The Ukrainian-Russian-American Observer: On March 22, 1943 A Ukrainian Nazi collaborator Punitive Police Unit burned to death an entire Belorussian village Khatyn.

Greg Krasovsky:

March 22, 2022

On March 22, 1943 A Ukrainian Nazi collaborator Punitive Police Unit - Schutzmannschaft Battalion 118 - burned to death an entire Belorussian village Khatyn along with the infamous Nazi Waffen-SS Dirlewanger Brigade (composed of and led by convicted criminals)

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schutzmannschaft_Battalion_118

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirlewanger_Brigade

Those who do not learn & remember (accurately!) their true history (not some distorted version written by victors & propagandists) are bound to repeat it.

The Nazi war machine widely used local collaborators to do their dirty work like in Khatyn, including Belorussians, Russians and Ukrainians.

In today's Belorussia and Russia, students are taught to remember and despise these Nazi collaborators and war criminals -- despite these war criminals' attempts to justify their actions by "I served the Nazis to free my country from Soviet communists & Bolsheviks"

Unfortunately, in my Ukraine (yes, I'm part Ukrainian and spent the first 4 years of my life in Ukraine), since 1991 and especially since 2014 the Ukrainian government recognized and prompted (with tacit approval by the U.S.) Ukrainian Nazi collaborators and war criminals as Ukrainian heroes, even during Jewish- Ukrainian President Zelensky's time in office.

Streets were named after these war criminals, monuments erected, stamps issued, portraits placed on paper currency and, more importantly, they were glorified and presented as role models ("true Ukrainian patriots!") in school and college text books and academic programs.

Sad, but true.

So what's the result?

A new generation of Ukrainians with a skewed (false) understanding of history and the evils of

- fascism,
- ultra-nationalism,
- war crimes,
- crimes against humanity,
- ethnic intimidation & cleansing, and
- religious intolerance,

with all ensuing consequences.

What consequences?

A list of consequences since January of 2014 will follow in a separate post by the Ukrainian-Russian-American Observer.

See https://ura-observer.blogspot.com/

***

[1] "At least 5,295 Byelorussian settlements were destroyed by the Nazis and some or all their inhabitants killed (out of 9,200 settlements that were burned or otherwise destroyed in Belarus during World War II),[3] and more than 600 villages like Khatyn had their entire population annihilated.[3]

Altogether, over 1 million were killed in Belarus during the three years of German occupation.[3][4][5]"

See below Wikipedia article on Khatyn and Nazi war crimes in Belorussia.

***
Alyaksandr Shpakovsky (Аляксандр Шпакоўскі)
Facebook
March 22, 2022

[Google Translation]

"Remember friends.
628 [Belarusian] villages were destroyed along with their inhabitants. [1]
Mostly old people, women and children.
This ashes of Khatyn still beats in our hearts."

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=4910649655655747&id=100001322840161

**

[Google Translation]

🇧🇾Today Belarus remembers the events of March 22, 1943 in the small village of Khatyn, which was wiped off the face of the earth.

Ukrainian nationalists from the 118th auxiliary security police battalion drove 149 civilians of the village into a barn and set fire to it: those who tried to run out were machine-gunned. Among the dead were the elderly, women and 75 children under the age of 16. Only six people survived.

One of the survivors, seven-year-old Viktor Zhelobkovich, said that he hid under the body of his mother, who covered her son with herself. Vitya was wounded in the arms, but he lay silently until the executioners left. Burnt, wounded children were picked up and left by residents of neighboring villages.

Two girls also managed to escape - Maria Fedorovich and Yulia Klimovich: they were able to get out of the burning barn and crawl to the forest, where they were picked up by the inhabitants of the village of Khvorosteni. However, later this village was burned down by the invaders, and both girls died.

For some time, the participation in this horror of the members of the OUN-UPA* was hushed up and was presented only as the revenge of the Germans on the inhabitants for helping the partisans of the Avenger detachment.

*OUN: Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, UPA: Ukrainian Insurgent Army

The day before, on March 21, they attacked the convoy of German police captain Hans Wölcke, as a result of which the Olympic champion who was personally acquainted with Hitler was killed.

However, the Ukrainians took "revenge" directly and began almost immediately after the attack on Wölke: they shot 26 women from the village of Kozyri just because the captain drove past them. However, some still talk about the groundlessness of the accusations against the OUN.

🇺🇦In Ukraine, materials on Khatyn were partially destroyed after 1991, some documents disappeared without a trace when transferred from the SBU to the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance. Very similar to the perception of the Volyn massacre (https://t.me/pl_syrenka/2173) by modern Ukrainian historians and politicians, isn't it?

