Ukrainian-German collaboration during World War II
Encyclopedia
During the military occupation of Ukraine
by Nazi Germany
, a number of Ukrainians initially chose to cooperate with the Nazis. Their reasons included the hopes of independence from the Soviet Union
and past maltreatment by Soviet authorities.
However, the absence of Ukrainian autonomy under the Nazis, mistreatment by the occupiers, and the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians as slave laborers
, soon led to a rapid change in the attitude among the collaborators. By the time the Red Army
returned to Ukraine, a significant number of the population welcomed the soldiers as liberators. At the same time, more than 4.5 million Ukrainians had joined the Red Army to fight Germany and more than 250,000 served as Soviet partisan paramilitary units.
in Operation Barbarossa
began on June 22, 1941, and by September the occupied territory was divided between two German administrative units the General Government
and the Reichskommissariat Ukraine
.
Many Ukrainians chose to resist and fight German occupation forces by joining the Red Army
or the Soviet Partisans
. However, particularly in the Western Ukraine assigned to General Government
, loyalty to the Soviet State was low due to the fact that it had been under Soviet control for a brief period of 2 years after the Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland under the Hitler-Stalin-agreement following September 17, 1939.
Although the Ukrainian SSR
did give the population the national and cultural autonomy that neither the Second Polish Republic
nor the interwar Romania
did, it came at a price. In 1933 millions of Ukrainians starved to death in the infamous famine, the Holodomor
and in 1937 several thousand intelligentsia were exiled, sentenced to Gulag
labor camp
s or executed. The negative impact of Soviet policies helped garner support for the German cause, and in some regions, parts of the nationalist minority initially viewed the Germans as allies in the struggle to free Ukraine from Stalinist oppression and achieve independence.
, in the German military, and serving as concentration camp
guards. Nationalists in the west of Ukraine were among the most enthusiastic early on, hoping that their efforts would enable them to establish independent state later on. For example, on the eve of Barbarossa as many as four thousand Ukrainians, operating under Wehrmacht
orders, sought to cause disruption behind Soviet lines. After the capture of Lviv
, in important Ukrainian city, OUN leaders proclaimed a new Ukrainian State on June 30, 1941 and were simultaneously encouraging loyalty to the new regime, in hope that they would be supported by the Germans. Already in 1939, during the German-Polish war, the OUN had been “a faithful German auxiliary”, according to
Professor Ivan Katchanovski of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies Harvard University Throughout writes that during the war the leadership of OUN B and UPA was heavily engaged in Nazi collaboration:at least 23% of its leaders in Ukraine were in the auxiliary police, Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201 as well as other police formations, 18% too part in training in Nazi Germany's military and intelligence schools in Germany and Nazi-occupied Poland, 11% served the Nachtigall and Roland Battalions, 8% in local administration during the Nazi occupation, and 1% in the SS Galicia Division;according to Katchanovski the percentage of Nazi collaborators among the OUN-B and UPA leadership is likely higher than those numbers, as much data from early occupation is missing
However, despite initially acting warmly to the idea of an independent Ukraine, the Nazi administration had other ideas, in particular the Lebensraum
programme and the total 'Aryanisation' of the population. They preferred to play Slavic nations out one against the other. OUN initially carried out attacks on Polish villages, trying to destroy or expel Polish enclaves from what the OUN fighters perceived as Ukrainian territory. When OUN help was no longer needed, its leaders were imprisoned, and many member were summariry executed, with over 600 shot in the Babi Yar
massacres.The arrests were only temporary however according to professor Katchanovski;while 27% of the leadership of OUN B and UPA were arrested at one time, they were released relatively soon or allowed to escape
The atrocities against the Jewish population during the Holocaust
started within a few days of the beginning of German occupation. There are indications that the Ukrainian auxiliary police was used in the round-up of Jews for the Babi Yar
massacre
and in other Ukrainian cities and towns, such as Lviv
,
Lutsk
,
and Zhytomyr
. On September 1, 1941, Nazi-controlled Ukrainian newspaper Volhyn wrote "The element that settled our cities (Jews)... must disappear completely from our cities. The Jewish problem is already in the process of being solved."
