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Template:TotallyDisputed In the course of World War II and military occupation by Germany, there was both resistance against the occupation as well as collaboration with the occupiers, which was quite common for many nations, including some Ukrainians. Immediately after the invasion, the Germans were enthusiastically welcomed in some areas by Ukranian population. Large numbers of Ukrainians actively participated in the genocide on the Jewish population.The lack of Ukrainian autonomy, the bad treatment by the occupiers, and the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians as slave laborers, however, soon led to to a rapid change. By the time the Red Army re-conquered Ukraine, most of the population welcomed the soldiers as liberators except in Volhynia and parts of Eastern Galicia. Further, more than 400,000 Ukrainians fought Germany in the Red Army and more than 130,000 as part of the Soviet partisans. It should be noted, however, that cooperation with the Nazis was not limited exclusively to Ukrainians, but in fact to almost all Europen nations, including the Jews. In his book "Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis" American historian Lenni Brenner explains in detail how Zionist leaders cooperated with the Nazi regime and against their own people during the Second World War..

Invasion by Nazis

Nazi Germany launched the invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, Ukraine was quickly overrun and the Germans created the Reichskommissariat Ukraine as an administrative zone in September 1941.

In dealing with the Nazis, the Ukrainians had two alternatives: to obey or to resist. Most have chosen to resist, fighting German occupants withSoviet Army, or fighting both German and Soviets with Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Contrary to the other European countries, by beginning of WWII, Ukrainians were lacking an own country, being splited among the Soviet Union, Poland, and Romania. In Western Europe, the loyalty to one's state was taken for granted and the Nazis were the one and only enemy. In Ukraine, however, some initially saw the Germans, as a possibility to get out of oppression by the ruling power, such as Soviet, Polish, or Romanian rule. Therefore, in Ukraine some so called nationalists attempted to collaborate with the Germans willingly and enthusiastically.

Indeed some surviving veterans of the German armed forces of the time note that Ukrainians publically celebrated the invasion of their homeland by Nazi Germany, the German soldiers were kissed and warmly greeted by Ukrainians in streets, wich was more welcome treatment than in the other area invaded by Nazi Germany before that.

Methods of Collaboration with Nazi Germany

On the individual level, collaboration with the Germans usually took the form of participation in the local administration of the German-supervised auxiliary police. Motives for taking such positions varied. The need to find employment or to satisfy personal ambitions was an important consideration. The most notorious form of collaboration was to act as a concentration camp guard.

Evidence of collaboration

Testifying at the Adolf Eichmann trial a holocaust survivor known as Zuckerman had described his ordeal at the hands at Ukrainian guards, while at Kampinos (labor camp in Poland), Zuckerman had noted the presence, and cruelty, of the Ukrainian guards. There were Ukrainian guards also at another camp near Warsaw, at Lowicz. In Warsaw, it became known early in May that ninety-one Jews had been murdered at Lowicz. The 'basic cause', Ringelblum noted, 'has been the terrible treatment of those in the camp by most of the Ukrainian camp guards'...These Ukrainians had been brought by the Germans, now they were taking their revenge, on Jews as well as Poles. 'The seventeen corpses brought to Warsaw from work camp on May 7th,' Ringelblum noted in his diary, 'made a dreadful impression: earless, arms and other limbs twisted, the tortured inflicted by the Ukrainian camp guards clearly discernible.

Atrocities against the Jewish minority began within a few days of the German occupation with the Babi Yar massacre, On the second day of the occupation of Kiev, Ukrainian policemen appeared on the streets, wearing armbands announcing that they belonged to the 'Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists. The Jews of Kiev were brought to Babi Yar, Ukrainian policemen formed a corridor and drove the panic-stricken people towards the huge glade, where sticks, swearings, and dogs, who were tearing the people's bodies, forced the people to undress, to form columns in hundreds, and then to go in the columns in two towards the mouth of the ravine. The policemen took the children by the legs and threw them down in the ravine.

On September 1 , 1941: Ukrainian newspaper Volhyn said - "The element that settled our cities (Jews). . . must disappear completely from our cities. The Jewish problem is already in the process of being solved."

In advance of the invasion of Soviet Union, the SS leaders had prepared special killing squads, the Einsatzgruppen, which set about finding and organizing local collaborators in this case they were able to recruit many Ukrainians, into these murder gangs, and were confident that the antisemitism which was common in the Ukraine could be turned easily to mass murder.

Ukrainian militias provided worked closely with the German Einatzgruppen, who were small in numbers to carry out large scale massacres without help from locals.

