Anatomy of a Genocide

by Omer Bartov

  3 S. Szymula, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 11240, p. 9; J. Biedroń, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 1564, pp. 2–3; Turkowa, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 4968, pp. 11–12. See also W. Antochów, Moja Działalność w Armii Krajowej, Wojskowe Biuro Badań Historycznych (Military Historical Research Center, Warsaw, hereafter WBBH), Zbiory specjalne Biblioteki Naukowej (Special Collections of the Scientific Library), III/49/313, pp. 1–3. In fact by late 1939 the twenty-two members of the Buczacz district committee of the Communist Party of Soviet Ukraine (KP[bU) and its executive included only three recognizably Jewish names, the rest being Ukrainian and Russian. By early 1940 there was just one identifiable Jewish member. DATO, fond R-1, op. 1, spr. 1, protocol 1, KP(b)U Tarnopol Oblast Committee meeting, December 19, 1939, p. 6, spr. 9, Protocol 6, January 15, 1940, p. 45.

  4 J. Janicka, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 4880, p. 11; S. Pawłowski, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 3648, p. 4; W. Mroczkowski, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 7909, pp. 7–8; W. Bożek, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 11214, p. 6; A. Bodaj, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 11037, p. 5.

  5 M. Bogusz, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, pp. 63–64; J. Flondro, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 7987, pp. 27–28; F. Bosowski, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 3024, p. 27. There were many more such cases. See, e.g., M. Wołkowa, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 8028, p. 50; A. Chaszczewski, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 5825, p. 54; B. Wojciechowski, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 7981, p. 25; J. Sosiak, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 143, p. 61; S. Milewska, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 8026, pp. 49–50; B. Bełz, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 4262, p. 24; J. Mrozikowa, Archiwum Zakładu Historii Ruchu Ludowego (Archive of the Institute for the Peasant Movement, Warsaw, hereafter AZHRL), pp. 6–7. See also W. Urban, Droga Krzyżowa (Wrocław, 1983), 52; N. Davies, Europa (Kraków, 1998), 1098. In the entire area of eastern Poland occupied by the Soviets, several thousand people were murdered by their neighbors. Most estimates of Polish victims either include the entire period of 1939–45 or focus on events after 1943. T. Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations (New Haven, CT, 2003), 170, 176; H. Romański et al., Ludobójstwo dokonane przez nacjonalistów ukraińskich na Polakach w województwie tarnopolskim 1939–1946 (Wrocław, 2004), 6.

  6 Transcripts of interviews with Rutyna at his home in Buczacz in 2006 by Sofia Grachova, March 8, and Frank Grelka, June 25.

  7 Transcript of interview with Hałkiewicz at his home in Lublin by Frank Grelka, April 27, 2004.

  8 Transcript of interview with Kozarska-Dworska at her home in Wrocław by Frank Grelka, June 30, 2004. After the war she became a psychologist, specializing in clinical criminology. See J. Kozarska-Dworska, Psychopatia jako problem kryminologiczny (Warsaw, 1977).

  9 Janda, AW, II/1561, pp. 8–10, 23–24.

  10 Z. Fedus, “Pierwsza deportacja z województwa tarnopolskiego,” Zesłaniec 21 (2005): 49.

  11 Za Nove Zhyttia, January 15, 1940, p. 2.

  12 Za Nove Zhyttia, January 15, 18, 21, 1940, pp. 2, 2, and 2, respectively.

  13 Za Nove Zhyttia, January 28 and February 2, 1940, pp. 2 and 2, respectively. The youths were named Aspis, Rosentrauch, Nadler, and Rozenzweig, indicating that three of them were Jewish.

  14 DATO, fond R-1, op. 1, spr. 6, Protocol 4, KP(b)U Tarnopol Oblast Committee meeting, January 3, 1940, pp. 7–8.

  15 DATO, fond R-1, op. 1, spr. 28, Protocol 62, Appendix, December 19, 1940, pp. 143–44, spr. 27, Protocol 53, and Appendix, March 26, 1941, pp. 3, 12, 27–28.