In May 2006, a Ukrainian newspaper Ukraine Christian News commented: "Carrying out the massacre was the Einsatzgruppe C, supported by members of a Waffen-SS battalion and units of the Ukrainian auxiliary police, under the general command of Friedrich Jeckeln. The participation of Ukrainian collaborators in these events, now documented and proven, is a matter of painful public debate in Ukraine.".
While some proportion of collaborators were volunteers, others were given little choice. Ukrainian and some other nationalities caught fighting for the Red Army were sometimes given the option between dying of starvation and exposure in the ill-equipped POW camps reserved for the Red Army or working for the Germans as a hiwi
including duty in the concentration camps and ghettos primarily as guards. The men selected for such duty were trained in the Trawniki concentration camp
and were used for that part of the Final Solution
known as Operation Reinhard
. However they were never fully trusted, and with good reason as some would escape their enforced duty, sometimes along with the prisoners they were meant to be guarding and occasionally killing their SS commanders in the process.
, 2185 righteous Ukrainians had been identified by the year 2007. These are the people who risked their lives to save the Jews. Until the dissolution of the Soviet Union
, little information was known of these acts due to Soviet censorship of this topic.
During his visit to Ukraine
, Pope John Paul II
beatified one of the righteous - Father Omelyan Kovch
who sacrificed his life while saving several hundred of Jews. In 1942, father Kovch issued Jews large numbers of baptism certificates in attempt to save their lives. In doing so, he broke the Nazi prohibitions and so he was arrested in December 1942 and deported to the Majdanek
concentration camp where he was gassed and burned on March 26, 1943.
The most famous instances of the saving of hundreds of Jews during World War II features the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church
, Andrey Sheptytsky
. He harbored hundreds of Jews in his residence and in Greek Catholic monasteries. He also issued two pastoral letters, "Thou Shalt Not Kill" and "On Misericordia" that instructed the Greek-Catholic believers not to participate Nazi atrocities
and aid those persecuted. Despite this, however, Sheptytsky remains unrecognized for his acts by Yad Vashem
, a consequence of stereotypes advanced by Soviet and Polish historians.
109, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 201-st Ukrainian Schutzmannschaftant-battalions participated in anti-partisan operations in Ukraine and Belarus. In February — March 1943 50-th Ukrainian Schutzmannschaftant-battalion participated in the large anti-guerrilla action «Winterzauber» (Winter magic) in Belarus
, cooperating with several Latvian and 2nd Lithuanian battalion. Schuma-battalions burned down villages suspected in supporting Soviet
partisans
. All the inhabitants of the village Chatyń
in Belarus were burnt alive by the Nazis with participation of the 118th Schutzmannschaft battalion on 22 March 1943
On 28 April 1943 the German Governor of District Galicia
, Dr. Otto von Wächter
, and the local Ukrainian administration officially declared the creation of the SS-Freiwilligen-Schützen-Division Galizien. Volunteers signed for service as of 3 June 1943 numbered 80 thousand. On 27 July 1944 the Galizien division was formed into the Waffen SS as 14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (gal. Nr. 1).
The history, composition, and function of the SS Galizien are the topic of contentious debate among scholars still today.
One theory is that these men volunteered eagerly for war against the Soviets, rather than being an example of evidence for active support of Nazi Germany. A counter theory is that at least some of them were victims of compulsory conscription as Germany suffered defeats and lost manpower on the eastern front. Sol Litman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center
claims that there are many proven and documented incidents of atrocities and massacres committed by the Waffen-SS Galizien against minorities, particularly Jews during the course of World War II, however other authors, such as Michael Melnyk, and Michael O. Logusz, maintain that members of the division fought almost entirely at the front against the Soviet Red Army. They also defend the unit against the accusations made by Litman and others since the war. German official records noted that the 4,5,6 and 7 SS-Freiwilligen regiments were under Ordnungspolizei
command at the time of the accusations. Neither the division nor any of its members were ever charged with any war crime (see 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Ukrainian)#Accusations of war atrocities).
