Bilynskyi, Andriy.

[UKRAINIAN DIASPORA – SOVIET PRISON MEMOIR] V kontstaborakh SRSR: 1944–1955 [In the concentration camps of the USSR: 1944–1955].

Munich; Chicago: "Orlyk", 1961. Octavo (21 × 15 cm). Original printed card wrappers; 379, [2] pp. Light soil to wrappers; foxing to first pages; lower spine starting; else about very good. Item #54922

A memoir about internment in the Soviet labor camps by the OUN activist and lawyer Andriy Bilynskyi (1916–1995). Born in Chernivtsi, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Bilynskyi studied law at the Jagellonian University in Kraków (1934–1938), where he was an active member of the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists). Arrested for his political activity by the Polish authorities in 1938, he was in a Polish prison at the outbreak of WWII. The present memoir begins with his liberation from the Polish prison upon the arrival of the German army. The memoir provides his reasoning and justification in joining the Galicia division of the Waffen SS, and fighting on the German side against the Soviet Union until he was taken prisoner in 1944. The bulk of the memoir describes Bilynskyi’s experiences and observations of the Soviet reality, social relations, and character studies while a prisoner in Vorkuta, in the far north of Russia. Bilynskyi would remain in the Soviet camps until his deportation to Germany in 1956. After the war, he became a specialist in Soviet law, lecturing on Soviet economic law at the University of Munich and publishing Ukrainian émigré journals in North America such as “Ukrainian Life” (Chicago). He also taught Soviet law at the Ukrainian Free University in Munich.

As of March 2025, KVK, OCLC show three copies in the US and six in Canada.