The 118th auxiliary security police battalion was formed in 1942 in Kyiv mainly from Ukrainian nationalists, residents of the western regions, who agreed to cooperate with the invaders, underwent special training in Germany and took a military oath of allegiance to Hitler. The head of the battalion was Sturmbannführer Erich Kerner, and the main one of the companies was the same Wölke. In fact, Grigory Vasyura ran all the affairs and enjoyed the boundless trust of Kerner.

https://t.me/pl_syrenka/2321

***

[Google Translation]

Meeting-requiem in Khatyn: 79 years of tragedy (photo)

13:16 03/22/2022 (updated: 13:24 03/22/2022)

On March 22, Belarus hosts events to commemorate the tragedy in Khatyn.

Khatyn has become a symbol of countless victims and sufferings of the Belarusian people in the Great Patriotic War. On March 22, 1943, the punishers burned alive and shot almost all the inhabitants - 149 people, including 75 children.

The grand opening of the Khatyn memorial complex took place on July 5, 1969. Over the years of its existence, the Khatyn memorial has been visited by tens of millions of people from more than a hundred countries of the world.

https://sputnik.by/20220322/meeting-rekviem-v-khatyni-79-let-tragedii-foto-1061500327.html

***

[Google Translation]

The death of Khatyn - A mystery without a statute of limitations!

Victor Glazkov, Judge of the military tribunal:
"I don't want the secrets of Khatyn gone with me"

During the occupation of Belarus by the Nazis, more than 140 punitive operations were carried out. 628 Belarusian villages were burned down together with the population, 186 of them could no longer be revived.

A significant role in the destruction of these settlements was played by units and subunits formed from collaborators who went over to the service of the Germans.

One of these formations was the 118th police battalion. It was created near Kiev in the summer of 1942. It was based on Ukrainian nationalists, and later expanded to include prisoners of war who agreed to cooperate with the Germans. Among them was Grigory Vasyura.

Black noon

This kind of large-scale punitive operation was first used in Khatyn, in the future the Nazis will use it in dozens of other Belarusian villages

On alarm that morning, the 118th police battalion, which was stationed in Pleschenitsy, and the SS battalion of Dirlewanger (something like a penal battalion, which consisted of soldiers with prison terms, inveterate thugs), based in Logoisk, were raised. Following the tracks in the melting March snow, they came to the village of Khatyn.

Further developments are known throughout the world. By noon, the police had surrounded the village in a double ring. They directed machine guns, machine guns and pistols at people. The order to burn was given by Erich Kerner, and Vasyura was in charge of police operations on the ground.

All the inhabitants of the village were herded into the collective farm barn. They forced them to raise even the sick, to take small children with them (the youngest of those killed in Khatyn was seven weeks old). A dense column of policemen shot anyone who tried to hide or escape.

However, the name of the policeman who left alive Vladimir and Sofya Yaskevich, the children who hid in a potato pile, still remains unknown - he only barked to keep quiet. There were many children among the villagers: the Baranovsky family had nine children, and the Novitsky family had seven. Everyone was driven into a barn. They locked him up, surrounded him with straw, doused him with gasoline and set him on fire.

The wooden shed quickly caught fire. Under the pressure of dozens of human bodies, they could not stand it and the doors collapsed. In burning clothes, terrified, suffocating, people rushed to run. But the police cordoned off the barn around the perimeter - almost everyone who tried to get out of it was killed.

149 villagers died in the fire, 75 of them were children. Two girls managed to escape then - Maria Fedorovich and Yulia Klimovich, who miraculously managed to get out of the burning barn and crawl to the forest, where they were picked up by the inhabitants of the village of Khvorosteni of the Kamensky village council. But they did not manage to survive the war - later this village was burned by the invaders.

Of the adults, only the 56-year-old village blacksmith Iosif Iosifovich Kaminsky survived. He regained consciousness at night, when the punishers left the village. Among the bodies of fellow villagers, he began to look for his family. During the fire, he pushed his son Adam through the space under the roof - he really hoped that the boy survived.

“How the qikha has become, I know Adasika: “Get tired, gavar, the yans have gone already.” Become yago fall, and ў little intestines fall out. I pick them up, pick them up, and he asks: "Pit, pip ...", Kaminsky later recalled more than once.

The boy died in his father's arms. Kaminsky has become a symbol of the dead village, which everyone knows now.

Having “been heroic” in Belarus, the 118th police battalion went to Poland, and then to France. Many punishers of this battalion went with the Germans to the end, many did not return to the USSR.

