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Revision as of 15:33, 27 December 2006 by Bryndza (talk | contribs) (removing hyperbolism, returning fact flags where lost. pls provide refs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Template:TotallyDisputed In the course of World War II and military occupation by Germany, some Ukrainians resisted the occupation, while others collaborated with the occupiers. While some participated in the genocide of the Jewish population in what came to be known as the Holocaust, 1,755 Ukrainians were recognized as the Righteous Among the Nations for saving their Jewish neighbors.
Immediately after the invasion, the Germans were enthusiastically welcomed by some of the Ukrainian population except for a pro-Soviet minority. The lack of Ukrainian autonomy, the bad treatment by the occupiers, and the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians as slave laborers, however, soon led to to a rapid change. By the time the Red Army re-conquered Ukraine, most of the population welcomed the soldiers as liberators except in Volhynia and parts of Eastern Galicia. Further, more than 400,000 Ukrainians fought Germany in the Red Army and more than 130,000 as part of the Soviet partisans.
Invasion by Nazis
Nazi Germany launched the invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, Ukraine was quickly overrun and the Germans created the Reichskommissariat Ukraine as an administrative zone in September 1941.
In dealing with the Nazis, the Ukrainians had two alternatives: to obey or to resist. Some chose to resist, fighting German occupants with Soviet Army, or fighting the Soviets (and the Germans) with Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Unlike the other European countries, by beginning of WWII, Ukrainians lost their own country, being split among the Soviet Union, Poland, and Romania. In Western Europe, the loyalty to one's state was taken for granted and the Nazis were the one and only enemy. In Ukraine, however, some initially saw the Germans, as a possibility to get out of oppression by the ruling power, such as Soviet, Polish, or Romanian rule. Therefore, initially in Ukraine some so called nationalists attempted to collaborate with the Germans in hope that this will enable them to establish independent state later on.
Indeed some surviving veterans of the German armed forces of the time note that Ukrainians publically celebrated the invasion of their homeland by Nazi Germany, the German soldiers were kissed and warmly greeted by Ukrainians in streets.
Methods of collaboration with Nazi Germany
On the individual level, collaboration with the Germans usually took the form of participation in the local administration of the German-supervised auxiliary police. Motives for taking such positions varied. The need to find employment or to satisfy personal ambitions was an important consideration. The most notorious form of collaboration was to act as a concentration camp guard.
Evidence of collaboration
Testifying at the Adolf Eichmann trial a holocaust survivor known as Zuckerman had described his ordeal at the hands at Ukrainian guards, while at Kampinos (labor camp in Poland), Zuckerman had noted the presence, and cruelty, of the Ukrainian guards. There were Ukrainian guards also at another camp near Warsaw, at Lowicz. In Warsaw, it became known early in May that ninety-one Jews had been murdered at Lowicz. The 'basic cause', Ringelblum noted, 'has been the terrible treatment of those in the camp by most of the Ukrainian camp guards'...These Ukrainians had been brought by the Germans, now they were taking their revenge, on Jews as well as Poles. 'The seventeen corpses brought to Warsaw from work camp on May 7th,' Ringelblum noted in his diary, 'made a dreadful impression: earless, arms and other limbs twisted, the tortured inflicted by the Ukrainian camp guards clearly discernible.
Atrocities against the Jewish minority began within a few days of the German occupation. The Ukrainian auxiliary police participated in the Babi Yar massacre.
Interestingly, among others, about 621 members of OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) were executed in Babi Yar, including the Ukrainian poet Olena Teliha.
On September 1, 1941, Ukrainian newspaper Volhyn said: "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 advance of the invasion of Soviet Union, the SS leaders had prepared special killing squads, the Einsatzgruppen, which set about finding and organizing local collaborators in this case they were able to recruit many Ukrainians, into these murder gangs, and were confident that the antisemitism which was common in the Ukraine could be turned easily to mass murder.
Ukrainian militias provided worked closely with the German Einatzgruppen, who were small in numbers to carry out large scale massacres without help from locals.
