On its website, the owner of the Pijana Wiśnia franchise brand states that ‘!FEST is more than a restaurant company. It presents a map of its businesses, including bars with traditional Lviv tinctures scattered throughout Poland. As it turns out, the same company runs the controversial ‘Kryjivka’ restaurant in Lviv, which aims to promote a positive image of fighters of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. One of the restaurant’s advertisements features a picture of Roman Shukhevych, a criminal directly involved in the genocide against Poles and Jews during World War II.  

A graphic in the portfolio of its Lviv-based restaurant Kryjivka shows UPA fighters and a picture of Roman Shukhevych – leader of the UPA and deputy commander of the Battalion Ukrainische Gruppe Nachtigall, whose soldiers took part in the 1941 Lviv pogrom. 

In the description, the owners of the restaurant state that it is ‘the most visited restaurant in Europe, with 1,000,000 visitors a year’. It is the Ukrainian Insurgent Army hideout from the Second World War. Its motto is +The Struggle Continues+’.

Roman Shukhevych’s wartime story

Roman Shukhevych was a Ukrainian nationalist activist born in Krakovets on 30 June 1907. During the Second World War, he acted as a commander of collaborationist units of German units and later as a high activist of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. 

Shukhevych’s infamous activities began after the start of the German-Soviet war in 1941 and the occupation of Lviv. There, from 30 June to 2 July, soldiers of his units took part in a pogrom against Jews, justified by the alleged ‘cooperation of the Jewish inhabitants of Lviv with the Soviet NKVD’.

Photographs of the brutal mistreatment of Jews in Lviv by Germans and Ukrainians shocked the world as the crimes were documented by the Nazi propaganda machine.

The number of Jewish victims of the Lviv pogrom by mid-July 1941 is estimated to be at least 4,000 and possibly as many as 7,000.

On 7 July 1941, near Vinnytsia, soldiers of the reconnaissance unit of the Nachtigall battalion (co-commanded by Shukhevych) shot an unknown number of Jews in at least two villages.

After the battalion was disbanded by the Germans in October 1941, on 1 December Shukhevych, along with other former battalion soldiers, signed a one-year contract to serve in the 201st German Police Battalion, into which the earlier Nachtigall and Roland battalions had been transformed.

Later, the newly formed Police Battalion served in Belarus, where it took part in battles against Soviet partisans. However, according to some historians, reports submitted by its soldiers indicate the unit’s large number of casualties, which may lead to the conclusion that murdered local Jews were counted among the partisans killed. 

According to some Ukrainian historians, the Battalion also took part in the pacification of the Ukrainian village of Kortelisy (22 September 1942) and its soldiers were said to have burned 2875 people alive. 

After his contract with the German army expired, Shukhevych returned to Lviv, where he became one of the three main leaders of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. 

Shukhevych and the Volhynian Genocide 

As a high-ranking member of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army’s leadership, Roman Shukhevych coordinated and justified in orders the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Poles in Volhynia in collaboration with another UPA leader, Dmytro Klyuchkivsky.

‘Given the official position of the Polish government on cooperation with the Soviets, the Poles should be removed from our lands. It should be understood in this way: give the Polish population an order to move out within a few days to the indigenous Polish lands. If they do not do it, then send the militia, which will liquidate the people, and burn (demolish) the huts and possessions,’ said Shukhevych instructions on the behaviour of UPA units in Eastern Lesser Poland. 

In July 1944, at a congress of the UHWR, Shukhevych admitted that there had been a ‘liquidation’ of the Polish population in Volhynia. 

Referring to the situation in Małopolska, he stated: ‘The UPA command gave the order to displace the Poles if they did not resettle themselves. The attacks will continue’.

The Volhynian Massacre, which was an act of genocide against Poles living in what is now Ukraine, was carried out by UPA fighters and claimed the lives of around 100,000 Poles living in the area during World War II. 

The !FEST statement 

In our opinion, using the perpetrators of this genocide and other ethnic cleansing as a part of advertising seems a shocking idea. 

