Bogdan Nikolajewitsch Staschinsky

Bogdan Nikolaevich Stashinsky (* 4. November 1931 in Borschtschowytschi , Galicia , Poland ) was a Soviet KGB - agent , bombers and defectors . The legal proceedings for his assassinations of Lew Rebet and Stepan Bandera went down in German legal history as the Staschinski case .

Cyrillic ( Ukrainian )
	Богдан Миколайович Сташинський
Transl. :	Bohdan Mykolajovyč Stašynsʹkyj
Transcr. :	Bohdan Mykolajowytsch Staschynskyj
Cyrillic ( Russian )
	Богдан Николаевич Сташинский
Transl .:	Bogdan Nikolaevič Stašinskij
Transcr .:	Bogdan Nikolajewitsch Staschinsky

Life

Youth and Recruitment by the State Security Service

Staschinski grew up in his native Borschtschowytschi as the third child of Ukrainian parents of Greek Catholic denomination in what is now the Ukrainian Lviv Oblast . His father, who ran a small farm in the past, was a carpenter. From 1945 on he attended high school in Lviv , where he graduated from high school in 1948. From autumn of the same year he studied in Lviv at the Mathematics Faculty of the Pedagogical University. To get food and money, he drove to see his parents once or twice a week. In the late summer of 1950, the student and fellow students were caught driving dodgy on the train and arrested. His father and sister were known to the authorities as anti-Soviet elements. Now he was given the choice of either being punished for fraudulent fares and possibly for failing to report counterrevolutionary activities or working as an employee of the State Security Service in the future. He chose the second option.

Training and service in the State Security Service

Shortly after this incident, he made a written commitment to work at the MGB with an absolute obligation of silence and was given the code name Oleg . In the months that followed, he reported all important incidents in his home village to the State Security Service, as was required of him. His superiors at the MGB asked him to join the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in January 1951 . They wanted to find out from him how the assassination attempt on the Ukrainian writer Yaroslav Halan , who was murdered in 1949, proceeded , with which he could save his parents and sisters from deportation. After he had successfully completed this assignment, he was active against the OUN resistance groups in Lviv Oblast until 1952 and then, now with the code name Moros , was trained in Kiev for the Western intelligence service between 1952 and 1954 and was also taught in German . He then lived from July to October 1954, in order to acquire a false identity, in the Polish-occupied Stargard in Pomerania .

After moving to Berlin-Karlshorst in East Berlin at the end of 1954, he posed as Josef Lehmann, a Pomeranian refugee from Stargard, whose father had died and whose mother had perished at the end of the war, after which he was an orphan under Polish rule for nine years lived what explained his Slavic accent. Then he worked as a “ displaced person ” in a VEB in Chemnitz as a punch and lost his Slavic accent almost completely by the end of 1955. At the beginning of 1956 his training as an agent was completed and he moved again to East Berlin. As a KGB agent, he was now mainly an instructor and courier who, equipped with all kinds of papers, had to visit other agents in West Germany and Western Europe, delivering messages to them and emptying dead mailboxes . In Schorfheide near Berlin, he also learned how to use a new type of spray gun to spray hydrogen cyanide gas from special laboratories of the KGB.

While dancing in East Berlin's Friedrichstadt-Palast , he met the German hairdresser Inge Pohl in April 1957. Since Staschinski had his own apartment, had plenty of money, looked good and wore tasteful clothes, she was impressed by Staschinski, who initially worked as a car mechanic and later as an interpreter as a camouflage, and they became lovers who became engaged in April 1959.

Assassinations

Assassination attempt on Rebet

The KGB saw in Lew Rebet the main ideologist and the “theoretical head” of the Ukrainians in exile and therefore wanted to kidnap him first. Staschinski was supposed to get an employee of the Ukrainian newspaper, whose editor was Rebet, to mix drugs into Rebet's food, but this did not succeed. The subsequent order to kill Lew Rebet came unexpectedly for Staschinski, an intelligent, capable, rather soft, naturally peaceful man (as later described by Judge Heinrich Jagusch in the oral verdict). Up to this point he had not killed anyone and so a dog was bought, which Staschinski had to kill for practice with the special weapon provided by the KGB.