Most recently, the last executioner of Khatyn, Vladimir Katryuk, died in Canada. His extradition was requested by Gromyko when he was the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR. But Canada never extradited him. True, when local journalists began to write about his fascist past, he was deprived of citizenship.

From the verdict of the Military Tribunal of the Belarusian Military District

“It was established at the court session that over the entire period of service of the defendant Vasyura in the 118th police battalion on the territory of Belarus, personally by him and the punishers led by him during the operations imputed to him by sentence, more than 360 Soviet citizens, mostly children, were shot, killed and burned alive, women and the elderly, their property was looted, about 300 yards with outbuildings were destroyed, many citizens were driven into fascist slavery."
December 26, 1986

At the trial, I asked many people why they went to the executioners, almost everyone answered: “It was necessary to eat - there was no bread.”

But Vasyura did not answer. There seemed to be hatred in him. He must have been born an enemy. However, on many in the 118th battalion "there was nowhere to put samples." The battalion was commanded by the White Pole Konstantin Smovsky, who at one time was a colonel of the UNR (Ukrainian People's Republic, which existed from 1917 to 1920).

https://sputnik.by/20200316/1023834943.html

***

[Google Translation]

On March 22, 1943, the Belarusian village of Khatyn was destroyed by the Nazis.

Sakharov Center

March 22, 2021

On March 22, 1943, the Belarusian village of Khatyn was destroyed by the Nazis.

This is one of the most famous crimes against humanity committed during the Second World War.

The reason for the punitive operation was the murder of several German soldiers by partisans, including Captain Hans Wölke, the champion of the 1936 Olympic Games in shot put, a personal acquaintance of Hitler.

The operation was carried out by servicemen of the auxiliary security police from the 118th Schutzmannschaft battalion, a collaborationist formation in which former Soviet prisoners of war and immigrants from Western Ukraine fought on the side of Nazi Germany.

The operation was commanded by the battalion's chief of staff, former senior lieutenant of the Red Army Grigory Vasyura.

149 residents of Khatyn were burned alive or shot, including 75 children.

The village has been wiped off the face of the earth.

Several miraculously survivors spoke about how the massacre took place, and named many of the punishers.

In Soviet times, an impressive memorial complex was created in Khatyn, dedicated to the memory of all the dead inhabitants of Belarus.

At the same time, the fact of the participation of collaborators in the destruction of Khatyn was carefully hushed up.

However, some punishers were eventually brought to justice.

In 1975, the commander of a platoon of the 118th Schutzmannschaft Battalion, Vasily Meleshko, was convicted and shot in the USSR;

in 1987, the same fate befell Grigory Vasyura.

In 2012, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which searches around the world for hiding Nazi criminals, reported that Meleshko's former subordinate, former sergeant, squad leader of the 1st company of the 118th Schutzmannschaft battalion, Vladimir Katryuk, lives in Canada.

He died in 2015.

https://www.facebook.com/sakharovcenter/photos/a.178807758830456/4229248337119691

***

COME AND SEE | ENGLISH SUBTITLES

Movie Studio “Belarusfilm

• Jan 7, 2019 •

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJYOg4ORc1w

This story is based on documentary facts and refers to “Khatyn novel”, written by Adamovich.

The authors have chosen the exact places and events that have become a symbol of people’s misfortune and suffering.

Flera is a sixteen years old boy, dug up carbine among torn of barbed wire, rusted machine-gun belts and shot helmets. Then he went to the forests to the partisans.

At the very beginning of the film, Flera is a kid, but after going through the horror of the fascist punitive actions, he becomes an adult, frighteningly adult and becomes an old man.

The war distorted once tender, childish features of the boy and turned them into wrinkles.

The protagonist, driven by a sacred feeling of the fight against the Nazi invaders, in defiance of his mother goes to the partisan detachment.

The circles of Hell of the fascist atrocities in Belarus are rushing before his eyes like the worst nightmare.

Script: Ales Adamovich, Elem Klimov
Director: Elem Klimov

Cast: Alexey Kravchenko, Olga Mironova, Liubomiras Lautsyavichyus, Vladas Bagdonas, Yuri Lumiste

All rights reserved by National movie studio “Belarusfilm” © 1985

***

The Scariest Film Ever Made ISN'T a Horror Film

Professor Jelkington
Sep 7, 2018

*WARNING*
This video includes graphic content.
Viewer Discretion is advised.