To clarify the situation, we contacted the representative of the !FEST concerns Mr Taras Maselko, responsible for PR and marketing of the holding. 

‘Figures such as Bandera or Shukhevych in Ukrainian historiography are presented as fighters for independence. Poland or the UK may have their heroes. In its daily activities, Kryjivka does not convey the idea that you have to agree with a certain ideology. Kryjivka is first and foremost a place to tell the story of Ukraine. Our venues in Poland, i.e. Rebernia and Pijana Wiśnia, do not reach for analogous narrative models,’ says Taras Masełko. 

We decided to ask how the owners of the !FEST holding related the use of the figure of Roman Shukhevych himself in advertising, pointing to the clear and negative assessment of his character by the authorities and historians from Poland or Israel. After all, after the stadium in Ternopil was named after him, the Polish and Israeli local authorities broke off their partnership with the city. 

‘In my personal opinion, Roman Shukhevych is a rather positive figure for Ukrainians. Elsewhere, of course, he may be perceived differently. In Ukraine itself, schools still portrayed UPA fighters as traitors in the 1990s. This does not mean that we want to use dark names to promote the restaurant. This place, Kryjivka, is a place that presents history. If we went through Polish history, we could also find instances of, for example, Pilsudski killing Ukrainians in certain regions, but this would be part of a longer historical discussion,’ replies Masełko.

Asked about Shukhevych’s collaboration with a Nazi military unit during the Second World War, which is controversial in itself, a spokesperson for the group replied:

‘There have been different cases in history. Some people served in the German army and then made a lasting contribution to the state of Israel,’ Maselko explains.

When asked whether the restaurant owners are concerned about the accusation of whitewashing the history of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and Shukhevych by showing only positive facts about the organisation in a non-committal mood, the spokesperson replies:

‘We are not trying to whitewash anything. We are simply creating restaurants with a specific theme. This does not mean that all historical facts have to be presented there accurately. […] We show there in an entertaining way the daily life and activities of the partisans by serving simple dishes and games such as +find the Russian traitor+ and the like.’

Despite flaunting its sympathy for anti-Polish mass criminals, !FEST operates numerous restaurants in Poland, mostly on a franchise basis.

One of these is ‘Pijana Wiśnia’, whose franchise locations operate in Warsaw, Krakow, Wroclaw, Swinoujscie, Rzeszow, Lodz, Lublin, Poznan, Sopot and Gdansk. In Łódź, the !FEST holding also runs the Rebernia restaurant. 

We decided to ask franchisees running Pijana Wiśnia restaurants in Poland about what they think of Kryjivka’s image. The opinions were given to us anonymously. 

A franchisee in one of the largest Polish cities said that he ‘considers such an action scandalous and would never agree to display similar content in his premises’, even if the owners of the !FEST concern expected it. Privately, he finds it unacceptable.

Another franchisee was surprised by the appearance of the figure of Roman Shukhevych in the promotional materials. He was previously familiar with the concept of Kryjivka as a Lviv restaurant depicting the life of partisans during World War 2, but he found the use of images of war criminals completely unacceptable and assured that he would intervene with the owners of the Pijana Wiśnia brand at the earliest opportunity. 

At the same time, the franchisee stressed that he is familiar with other venues run by !FEST and knows that their creators always reach for the emotions encoded in the theme of the venue, but stated that ‘everything has its limits’, and in the case of Kryjivka, the limits were violated.

We hope that describing the situation will help to limit the glorification of those directly responsible for crimes against civilians in Poland and Ukraine during the World War 2. 

It may help to build good and lasting relations between our nations based on truth and respect for history. 

Promoting phenomena and figures marked with the blood of civilians not only hinders but also reverses the process of rapprochement that was set in motion by the selfless help of Poles to Ukraine and the heroic struggle of Ukrainians after the full-scale Russian invasion that began on 24 February 2022.

Szymon Leśniewski

Photos: British Poles and Kryjivki’s website