Schooling in Murder: Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201 and

Hauptmann Roman Shukhevych in Belarus 1942

Per Anders Rudling
Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität, Greifswald (Germany).

Introduction

The OUN(b) and UPA’s campaign to cleanse Western Ukraine of its non-

Ukrainian minorities in 1943 and 1944 was carried out in a brutal, systematic fashion.

The UPA’s cleansing of the Volhynian and Galician Poles was the culmination of a

campaign of violence, the understanding of which requires a study of the background of

its leadership, and the establishment of the context within which it operated. While

several researchers emphasize the training of a substantial part of the UPA leadership by

Nazi Germany, this is a relative recent field of study. Many questions remain to be

answered.1 What seems clear is that the brutalization of the war in the east came to

influence the violent nature of the campaign, and the way it was carried out. Therefore, in

order to understand the nature of the UPA’s anti-Polish campaign, particularly during its

most violent phase in 1943-44, it is important to study the background of its leadership,

particularly its activities and affiliations in 1941-42. Roman Shukhevych, its commander,

had distinguished himself in German service. Serving in German uniform since 1938,

Shukhevych combined his political activism as a Ukrainian nationalist with a

distinguished military record. In 1941, he was a commander of the Nachtigall battalion, a

Wehrmacht formation consisting of Ukrainian nationalists. Soldiers under his command

carried out mass shootings of Jews in the vicinity of Vinnytsia. The role of Shukhevych

and the Nachtigall in the pogroms of the June 30, 1941 L’viv pogrom has been the topic

of heated discussions.2 A less known, and often overlooked aspect of Shukhevych’s

service for Nazi Germany was his whereabouts in 1942, something often omitted in the

nationalist historiography.3 During this year, Shukhevych served as Hauptmann (captain)

of the Schutzmannschaften, and stood under the command of Höhere Polizei- und SS-

Führer Heinrich Himmler. This paper is an attempt to document this white spot in the

Shukhevych’s biography.

Background: Jews, partisans, and “bandits”

Given the huge size of the Soviet territories under German occupation, the

German military personnel were spreading thinly. Aware of this shortage, Wilhelm Keitel,

the head of the Oberkommano der Wehrmacht, argued “Since we cannot watch

everybody, we need to rule by fear.” Hitler himself, when learning about Stalin’s call for

a partisan movement in the summer of 1941, exclaimed “That’s only good, it gives us a

possibility to the exterminate everybody who challenges our rule.”4 Hitler himself

compared the fighting of partisans with that of the struggle against “red Indians.”5 On

September 16, 1941 Keitel issued an order that every German soldier, killed in a partisan

attack in the occupied Soviet Union would be avenged by the killing of “50 – 100

Communists.”6 At a September, 1941 meeting for army officers, von dem Bach-Zelewski

and SS-Brigadeführer Artur Nebe, the leader of Einsatzgruppe B linked the partisans to

the Jews: “Where the partisan is, there also is the Jew, and where the Jew is, is the

partisan.”7 In December, 1941, one month before the Wannsee conference, Himmler’s

appointment book carried the cryptic note “Jewish question/to be exterminated as

partisans.”8 As escaping Jews reinforced the partisans, the Nazis linked the expediency of

exterminating Jews to their counterinsurgency activities. The view that “The Jews are
without exception identical with the concept of partisan” was a key assumption of the

architects of the German counter-insurgency campaigns.9

Local Collaboration during World War II

The shortage of German military personnel necessitated an increased reliance on

local collaborators. The Schutzmannschaften, auxiliary police forces, were designated as

an instrument, operating under the Gendarmerie, intended to carry out the “dirty work”

(Schmutzarbeit) of the occupying forces,10 including the execution of Jews and

Communists.11 Central assignments were “anti-partisan warfare, searching the ghettoes

and sealing them off during Aktionen, to executions at the murder sites.”12

While the Schutzmannschaften had constituted a fairly small force, they were

drastically enlarged after the summer of 1942. From July 1942 to the end of that year, the

overall strength of the Schutzmannschaft-Einzeldienst increased from about 30,000 to

over 200,000 men.13 While half of the men worked in fire brigades, the dramatic growth

of the Schutzmannschaften mirrored the growth of the pro-Soviet partisan formations. By

October, 1942 there were 55,562 local police in Ostland, (i.e. the Baltics and Western

Belarus) but only 4,428 Germans, i.e. a ration of 1:13.14 With the exception of the Soviet

POWs, the Schutzmänner were recruited on a voluntary basis.15

The activities of the very institution of the Schutzmannschaft are one of the lesser-

known episodes of the Holocaust.16 While there are considerable documentary evidence

and witness accounts to establish the participation of the Schutzmannschaften in Nazi war

crimes,17 their direct participation in anti-Jewish actions is poorly documented in the

surviving German records. The German occupation authorities left relatively little

information about the local auxiliaries. Our knowledge of the anti-partisan activities is
still limited. Only in exceptional cases are the names of individual soldiers, other than

their commanders mentioned. After the war, the West German authorities paid limited

attention to war-time killing of civilian Slavs. Unlike the murder of Jews, killing of local

Slavs was generally not regarded as having been carried out on racist grounds. Anti-

partisan activities were considered as conventional war crimes, and something to which

the Federal German prosecutors in Ludwigsburg generally paid little interest.18 The fact

that many of the crimes on the local level were committed not by Germans, but by local

collaborators was something that further diminished the interest in Germany for these

crimes.19 Until the late 1960s, a large part of the evidence was kept in inaccessible Soviet

archives.20 Soviet war crimes trial records of former Schutzmänner were long

inaccessible, and much of the Belarusian and Russian archives remain off-limits to

scholars. Historians are only beginning to use the materials from Soviet war crimes

trials.21 In addition, many documents were destroyed during, or immediately after the

war.22 At the end of the war, many members of the Schutzmannschaften retreated with the

German army. A survey of about 200 Schutzmänner indicated that over 30 per cent of

them remained in the west after the war.23 Few, if any, were held accountable for their

actions. Western countries have yet to try a single Schutzmann for war crimes.24

Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201

On June 30, 1941, in L’viv, the Bandera wing of the Organization of Ukrainian

Nationalists, (OUN(b)) issued a declaration of Ukrainian statehood, modeled on the

Slovak and Croatian precedents. The OUN(b) had hoped for German recognition of their

pro-Nazi state, which they intended as a totalitarian ally of Nazi Germany. To the

disappointment of the OUN(b), the Nazi leadership refused to recognize their state,
seriously complicating the OUN(b)’s relations with its major sponsor. The German

refusal to accept the Ukrainian declaration of statehood led to a conflict with the

leadership of the Nachtigall battalion, a collaborationist formation, consisting almost

exclusively of members of the OUN(b). The Nachtigall battalion was dissolved. On

August 13, 1941, it was ordered to return from Vinnytsia to Neuhammer, where it was

disarmed at gunpoint. Its members were then transported to Frankfurt an der Oder. On

October 21, 1941, the soldiers were reorganized as the 201st Ukrainian Schutzmannschaft

Battalion, which consisted of four companies. The formal commander of the battalion

was Sturmbannführer (major) Ieven Pobihushchyi, under the supervision of the German

Hauptmann Wilhelm Mocha.25 Roman Shukhevych’s title was that of Hauptmann

(captain) of the first company and deputy commander of the legion.26 Even though

enrollment was voluntary, of the some 300 remaining members of the Nachtigall

division, only about 15 declined to sign up for service in the Schutzmannschaften.27 The

members themselves named the battalion after Ievhen Konovalets, a co-founder and the

first leader the OUN, an organization to which almost all of its members belonged. 28 To

the battalion were added 60 Soviet POWs from Poltava and Dnipropetrovs’k oblasti,

selected by Shukhevych.29 Several future UPA commanders served in Schutzmannschaft