Watch Come and See for free online:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJYOg4ORc1w

Interview with Elem Klimov (3 parts):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN9_r1NEnGM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KY53cDZT4Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT1hHyIAuFo

***

Khatyn Massacre

By Wikipedia

Khatyn (Belarusian: Хаты́нь, romanized: Chatyń, pronounced [xaˈtɨnʲ]; Russian: Хаты́нь, pronounced [xɐˈtɨnʲ]) was a village of 26 houses and 157 inhabitants in Belarus, in Lahoysk Raion, Minsk Region, 50 km away from Minsk.

On 22 March 1943, almost the entire population of the village was massacred by the Schutzmannschaft Battalion 118 in retaliation for an attack on German troops by Soviet partisans.

The battalion was composed of Nazi collaborators and assisted by the Dirlewanger Waffen-SS special battalion.[1][2][3]
...
Khatyn Memorial

Khatyn became a symbol of mass killings of the civilian population during the fighting between partisans, German troops, and collaborators.

In 1969, it was named the national war memorial of the Byelorussian SSR.[16]

Among the best-recognized symbols of the memorial complex is a monument with three birch trees, with an eternal flame instead of a fourth tree, a tribute to the one in every four Belarusians who died in the war.[5]

There is also a statue of Yuzif Kaminsky carrying his dying son, and a wall with niches to represent the victims of all the concentration camps, with large niches representing those with more than 20,000 victims.

Bells ring every 30 seconds to commemorate the rate at which Belarusian lives were lost throughout the duration of the Second World War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khatyn_massacre

***

German occupation of Byelorussia during World War II

German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 led to the military occupation of Byelorussia until August 1944 with the Soviet Operation Bagration.

The western parts of Byelorussia became part of the Reichskommissariat Ostland in 1941, but in 1943 the German authorities allowed local collaborators to set up a client state, the Belarusian Central Rada, that lasted until the Soviets restablished control over the region.

During the occupation, German actions led to about 1.6 million civilian deaths[1] including 500,000 to 550,000 Jews in the Holocaust in Belarus.[2]
...

War crimes

The German invasion and occupation resulted in heavy human casualties, with some 380,000 people deported for slave labour, and the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of more civilians.

The ethnically Slavic Byelorussian population was intended to be exterminated as part of the German ethnic cleansing operation named Generalplan Ost.

At least 5,295 Byelorussian settlements were destroyed by the Nazis and some or all their inhabitants killed (out of 9,200 settlements that were burned or otherwise destroyed in Belarus during World War II),[3] and more than 600 villages like Khatyn had their entire population annihilated.[3]

Altogether, over 1 million were killed in Belarus during the three years of German occupation.[3][4][5]

Holocaust

The largest Jewish ghetto in Soviet Belarus before the conclusion of World War II was the Minsk Ghetto, created by the Germans shortly after the invasion began.

Almost the whole, previously numerous Jewish population of Belarus which did not evacuate east ahead of the German advance was killed during the Holocaust by bullet.

The list of eradicated Jewish ghettos in Nazi-Soviet occupied Poland extending eastward toward the border with the Soviet Belarus can be found at the Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_occupation_of_Byelorussia_during_World_War_II

***

Collaboration in the Holocaust: Crimes of the Local Police in Belorussia and Ukraine, 1941-44.

By Martin Dean

Palgrave Macmillan, Mar 23, 2003 - History - 241 pages

What was the role played by local police volunteers in the Holocaust?

Using powerful eyewitness descriptions from the towns and villages of Belorussia and Ukraine, Martin Dean's new book reveals local policemen as hands-on collaborators of the Nazis.

They brutally drove Jewish neighbors from their homes and guarded them closely on the way to their deaths.

Some distinguished themselves as ruthless murders.

Outnumbering German police manpower in these areas, the local police were the foot-soldiers of the Holocaust in the east.

https://books.google.com/books?id=tdzTU1Uj3zcC

***

***

Pure Soldiers Or Sinister Legion - The Ukrainian 14th Waffen-SS Division.

By Sol Littman · 2003

Publisher: Black Rose Books

Between 1950 and 1955, thousands of veterans from the notorious German-led, Ukrainian 14th Waffen-SS Galicia Division emigrated to North America with the full consent of the governments despite immigration regulations in force at the time that forbade entry to all who served in any branch of the SS.

The Jewish community fought a brief, but futile, battle to persuade those governments to deny them entry, denouncing them as a "sinister legion" of "bloodthirsty murderers"—war criminals who had engaged in the mass murder of thousands of innocent civilians.

On the other hand, a well-organized body of Division supporters insisted there was nothing "sinister" or "murderous" about the young men who had volunteered to serve in its ranks.

