, it has been bestowed upon those that represented Ukraine’s interests in the US government. Past honorees include Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Bill Clinton, Mitch McConnell and John McCain.

Today, three currently-serving politicians in the United States have received the award - Senator Joe Wilson (R), Richard Blumenthal (D), and Mitch McConnell (R). All, might I note, have been vocal advocates in funding Ukraine’s war effort since the Russian invasion in 2022, and also all members of the Helsinki Commission. They’ve worked together to pass legislation in the US Congress approving over $175 billion in US spending on Ukraine, with Wilson and Blumenthal also co-sponsoring the REPO Act to use seized Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s rebuilding efforts once the current conflict ends (the bill itself still awaiting a floor vote in Congress to be held once hostilities cease).

As a footnote, I should also mention both Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas, who, while unconnected on paper to the organizations I have mentioned in this article, both served on the board of “Friends of Anatevka”, a Ukrainian-Jewish charity, which has donated sums to Donald Trump’s America First Action PAC, as well as Rudy Giuliani. If you may remember, these are the individuals who connected Giuliani to Ukrainian prosecutors, Yuriy Lutsenko and Viktor Shokin, to pursue investigations into the Biden families connections to Ukraine in order to expose corruption of his son’s activities serving on the board of Burisma in Ukraine.

What this all boils down to is that I personally feel there’s enough “there” there to question to what extent all these influence operations have had on our culture and politics for the past 75+ years, and what harm they may bring to American society by promoting fascist and neo-nazi ideology among the population, all dressed up as some cultural exchange. Just as AIPAC is famous today for it’s influence on the public discourse in America, I believe Ukraine is likewise influencing our society but much more quietly without being recognized because Americans aren’t as educated on the subject as they are with our relationship with Israel. I find it quite unusual how a Eastern European former Soviet state has held so much influence on people and politics in America, even prior to our entrance into World War II. I’m sure the rabbit hole goes much deeper than this and I’ll devote what time I can to sharing more.