FACES AND PLACES: Ukraine under Nazi rule (07/18/04)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

Ukraine under Nazi rule

When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Ukrainians and, amazingly, many Jews, greeted them as liberators.

In the aftermath, Romania, a German ally, was awarded Bukovina. Eastern Galicia became part of the Generalgouvernment under the leadership of Hans Frank. Most of Volyn and Dnipro Ukraine were incorporated into the Reichskommisariat, ruled by the infamous Erich Koch, a psychopathic mass murderer whose loathing of Ukrainians was surpassed only by his hatred of Jews.

In "Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine Under Nazi Rule," Karl C. Berkhoff, associate professor of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Amsterdam, presents us with a thematic sketch of Ukrainian life under the Koch regime.

The book, initially part of a Dr. Magcosi-directed Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Toronto, informs us almost as much about the abominations committed by the retreating Soviets - the scorched earth policy, the dynamiting of Kyiv, Stalin's order to murder all political prisoners - as it does the horrors of Nazi rule. Ukraine's "liberators" quickly became Ukraine's tormentors, a blunder that contributed greatly to Hitler's ultimate demise.

Unlike other books on Nazi rule in Ukraine, the author focuses on the suffering of Ukrainians rather than Jews. He writes that the Jewish militia collaborated closely with the Nazis. He cites Nazi reports which suggest that while "most non-Jews expressed anti-Semitic views ... they also did not want the Jews killed." He explains the antipathy toward Jews by the fact that "whereas the official Jewish percentage of the entire pre-1949 Soviet Ukraine was only 4.9, 13.9 percent of the republican Communist Party in 1940 were officially Jewish." Jewish representation among the Soviet Ukrainian leadership was far out of proportion to Jewish percentages in the general population. Still, according to one 1941 Einzatsgruppe report, "almost nowhere could the population be moved to take active steps against the Jews." Later, when "the non-Jews of Kyiv learned that all of the Jews had been shot ... the general reaction was horror and indignation, even among those who hated Jews."

There is much to recommend this book, described by the author as "a narrative history." The Ukrainian/English spellings, for example, are a refreshing change, as are interviews with Ukrainians conducted in the Ukrainian language. Especially informative are the chapters titled "Life in the Countryside," "Ethnic Identity and Political Loyalties," "Religion and Popular Piety," and "Deportations and Forced Migrations."

The author stumbles badly, however, when he writes: "Both factions of the OUN were anti-Semitic themselves and wartime documents with regard to leading Banderites show that during the German invasion they wanted the Jews, or at the very least Jewish males, killed, and that they were willing to participate in the process." The primary source for this statement is an article by the author Marco Carynnyk titled, "The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and Its Attitude toward Germans and Jews: Iaroslav Stetsko's 1941 Zhyttiepys," which appeared in Harvard Ukrainian Studies in 1999.

Unfortunately, Dr. Berkhoff does not reference Dr. Taras Hunczak's rebuttal to the above paper, "Problems of Historiography: History and Its Sources," which appeared in Harvard Ukrainian Studies two years later. Dr. Hunczak questions the authenticity of the Stetsko "zhyttiepys." (biography) Dr. Stetsko allegedly wrote that he supported "bringing German methods of exterminating Jewry in Ukraine" when he was in a Nazi concentration camp, before such "German methods" were actually being implemented. How can this be, wonders Dr. Hunczak. He has other questions as well: why was the biography found in Ukraine and not in Germany, where it was supposedly written? Why was it "discovered" only in 1970 by a Soviet researcher? Why are there so many "factual, terminological, linguistic and chronological mistakes which Stetsko could not have made" in his own autobiography? What role did Michael Hanusiak, the Ukrainian American Soviet agent identified by the Venona Files, play in bringing it to light? The document, Dr. Hunczak concludes, "was written in the offices of KGB functionaries."

Ukrainian antagonism toward Jews during World War II cannot be dismissed simply as "traditional Ukrainian anti-Semitism" as some Jewish Americans and Israelis have a wont to do. Were Jews "the most reliable supporters of the ruling Bolshevik regime" as Resolution 17 of the Second OUN Congress alleges? The distinguished Jewish activist Arnold Margolin wrote that "Jews were prominently represented in the ranks of the Bolsheviks." Historian Arthur Adams suggests that Jews were the prime on-the-ground engineers of Ukraine's 1932-1933 Famine. "Jews abounded at the lower levels of party machinery - especially in the Cheka ..." claimed Prof. Leonard Schapiro. Dr. Hunczak informs us that all this was confirmed in 1997 when Yurii Shapoval, Volodymyr Prystaiko and Vadym Zolotariov researched the archives of the Cheka/KGB in Ukraine and concluded that "the number of Jews who were in high positions of secret service in Ukraine, exceeded all the other nationality groups put together."

Despite the OUN flaw, egregious on its face, Dr. Berkhoff's book is an extraordinary piece of research that contributes much to an understanding of modern Ukraine.

Myron Kuropas's e-mail address is: kuropas@comcast.net.

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