They declared them exceptional soldiers who obeyed the international rules of war, praised them for being dedicated soldiers who harbored no hatred for Jews, guarded no concentration camps, and committed no crimes against humanity.

At issue then was the nature of the Division and its war record.

Were they "pure soldiers" as many of their supporters contended, or were they, to use Daniel Goldhagen's phrase, among Hitler's willing executioners?

Pure Soldiers or Bloodthirsty Murderers traces the 14th Waffen-SS Galicia Division's fortunes from its formation in April 1943, to its surrender to the British in May 1946, from immigrant farm workers in Britain, Canada and the USA, to Cold War CIA assassins.

Along the way, it attempts to shed some light on this acrimonious dispute that has continued to the present day.

Sol Littman is former Canadian Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, author of War Criminal on Trial, founding editor of The Canadian Jewish News, the First Director of B'nai Brith Canada's "League for Human Rights," and also served with the Anti-Defamation League in the United States.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Pure_Soldiers_Or_Sinister_Legion/XvBmAAAAMAAJ

***

Ukrainian Auxiliary Police

The Ukrainische Hilfspolizei or the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police (Ukrainian: Українська допоміжна поліція, Ukrains'ka dopomizhna politsiia) was the official title of the local police formation set up by Nazi Germany during World War II in Reichskommissariat Ukraine, shortly after the German conquest of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union, Germany's former co-belligerent in the invasion of Poland.[1]

The Ukrainian Auxiliary Police was created by Heinrich Himmler in mid-August 1941 and put under the control of German Ordnungspolizei in General Government territory.[1] The actual Reichskommissariat Ukraine was formed officially on 20 August 1941.[2]

The uniformed force was composed in large part of the former members of the Ukrainian People's Militia created by OUN in June.[3] There were two categories of German-controlled Ukrainian armed organisations.

The first comprised mobile police units most often called Schutzmannschaft,[1] or Schuma, organized on the battalion level and which engaged in the murder of Jews and in security warfare in most areas of Ukraine. It was subordinated directly to the German Commander of the Order Police for the area.[4]

The second category was the local police force (approximately, a constabulary), called simply the Ukrainian Police (UP) by the German administration, which the SS raised most successfully in the District of Galicia (formed 1 August 1941) extending south-east from the General Government.

Notably, the District of Galicia was a separate administrative unit from the actual Reichskommissariat Ukraine. They were not connected with each other politically.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Auxiliary_Police

***

Ukrainian Insurgent Army

The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrainian: Українська повстанська армія, УПА, Ukrayins'ka povstans'ka armiya, abbreviated UPA) was a Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary and later partisan formation.[1]

During World War II, it was engaged in guerrilla warfare against the Soviet Union, the Polish Underground State, Communist Poland, and Nazi Germany.[2][3][4]

It was established by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.

The insurgent army arose out of separate militant formations of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists—Bandera faction (the OUN-B), other militant national-patriotic formations, some former defectors of the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police, mobilization of local populations and others.[5]

The political leadership of the army belonged to the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists—Bandera.[5] It was the primary perpetrator of the ethnic cleansing of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.[6][7]

Its official date of creation is 14 October 1942,[8] day of the Intercession of the Theotokos feast. The Ukrainian People's Revolutionary Army at the period from December 1941 untl July 1943 has the same name (Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA).[9]
...
Germany

In a top secret memorandum, General-Major Brigadeführer Brenner wrote in mid-1944 to SS-Obergruppenführer General Hans-Adolf Prützmann, the highest ranking German SS officer in Ukraine, that, "The UPA has halted all attacks on units of the German army. The UPA systematically sends agents, mainly young women, into enemy-occupied territory, and the results of the intelligence are communicated to Department 1c of the [German] Army Group" on the southern front.[63]

By the Autumn of 1944, the German press was full of praise for UPA for their anti-Bolshevik successes, referring to the UPA fighters as "Ukrainian fighters for freedom"[64] After the front had passed, by the end of 1944 the Germans supplied OUN/UPA by air with arms and equipment.

In the region of Ivano-Frankivsk, there even existed a small landing strip for German transport planes. Some German personnel trained to conduct terrorist and intelligence activities behind Soviet lines, as well as some OUN-B leaders, were also transported through this channel.[65]

Poland
Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia

In 1943, the UPA adopted a policy of massacring and expelling the Polish population.[68][69]

The ethnic cleansing operation against the Poles began on a large scale in Volhynia in late February (or early Spring[69]) of that year and lasted until the end of 1944.[70]

11 July 1943 was one of the deadliest days of the massacres, with UPA units marching from village to village, killing Polish civilians. On that day, UPA units surrounded and attacked 99 Polish villages and settlements in three counties – Kowel, Horochów, and Włodzimierz Wołyński.

