[7] Himka, who traveled to Ukraine to conduct research since 1976, began to work with academics at Lviv University's Department of History.

Himka challenged the interpretation of Holodomor as a genocide and the view that Ukrainian nationalism and nationalists played no or almost no role in the Holocaust in Ukraine.

He also opposed official glorification of such nationalistic heroes as Roman Shukhevych and Stepan Bandera in Ukraine during the presidency of Viktor Yushchenko.

[9] In response to this lacuna, Himka presented his detailed study of the publishing of a series of antisemitic articles in 1943 in the "flagship of Ukrainian journalism under Nazi occupation," Krakov's daily newspaper Krakivs'ki Visti.

[10]: 82  Himka described how Krakivs'ki Visti "played an important and, generally, positive role in Ukrainian life,"[10]: 83  "serving as a buffer between the German occupation authorities and the population of the Generalgouvernement.

"[10]: 84  In response to a May 1943 order by the German press chief, the newspaper published antisemitic articles from May 25 through July[10]: 85  which were received negatively by the Ukrainian intelligentsia in general.

[13] In a book review in the Harvard Ukrainian Studies, Larry Wolff described Religion and Nationality in Western Ukraine as a subtle, sophisticated and insightful account of an "important and profoundly complex historical problem."

[16] Himka observed that the "Greek Catholic case in Galicia" is "a stunningly transparent instance of how much agency and choice can be involved in the construction of nationality.

"[19] In his chapter Ethnicity and the Reporting of Mass Murder: Krakivs′ki visti, the NKVD Murders of 1941, and the Vinnytsia Exhumation,[20] Himka examined how the Krakivs'ki Visti, an "important [Ukrainian] nationalist newspaper" "reported on two cases of mass violence by the Soviets, the 1941 NKVD prisoner massacres and the 1943 Vinnytsia massacre.

Himka wrote that Krakivs'ki Visti "ethnicized both perpetrators and victims, ascribing primarily Jewish identity to the former and depicting the latter as almost exclusively Ukrainian.