Battalion 201, besides Roman Shukhevych himself, there was also Oleksander Luts’kyi,

the organizer and first Commander of the UPA-West, based primarily in Galicia, and his

successor Vasyl Sydor, who commanded UPA-West in 1944-49.30

After training in Germany, Schutzmannschaft battalion 201 was assigned to

Belarus on February 16, 1942. The soldiers signed a one-year contract with the
Germans.31 The Schutzmänner themselves were disappointed with this assignment,

having hoped to be stationed in Ukraine. Pobihushchyi wrote in his memoirs that

With bitterness in my heart and with serious thoughts I returned to Frankfurt [an der
Oder], and there I received the order, that on March 19, 1942, we would be sent to a so-
called Einsatz, i.e. military assignments. The location of our assignment was not given,
since only the commander had the information. Even though I was the commander, I did
not receive the order. Only Mocha had seen it. This was the way the Germans treated the
commander of the legion….How disillusioned we were when we found out that we were
not going to Ukraine, but Belarus…32

The men of Schutzmannschaft battalion 201 wore German police uniforms

without national symbols. On March 16, 1942, the battalion was ordered eastwards and

arrived in Belarus, it they replaced a Latvian Schutzmannschaft battalion. Under the

command of General J. Jakob it was spread out over 12 different points in the triangle

Mahiliou-Vitsebsk-Lepel’, guarding a territory of 2,400 square kilometers,33 at the time of

the implementation of the Holocaust of the Belarusian Jews.34

There is no consensus in the sources about the activities of the battalion. Andrii

Bolianovs’kyi’s magisterial work on Ukrainian military formations in the service of Nazi

Germany dedicates but a few pages to the division’s whereabouts in 1942.35 Frank

Golczewski describes the activities of Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201 as “fighting

partisans and killing Jews,” but does not provide a source for this claim.36 Several

veterans of Schutzmannschaft battalion 201 made it to the west after the war. Whereas 30-

40 veterans of Schutzmannschaft battalion 201 were alive in 1980, only 4 remained by

2004.37

The veterans were acutely aware of efforts to track down collaborators and

perpetrators.38 Most published veteran memoirs avoid any specific mention of the

battalion’s geographic whereabouts. Pobihushchyi’s 1982 memoirs do not provide any

details about where the division was stationed in Belarus. Many memoirs refer back to
the accounts from Schutzmann Teodor Krochak’s diary, an edited version of which

appeared in the 1953 collection, which Pobihushchyi helped to craft.39 Myroslav Kal’ba,

a non-commissioned officer in Nachtigal and the Schutzmannschaft battalion 201,40 who

has edited six books on the formation, which the nationalists prefer to refer to as DUN,

Druzhuny Ukrains’kykh Nationalistiv generally either avoids listing the battalion’s

specific geographic whereabouts in 1942 or uses abbreviations, referring to the cities

“K.” “M.” “L”, the villages “Zh.” “V”, “P” “small city B” or “the locality H.” 41

Unsurprisingly, the veterans’ own accounts of their whereabouts in Belarus make no

mention of atrocities, but present the battalion’s tasks as being of a military nature.

Ievhen Pobihushchyi describes the military assignment as

defending the major bridges across the rivers Biarezina and Dzvina and to prevent
Bolshevik partisans from destroying them. That was the main assignment, and for that
purpose, the legion was distributed over an area nearly 50 kilometers long, and
approximately 50 kilometer wide, and the soldiers were quartered in the villages in
groups of 40, since their task was to protect the local administration. In addition, to the
assignments of the legion belonged a constant combing of the forests from Bolshevik
partisans. Such combing operations (besides, being very dangerous) required no less than
two formations (80 men), which, in turn, weakened our positions in the villages, the so-
called Schützpunkte. Still – regardless of various difficulties, the entire time – that is from
March 22 to December 31, 1942 – the Legion painstakingly and in an exemplary fashion
had to carry out its military service in such a way that the Bolshevik partisans would not
be able to destroy another large bridge.42

There were indeed pressing military matters, which also required attention. The

so-called Vitsebsk or Surazh Gate was a forty-kilometer-long breach in the German front

line between Velizh and Usviaty in the RSFSR between the German Army groups

“North” and “Center.” It opened up as a result of a shock attack by the third and fourth

Soviet Armies in the winter of 1941-1942, and remained open from February to

September 28, 1942. Through this opening in the front, Soviet ammunition, weapons,

sabotage groups and medical supplies were transported behind the enemy lines.43 There

were various partisan formations in the region. Partisan Detachment 406 carried out
military operations on the Minsk-Vilnius, Maladzechna-Polatsk, and Minsk-Lepel’

railroad lines. Over the course of the war, they attacked 148 highway bridges and blew up

three railroad bridges. One of their more spectacular attacks was carried out on October

14, 1942 when they destroyed “9 automobiles and 70 Nazis on [the] Pukhavichy-Omel'na

road.”44 It is quite possible that members of Schutzmannschaft battalion 201 may have

been a target. Schutzmannschaft battalion veterans reported several attacks on August 25

and October 2, in “U.” and “Zh.”45 The accounts contain no information on reprisal

actions by the Schutzmannschaften, even though this was a standard practice.

Yet, even the memoirs of the Schutzmänner themselves indicate that the battalion

had alternative assignments beyond the safeguarding of the infrastructure. Pobihushchyi

wrote that his soldiers “found out” that in the vicinity there was a camp for Soviet POWs.

According to Pobihushchyi, Shukhevych attempted to have 45 Ukrainians POWs there

released to join the Schutzmannschaft, but was prevented from doing so as a punishment

for refusing to participate in an operation of forced grain requisitions from the local

Belarusian population.46

Interrogated by the MKGD by the very end of the war, Nachtigal and

Schutzmannschaft battalion 201 veteran Oleksandr Luts’kyi47 gave the following account

of the activities of the battalion:

In mid-April, 1942 we were brought from Minsk to the city of Lepel’, where we were
divided into four groups. Each group was assigned particularly important military objects
to be safeguarded, but the primary task was to fight the Soviet partisan movement in the
Lepel’, Ushycha, and Beshankovichy raiony. Personally, I belonged to a group of the
legion of approximately 90 people, brought to the south of the city of Lepel’, in the
village Veleushchyna, where I took part in the safeguarding of roads, the protection of the
representatives of the German command, which moved along the roads from place to
place. Several times I was sent out on assignments to liquidate Soviet partisans. The
information we received was passed on to the staff of the legion, located in the city of
Lepel’.48
 Luts’kyi stated that “in October of 1941 the entire legion was put under the

disposal of the SS, and the Germans used us to fight Soviet partisans. At that point our

battalion was already named Schutzmannschaft battalion 201.”49 The Soviet interrogators

were more interested in the veterans’ role in Nachtigal in 1941 and in the UPA from 1943

than in their whereabouts in 1942. The reports therefore provide little information of the

activities of Schutzmannschaft battalion 201. Schutzmann Volodymyr Pavlyk told his

Soviet interrogators that “[i]n 1941 and 1942 he served in the German armed formations

as a commander of a platoon and company. In that period I, as a platoon and company

commander did not participate in the battles against partisans and the Red Army, but

helped form them and sent them into battle against the Red partisans.”50 The interrogation

reports from that of other veterans, such as Schutzmann Omelian Pol’ovyi, make no

mention of the activities of battalion 201.51

Some correspondence between the 201 battalion and their German superiors has

survived. The last report from Schutzmannschaft battalion 201 was sent on November 3,

1942, at which point the unit was stationed 20 kilometers north of Lepel’.52 On December

1, 1942, the contracts of Schutzmannschaft battalion 201 expired. Its volunteers had

originally agreed to serve until December 31, 1942. Yet, in late 1942 the German

authorities increased the recruitment of forced labor in the occupied territories extending

the Schutzmannschaften’s term of service for an indefinite period.53 They therefore

declined to renew their contracts. The Schutzmänner also had grievances with the

leadership style of the Germans. Pobihushchyi himself complained that

[t[he last straw, which led to the dissolution of the entire legion [Schutzmannschaft
battalion 201] was the terrible occurrence, unforgivable crimes that the German command
allowed to be carried out against the riflemen of the legion. At the funeral of one fallen
volunteer there wasn’t even a Ukrainian banner on his bier, only a German one. One of
[our Ukrainian Schutzmänner] pushed the swastika bands in under the wreath. When a
 German policeman saw this, [the Ukrainian Schutzmann] was terribly abused. No appeals
or pledges from the Ukrainian side helped. It was deemed an insult to the German state.
The rifleman was jailed and…shot. From that moment on the attitude of the soldiers of the
[Schutzmannschaft battalion 201] to the Germans changed.54