On the following day 50 additional villages were attacked.[71]

In January 1944, the UPA campaign of ethnic cleansing spread to the neighbouring province of Galicia. Unlike in Volhynia, where Polish villages were destroyed and their inhabitants murdered without warning, Poles in eastern Galicia were in some instances given the choice of fleeing or being killed.[69]

Ukrainian peasants sometimes joined the UPA in the violence,[69][72] and large bands of armed marauders, unaffiliated with the UPA, brutalized civilians.[73]

In other cases however, Ukrainian civilians took significant steps to protect their Polish neighbours, either by hiding them during the UPA raids or vouching that the Poles were actually Ukrainians.

The methods used by UPA to carry out the massacres were particularly brutal and were committed indiscriminately without any restraint.

Historian Norman Davies describes the killings: "Villages were torched. Roman Catholic priests were axed or crucified. Churches were burned with all their parishioners. Isolated farms were attacked by gangs carrying pitchforks and kitchen knives. Throats were cut. Pregnant women were bayoneted. Children were cut in two. Men were ambushed in the field and led away."[74]

In total, the estimated numbers of Polish civilians killed by UPA in Volhynia and Galicia is about 100,000.[75][76][77]

On 22 July 2016, the Sejm of the Republic of Poland passed a resolution declaring the massacres committed by UPA a genocide.[78]
...

Holocaust

The OUN pursued a policy of infiltrating the German police to obtain weapons and training for fighters.

In that role, it helped the Germans to carry out the Holocaust. Although most Jews were actually killed by Germans,[citation needed] the Ukrainian auxiliary police, working for the Germans, played a crucial supporting role in the liquidation of 200,000 Jews in Volhynia in the second half of 1942[114] although in isolated cases Ukrainian policemen also helped Jews to escape.[115] Most of the police deserted in the following spring and joined UPA.[114]

Numerous accounts ascribe to the UPA a role in the killing of Ukrainian Jews under the German occupation.[116][117]

According to Ray Brandon, co-editor of The Shoah in Ukraine, "Jews in hiding in Volhynia saw the UPA as a threat."[118]

While anti-Semitism did not play a significant role in Ukrainian politics,[citation needed] with the first anti-Semitic ideology and acts traced back to the Russian Civil War, by 1940–41 the publications of Ukrainian terrorist organizations became explicitly anti-Semitic.[119]

German documents of the period give the impression that Ukrainian ultranationalists were indifferent to the plight of the Jews and would either kill them or help them, whichever was more appropriate for their political goals.[120]

According to John Paul Himka, OUN militias were responsible for a wave of anti-Jewish pogroms in Lviv in 1941, in what it was at the time occupied Poland, and other areas that claimed thousands of lives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Insurgent_Army

***

The Holocaust in Ukraine

The Holocaust in Ukraine took place in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, the General Government, Crimean General Government and some areas under military control to the East of Reichskommissariat Ukraine (all subdued to Nazi Germany), in the Transnistria Governorate and Northern Bukovina (both occupied with the latter annexed by Romania) and Carpathian Ruthenia (then part of Hungary) in World War II. The listed areas are today part of Ukraine.[5][a]

Between 1941 and 1944, more than a million Jews living in the Soviet Union were murdered by Nazi Germany's "Final Solution" extermination policies.

Most of them were killed in Ukraine because most pre-WWII Soviet Jews lived in the Pale of Settlement, of which Ukraine was the biggest part.

Collaboration in Ukraine
See also: Collaboration in German-occupied Ukraine

The National Geographic reported:

A number of Ukrainians had collaborated: According to German historian Dieter Pohl, around 100,000 joined police units that provided key assistance to the Nazis. Many others staffed the local bureaucracies or lent a helping hand during mass shootings of Jews. Ukrainians, such as the infamous Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka, were also among the guards who manned the German Nazi death camps.[10]

According to The Simon Wiesenthal Center (in January 2011) "Ukraine has, to the best of our knowledge, never conducted a single investigation of a local Nazi war criminal, let alone prosecuted a Holocaust perpetrator."[11]

According to the Israeli Holocaust historian Yitzhak Arad, "In January 1942 a company of Tatar volunteers was established in Simferopol under the command of Einsatzgruppe 11. This company participated in anti-Jewish manhunts and murder actions in the rural regions."[12]

According to Timothy Snyder, "Something else to remember: the majority, probably the vast majority of people who collaborated with the German occupation were not politically motivated. They were collaborating with an occupation that was there, and which is a German historical responsibility."[13]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust_in_Ukraine

***

Lviv pogroms (1941)

The Lviv pogroms were the consecutive pogroms and massacres of Jews in June and July 1941 in the city of Lwów in Eastern Poland/Western Ukraine (now Lviv, Ukraine).