  16 Biblioteka Narodowa (National Library, Warsaw), Mf. A. 240: Prawda Bolszewicka, May 24, 1941, p. 1.

  17 Gross, Revolution, 71–113; B.-C. Pinchuk, Shtetl Jews under Soviet Rule (Oxford, 1990), 49.

  18 L. Fenerstoin, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 4063, p. 1; Biedroń, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 1564, pp. 3–4. Stefan Kowalski from Monasterzyska testified that although “after the elections there should have been celebrations all night, no one wanted to go there” (HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 6521, p. 21). The teacher Kazimierz Sukowski remembered that “some 20 armed Soviet soldiers were positioned 300 meters from the polling station” (HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 5655, p. 21). Paweł Januszewski, Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum Archives, London (hereafter PISM), Kol. 138/253, 10897, testified that “the elections” in Buczacz “were enforced by the armed militia.” Former police official Antonin Tymiel Benjamin testified that in Monasterzyska each apartment block was assigned its own “guardian angel” charged with ensuring that all residents took part in the elections (HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 4063, p. 1).

  19 The farmer Bodaj refused to vote and went into hiding; he was later arrested: Bodaj, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 11037, p. 5; the farmer Józef Salomon was warned that “anyone who does not take part in the election will be deported to Russia”: HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 1445, p. 5; J. Thieberger, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 819, p. 6; Turkowa, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 4968, p. 13; T. Daniłow, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 5365, p. 2; W. Mriczkowski, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 7909, p. 8.

  20 Szymula, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 11240, p. 10; L. Szydłowski, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 8973, p. 37; Wołkowa, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 8028, p. 51.

  21 S. Siwy, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 9884, p. 55; S. Medyński, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 1009, p. 15; Flondro, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 7987, 28; Z. Waruszyński, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 5128, p. 22. The peasant Władysław Bożek observed that in Buczacz “the election committee was made up only of Ukrainians and chaired by a Soviet functionary”: Bożek, HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 11214, p. 6. Kazimierz Siwy of Podzameczek was of the same opinion as his relative Szymin: HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 5827, p. 54. The canon Franciszek Bosowski recalled that in Trościaniec all members of the election committee were Ukrainians. His relatives Józef and Katarzyna Bosowski, and their son, subsequently died in deportation: HI, Pol., MID, 199/5, 3024, p. 27. Membership lists of the election committees to the Supreme Soviet in the Buczacz district, published on February 10, 1940, include the former Ukrainian nationalist and future mayor of Buczacz under the Germans, Ivan Bobyk, and prewar OUN adherents and future members of the German-organized police Volodymyr Lutsiv and Vasyl Lehkyi. The vast preponderance of committee members had Ukrainian names. In December 1940, of sixty deputies elected in the district election for the local soviets in Western Ukraine, there was not a single recognizably Jewish name. Za Nove Zhyttia, February 2, 10, December 19, 1940, pp. 2, 2, and 1, respectively. See also Gross, Revolution, 109.

  22 G. Hryciuk, “Victims 1939–1941,” in Shared History—Divided Memory, ed. E. Barkan, E. Cole, and K. Struve (Göttingen, 2007), 182–83, 195; Gross, Revolution, xiv. See also S. Ciesielski et al., Represje sowieckie wobec Polaków i obywateli polskich (Warsaw, 2002). Poles made up close to 40 percent of those arrested by the Soviets in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, Ukrainians and Jews 22 percent each; Jews were twice as likely to be arrested as Poles and three times more likely than Ukrainians. About 600 of those arrested died of torture and maltreatment in prison, 7,300 were murdered by the NKVD in spring 1940, and 1,200 executed in May–July 1941. Of the 20,000 in prison in June 1941 in Western Ukraine, 8,700 were murdered when the Germans invaded. K. Struve, Deutsche Herrschaft, ukrainischer Nationalismus, antijüdische Gewalt (Berlin, 2015), 216, estimates between 7,500 and 10,000 victims.

  23 Hryciuk, “Victims,” 182–83, 195; K. R. Jolluck, Exile and Identity (Pittsburgh, 2002), 13; P. Ahonen et al., People on the Move (New York, 2008), 124–26. See also A. V. Prusin, The Lands Between (New York, 2010), 142–43. According to Gross, Revolution, 269, Polish statistics compiled in 1944 indicated that 52 percent of deportees were ethnic Poles, 30 percent Jews, and 18 percent Ukrainians and Belarusians, suggesting that the ratio of Jewish deportees was three times higher than the proportionate Jewish population of prewar eastern Poland.

  24 Fedus, “Pierwsza deportacja z województwa tarnopolskiego,” 55; Janda, AW, II/1561, pp. 26–29. See also W. Janda, Dotrwać do świtu (Toruń, Poland, 1998).

  25 Transcript of interview with B. Piotrowska-Dubik by F. Grelka in Warsaw, September 21, 2005. See also the testimony of Helena Siekierska, who was deported on the same train: AW, II/1652, pp. 1–6, and by former police officer Stanisław Pawłowski: H
I, Pol., MID, 199/5, 3648, p. 4.