For example Einatzgruppen z.b.V which was immediately labelled as EG z.b.V.(for special tasks, zur besonderen Verwendung) presented a report on August 9 from the eastern Polish area which clearly reveals how excessively "retributions" were applied at this point, and that this term was actually used as camouflage language for mass murder. In the area near Pinsk a member of the ukrainian militia was ambushed and shot, for this 4500 Jews were liquidated by the Ukrainian militia working with the Einatzgruppen.

In some places, the local population provided an added dimension of danger for the local Jews, in Lvov, the Ukrainians locals themselves seized jews and turned them over to the Nazis, in Buczacz, the pogrom was directed by the local Ukrainian intelligentsia. In Delatyn, the pogrom was largely the work of the music teacher Slawko Waszczuk; in Stanislawow, of Professor Lysiak, of the local teachers' seminary.

In 'revenge' for the murder of Symon Petlura, a Ukrainian nationalist assasinated by a Jewish man, Sholom Schwartzbard in 1926, the local Ukrainians launched the 'Petlura action' a three-day orgy of killing of local Jews on July 25, 1941, . Thousands of men and women were seized, ostensibly for forced labour. Most were taken to a prison in the city, where they were beaten to death, at least two thousand were killed.

In the Dubno pogrom the pogrom was carried out under the direction of the new Ukrainian municipal administration. In Tarnopol, a Ukrainian pharmacist, a teacher, and several others participated with the Germans in planning the pogrom. In Kosow Huculski, the leading figures in the massacre of the Jews included a former Ukrainian schoolteacher. In Skalat, a Ukrainian priest and a Ukrainian judge were members of a delegation that presented an anti-Jewish petition to the Germans. In Jablonica, after the Ukrainian priest incited the local Eastern Carpathian mountaineers against the Jews, several jews were dragged at night from their beds and drowned in teh Czeremosz River.

In Gliniany, the Ukrainian priest Hawryuluk incited his parishoners against the Jews. Also in Gliniany, the local Ukrainians staged a kangaroo court that condemned eleven Jews to die, took them to the woods and shot them all. One of those who perished at Ukrainian hands in Lvov was the well-known yiddish writer Alter Kacyzne on the way to Tarnopol he was seized by Ukrainians, and beaten to death.'

At Lubeiszow, Jews armed themselves with axes, hammers, iron bars and pitchforks, to await the arrival of local Ukrainians intent upon murder....The Ukrainians came, and were beaten off. But then, retreating to the nearby village of Lubiaz, they fell immediately upon the few isolated Jewish families living there. When, the following morning, the Jews of Lubieszow's self-defence group reached Lubiaz, 'they found the bodies of twenty children, women and men without heads, bellies ripped open, legs and arms hacked off.

Ukrainian women and German soldiers

Since the invading German forces were widely greeted as liberators by many Ukrainians, sexual relations between German soldiers and Ukrainian women were commonplace. Although officially this was frowned on as evidenced by statements by Alfred Rosenberg stating that sexual relations between Germans and women in the eastern territories was forbidden, it was widely ignored. Whereas in France or Norway this 'sleeping with the enemy' was considered a form of collaboration, this is not so in the Ukraine even after the war, by 1942, the Germans own estimate for the number of Ukrainian women with child from German soldiers and officers numbered over one million, such an extraordinary figure is plausible as the invading German army numbered almost three million. Some of these children were taken to Germany to be adopted by ethnic Germans.

14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Galizien (1st Ukrainian)

Losing on the eastern front, Heinrich Himmler and other nazis desperate for more recruits, pressed for the formation of a Ukrainian waffen SS division, the proposal for recruits when offered received more than 83,000 potential volunteers. Of these initial volunteers, 13,000 eventually became members of the SS volunteer Galicia Division. Similar divisions of the Waffen-SS were created from the representatioves of the other occupied nations, such as Belarusian, Russian, Estonian, Latvian, Slovakian, and others.

See also

• Soviet Army
• Soviet partisans
• Ukrainian Insurgent Army
• History of the Jews in Ukraine

References

1. Bauer, Yehuda: "The Holocuast in its European Context" pg. 14. Accessed December 24, 2006."
2. Bauer, Yehuda: "The Holocuast in its European Context" pg. 13-14. Accessed December 24, 2006.
3. Potichnyj, Peter J.: "Ukrainians in World War II Military Formations: An Overview". Accessed December 24, 2006.
4. * Lenni Brenner. 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis, CounterPunch, December 23, 2002.

• Gilbert Martin (1987). The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War (Reprint Edition ed.). Owl Books. ISBN 978-0805003482. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
• Gilbert Martin (1986). The Holocaust: The Jewish tragedy (Unknown Binding ed.). Collins. ISBN 978-0002163057.
• Zionist Collaboration With the Nazis