For example Einatzgruppen z.b.V which was immediately labelled as EG z.b.V.(for special tasks, zur besonderen Verwendung) presented a report on August 9 from the eastern Polish area which clearly reveals how excessively "retributions" were applied at this point, and that this term was actually used as camouflage language for mass murder. In the area near Pinsk a member of the ukrainian militia was ambushed and shot, for this 4500 Jews were liquidated by the Ukrainian militia working with the Einatzgruppen.
In some places, the local population provided an added dimension of danger for the local Jews, in Lviv, the Ukrainians locals themselves seized Jews and turned them over to the Nazis, in Buczacz, the pogrom was directed by the local Ukrainian intelligentsia. In Delatyn, the pogrom was largely the work of the music teacher Slawko Waszczuk; in Stanislawow, of Professor Lysiak, of the local teachers' seminary.
In 'revenge' for the murder of Symon Petlura, a Ukrainian nationalist assasinated by a Jewish man, Sholom Schwartzbard in 1926, the local Ukrainians launched the 'Petlura action' a three-day orgy of killing of local Jews on July 25, 1941, . Thousands of men and women were seized, ostensibly for forced labour. Most were taken to a prison in the city, where they were beaten to death, at least two thousand were killed.
In the Dubno pogrom the pogrom was carried out under the direction of the new Ukrainian municipal administration. In Tarnopol, a Ukrainian pharmacist, a teacher, and several others participated with the Germans in planning the pogrom. In Kosow Huculski, the leading figures in the massacre of the Jews included a former Ukrainian schoolteacher. In Skalat, a Ukrainian priest and a Ukrainian judge were members of a delegation that presented an anti-Jewish petition to the Germans. In Jablonica, after the Ukrainian priest incited the local Eastern Carpathian mountaineers against the Jews, several jews were dragged at night from their beds and drowned in teh Czeremosz River.
In Gliniany, the Ukrainian priest Hawryuluk incited his parishoners against the Jews. Also in Gliniany, the local Ukrainians staged a kangaroo court that condemned eleven Jews to die, took them to the woods and shot them all. One of those who perished at Ukrainian hands in Lviv was the well-known yiddish writer Alter Kacyzne on the way to Tarnopol he was seized by Ukrainians, and beaten to death.
At Lubeiszow, Jews armed themselves with axes, hammers, iron bars and pitchforks, to await the arrival of local Ukrainians intent upon murder....The Ukrainians came, and were beaten off. But then, retreating to the nearby village of Lubiaz, they fell immediately upon the few isolated Jewish families living there. When, the following morning, the Jews of Lubieszow's self-defence group reached Lubiaz, 'they found the bodies of twenty children, women and men without heads, bellies ripped open, legs and arms hacked off.
There is evidence that Ukrainian forces participated in crushing the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 and later the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.
Righteous people of the world
An Israeli organization Yad Vashem has recognized 1,755 Ukrainians - inhabitants of present-day Ukraine - as Righteous Among the Nations. These are the people, who risked their lives to save the Jews . Indeed as recognized historian Martin Gilbert writes in "The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust,", "A far larger number turned their weapons and their venom against the Jews.", however the bravery of this tiny percentage of Ukrainians in fighting Nazism cannot be dismissed, even if most Ukrainians aided the Nazis actively.
During his visit to Ukraine Pope John Paul II raised one of the righteous - Father Emilian Kovtch to the honours of the Altar for his sacrifice in saving innocent people from death. In 1942 father Kovtch began to baptize Jews in large numbers in atttempt to save their lives. In doing so, he broke the Nazi prohibitions and so he was arrested in December 1942. In August of 1943, for helping Jews Fr. Kovtch was deported to the Maydanek concentration camp where he was killed and burned in the camp's ovens for his courageous attempt to save lives.
The most famous account of saving hundreds of Jews during WWII is by 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 the pastoral letter, "Thou Shalt Not Kill," to protest Nazi atrocities.