  26 J. Bojnowski, AW, II/1115, pp. 1–31.

  27 Transcript of interview with P. Pasichnyk by S. Grachova and A. Pavlyashuk at his home in Buczacz, March 3, 2006. See also “Memories of Zelena,” http://history.buchach.net/spohady-zhyteliv-sela-zelena (in Ukrainian, accessed October 21, 2016). According to NKVD documents, of 1,290 inmates of the regional Czortków prison, 954 were evacuated to Novosibirsk, of whom “123 prisoner members of the OUN were shot” in the course of a “mutiny” during their march to the east; they were probably executed. Another 217 prisoners were released, and most of the remaining 119 appear to have been executed in the prison. The NKVD reported the execution of 2,464 prisoners in Lwów and 560 in Tarnopol; there were many more killings in other towns. Most, although not all, of these victims were Ukrainian political activists. I. Bilas, The Repressive-Punitive System in Ukraine (Kiev, 1994, in Ukrainian and Russian), 2:250–51, 262–68. For slightly different figures, see Struve, Deutsche Herrschaft, 252–53.

  28 Transcript of interview with V. Petrykevych by S. Grachova at his home in Ivano-Frankivsk (Stanisławów), May 2006.

  29 E. Worman (Bazan), Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem (hereafter YVA), 03/4235, 1976 (transcribed 1982, hereafter Worman 1976), pp. 1–6.

  30 M. Rosner, I Am a Witness (Winnipeg, 1990), 13–22; E. Bauer Katz, Our Tomorrows Never Came (New York, 2000), 9–29.

  31 A. Nir (Reinisch), YVA, 03/11147, tape 033C/5863, transcript, 1999, pp. 2–9; H. Miller, Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, USC, Los Angeles (hereafter SFV), 47637, 1998; Gekht, “Road from Ghetto to Orphanage,” 253.

  32 M. Halpern, Family and Town (Tel Aviv, 2003, in Hebrew), 41–44; P. Anderman, The Power of Life (Ramat Gan, Israel, 2004, in Hebrew), 12–30.

  33 G. Gross, SFV 16309, June 17, 1996 (hereafter Gross 1996); S. Tischler, YVA, 03/10229, VT-1585, transcript, 1997, pp. 2–6 (hereafter Tischler 1997).

  34 Transcript of interview with J. Szechner by F. Grelka at his home in Wrocław, June 29, 2004; transcript of interview with Y. Friedlender by Eyal Ziffer, D. Friedlender’s grandson, in Israel, 2004 (hereafter Friedlender 2004). See also Katz, Our Tomorrows, xxvii.

  35 O. Bartov, “Defining Enemies, Making Victims,” AHR 103/3 (June 1998): 771–816.

  36 PISM, PRM.K.96, file 28, Okupacja Sowiecka, pp. 204–20, 214–16. See also J. B. Michlic, “Anti-Polish and Pro-Soviet?,” in Barkan, Shared History, 76–77.

  37 Okupacja Sowiecka, 217–18. The GPU had by then been renamed GUGB; it was still under the overall command of the NKVD, but was often referred to by its original name.

  38 Okupacja Sowiecka, 218–19. Penslar, Jews and the Military, 207. See also B. Meirtchak, Jewish Military Casualties in the Polish Armies in World War II (Tel Aviv, 1994).

  39 PAAA, Botschaft Moskau, Sign. 404, undated list of applications for passports by Jews in the Soviet zone of occupation in East Poland, p. 4; Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD [Sicherheitsdienst, the security service of the SS], IV D 4-2, to German Embassy in Moscow, “Juden im ehem. Ostpolen, Paß- und sonstige Anträge,” May 21, 1940; Schulenburg response, June 22, 1940. In August Schulenburg reported, “In recent weeks, organs of the NKVD in Lemberg have raided Jews who had fled from the [General] Government to the Soviet Union. . . . All Jews who could not provide proof of a permanent work place were arrested and immediately brought by buses to the train in order to be transported to Kazakhstan. This action apparently entailed 20,000–25,000 Jews.” Soviet sources mention the deportation of 22,000 people from Lwów, mostly Jewish bieżeńcy (fugitives from German-occupied Poland), on June 28–29, 1940; an NKVD report dated July 3 references 50,582 refugees deported from Lwów by the previous day, with a total of 83,207 deported from the entire Soviet zone (including 3,426 from the Tarnopol oblast), thus exceeding the generally accepted estimate of 75,000 deportees in this third wave of deportations mostly targeting Jewish refugees. PAAA, Botschaft Moskau, Sign. 495, “Rundschrift,” August 5, 1940; K. T. Lewin, Przeżyłem (Warsaw, 2006), 40, n. 1; Bilas, Punitive System of Repression, 156–57; Jolluck, Exile and Identity, 13; Gross, Revolution, 269; Ahonen, People on the Move, 123–26.