This, according to Pobihushchyi, contributed to the battalion’s refusal to renew the

contract

We decided to abstain from [further] service, since military honor required it. We did not
receive answers to our inquiries about why our leaders were arrested, our dear ones were
arbitrarily sent to work deep into Germany, why wounded Ukrainian soldiers were not
allowed to be treated in the same hospitals as the Germans, but taken to hospitals for
“aliens.” The Legion did not want to fight for such a “New Europe,” with different
categories of citizens and soldiers. At the front we all faced death equally. Yet the
wounded had different rights and received different treatment. 55

Around Christmas, 1942, Obergruppenführer von dem Bach-Zelewski informed

Pobihushchyi that the battalion would be dissolved. On January 6, 1943, the battalion was

sent to L’viv where most members arrived January 8. The officers left Belarus on January

5, the last soldiers January 14, 1943.56 The 201st battalion was disbanded and taken to

L’viv, where its officers were arrested and placed in the jail on Lontsky Street. Some,

including Roman Shukhevych, managed to escape and went underground.57 The officers

were formally arrested for declining to continue their service, but appear to have been

treated quite leniently by the Germans. “The forms under which we were arrested were

quite delicate – we only had to surrender our weapons, and with an escorting officer from

the German officer we traveled to L’viv,” wrote Pobihushchyi.58

The German authorities reported to Berlin that while the “better treatment of the

Ukrainians by the local administration is not without effect,”59 the disbanding of

Schutzmannschaft battalion 201 caused “indignation” and “extensive disquiet” among

Galician Ukrainians, also the intelligentsia.60 The German command suggested that the

men of Schutzmannschaft battalion 201 should gather in Lublin to form a new unit. This

time its members declined to renew their contracts, even if several continued to volunteer
their services to Nazi Germany until 1945. Evhen Pobihushchyi joined the ranks of the

Waffen SS Galizien, progressing to the rank of major.61

Counterinsurgency or mass murder?

While the source material of the whereabouts of Schutzmannschaft battalion 201

is incomplete, some of the correspondence between the battalion and its German

commanders has been preserved. According to Myroslav Kal’ba, the DUN, that is

Nachtigall and Schutzmannschaft battalion 201 “lost” 450 soldiers and officers, i.e. two

thirds of it members over the entire period 1941-1945.62 Many of these losses were due to

desertions, most of which took place after 1943. However, during its ten-month tenure in

Belarus, Schutzmannschaft battalion 201 lost only 49 men, while 40 were wounded. This

should be contrasted with to the over 2,000 “partisans” it killed.63 Even if all the losses of

Schutzmannschaft battalion 201 were due to war deaths, this means a discrepancy in the

casualty ratio between its members and enemy “bandits” of over 1:40. Such

disproportional losses between German and collaborating forces and “bandits” is largely

in line with what we know about the activities of other Schutzmannschaft battalions. The

imbalance is also reflected in von dem Bach-Zelewski’s personal records, which he kept

as Bevollmächtiger für Bandenbekämpfung. On October 30, 1942 von dem Bach-

Zelewski noted 26 casualties from Schutzmannschaft battalion 201, 4 Germans and 22

“fallen members of the Schutzmannschaften.” Enemy losses were listed as 89 dead and

20 wounded.64 A routine report on the activities of Schutzmannschaft battalion 201, von

dem Bach-Zelewski’s report appears in a folder of fifteen “Meldungen an den Führer

über Bandenbekämpfung” to Reichsführer-SS Himmler, who passed them on to Adolf

Hitler personally. It contains a series of information bulletins from German-led police

forces in occupied Belarus and Ukraine.65 The reports illustrate the nature of the

“counterinsurgency” activities in which Schutzmannschaft battalion 201 was involved.

Meldung number 51 is a summary of anti-partisan warfare in Russia-South,

Ukraine, and the Bezirk Białystok, which is a summary of the police activities in that

region from September to November, 1942. Passed to Hitler on December 29, 1942, it

shows the realities of the Bandenbekämpfung. The number of Jews outweighs all other

groups executed, and the number of “bandits” executed after an Aktion far outweighs the

number of people killed in action.

Bandits
Killed in combat 1,337
Executed prisoners 737
Executed later 7,827
Bandit helpers
Arrested 16,553
Executed 14,257
Jews Executed 363,211
Deserters 140
German casualties
Dead 174
Wounded 132
Missing 13
Schutzmannschaft
Dead 285
Wounded 127
Missing 13366

Meldungen 36, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 55, 56, 57, covering Russland-

Mitte and Gebiet Weissruthenien for the fall of 1942, report 28, 360 enemy casualties and

381 “own losses;” a ratio of 1:74.67 Meldung 51a, which appears in the same folder,

summarizing the entire region Russland-Süd, Ukraine, and Białystok, shows a ratio of

killed Schutzmannschaft and Germans to killed “bandits” and “bandit helpers” (excluding

the category of “Executed Jews”) of over 1:52. If we include the 363,211 executed Jews

in the column of Bandenverdächtige, or ”suspected bandits,” the ratio is 1:843.68

 It may also useful to compare the ratio of dead Schutzmannschaften to “bandits”

with the more infamous anti-partisan Aktionen, such as Operation Cottbus in 1943, during

which 6,087 “bandits” were registered as “killed in action” while only 88 German

officers and soldiers and 40 non-Germans Schutzmänner were killed and 152 wounded, a

casualty ratio of 1:47. In operation Cottbus, 90 per cent of the people killed were

unarmed.69 Christian Gerlach calculates that between 10 and 15 per cent of the victims of

the partisan hunts in Belarus actually were partisans.70 Regular warfare or

counterinsurgency campaigns do not generate such staggering imbalances. Rather, they

show the genocidal consequences of the war of annihilation, in line with Keitel, Himmler,

and Hitler’s directives. German historian Manfred Messerschmidt makes the following

assessment of the Schutzmannschaften

In evaluating the operations of the Schuma battalions one has to consider that … they
were involved in a ruthless scenario of terror. This included the compulsory use of
specific language. They had to speak of ‘gangs’ [‘Banden’]. Annihilation operations were
called ‘pacification’ or ‘re-establishment of security and order’.” 71

Former Schutzmänner in UPA

In the spring of 1943, the men of the Schutzmannschaft battalion 201, who had

crossed over from Belarus to Volhynia came to constitute the heart of the OUN(b)

security service, the Sluzhba Bezpeki, or SB.72 As the result of a campaign of mass

desertion from the German collaborating forces following Stalingrad, several thousand

deserting Ukrainian policemen flocked to the ranks of the UPA, forming its backbone.73

From March 15 to April 15, 1943, close to 4,000 Ukrainian former Schutzmänner joined

the UPA.74 Former Schutzmänner and other forms of auxiliary policemen, who had joined

the UPA on OUN(b) orders constituted about half of the UPA and OUN(b) leaders in the

fall of 1943: 23 per cent had a background in regional and local auxiliary police
formations, 18 per cent had been trained in German intelligence and military schools at

the beginning of the war, 11 per cent in the Nachtigall and Rolland Battalions, 8 per cent

in the regional or local administration in Nazi-occupied Ukraine, and one per cent had a

background in the Waffen-SS Division Galizien.75 The skills acquired in 1941-1942

became useful in the UPA’s ethnic cleansing of the Poles of Volhynia.76 John-Paul Himka

writes that

Of course, infiltrating the Ukrainian police formations meant taking part in anti-Jewish
actions. Apparently, this did not constitute an obstacle of conscience for the radical
nationalists. In fact, taking part in some actions was probably useful, since weapons could
be confiscated during ghetto clearings and added to the stockpile.77