Reichskommissariat Ukraine
Reichskommissariat Ukraine , literally "Reich Commissariat of Ukraine", was the civilian occupation regime of much of German-occupied Ukraine during World War II. Between September 1941 and March 1944, the Reichskommissariat was administered by Reichskommissar Erich Koch as a colony...
by Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
, a number of Ukrainians initially chose to cooperate with the Nazis. Their reasons included the hopes of independence from the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
and past maltreatment by Soviet authorities.
However, the absence of Ukrainian autonomy under the Nazis, mistreatment by the occupiers, and the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians as slave laborers
OST-Arbeiter
OST-Arbeiter was a designation for slave workers gathered from Eastern Europe to do forced labor in Germany during World War II. The Ostarbeiters were mostly from the territory of Reichskommissariat Ukraine . Ukrainians made up the largest portion although many Belarusians, Russians, Poles and...
, soon led to a rapid change in the attitude among the collaborators. By the time the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
returned to Ukraine, a significant number of the population welcomed the soldiers as liberators. At the same time, more than 4.5 million Ukrainians had joined the Red Army to fight Germany and more than 250,000 served as Soviet partisan paramilitary units.
Initial attitudes towards German invasion
The German invasion of the Soviet UnionSoviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
in Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
began on June 22, 1941, and by September the occupied territory was divided between two German administrative units the General Government
General Government
The General Government was an area of Second Republic of Poland under Nazi German rule during World War II; designated as a separate region of the Third Reich between 1939–1945...
and the Reichskommissariat Ukraine
Reichskommissariat Ukraine
Reichskommissariat Ukraine , literally "Reich Commissariat of Ukraine", was the civilian occupation regime of much of German-occupied Ukraine during World War II. Between September 1941 and March 1944, the Reichskommissariat was administered by Reichskommissar Erich Koch as a colony...
.
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
or the Soviet Partisans
Soviet partisans
The Soviet partisans were members of a resistance movement which fought a guerrilla war against the Axis occupation of the Soviet Union during World War II....
. However, particularly in the Western Ukraine assigned to General Government
General Government
The General Government was an area of Second Republic of Poland under Nazi German rule during World War II; designated as a separate region of the Third Reich between 1939–1945...
, loyalty to the Soviet State was low due to the fact that it had been under Soviet control for a brief period of 2 years after the Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland under the Hitler-Stalin-agreement following September 17, 1939.
Although the Ukrainian SSR
Ukrainian SSR
The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic or in short, the Ukrainian SSR was a sovereign Soviet Socialist state and one of the fifteen constituent republics of the Soviet Union lasting from its inception in 1922 to the breakup in 1991...
did give the population the national and cultural autonomy that neither the Second Polish Republic
Second Polish Republic
The Second Polish Republic, Second Commonwealth of Poland or interwar Poland refers to Poland between the two world wars; a period in Polish history in which Poland was restored as an independent state. Officially known as the Republic of Poland or the Commonwealth of Poland , the Polish state was...
nor the interwar Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
did, it came at a price. In 1933 millions of Ukrainians starved to death in the infamous famine, the Holodomor
Holodomor
The Holodomor was a man-made famine in the Ukrainian SSR between 1932 and 1933. During the famine, which is also known as the "terror-famine in Ukraine" and "famine-genocide in Ukraine", millions of Ukrainians died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of...
and in 1937 several thousand intelligentsia were exiled, sentenced to Gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
labor camp
Labor camp
A labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons...
s or executed. The negative impact of Soviet policies helped garner support for the German cause, and in some regions, parts of the nationalist minority initially viewed the Germans as allies in the struggle to free Ukraine from Stalinist oppression and achieve independence.