The massacres were perpetrated by Ukrainian nationalists (specifically, the OUN), German death squads (Einsatzgruppen), and urban population from 30 June to 2 July, and from 25 to 29 July, during the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

Thousands of Jews were killed both in the pogroms and in the Einsatzgruppen killings.

Ukrainian nationalists targeted Jews in the first pogrom on the pretext of their purported responsibility for the NKVD prisoner massacre in Lviv, which left behind thousands of corpses in three Lviv prisons.

The subsequent massacres were directed by the Germans in the context of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. The pogroms were ignored or obfuscated in Ukrainian historical memory, starting with OUN's actions to purge or whitewash its own record of anti-Jewish violence
...
Number of victims

The estimates for the total number of victims vary. A subsequent account by the Lviv Judenrat estimated that 2,000 Jews disappeared or were killed in the first days of July. A German security report of 16 July stated that 7,000 Jews were "captured and shot".

The former is possibly an undercounting, while the German numbers are likely exaggerated, in order to impress higher command.[28]

According to the Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, the first pogrom resulted in 2,000 to 5,000 Jewish victims. An additional 2,500 to 3,000 Jews were shot in the Einsatzgruppen killings that immediately followed.

During the so-called "Petliura Days" massacre of late July, more than 1,000 Jews were killed.[9] According to the historian Peter Longerich, the first pogrom cost at least 4,000 lives.

It was followed by the additional 2,500 to 3,000 arrests and executions in subsequent Einsatzgruppen killings, with "Petliura Days" resulting in more than 2,000 victims.[29]

The historian Dieter Pohl estimates that 4,000 of Lviv's Jews were killed in the pogroms between 1 and 25 July.[30]

According to the historian Richard Breitman, 5,000 Jews died as a result of the pogroms.

In addition, some 3,000 mostly Jews were executed in the municipal stadium by the Germans.[31]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lviv_pogroms_(1941)

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Antisemitism in Ukraine

World War II

Main article: The Holocaust in Ukraine
See also: Lviv pogroms

Photo: Jews dig their own graves, Zborov, Western Ukraine, 1941

Operation Barbarossa of 1941 brought together native Ukrainian populations of both, Soviet Ukraine and the territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union, under the German administrative control of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine to the north-east, and the General Government to the south-west.

Many historians argue that the destruction of the Jewish population of Ukraine, reduced from 870,000 to 17,000, could not have been accomplished without the aid of the local population, because the Germans lacked the manpower to reach all of the communities that were annihilated, especially in the remote villages.[18]

The nationalist OUN-Bandera faction of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army "openly advocated violence against Jews", wrote Jeffrey Burds.[19]

In August 1941 at its Second Congress in Kraków OUN-B embraced anti-Semitism. "Twenty so-called 'foreign' nationalities were listed as enemies of Ukraine: Jews were first, Poles were second."

The resolution stated: "OUN combats the Jews as the prop of the Muscovite-Bolshevik regime."[18]

On September 1, 1941, Ukrainian language 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."[20]

The Lviv pogroms were two massacres of Jews that took place from 30 June to 2 July and 25–29 July 1941 during Operation Barbarossa.

According to Yad Vashem six thousand Jews were killed primarily by rioting Ukrainian nationalists and a newly formed Ukrainian militia.

The pretext for the pogrom was a rumor that the Jews were responsible for the execution of prisoners by the Soviets before their withdrawal from Lviv.[21]

Ukrainian nationalists assisted German Security Police and the Einsatzgruppen.[22]

They compiled lists of targets for the branch offices of the KdS and assisted with the roundups (as in Stanisławów, Włodzimierz Wołyński, Łuck), as well as in Zhytomyr, Rivne and Kiev among other locations.[23][24][25]

In Korosten, the nationalists carried out the killings by themselves,[26] same as inn Sokal. Other locations followed.[27]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_Ukraine#World_War_II

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Neo-Nazism

Neo-Nazism comprises the post–World War II militant, social, and political movements that seek to revive and reinstate Nazi ideology. Neo-Nazis employ their ideology to promote hatred and white supremacy, attack racial and ethnic minorities (which include antisemitism and Islamophobia), and in some cases to create a fascist state.[1][2]

Neo-Nazism is a global phenomenon, with organized representation in many countries and international networks. It borrows elements from Nazi doctrine, including antisemitism, ultranationalism, racism, xenophobia, ableism, homophobia, anti-Romanyism, anti-communism, and creating a "Fourth Reich". Holocaust denial is common in neo-Nazi circles.