Singled out by his German superiors for his particular heroism in battle,78

Pobihushchyi summarizes his own experiences of the Einsätze in Belarus in the following

way:

The struggle against the partisans was extraordinarily good education for our officers and
soldiers. It taught us a lot. Too bad, that my notes were lost at the time I was interned.
Our education, battle experience was very useful to all of our soldiers, non-commissioned
officers and officers, who continued their military paths in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army
or the I UD UNA [The first Ukrainian Division of the Ukrainian National Army]79

By 1943, as the German violence escalated, the OUN(b) appeared increasingly concerned

with the image of the Schutzmannschaften. By now, Soviet Belarusian partisans

habitually referred to the Schutzmannaschaft batallion 118 in ethnic terms as

“Ukrainians” and “Ukrainian police.”80 The OUN(b) now began to disassociate itself

from the Schutzmannschaften. “A Ukrainian police can exist only in a Ukrainian state,”

OUN(b) propaganda stated.81

Conclusion

Researching the whereabouts of Schutzmannschaft battalion 201 in occupied

Belarus in 1942 is in many ways a difficult piece of detective work. Not only are the

sources scarce, a number of actors – Soviet authorities, Ukrainian nationalists and the
veterans themselves – have all tried to distort the historical record.82 Under the presidency

of Viktor Yushchenko (2005-2010) it was government policy to glorify Shukhevych, who

the president posthumously turned into a national hero in 2007. The government-

orchestrated Shukhevych cult was accompanied by a campaign by official historians to

produce a hagiographic representation of Shukchevych’s life. His activities in the

Schutzmannschaften have been ignored and glossed over, and the presence of a handful

of Jews in the UPA presented as evidence that the OUN could not have been involved in

anti-Semitic activities.83 OUN involvement in pogroms, the fascist nature of the OUN and

its collaboration with Nazi Germany was downplayed or denied. Nachtigall’s

involvement in the murder of Jews in the summer of 1941 has been the subject of an

emotional debate. The Polish Sejm has described UPA’s ethnic cleansing of the Volhynian

Poles in 1943 in terms of “genocide.”84 By comparison, Shukhevych’s role as a

Hauptmann of Schutzmannschaft Battalion in 1942 has generated marginal attention. Yet,

a few conclusions can be made from this episode.

Shukhevych appears to have had a violent temper, and to have abused his soldiers

physically.85 Under his command, soldiers of the Nachtigall battalion carried out mass

murder of Jewish civilians in the Vinnytsia area in 1941.86 Under Shukhevych’s

leadership the UPA carried out a campaign of mass murder in Volhynia and Galicia in

1943-1944, in which 60,000-100,000 Poles and thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of

Jews lost their lives.87 It is reasonable to assume that also Schutzmannschaft battalion

201, like other Schutzmannschaft battalions and Nachtigall, its previous incarnation was

involved in a ruthless scenario of terror, aimed not only against “bandits” (partisans and

Jews), but also passive bystanders.88 The leadership of the OUN(b) – Shukhevych,
Bandera, Lenkavs’kyi, and Stets’ko shared the Nazi stereotypes of the żydokomuna, of

Jews as the tools of Moscow and/or Bolshevism, and the latter two openly approved of

the German extermination of the Jews.89 Like the Nazis, the OUN(b) leadership equated

the fight against communism with the struggle against Jews and Muscovites.90 To the

Schutzmannschaften, the struggle against communism was linked to the killing of Jews.

In Belarus, the exterminating of Jews and partisans were overlapping tasks. Anti-partisan

operations were often carried out as extermination campaigns, or outright massacres.

Jewish civilian victims of these massacres were often murdered under the pretense that

they were also partisans. The Schutzmannschaften and their German commanders tallied

up massacred Jews as “partisans.” The ratio of 1:40 killed “bandits” to Schutzmänner in

Battalion 201 indicates mass murder and executions, rather than conventional counter-

insurgency campaigns. In line with Keitel’s instructions of mass retribution, the numbers

also resemble those of other Schutzmannschaften in occupied Belarus. They were part of

a greater scheme, that of Generalplan Ost, which foresaw the deportation and

extermination of entire ethnic groups and communities.91 Given the training of much of

the UPA and SB OUN leadership by Nazi Germany, it is no coincidence that the patterns

and tactics of the OUN and UPA’s ethnic cleansing of the Volhynian Poles resemble the

anti-partisan tactics of the Schutzmannschaften. Within their ranks, a significant part of

the UPA leadership had been accustomed to the use of disproportionate violence, attacks

on civilians, and the use of collective retribution. The ethnic cleansing of the Volhynian

Poles, Jews, Armenians, and Czechs carries the hallmarks of the SS and

Schutzmannschaftens’ tactics of “anti-partisan” warfare.

1
See, for instance Timothy Snyder, “To Resolve the Ukrainian Problem Once and for All: The Ethnic Cleansing of
Ukrainians in Poland, 1943-1947,” Cold War Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2, (1999): 86-120; John-Paul Himka, “Ukrainian
Collaboration in the Extermination of the Jews During the Second World War: Sorting Out the Long-Term and Conjunctural
Factors,” in The Fate of the European Jews, 1939-1945: Continuity or Contingency, ed. Jonathan Frankel (New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), Studies in Contemporary Jewry 13 (1997): 170-189; Ivan Katchanovski,
“Terrorists or National Heroes?: Politics of the OUN and the UPA in Ukraine,” paper presented at the World Conference of
the Association for the Study of Nationalities, New York, NY, April 15, 2010. Forthcoming, Nationalities Papers.
2

On the controversies surrounding Nachtigall and the L’viv pogrom, see Philip-Christian Wachs, Der Fall Theodor
Oberländer (1905-1998): ein Lehrstück deutscher Geschichte (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus, 2000), 55-71 and Per Anders
Rudling, “The Shukhevych Cult in Ukraine: Myth Making with Complications,” paper presented at the conference World
War II and the (Re)Creation of Historical Memory in Contemporary Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine, September 25, 2009. Available
online, http://ww2-historicalmemory.org.ua/abstract_e.html (Accessed October 11, 2009)
3

A typical biography in the nationalist press could like this: “On assignment from the OUN, [Shukhevych] travelled to
Gdansk, and in June 1941 he became the deputy commander of the so-called Ukrainian Legion. It gathered the best
Ukrainian youth in emigration in Poland and Germany. After training them they marched east together with the German
army. The legion reached Vinnytsia, but Hitler did not like him, and punished him by liquidating the battalion. In 1943
Roman Shukhevych was elected head of the Bureau of the Leadership of the OUN, and in the fall he occupied the position
as Supreme Commander of the UPA.” Sign. ‘Ukrains’ka Dumka,’ “Roman Shukhevych-Taras Chuprynka,” Ukrains’ki visti,
no. 22, May 29, 1975: 7.
4

Ales’ Adamovich, ”Zapisnye knizhki raznykh let,” Nëman: Ezhemesiachnyi literaturno-khudozhestvennyi i

obshchestvenno-politicheskii zhurnal, no. 7, (July 1997): 14.
5

Philip W. Blood, Hitler’s Bandit Hunters: The SS and the Nazi Occupation of Europe (Washington, DC: Potomac Books,
Inc., 2006), 79.
6

I. N. Kuznetsov and V. G. Mazets, eds. Istoriia Belarusi v dokumentakh i materialakh (Minsk: Amalfeia, 2000), 542, citing
TsGAOR SSSR, f. 7445, op. 2, d. 140, l. 502-504; “Erlaß des Chefs des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht Keitel über
Vergeltunsmaßnahmen bei Widerstand gegen die deutsche Besatzungsmacht, vom 16. September 1941,” in Johannes
Schlootz ed., Deutsche Propaganda in Weißrußland 1941-1944: Eine Konfrontation von Propaganda und Wirklichkeit
(Berlin: Freie Universität Berlin, 1996), 13.
7

Helmut Krausnick, Hitlers Einsatzgruppen: Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges 1938-1942 (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer,
1993), 218.
8

Blood, Hitler’s Bandit Hunters, 54.