Under occupation
Some Ukrainians cooperated with the German occupiers, participating in the local administration, in German-supervised auxiliary police, SchutzmannschaftSchutzmannschaft
Schutzmannschaft or Hilfspolizei were the collaborationist auxiliary police battalions of native policemen in occupied countries in East, which were created to fight the resistance during World War II mostly in the Eastern European countries occupied by Nazi Germany. Hilfspolizei refers also to...
, in the German military, and serving as concentration camp
Nazi concentration camps
Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...
guards. Nationalists in the west of Ukraine were among the most enthusiastic early on, hoping that their efforts would enable them to establish independent state later on. For example, on the eve of Barbarossa as many as four thousand Ukrainians, operating under Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
orders, sought to cause disruption behind Soviet lines. After the capture of Lviv
Lviv
Lviv is a city in western Ukraine. The city is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically has also been a major Polish and Jewish cultural center, as Poles and Jews were the two main ethnicities of the city until the outbreak of World War II and the following...
, in important Ukrainian city, OUN leaders proclaimed a new Ukrainian State on June 30, 1941 and were simultaneously encouraging loyalty to the new regime, in hope that they would be supported by the Germans. Already in 1939, during the German-Polish war, the OUN had been “a faithful German auxiliary”, according to
Professor Ivan Katchanovski of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies Harvard University Throughout writes that during the war the leadership of OUN B and UPA was heavily engaged in Nazi collaboration:at least 23% of its leaders in Ukraine were in the auxiliary police, Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201 as well as other police formations, 18% too part in training in Nazi Germany's military and intelligence schools in Germany and Nazi-occupied Poland, 11% served the Nachtigall and Roland Battalions, 8% in local administration during the Nazi occupation, and 1% in the SS Galicia Division;according to Katchanovski the percentage of Nazi collaborators among the OUN-B and UPA leadership is likely higher than those numbers, as much data from early occupation is missing
However, despite initially acting warmly to the idea of an independent Ukraine, the Nazi administration had other ideas, in particular the Lebensraum
Lebensraum
was one of the major political ideas of Adolf Hitler, and an important component of Nazi ideology. It served as the motivation for the expansionist policies of Nazi Germany, aiming to provide extra space for the growth of the German population, for a Greater Germany...
programme and the total 'Aryanisation' of the population. They preferred to play Slavic nations out one against the other. OUN initially carried out attacks on Polish villages, trying to destroy or expel Polish enclaves from what the OUN fighters perceived as Ukrainian territory. When OUN help was no longer needed, its leaders were imprisoned, and many member were summariry executed, with over 600 shot in the Babi Yar
Babi Yar
Babi Yar is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kiev and a site of a series of massacres carried out by the Nazis during their campaign against the Soviet Union. The most notorious and the best documented of these massacres took place on September 29–30, 1941, wherein 33,771 Jews were killed in a...
massacres.The arrests were only temporary however according to professor Katchanovski;while 27% of the leadership of OUN B and UPA were arrested at one time, they were released relatively soon or allowed to escape
Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
started within a few days of the beginning of German occupation. There are indications that the Ukrainian auxiliary police was used in the round-up of Jews for the Babi Yar
Babi Yar
Babi Yar is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kiev and a site of a series of massacres carried out by the Nazis during their campaign against the Soviet Union. The most notorious and the best documented of these massacres took place on September 29–30, 1941, wherein 33,771 Jews were killed in a...
massacre
and in other Ukrainian cities and towns, such as Lviv
Lviv
Lviv is a city in western Ukraine. The city is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically has also been a major Polish and Jewish cultural center, as Poles and Jews were the two main ethnicities of the city until the outbreak of World War II and the following...