Ukrainian women and German soldiers
As the English edition of the Greek newspaper 'Kathimerini' reported in an article about the children of the German armed forces during occupied Europe during WW2, quoting German psychologist and historian Kerstin Muth: "The case of Ukraine is striking. Almost any child that was born in that country between 1942 and 1944 was the offspring of a German soldier. Ukraine was under occupation and the men were at the front without any right to take leave to see their families. When the Wehrmacht left, any mothers who were able to changed the birth date, because if the authorities learned the paternity of their children they could be sent to Siberia."
Yet, this account can not be considered as a valid source.
14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Galizien (1st Ukrainian)
Main article: 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Galizien (1st Ukrainian)Losing on the eastern front, Heinrich Himmler and other nazis desperate for more recruits, pressed for the formation of a Ukrainian Waffen SS division, the proposal for recruits when offered received more than 83,000 potential volunteers (which is far more success in volunteer Waffen SS recruitment the Germans had than in any other European country). Of these initial volunteers, 13,000 eventually became members of the SS volunteer Galicia Division. Similar divisions of the Waffen-SS were created from the representatives of the other occupied nations, such as Belarusian, Russian, Estonian, Latvian, Slovakian, and others. Yet, there are no documented accounts on involvement of Ukrainian waffen SS division in prosecution of Jews.
See also
References
- Bauer, Yehuda: "The Holocuast in its European Context" pg. 14. Accessed December 24, 2006."
- Bauer, Yehuda: "The Holocuast in its European Context" pg. 13-14. Accessed December 24, 2006.
- Potichnyj, Peter J.: "Ukrainians in World War II Military Formations: An Overview". Accessed December 24, 2006.
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- "The implementation of the decision to kill all the Jews of Kiev was entrusted to Sonderkommando 4a. This unit consisted of SD (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service) and Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police; Sipo) men; the third company of the Special Duties Waffen-SS battalion; and a platoon of the No. 9 police battalion. The unit was reinforced by police battalions Nos. 45 and 305 and by units of the Ukrainian auxiliary police." (Extracts from the Article by Shmuel Spector, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Israel Gutman, editor in Chief, Yad Vashem, Sifriat Hapoalim, MacMillan Publishing Company,1990)
- " Guarded by SS, SD and Ukrainian auxiliaries, the Jews were marched in groups of 100 via the Melnikova Street to the Jewish cemetery located near the ravine called "Babi Yar". The entire surroundings of the ravine had been fenced in with barbed wire, and were cordoned off by three rows of troops: The outer circle was manned by Ukrainian police, the second with Ukrainian police and Germans, and the inner circle with Germans only." (Babi Yar (death-camps.org))
- "The Ukrainians led them past a number of different places where one after the other they had to remove their luggage, then their coats, shoes and overgarments and also underwear. They also had to leave their valuables in a designated place. There was a special pile for each article of clothing. It all happened very quickly and anyone who hesitated was kicked or pushed by the Ukrainians to keep them moving." (Statement of Truck-Driver Hofer Describing the Murder of Jews at Babi Yar)
- Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Encyclopædia Britannica)
- Central Commission for Investigation of German Crimes in Poland. Excerpts from: German Crimes in Poland. Howard Fertig, New York, 1982.
- Warsaw's failed uprising still divides (BBC) 2 August, 2004
- Ukrainian Righteous among the nations. Myron B. Kuropas. Ukrainian weekly.
- Pope to glorify Ukrainian Priest who saved Jews during the Holocaust. Dr. Alexander Roman. Ukrainian Orthodoxy
- Tzimas, Stavros: "Seeking the ‘children of the Wehrmacht - Kathimerini Newspaper’" Accessed December 24, 2006."
External links
- Late Trawniki Trials (death-camps.org)
Further reading
- Gilbert Martin (1987). The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War (Reprint Edition ed.). Owl Books. ISBN 978-0805003482.
{{cite book}}:|edition=has extra text (help) - Gilbert Martin (1986). The Holocaust: The Jewish tragedy (Unknown Binding ed.). Collins. ISBN 978-0002163057.