In April and July 1957, Staschinski visited Munich twice under the false names Siegfried Deger and Josef Lehmann , where he spied out Rebet, the Ukrainian politician in exile of the OUN , publicist, lawyer and professor at the Ukrainian Free University . Staschinski found out that he lived on Ockham Strasse and took care of the office on Karlsplatz . In October 1957, Staschinski rented a hotel in Munich as Mr. Draeger from Essen . He wanted to kill Rebet on Thursday, October 10th, but he did not appear at the time Staschinski expected.

Saturday, October 12, 1957, became the anniversary of Rebet's death. At ten o'clock in the morning, when Rebet was on his way to the editorial office of the "Ukrainian Independent", Staschinski met him at the tram stop at Karlsplatz 8 in Munich and shot him in the face with the KGB's special weapon. Called doctors declared a natural death from heart failure. Nobody noticed the microscopic shards of glass that were glistening from the shot in the face. A few hours after the fact, Staschinski was already in Frankfurt am Main , from where he flew to Berlin the next day and reported to his superiors about the successful operation. He later wrote a written report in which he wrote, “I met a famous person in town and congratulated him. I am sure that this greeting was successful. Signature."

The second victim: Stefan Bandera

Assassination attempt on Bandera

In 1959, Alexander Schelepin , member of the Politburo and chairman of the KGB, gave Bogdan Staschinski the order to kill the Ukrainian emigrant leader Stefan Bandera . For this purpose, Staschinski rented a hotel in Munich as Hans Joachim Budeit from Dortmund and then tried three times to open the front door to Bandera's apartment in Kreittmayrstrasse 7 to get to Bandera. Finally he found Bandera at 12:50 p.m., loaded with packages, in the stairwell as he was about to unlock the front door. Staschinski asked him if he could help him, whereupon Bandera turned to him. At that moment Staschinski shot the poison in his face from his spray gun, which he had hidden under a newspaper in his right hand. He threw the weapon into the Eisbach in the English Garden .

Since the shooting took place too close to Bandera's face, it left traces on his face and so the doctors were able to “see” potassium cyanide this time . However, the police could not determine exactly how and with whose help it got into the body of the deceased.

After the attacks to the point of defection

After the successful assassination attempt on Bandera, Staschinski drove to Moscow with a Soviet identity card in the name of Krylow , where he reported to Schelepin and at the same time asked that the German, whom he had met in East Berlin in 1957, be married. Schelepin was generous and in March 1960 Staschinski was married as Josef Lehmann in East Berlin. Two months later, he and his wife moved to Moscow as the Krylow and Krylowa couple , since, according to his superiors, he had to stay in Moscow for about five to seven years as a keeper of secrets. The young husband now revealed to his wife bit by bit his activity as an agent, including the assassinations carried out, which horrified her. After Staschinski found a bug in their shared apartment and discovered that his post office had been opened, fear seized the couple and decided to flee to the West. In January 1961, Staschinski's pregnant wife traveled to East Berlin to give birth while he had to stay in Moscow. However, his son Peter, who was born in March, died four months later on August 9, 1961, which is why Staschinski was also allowed to travel to East Berlin for funeral under observation of the KGB. Even before the funeral at the place of residence of Staschinski's parents-in-law in Dallgow , a few kilometers west of Berlin, the couple shook off their guards from the KGB on the evening of August 12, 1961, three hours before construction of the Berlin Wall began near the Falkensee S-Bahn station , and let themselves be with them take a taxi to the Schönhauser Allee S-Bahn station . After surviving identity checks, the couple took the S-Bahn to Gesundbrunnen S-Bahn station in West Berlin , where Staschinski turned himself in to the Americans and revealed his activity as an agent.