,
Lutsk
Lutsk
Lutsk is a city located by the Styr River in northwestern Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Volyn Oblast and the administrative center of the surrounding Lutskyi Raion within the oblast...
,
and Zhytomyr
Zhytomyr
Zhytomyr is a city in the North of the western half of Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Zhytomyr Oblast , as well as the administrative center of the surrounding Zhytomyr Raion...
. On September 1, 1941, Nazi-controlled Ukrainian newspaper Volhyn wrote "The element that settled our cities (Jews)... must disappear completely from our cities. The Jewish problem is already in the process of being solved."
In May 2006, a Ukrainian newspaper Ukraine Christian News commented: "Carrying out the massacre was the Einsatzgruppe C, supported by members of a Waffen-SS battalion and units of the Ukrainian auxiliary police, under the general command of Friedrich Jeckeln. The participation of Ukrainian collaborators in these events, now documented and proven, is a matter of painful public debate in Ukraine.".
While some proportion of collaborators were volunteers, others were given little choice. Ukrainian and some other nationalities caught fighting for the Red Army were sometimes given the option between dying of starvation and exposure in the ill-equipped POW camps reserved for the Red Army or working for the Germans as a hiwi
Hiwi
Hiwi refer to:*Hiwi people*hiwi , a German word for volunteer assistant*Hiwi al-Balkhi, the first Jewish Bible critic...
including duty in the concentration camps and ghettos primarily as guards. The men selected for such duty were trained in the Trawniki concentration camp
Trawniki concentration camp
Trawniki concentration camp, in the village of Trawniki about 40 km southeast of Lublin in Poland, was an SS labour camp which provided forced labourers for a nearby industrial plant to work in appalling conditions with little food...
and were used for that part of the Final Solution
Final Solution
The Final Solution was Nazi Germany's plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II, resulting in the most deadly phase of the Holocaust...
known as Operation Reinhard
Operation Reinhard
Operation Reinhard was the code name given to the Nazi plan to murder Polish Jews in the General Government, and marked the most deadly phase of the Holocaust, the use of extermination camps...
. However they were never fully trusted, and with good reason as some would escape their enforced duty, sometimes along with the prisoners they were meant to be guarding and occasionally killing their SS commanders in the process.
Righteous Among the Nations in Ukraine
According to Yad VashemYad Vashem
Yad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, established in 1953 through the Yad Vashem Law passed by the Knesset, Israel's parliament....
, 2185 righteous Ukrainians had been identified by the year 2007. These are the people who risked their lives to save the Jews. Until the dissolution of the Soviet Union
Dissolution of the Soviet Union
The dissolution of the Soviet Union was the disintegration of the federal political structures and central government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , resulting in the independence of all fifteen republics of the Soviet Union between March 11, 1990 and December 25, 1991...
, little information was known of these acts due to Soviet censorship of this topic.
During his visit to Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
, Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II
Blessed Pope John Paul II , born Karol Józef Wojtyła , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005, at of age. His was the second-longest documented pontificate, which lasted ; only Pope Pius IX ...
beatified one of the righteous - Father Omelyan Kovch
Omelyan Kovch
Blessed Оmelyan Kovch was a Ukrainian Greek-Catholic priest murdered in Majdanek concentration camp....
who sacrificed his life while saving several hundred of Jews. In 1942, father Kovch issued Jews large numbers of baptism certificates in attempt to save their lives. In doing so, he broke the Nazi prohibitions and so he was arrested in December 1942 and deported to the Majdanek
Majdanek
Majdanek was a German Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland, established during the German Nazi occupation of Poland. The camp operated from October 1, 1941 until July 22, 1944, when it was captured nearly intact by the advancing Soviet Red Army...
concentration camp where he was gassed and burned on March 26, 1943.
The most famous instances of the saving of hundreds of Jews during World War II features the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church
Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church
The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church , Ukrainska Hreko-Katolytska Tserkva), is the largest Eastern Rite Catholic sui juris particular church in full communion with the Holy See, and is directly subject to the Pope...
