At the end of the war, Stetsko – who had eagerly written about the need to adopt Germany’s genocide methods to exterminate Ukraine’s Jews – decamped for America, where he spent decades running the OUN from the US while traveling in the highest circles of Washington, DC. Both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush celebrated Stetsko as a staunch anti-communist freedom fighter. He died in 1986.

Fighting communism is part of the reason Stetsko and thousands of others were welcomed by Western governments. As World War II rapidly transitioned into the Cold War, Western intelligence agencies recognized the potential of nurturing anti-Soviet groups in order to weaken the Kremlin’s hold over Eastern Europe. As a result, those who fought against Moscow became welcome assets. Some of the most organized and zealous assets also happened to be fascists and anti-Semites whose vision of freedom – and wartime experience – involved cleansing Jews and other ethnicities from their homeland.