9

Hannes Heer, ”Killing Fields: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belorussia, 1941-1942,” Holocaust and Genocide
Studies 11 (1997): 88, citing Kommandatur des Sicherungs-Gebietes Weißruthenien-Abt. Ic. Lagebericht, 20. 2. 1942, BA-
MA, RH 26-707-15, p. 4.
10

Martin C. Dean, “The German Gendarmerie, the Ukrainian Schutzmannschaft and the ‘Second Wave’ of Jewish killings in
Occupied Ukraine: German Policing at the Local Level in the Zhitomir Region, 1941-1944,” German History, Vol. 14, No.
2 (1996): 178.
11

Richard Breitman, “Himmler’s Police Auxiliaries in the Occupied Soviet Territories,” Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual,
vol. 7 (1997): 27.
12

Yehoshua Büchler, “Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS: Himmler’s Personal Murder Brigades in 1941,” Holocaust and
Genocide Studies Vol. 1, No. 1, (1986): 94, citing the Stahlecker report, and Prague Military Archives, V. H. A.: Pol. Reg.
Mitte 13/74 and 5/36. Martin Dean, Collaboration in the Holocaust: Crimes of the Local Police in Belorussia and Ukraine,
1941-44 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000), 77. See also Dean (1996), 181, 192.
13

Dean, Collaboration in the Holocaust (2000), 122.

14
By comparison, the balance was 1:1 in The General Gouvernment and Norway, 1:4 in the Reichsprotektorat Böhmen-
Mähren and the Netherlands, Serbia 1:6, France 1:15, and Russia 1:20, Petras Stankeras, Litovskie politseiskie batal’ony
1941-1945 gg. (Moscow: Veche, 2009), 37.
15

"The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration (applicant) v. Vladimir Katriuk (respondent) (T-2408-96) Federal Court of
Canada Trial Division, Nadon, J. January 29, 1999,” Federal Trial Reports, Vol. 156 (Fredricton, NB: Maritime Law Book
Ltd, 1999), 178-179.
16

“The little-known role of the Gendarmerie and the Schutzmannschaft demonstrates the ‘open’ or ill-concealed nature of the
genocide in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union. The Jews were killed by shooting in pits close to their neighbours.
As German forces, especially Security Police , were so thin on the ground, most of the available local manpower had to be
utilized to carry out such as vast programme.” Martin C. Dean, “The German Gendarmerie,”191.
17

Report by Gebietskommissar Carl, October 30, 1941, in Ernst Klee et al, (eds.) ”Schöne Zeiten”: Judenmord aus der Sicht
der Täter und Gaffer (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 1988), 164-167.
18

Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the final Solution in Poland (New York:
Perennial, 1998), 150.

19
Ruth Bettina Birn, “’Zaunkönig’ an ’Uhrmacher.’ Grosse Partisanaktionen 1942/43 am Beispiel des ’Unternehmens
Winterzauber,’” Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift No. 60 (2001): 99-101.
20

Mats Deland, Purgatorium: Sverige och andra världskrigets förbrytare (Stockholm: Bokförlaget Atlas, 2010), 60.
21

Alexander Victor Prusin, “’Fascist Criminals to the Gallows!’: The Holocaust and Soviet War Crimes Trials, December
1945-February 1946,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Spring 2003), 1-30; Karel C. Berkhoff, “Dina
Pronicheva’s Story of Surviving the Babi Yar Massacre: German, Jewish, Soviet, Russian, and Ukrainian Records,” in Ray
Brandon and Wendy Lower (eds.) The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization, (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press in Association with the United States Holocaust Museum, 2008), 291-317. Other than Dean’s pioneering
work on the Schuma in Belarus, there is also Stankeras’ 2009 book on Lithuanian Schutzmannschaften. See also Per Anders
Rudling, “The Khatyn’ Massacre: A Historical Controversy Revisited,” Journal of Genocide Research (Forthcoming).

22
Stankeras, Litovskie politseiskie batal’ony, 5.
23

Martin C. Dean, ”Der Historiker als Detektiv: Fluchtweger der einheimischen Schutzmannschaften und anderer deutschen
Polizeieinheiten aus der besetzten Sowjetunion, 1943-1944.” http://www.fantom-online.de/seiten/scienc2.htm
(accessed November 7, 2007)
24

Richard Breitman, “Himmler’s Police Auxiliaries in the Occupied Soviet Territories,” Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual,
vol. 7 (1997): 33.
25

Andrii Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viiskovyi formuvannia v zbroinykh sylakh Niemechchyny,, 1939-1945 (L’viv: LNU im. I.
Franka, 2003), 143; Sergei Chuev, Ukrainskii Legion (Moscow: Iauza, 2006), 180.
26

Ievhen Pobihushchyi-Ren, Mozaїka moїkh spomyniv (Ivano-Frankiv’sk: “Lileia-HB,” 2002), 62.

27
Pobihushchyi, the former commander of the Roland battalion, served as an officer in Schutzmannschaft battalion 201, and
became an officer in the Waffen-SS Division Galizien in 1943. Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viiskovyi formuvannia, 60, 143,
360. The commanders of the other three companies were Hauptmann Bryhyder, who later continued as an officer in SS
Galizien, Vasylyi Sydor and Volodymyr Pavliuk. DA SB Ukraїny: F. 5, spr. 67418, T. 1, ark. 208-241, in Volodymyr
Serhiichuk (ed.) Roman Shukhevych u dokumentakh radians’kykh orhaniv derzhavnoї bezpeky (1940-1950) Tom I. (Kyїv:
PP Serhiichuk M.I., 2007), 529.

Parmen Posokhov, ”Shukhevych. Beloe piatno v biografii,” FRAZA, August 15, 2007
http://fraza.org.ua/zametki/15.08.07/40788.html?c=post&i=113503 (accessed November 18, 2007)
28

Chuev, Ukrainskii Legion, 180; Volodymyr V’’iatrovych, “Roman Shukhevych: soldat,” Ukraїns’ka Pravda, May 2, 2008.
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2008/4/25/75222.htm (accessed May 6, 2008), Ren, 115; Bolianovs’kyi,
Ukrains’ki viiskovyi formuvannia, 143.
29

Bolyanovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viiskovyi formuvannia 144; Stepan Kotelets’-Lisovyi, ”Mii spomnyn z legionu: U Krakovi i
Komanchi,” in Myroslav Kal’ba, (ed.), U lavakh druzhynnykiv: spohady uchasnykiv (Denver: Vydavnytstva Druzhyn
ukrains’kykh natsionalistiv, 1982), 91.
30

Katchanovski, “Terrorists or National Heores?”, 13-14, see also Petro Sodol, Ukrainska povstanska armiia, 1943-49.
Dovidnyk. (New York: Proloh, 1994).
31

Mykola Posivnych, “Roman Shukhevych (30.VI.1907-5.III.1950)” in Petro J. Potichnyj and Mykola Posivnych (eds.),
Litopys Ukraїns’koї Povstans’koї Armiї, Tom 45, Heneral Roman Shukhevych – ”Taras Chuprynka” Holovnyi Komandyr
UPA (Toronto and L’viv: Vydavnytstvo “Litopys UPA,” 2007) 29, citing Myroslav Kal’ba, Druzhyny Ukraїns’kykh
Natsionalistiv (Detroit: DUN, 1994), 45-53, 75-80.
32

Pohibushchyi, Mozaїka moїkh spomyniv (1982/2002), 64.

33

Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viiskovyi formuvannia, 144; Chuev, Ukrainskii Legion, 183.

34

R. A. Chernoglazova (ed.) Tragediia evreev Belorussii v gody nemetskoi okkupatsii (1941-1944): Sbornik materialov i
dokumentov (Minsk: Ia. B. Dremach and E. S. Hal’perin, 1995), 169-181.
35

Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viiskovyi formuvannia, 143-151.