, Andrey Sheptytsky
Andrey Sheptytsky
Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky was the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church from 1901 until his death. During his tenure, he led the Church through two world wars and seven political regimes: Austrian, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Soviet, German National Socialist , and...
. He harbored hundreds of Jews in his residence and in Greek Catholic monasteries. He also issued two pastoral letters, "Thou Shalt Not Kill" and "On Misericordia" that instructed the Greek-Catholic believers not to participate Nazi atrocities
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
and aid those persecuted. Despite this, however, Sheptytsky remains unrecognized for his acts by Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, established in 1953 through the Yad Vashem Law passed by the Knesset, Israel's parliament....
, a consequence of stereotypes advanced by Soviet and Polish historians.
Auxiliary police
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
, cooperating with several Latvian and 2nd Lithuanian battalion. Schuma-battalions burned down villages suspected in supporting Soviet
Soviet partisans
The Soviet partisans were members of a resistance movement which fought a guerrilla war against the Axis occupation of the Soviet Union during World War II....
partisans
Belarusian partisans
Belarusian partisans were fighters in irregular military groups participating in the Belarusian resistance movement, including against Nazi Germany and collaborationism during World War II.- World War II :...
. All the inhabitants of the village Chatyń
Khatyn massacre
Khatyn, Chatyń was a village in Belarus, in Lahojsk district, Minsk Voblast. On March 22, 1943, the population of the village was massacred during World War II by the 118th Schutzmannschaft battalion, formed in July 1942 in Kiev, mostly from Ukrainian collaborators, prisoners of war and...
in Belarus were burnt alive by the Nazis with participation of the 118th Schutzmannschaft battalion on 22 March 1943
SS Division "Galizien"
District Galicia
The District of Galicia was an administrative unit of the General Government in Nazi-occupied Ukraine from 1941 to 1944 centered in Lemberg ....
, Dr. Otto von Wächter
Otto Wächter
The Baron Otto Gustav von Wächter , was an Austrian lawyer and later German SS officer and National Socialist official...
, and the local Ukrainian administration officially declared the creation of the SS-Freiwilligen-Schützen-Division Galizien. Volunteers signed for service as of 3 June 1943 numbered 80 thousand. On 27 July 1944 the Galizien division was formed into the Waffen SS as 14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (gal. Nr. 1).
The history, composition, and function of the SS Galizien are the topic of contentious debate among scholars still today.
One theory is that these men volunteered eagerly for war against the Soviets, rather than being an example of evidence for active support of Nazi Germany. A counter theory is that at least some of them were victims of compulsory conscription as Germany suffered defeats and lost manpower on the eastern front. Sol Litman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center
Simon Wiesenthal Center
The Simon Wiesenthal Center , with headquarters in Los Angeles, California, was established in 1977 and named for Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter. According to its mission statement, it is "an international Jewish human rights organization dedicated to repairing the world one step at a time...
claims that there are many proven and documented incidents of atrocities and massacres committed by the Waffen-SS Galizien against minorities, particularly Jews during the course of World War II, however other authors, such as Michael Melnyk, and Michael O. Logusz, maintain that members of the division fought almost entirely at the front against the Soviet Red Army. They also defend the unit against the accusations made by Litman and others since the war. German official records noted that the 4,5,6 and 7 SS-Freiwilligen regiments were under Ordnungspolizei
Sicherheitspolizei
The Sicherheitspolizei , often abbreviated as SiPo, was a term used in Nazi Germany to describe the state political and criminal investigation security agencies. It was made up by the combined forces of the Gestapo and the Kripo between 1936 and 1939...
command at the time of the accusations. Neither the division nor any of its members were ever charged with any war crime (see 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Ukrainian)#Accusations of war atrocities).