The Americans handed the refugee over to the German authorities, whereupon the Federal Prosecutor's Office , the Federal Criminal Police Office and the Munich police checked all statements for their truthfulness and after a few weeks came to the conclusion that they were true. The Americans expected that the German authorities should now exploit the case for propaganda purposes, but the Federal Prosecutor's Office had legal concerns as no indictment had yet been filed and there was no Federal Minister of Justice at the time, as the coalition negotiations in Bonn were ongoing after the 1961 federal election . The Federal Ministry of the Interior did not want to comment on the case at this point either and recommended that the American side publish the incident in the American press. The Soviet side reacted more quickly and started a disinformation campaign in which they wanted to pass the murder of Bandera on to the Federal Intelligence Service . Finally , immediately before his departure to John F. Kennedy in November 1961 , Chancellor Adenauer gave instructions to make the case public.

process

→ Main article : Staschinski case

After a preliminary judicial investigation by the examining magistrate at the Federal Court of Justice, which was opened at the request of the Federal Prosecutor's Office, charges were brought and the trial against Staschinski opened on October 8, 1962 in Karlsruhe. On October 19, 1962, he was sentenced to a total of eight years in prison for complicity in a homicide. He was released after four years in prison for good conduct.

consequences

According to Staschinski's testimony to the Western authorities, the latter received numerous attacks against agents from the Eastern Bloc . Since Staschinski, as a defector and traitor, was now a target of the KGB himself, he and his family were given a new identity by the Federal Intelligence Service. Their further fate is unknown, according to more recent Russian knowledge they live in the United States .

Honors

• Order of the Red Banner by resolution of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of November 6, 1959

Movie

• The murder of Bandera by Staschinski was filmed in 1966 by Rudolf Jugert as part 15 of the ZDF television series The Fifth Column under the title Murder on Orders. The role of Staschinski was played by Josef Fröhlich , that of Bandera was played by Max Strassberg .

literature

The Ukrainian writer Jurij Andruchowytsch treated him literarily in his novel The Darlings of Justice: Parahistoric novel in eight and a half chapters (2020; Ukrainian Кочанціі Юстиції Kochancii Justyciji ; 2017)

Staschinski's collaboration with the KGB and the assassination of Stefan Bandera formed the basis of the novel Iets beters dan de dood ; 1964 by the Dutch writer Rogier van Aerde (1917–2007).

Web links

• Echo of the arrest of the Murderer (English)
• Bandera's killer could still be alive , istpravda from October 29, 2010 (Ukrainian)

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} License to kill: The murder squads of the secret services by Egmont R. Koch ; accessed on June 15, 2020
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} BGH, judgment of October 19, 1962 ( Memento of the original of February 4, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - 9 StE 4/62 on openjur.de ; accessed on June 15, 2020 
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n} Bart ab . In: Der Spiegel . No. 49 , 1961 ( online ).
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Article on Lew Rebet ( Memento of the original from June 13, 2020 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in istpravda of October 12, 2011; accessed on June 14, 2020 (Ukrainian) 
5. ↑ How a KGB Assassin Used the Death of His Child to Defect ( Memento of the original from June 15, 2020 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on politico.com from January 5, 2017; accessed on June 15, 2020 
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Greetings to a friend in wienerzeitung.at from September 28, 2012; accessed on June 15, 2020
7. ↑ Black Earth: A journey through the Ukraine by Jens Mühling ; accessed on June 15, 2020
8. ↑ ^{a b} Hour of Vengeance . In: Der Spiegel . No. 17 , 1975 ( online ).
9. ↑ ^{a b} The gas pistol in the English Garden ( Memento of the original from June 15, 2020 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in the NZZ of December 1, 2006; accessed on June 15, 2020 
10. ↑ The Fall of "Taras". Released documents by Banderas Murderer ( Memento of the original from December 18, 2019 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on istpravda.com.ua on January 24, 2018; accessed on June 15, 2020 (Ukrainian) 
11. ↑ ^{a b} Residents of the homeland of the murderer of Bandera are still hated by neighbors ( memento of the original from June 15, 2020 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on segodnya.ua on May 22, 2008; accessed on June 15, 2020 (Ukrainian) 
12. ↑ Galicia has no epic? With his new novel, Yuri Andruchowytsch delivers one thing - and what a one! ( Memento of the original from June 17, 2020 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in NZZ from June 17, 2020; accessed on June 18, 2020