36

Frank Golczewski “Die Kollaboration in der Ukraine,” in Christoph Dieckmann, Babette Quinkert, Tatjana Tönsmeyer
(eds.), Kooperation und Verbrechen. Formen der “Kollaboration“ im östlichen Europa 1939-1945 (Göttingen: Wallenstein,
2003), 176. However, Golczewski does not provide a footnote or source for this claim.

37
Myroslav Kal’ba, DUN v rozbudovi UPA (Detroit and Ternopil’: Dzhura, 2005), 109-112; Kal’ba in Ievhen Pobihushchyi-
Ren, Mozaїka moїkh spomyniv. Tom druhyi. (Munich and London: Ievhen Pobihushchyi-Ren and the Association of
Ukrainian Former Combatants in Great Britain, 1985, 264.
38

In his post-war correspondence with Pobihushchyi, Myroslav Kal’ba refers to the activities of the Wiesenthal Centre as “a
Jewish assault that knows no limits.” Volume two of Pobihushyi’s memoirs contains a section on his correspondence with
other former Schutzmänner. “In his attack Wiesenthal lies to create a narrative which Nachtigal and Roland leave a trail of
blood all the way to Kyiv and “Babyn Iar.” The Jewish assaults know no limits,” Myroslav Kal’ba and his wife Iryna wrote
Pobihushchyi-Ren on February 23, 1983. Pobihushchyi-Ren, Mozaїka moїkh spomyniv, 268.
39

Teodor Krochak, “Vytiahy z shchodennyka 1941-1943 rr. Pro pobut u Legioni DUN,” in Myroslav Kal’ba (ed.), U lavkah
druzhynnykiv; Druzhyny Ukraїns’kykh Nationalistiv v 1941-1942 rokakh (n.p: Vyd-ia Druzhyny ukraїnsks’kykh
nationalistiv, 1953), 59, 63, 65, 69, 72. There are some uncertainties regarding the authorship of this volume. In addition to
an unsigned foreword, this collection of memoirs lists four authors, Ievhen Pobihushchyi, Teodor Krochak, Karlo Malyi and
Ievhen Ren. Later in life Ievhen Pobihushyi used the name Ievhen Pobihushchyi-Ren. In his 1982 memoirs, Pobihushchyi-
Ren writes that the 1953 volume had three authors, namely himself, Krochak and Malyi. He also informs his readers that
unsigned forward was written by Stepan Lenkavs’kyi. Pobihushchyi-Ren, 53. Likely, the Ievhen Pobihushyi and Ievhen Ren
of the 1953 volume was the same person.
40

Anatolii Kentii and Volodymyr Lozyts’kyi, ”From UVO fighter to sumpreme commander of the UPA,” in P. Sokan and P.
Potichnyj, (eds.), Zhyttia i borot’ba Henerala “Tarasa Chuprynky” (1907-1950): dokumenty i materialy Litopys UPA, nova
seriia, 10,(Kyiv and Toronto: Litopys UPA, 2007), 95; Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viiskovyi formuvannia, 59.
41

Krochak, “Vytiahy z shchodennyka,” 59, 63, 65, 69, 72; Kal’ba, U lavakh Druzhynykiv, 102, 104, 105, 106. In 2008, Kal’ba
added that “All other companies were placed far from Borovkiv, such as Zhar, Komenia, Voronezha and others.” Myroslav
Kal’ba, “Nakhtigal’” v zapytanniakh i vidpovidiakh Myroslava Kal’by (L’viv: Halytsk’ka vydavnycha spilka, 2008), 45.
Ievhen Pobihushchyi-Ren, Mozaїka moїkh spomyniv (Munich and London: Ievhen Pobihushchyi and the Association of
Ukrainian Former Combatants in Great Britain, 1982), 87, 97, 103. The first volume of Pobihushchyi-Ren’s memoirs
appeared in a second edition in 2002. Myroslav Kal’ba, My prysiahaly Ukraїni: DUN 1941-1942 (L’viv: Memuarna
biblioteka NTSh, 1999), 63, 69, 70, 79; A 1982 collection of veteran memories, edited by Kal’ba follows the same trend,
containing little information on its activities in Belarus, focusing more on the battalions whereabouts in 1941 and its
dissolution. Most of the contributions are non-committal as to its specific whereabouts, or use abbreviations. However, a
certain “Vasyl” (no last name provided) mentions being stationed in Zhary, Letel’ [sic?] and “the city Voronezh on the
Biarezina river” around Easter, 1942, and Krochak locates his “first baptism of fire” to the “southeast of Zhariv, by Homol,
where none of us had been before.” A chapter by Stepan Kotelets’-Lisovyi mentions a few localities in Belarus – the
villages Cherven’, Komen’, “the village Porych, not far from Komen’,”Borovka, Zhary, and “the village Voronezh on the
Biarezina river,” but does not give the dates for its specific whereabouts. Myroslav Kal’ba, U lavkah druzhynnykiv: spohady
uchasnykiv. Materialy zibrav i vporiadkuvav Myroslav Kal’ba. (Denver: Vyd-ia Druzhyny ukraїns’kykh natsionalistiv,
1982), 91-95, 102, 104, 105, 106, 117, 119, 144.
42

Pobihushchyi-Ren, Mozaїka moїkh spomyniv (1982/2002), 65.

43

David Meltser and Vladimir Levin, The Black Book with Red Pages (Tragedy and heroism of Belorussian Jews)
(Cockneysville, MD: VIA Press, 2005), 249.
44

Meltser and Levin, The Black Book, 106.

45

Krochak,“Vytiahy z shchodennyka,” 76, 82.

46

Pobihushchyi-Ren, Mozaїka moїkh spomyniv (2002), 65

47

Petro Sodol, Ukraїns’ka Povstancha Armiia 1942-1942: Dovidnyk. (New York: Proloh, 1994), 99.
48

Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viiskovyi formuvannia, 144, citing TsDAHO Ukraїny, f. 57, op. 4, spr. 340, ark. 29-30; DA SB
Ukraїny: F. 5, spr. 67418, T. 1, ark. 208-241, in Volodymyr Serhiichuk, Roman Shukhevych u dokumentakh radians’kykh
orhaniv derzhavnoi bekpeki (1940-1950) Tom I. (Kyiv: PP Serhiichuk M. I., 2007), 529.
49

“Protokol doprosa obviniaemogo BODNARA Antona Andreevicha 29 iuinia 1945 goda,” DA SB Ukraїny, F. 5, Spr. 67418,
t. 1, ark. 138-146, in P. Sokhan’ and P. Potichnyj (eds.), Litopys UPA, Nova seriia, tom 9, Borot’ba proty povstans’koho
rukhu i natsionaluistychnoho pidpillia: protokoly dopytiv zaareshtovanykh radians’kymy orhanamy derzhavnoї bezpeky
kerivnykiv OUN i UPA 1944-1945 (Kyїv and Toronto: Litopys UPA, 2007), 320, 328, 63.
50

“Protokol dopolnitel’nogo doprosa Pevlyk Vladimira Ivanovicha 8 avgusta 1945 goda,” DA SB Ukraїny, L’viv, Spr. P-
36445, ark. 97-98 zv., in Sokhan’ and Potichnyj (eds.), Litopys UPA, Nova seriia, tom 9, 564-565, 73.
51

Sokhan’ and Potichnyj (eds.), Litopys UPA Nova seriia, tom 9, 78.
52

“Meldungen an den Führer über Bandenbekämpfung, Nr. 37 (E-spiel),” Nov. 3, 1942 and “Nr. 36, “Ergebnisse im Gebiet
Russland Mitte, Gefecht des Schutzmannschafts-Battallions 201 20 km Nördlich Lepel, Nov. 3, 1942,” Serial 124, Roll 124,
Reichsführer-SS u. Chef der Deutschen Polizei Feld-kommandostelle. T-175, Item EAP 161-b-12/250, 1st frame, 2598495,
Guide to German Records Microfilmed at Alexandria, VA. No. 33, Records of the Reich Leader of the SS and Chief of the
German Police (Part II), (Washington, DC: The National Archives, National Archives and Record Service General Service
Administration 1961), 4. http://www.archives.gov/research/microfilm/t175-2.pdf (Accessed January 17, 2010)
53

Dean “The German Gendarmerie,” (1996), 179.