Ukrainian volunteers in the German armed forces
- Nachtigall BattalionNachtigall BattalionThe Nachtigall Battalion , officially known as Special Group Nachtigall, was the subunit under command of the Abwehr special operation unit Lehrregiment "Brandenburg" z.b.V. 800...
- Roland BattalionRoland BattalionThe Roland Battalion , officially known as Special Group Roland, was the subunit under command of the Abwehr special operation unit Lehrregiment "Brandenburg" z.b.V. 800...
- Freiwilligen-Stamm-Regiment 3 & 4 (Russians & Ukrainians)
- 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Ukrainian)
Ukraine propaganda news
- Ukrainskyi Dobrovoletz (Der ukrainische Kämpfer) - Ukrainische Freiwilligenverbände
Ukrainian units in the German work organization
- Organization Todt OT-Einsatzgruppe Ost (Kiev)
Ukrainian collaborators (heads of local administration and public figures)
- Oleksander OhloblynOleksander OhloblynOleksander Ohloblyn, Ukr. Олександер Петрович Оглоблин was one of the most important Ukrainian emigre historians of the Cold War era.-Life and career:...
(Kiev mayor, 1941) - Volodymyr BahaziyVolodymyr BahaziyVolodymyr Panteleimonovych Bahasiy , was a Ukrainian nationalist affiliated with the Andriy Melnyk's faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and head of Kiev City Administration under German occupation in October 1941 - January 1942.He was a professional...
(Kiev mayor, 1941–1942, executed by Germans in 1942) - Leontii Forostivsky (Kiev mayor, 1942–1943)
- Mykola Velychkivsky (head of the Ukrainian National Committee in Kiev, dismissed in 1942, later emigrated)
- Fedir Bohatyrchuk (head of the Ukrainian Red Cross, 1941–1942)
- Ivan RohachIvan RohachIvan Rohach was a Ukrainian journalist, poet, writer, and political activist born in Velykyj Bereznyj , Austria-Hungary ....
(journalist, public figure, executed in 1942) - Oleksii Kramarenko (Kharkiv mayor, 1941–1942, executed by Germans in 1943)
- Oleksander Semenenko (Kharkiv mayor, 1942–1943)
- Paul Kozakevich (Kharkiv mayor, 1943)
- Aleksandr Sevastianov (Vinnytsia mayor, 1941 – ?)
See Also
- Collaboration with the Axis Powers during World War II
- Reichskommissariat UkraineReichskommissariat UkraineReichskommissariat Ukraine , literally "Reich Commissariat of Ukraine", was the civilian occupation regime of much of German-occupied Ukraine during World War II. Between September 1941 and March 1944, the Reichskommissariat was administered by Reichskommissar Erich Koch as a colony...
- History of the Jews in UkraineHistory of the Jews in UkraineJewish communities have existed in the territory of Ukraine from the time of Kievan Rus' and developed many of the most distinctive modern Jewish theological and cultural traditions. While at times they flourished, at other times they faced periods of persecution and antisemitic discriminatory...
- Ukrainian SSRUkrainian SSRThe Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic or in short, the Ukrainian SSR was a sovereign Soviet Socialist state and one of the fifteen constituent republics of the Soviet Union lasting from its inception in 1922 to the breakup in 1991...
- OstlegionenOstlegionenOstlegionen or Osttruppen were conscripts and volunteers from the occupied eastern territories recruited into the German Army of the Third Reich during the Second World War....
Further reading
here- Collaborationism in World War II: The Integral Nationalist Variant in Eastern Europe, by John A. Armstrong in The Journal of Modern History > Vol. 40, No. 3 (Sep., 1968), pp. 396–410 http://books.google.com/books?id=YCz0J-8HIIMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22Ivan+semeniuk%22 http://books.google.com/books?id=KZjuAAAACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=subject:%22Righteous+Gentiles+in+the+Holocaust%3B+Biography.%22