Lemyk was born in Soloviy,
Galicia. After completing
gymnasium he studied law at
Lviv University and joined the youth branch of the
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in the early 1930s. On 21 October 1933 he was ordered by the
OUN to
assassinate Alexei Mailov,
OGPU agent and Secretary of the
Soviet Union's
consulate in
Lviv, which was then under
Polish administration. This political assassination was to publicize and to protest against the
Holodomor. At the outset of
World War II in 1939 Lemyk was freed from jail, and on 4 August 1940 he married Liuba Vozniak. From 1941 Lemyk was in the regional command of the
OUN-B — the faction supporting
Stepan Bandera, in Eastern Ukraine. In the fall of 1941 he led the Central Committee of the OUN. In October 1941 Lemyk was arrested by the
Gestapo in
Myrhorod (which was then occupied by
Nazi Germany), and shot (other sources state that he was hanged by the Gestapo). == Notes ==