54

Ievhen Pohibushchyi, “Druzhyny Ukraїns’kykh Natsionalistiv na Bilorusi,” in Kal’ba (ed.) Druzhyny Ukraїns’kykh
Natsionalistiv u 1941-1942, 38.
55
 Pohibushchyi, “Druzhyny Ukraїns’kykh Natsionalistiv na Bilorusi,” in Kal’ba (ed.) Druzhyny Ukraїns’kykh Natsionalistiv,
38.
56

Pobihushchyi in Kal’ba (ed.), U lavkah druzhynnykiv (1953), 40; Pobihushchyi-Ren Mozaїka moїkh spomyniv (2002), 85.
57

Posivnych, “Roman Shukhevych (30.VI.1907-5.III.1950)” in Potichnyj and Posivnych (eds.), Litopys Ukraїns’koї
Povstans’koї Armiї, Tom 45, Heneral Roman Shukhevych – ”Taras Chuprynka” Holovnyi Komandyr UPA (Toronto and
L’viv: Vydavnytstvo “Litopys UPA,” 2007) 29, citing Myroslav Kal’ba, Druzhyny Ukraїns’kykh Natsionalistiv (Detroit:
DUN, 1994), 45-53, 75-80; Chuev, Ukrainskii legion, 184.

58
Ievhen [Pobihushchyi]-Ren, “Spohady pro generala Romana Shukhevycha,” in Kal’ba (ed.) Druzhyny Ukraїns’kykh
Natsionalistiv u 1941-1942, 123.

59
Der Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD im Generalgouvernment an das Reichssicherheitshauptamt – Amt VII
– Berlin. February 2, 1943, ”Meldungen aus dem Generalgouvernement für die Zeit von 1. Bis 31. Januar 1943. P. 0310, p.
8, reproduced in Heinz Boberach (ed.), Regimekritik, Widerstand und Verfolgung in Deutschland und den besetzten
Gebieten [microform]: Meldungen und Berichte aus dem Geheimen Staatspolizeiamt, dem SD-Hauptampts der SS und dem
Reichssicherheitsamt 1933-1944, Teil II: Besetzte und angeglierdete Gebiete (1939-1945) Mikrofische 006.
60

“Mit grossem Unwillen wurde die Auflösung des ukrainischen Bat. 20 [sic!] der Schutzmannschaften in der Ostukraine
[sic!] aufgenommen. Die Festnahme des Offizierskorps, das früher die bekannten Roland-Nachtigallunternehmen geführt
hat, stiess auf allgemeines Unverständnis und führte insbesondere unter den Kreisen der Intelligenz in Lemberg zu einer
weitgehenden Beunruhigung, die sich erst nach Freilassung der Offiziere allmählich legte.” Ibid, p. 8-9, P. 0310, 0311.
61

DA SB Ukraїny: F. 5, spr. 67418, T. 1, ark. 208-241, in Serhiichuk, Roman Shukhevych, Tom I., 529-530.
62

Kal’ba, DUN v rozbudovi UPA, 68.

63

I. K. Patryliak, Viis’kova diial’nist’ OUN(b) u 1940-1942 rokakh (Kyiv: Kyїvs’kyi natsional’nyi universytet imeni Tarasa
Shevchenko, Instytut istroiї Ukraїny NAN Ukraїny, 2004), 386.
64

Meldung Nr. 36, “Ergebnisse im Gebiet Russland Mitte. Gefecht des Schutzmannschafts-Batallions 201, 20 km nördlich
Lepel, Feld-kommandostelle Nov 3, 1942” Records of the Reich Leader of the SS and Chief of the German Police
[Reichsführer-SS und Chef der deutschen Polizei]” United States National Archives and Records Administration
(Henceforth NARA), EAP T-175, item161-b-12/250, reel 124, frame 2599081; Blood, 90-91, citing Tagesbuch von dem
Bach (TVDB), Bundesarchiv, Berlin (Lichterfelde) A R20/45b, 55-95.

65
This folder, containing materials captured by the US Army, bears annotations showing that Hitler had seen it. US National
Archives, MF-3293, T-175, roll 124, Reichsführer-SS Chef der Deutschen Polizei, Feld-Kommandostelle, NARA EAP T-
175, item 161-b-12/250, frames 2598495 to 2599093. www.archives.gov/research/microfilm/t175-2.pdf (Accessed
January 17, 2010)
66

Meldung 51a, “Russland-Süd, Ukraine, Bialystok vom 1.9. bis 1.12. 1942,” December 29, 1942. NARA, RG 242, T175,
reel 81, frame 2601524. Also cited in Blood, 90.
67

NARA MF-3293, T-175, roll 124, frames 2599081, 2599082, 2599007, 2598963, 2896965, 2598940, 2598915, 2598937,
2598916, 2598925, 2598926, 2598836, 2598837, 2598814-2598815, 2598775- 2598778, 25987783-25987784, 2598709,
2598710, 2598703-2598704, 2598692-2598693, 2598653, 2598655.
68

Reichsführer-SS Chef der Deutschen Polizei, Meldungen 35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 51, 55, and 56,
issued November 3, 1942 to January 17, 1943. NARA MF-3293, T-175, roll 124
69

Manfred Messerschmidt, expert report, cited in “The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration (applicant) v. Vladimir
Katriuk (respondent) (T-2408-96) Federal Court of Canada Trial Division, Nadon, J. January 29, 1999,” Federal Trial
Reports, Vol. 156 (Fredricton, NB: Maritime Law Book Ltd, 1999), 183.
70

Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 907.

71

“Minister vs. Katriuk,” 184, citing Manfred Messerschmidt expert report on Schutzmannschaft battalions 115 and 118.
72

Marples (2007), 195;

73
Other Schutzmannschaft battalions saw mass desertions around the same time. On Schutzmannschaft battalions 115 and
118, see Duda and Staryk, 132, 152. On Schutzmannschaft battalion 103, see Ivan Kachanovs’kyi, “Ukraintsy ne veriat v
mify ob OUN i UPA,” Fraza.ua, October 14, 2009, http://www.fraza.ua/print/14.10.09/76064.html (Accessed
January 22, 2010) See also Katchanovski, “Terrorists or National Heroes?”
74

Serhiichuk (ed.) Roman Shukhevych, Tom I. ,11. Timothy Snyder gives a somewhat higher number, around 5,000
Ukrainians from the Schutzmannschaften deserted to join the UPA in March, 1943. Timothy Snyder, “To Resolve the
Ukrainian Problem Once and for All: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ukrainians in Poland, 1943-1947,” Cold War Studies, Vol. 1,
No. 2, (1999): 97.

75
Katchanovski, “Terrorists or National Heroes?”
76

Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations; Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 (Princeton, NJ: Yale
University Press, 2003), 162; Franziska Bruder, ”Den ukrainischen Staat erkämpfen oder sterben!”: Die Organisation
Ukrainischer Nationalisten (OUN) 1929-1948 (Berlin: Metropol, 2007), 184.
77

John-Paul Himka, “Ukrainian Collaboration in the Extermination of the Jews During the Second World War: Sorting Out
the Long-Term and Conjunctural Factors,” in The Fate of the European Jews, 1939-1945: Continuity or Contingency, ed.
Jonathan Frankel (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), Studies in Contemporary Jewry 13 (1997): 179.
78

Wolf-Dietrich Heike, Sie wollten die Freiheit: Die Geschichte der Ukrainischen Division 1943-1945 (Dorheim: Podzun-
Verlag, n.d), 42.
79

Pobihushchyi-Ren, Mozaїka moїkh spomyniv (1982/2002), 72. The Ukrainian National Army was the name the members of
the 14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (Galizische Nr. 1) chose for their organization on March 17, 1945. In their own
writings, they avoid using the term SS.
80

National’nyi Arkhiv Respubliki Belarus (NARB), f. 1450, vop. 4, d. 168, ll. 70, 72, 153.