Neo-Nazis regularly display Nazi symbols and express admiration for Adolf Hitler and other Nazi leaders.

In some European and Latin American countries, laws prohibit the expression of pro-Nazi, racist, antisemitic, or homophobic views. Many Nazi-related symbols are banned in European countries (especially Germany) in an effort to curtail neo-Nazism.[3]

Ukraine

See also: Racism and discrimination in Ukraine and Ukrainian nationalism

Photo: Protesters with neo-Nazi symbols – SS-Volunteer Division "Galicia" and Patriot of Ukraine flags
Ukrainian volunteer battalion members with neo-Nazi Wolfsangel symbol, 24 July 2014

In 1991, Svoboda was founded as the Social-National Party of Ukraine.[65] The party combined radical nationalism and neo-Nazi features.[66][67][68] It was renamed and rebranded 13 years later as All-Ukrainian Association Svoboda in 2004 under Oleh Tyahnybok.

In 2016, The Nation reported that "in Ukrainian municipal elections held [in October 2015], the neo-Nazi Svoboda party won 10 percent of the vote in Kiev and placed second in Lviv. The Svoboda party's candidate won the mayoral election in the city of Konotop."[69] The Svoboda party mayor in Konotop reportedly has the number "14/88" displayed on his car and has refused to display the city's official flag because it contains a star of David, and has implied that Jews were responsible for the Holodomor.[66]

The topic of Ukrainian nationalism and its alleged relationship to neo-Nazism came to the fore in polemics about the more radical elements involved in the Euromaidan protests and subsequent Russo-Ukrainian War from 2013 onward.[68] Some Russian, Latin American, U.S. and Israeli media have attempted to portray the Ukrainian nationalists in the conflict as neo-Nazi.[70] The main Ukrainian organisations involved with a neo-Banderaite legacy are Right Sector,[71] Svoboda and Azov Battalion. The persons regarded as Ukraine's national heroes—Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych or Dmytro Klyachkivsky of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)—at times supported and then opposed the presence of the Third Reich in Ukraine.[72][73]

After Yanokovych's ouster in February 2014, the interim Yatsenyuk Government placed 4 Svoboda members in leading positions: Oleksandr Sych as Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine, Ihor Tenyukh as Minister of Defense, lawyer Ihor Shvaika as Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food and Andriy Mokhnyk as Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine.[74][75] From 14 April 2016 to 29 August 2019, the Chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament was Andriy Parubiy,[76][77] the co-founder of the neo-Nazi Social-National Party of Ukraine.[75][78]

In June 2015, Democratic Representative John Conyers and his Republican colleague Ted Yoho offered bipartisan amendments to block the U.S. military training of Ukraine's Azov Battalion—called a "neo-Nazi paramilitary militia" by Conyers and Yoho.[79][80][69] Andriy Biletsky, the head of the ultra-nationalist and neo-Nazi political groups Social-National Assembly and Patriots of Ukraine,[81] has been commander of the Azov Battalion.[82] Azov Battalion of the Ukrainian National Guard[79] is fighting pro-Russian separatists in the War in Donbass.[83][84] Some members of the battalion are openly white supremacists.[82]

...

The radical nationalists group С14, whose members openly expressed neo-Nazi views, gained notoriety in 2018 for being involved in violent attacks on Romany camps.[89][90][91]

In the 2019 Ukrainian elections, the far-right nationalist electoral alliance, including Svoboda, National Corps, Right Sector, Azov Battalion, OUN, and Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, underperformed expectations.

In the presidential election, its candidate Ruslan Koshulynskyi received 1.6% of the vote, and in the parliamentary election, it was reduced to a single seat and saw its national vote fall to 2.15%, half of its result from 2014 and one-quarter of its result from 2012.[92][93]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Nazism#Ukraine

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esoteric_Nazism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Nazism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryanism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armanen_runes

***

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totenkopf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wewelsburg

***

The Ukrainian-Russian-American Observer

Tuesday, March 22, 2022

On March 22, 1943 A Ukrainian Nazi collaborator Punitive Police Unit burned to death an entire Belorussian village Khatyn.

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