81
TsDAVOU, f. 3833, op. 2, spr. 1, ark. 246-247, as cited in Vitalii Nakhmanovych, “Do pytannia pro sklad uchasnykiv
karal’nykh aktsii v okupovanomu Kyievi (1941-1943) in V. R. Nakmanovych et al, (eds.) Druha svitova viina i dolia
narodiv Ukraїny: Materialy 2-ї Vseukraїnsäkoї naukovoї konferentsiї m. Kyїv, 30-31 zhovtnia 2006 r. (Kyiv:
Zovnishtorhvydav, 2007), 254.
82

Former Nachtigall and Schuma 201 veteran Myroslav Kal’ba, one of the few surviving veterans of Nachtigall and
Schutzmannschaft battalion 201, who was present in L’viv on June 30th, 1941, deny that that well-documented pogrom took
place, and claims not to have seen anyone killed. Myroslav Kal’ba, “Nakhtigal” v zapytanniakh i vidpovidiakh Myroslava
Kal’by (L’viv: Halyts’ka vydavnycha spilka, 2008), 23-25. Survivors of the L’viv pogrom remember these events very
differently, and emphasize the role of Ukrainian militiamen in the pogroms. On eye witness testimonies and photographs
from the L’viv pogrom See Ivan Khymka [John-Paul Himka] “Dostovirnist’ svidchennia: reliatsiia Ruzi Vagner pro
l’vivs’kyi pohrom vlitku 1941 r,” Holokost i suchasnist’: studii v Ukraini i sviti No. 2, vol. 4 (2008): 43-79. That memories
are selective and self-serving is well-known. On how participants in well-documented events suppress their memories to
make them conform to a particular political agenda, see John-Paul Himka and Eva Himka, “Absense and Presence of
Genocide and Memory: The Holocaust and the Holodomor in Interviews with Elderly Ukrainian Nationalists in Lviv,” Fifth
Annual Danyliw Research Seminar of Contemporary Ukrainian Studies, Chair of Ukrainian Studies, University of Ottawa,
October 29, 2009.
83
 For an example of this see, for instance, Volodymyr V’’iatrovych, Stavlennia OUN do evreiv: Formuvannia pozytsii na tli
katastrofy (L’viv: Vydavnytstvo “Ms”, 2006), 77-79, but see also Taras Kurylo and John-Paul Himka [Ivan Pavlo Khymka]
“Iak OUN stavylasia do ievreiv? Rosdumy nad knyzhkoiu Volodymyra V’’iatrovycha. Ukraina Moderna vo. 12 (2008):
252-265. We know the names of four Jews who served in UPA. This is presented as evidence that the OUN and UPA could
not have been anti-Semitic. The UPA’s murder of thousands of Jews is overlooked, ignored, or denied by nationalists
historians and OUN apologists. Per Anders Rudling and John-Paul Himka, “The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the
Holocaust,” paper presented at the 41st National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic
Studies (AAASS), Boston, MA, November 13, 2009.
84

Bronisław Komorowski, Marszałek Sejmu, “Uchwała Sejmu Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej z dnia 15 lipca 2009 r. w sprawie
tragicznego losu Polaków na Kresach Wschodnich” Website of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland,
http://orka.sejm.gov.pl/opinie6.nsf/nazwa/2183_u/$file/2183_u.pdf (accessed October 18, 2009)
85

In his diary, OUN(b), Nachtigal, and Schutzmannschaft battalion 201 member Viktor Khar’kiv (Khmara), describes how he
was physically abused by Shukhevych. After visiting the barber without telling his superiors Khar’kiv (Khmara), other
members of his battalion go looking for him. “Returning from the barber shop, I run into captain Shukhevych, who has been
told about the fact. On the spot he attacked me, asked me how I could have managed to get out, despite the explicit
prohibition of leaving the sealed-off limits around the casern. I began explaining that I had only been to the barber. Captain
Shukhevych did not listen to that and punched me in the face.” TsDAVO Ukrainy, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 57, ark. 18. Thanks to
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe for this reference.

86
Viktor Khar’kiv (Kharma) wrote in his diary: “At the time of our march eastwards we saw with our own eyes the victims
of the Judeo-Bolshevik terror, and the sight of it so strengthened our hatred to the Jews, that in two villages we shot all the
Jews we encountered. I recall one example. At the time of our march through one village we saw many vagrant people.
Asked where they were going, they answered that the Jews were threatening them and that they are afraid of spending the
nights in their houses. As a result of that, we shot all the Jews we encountered there.” TsDAVO Ukrainy, f. 3833, op. 1, spr.
57, ark. 17. Also in Ivan Kazymyrovych Patryliak, Viis’kova diial’nist’ OUN(b) u 1940-1942 rokakh (Kyiv: NAN Ukraїny,
2004), 361-362.
87

Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, “Den polnisch-ukrainische Historikerdiskurs über den polnisch-ukrainischen Konflikt 1943-
1947,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, No. 57 (2009): 54-85; John-Paul Himka “The Ukrainian Insurgent Army and
the Holocaust,” Paper presented at the 2009 National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of
Slavic Studies, Boston, MA, November 13, 2009.
88

Other Schutzmannschaft battalions from the General Government, such as 203 and 204 consisted of Trawniki men, many of
which came to staff the death camps of Sobibor and Bełżec. Frank Golczewski, “Shades of Grey: Reflections on Jewish-
Ukrainian and German-Ukrainian Relations in Galicia,” in Ray Brandon and Wendy Lower (eds.), The Shoah in Ukraine:
history, testimony, memorialization (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press in association with the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2008), 114-155. On the activities of Schutzmannschaft battalion 115/118, see Per
Anders Rudling, “The Khatyn’ Massacre: A Historical Controversy Revisisted,” Journal of Genocide Research
(Forthcoming)
89

Gabriel Finder and Aleksander Prusin, “Collaboration in Eastern Galicia: The Ukrainian Police and the Holocaust,” East
European Jewish Affairs, Vol. 34 No. 2 (2004): 102; Karel Berkhoff and Marco Carynnyk,”The Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists and Its Attitude towards Germans and Jews: Iaroslav Stets’ko’s 1941 Zhyttiepys’,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies
vol. XXIII, no. 3-4 (1999): 171.
90

The OUN(b) blueprint for its wartime activities, “Borot’ba i diial’nist’ OUN pid chas viiny” from May, 1941, authored by
Shukhevych, Stets’ko, Lenkavs’kyi and Bandera, outlined the creation of an OUN “People’s militia,” the establishment of
“internment camps, set up for Jews, asocial elements and captives.” [“Tabir internovanykh, pryznachenyi dlia zhydiv,
asotsial’nykh elementiv ta polonenykh”] It demanded “Ukraine for the Ukrainians!...Death to the Muscovite-Jewish
commune! Beat the commune, save Ukraine!”[“Ukraina dlia Ukraintsiv!...Smert’ moskovs’ko-zhydivs’kyi komuni! Byi
komunu, spasai Ukrainu!”], demanding a “dog’s death” for the Muscovite-Jewish outsiders [“moskovs’ko-zhydivs’kykh
zaid”]. TsDAVO Ukrainy, f. 3833, op. 2, spr. 1, ark. 57-76. Kopiia. Mashynopys and TsDAVO Ukrainy, f. 3855, op. 1, spr. 2,
ark. 1-2. Kopiia. Mashynopys. Both published in Stanislav Kul’chyts’kyi et al (eds.), OUN v 1941 roki. Dokumenty,
Chastyna 1. (Kyiv: Natsional’na akademiia nauk Ukrainy, Instytut istorii Ukrainy, 2006), 143, 159, 165.
91
On Generalplan Ost, see Czesław Madajczyk (ed.), Generalny Plan Wschodni: Zbiór dokumentów (Warszawa:
Glówna Komisja Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce, 1990) and Czesław Madajczyk, “General Plan East: Hitler’s
Master Plan for Expansion,” Polish Western Affairs, vol. III, no.2 (1962), accessed online,
http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/GPO/gpoarticle.HTM (August 28, 2009).