  Chapter 5: GERMAN ORDER

  1 V. Petrykevych diary; B. Petrykevych interview; S. Grachova, “The Diary of Viktor Petrykevych,” unpublished paper, Herder Institute, University of Marburg, Germany, 2007. The rest of the missing section, covering the first six months of the German occupation, likely depicted Petrykevych’s role as director of the Buczacz District Department of People’s Education under the short-lived Ukrainian nationalist administration between July and October 1941. See N. S. Myzak, For You, Holy Ukraine (Chernivtsi, 2004, in Ukrainian), 4:94–96.

  2 See also Wehrmacht report that the Hungarians had “transported Jews by trucks from Hungary . . . and dumped them in the region.” They were subsequently murdered there and in Kamieniec Podolski. Bundesarchiv (Federal Archives, Germany, hereafter BArch, here the Military Archive in Freiburg), RH 26-101/8, 24-52/3, 52/21, 26-101/2, 20-17/280, 17/277, 17/38, 17/33, 22/5, 22/187; BArch RH 162/20036, p. 797.

  3 Kramarchuk served as chief of the security service; he died in the United States in 1960. While the Germans dismantled Ukrainian self-government in the fall of 1941, they employed many Ukrainians in their own administration. Myzak, For You, Holy Ukraine, 4:94–96. See also Private Archive of Oleh Klymenko (hereafter PAK), in DATO, from HDA SBU, spr. 26874, vol. 1, pp. 190–93, 196.

  4 The collaborationist newspaper Buchatski Visti, September 14, 1941, p. 3, described a much larger event on Fedor Hill on August 31, 1941, where ten thousand people commemorated the anti-Bolshevik war of 1941 and the victims of Soviet rule in 1939-41.

  5 Father Antin Kaznovskyi was a prewar nationalist activist; his two other sons were killed in the war, and he “repeatedly protested . . . against the mass deportation of young Ukrainians as forced laborers to the Reich, and against the Holocaust.” Arrested by the Germans but rescued by his son Volodymyr, he died shortly after his arrest by the Soviet authorities in 1958. Uliana Skalska, “Biographical Sketch,” Poshuk Archive, Buczacz City Museum, making no mention of the son’s wartime function.

  6 These and the following accounts by Ukrainian policemen and their victims are based on: O. Klymenko and S. Tkachov, Ukrainian Policemen in Distrikt Galizien, Kreishauptmannschaft Chortkiv (Kharkiv, 2012, in Ukrainian), 137, 151–71, 250–58 (a list of ninety-two Ukrainian auxiliary policemen in the Buczacz district); HDA SBU, Ternopil, spr. 8540-P, pp. 13, 27; spr. 8973-P; spr. 9859-P, vol. 1, pp. 95, 133–34; vol. 2, pp. 1–3, 103–4; spr. 14050-P, 1951, pp. 122–23, 137; spr. 14320-P, pp. 17, 19–20, 44, 57, 142, 151, 159; spr. 3713, pp. 9–18; spr. 30466, 1957 indictment of Volodymyr Kaznovskyi (b. 1904, arrested 1956, sentenced to twenty-five years, hereafter Kaznovskyi indictment), appendices, vol. 1, pp. 35–36, 43–45, 53, 58–59, 192, 203–4, 222–23; vol. 2, pp. 4–5, 9, 15–16, 135–36.

  7 Generally see T. Sandkühler, “Endlösung” in Galizien (Bonn, 1996); D. Pohl, Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien (Munich, 1996).

  8 The Czortków district administration was first headed by district chief Gerhard Littschwager, then, as of April 1942, by Hans Kujath. Littschwager was dismissed for corruption, described in an internal SS report as “a loser politically, professionally, and in terms of his character,” and as having driven Czortków “almost completely to rack and ruin.” Behörde für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic, Berlin, hereafter BStU, MfS), HA XX 3047, May 14, 1943, pt. 1, pp. 19–20; BArch (Ludwigsburg Außenstelle), Personalkartei, 208 AR 611/1960; BArch ZR 572/14, pp. 1–2, 6–23 (Berlin Document Center, Series RS, hereafter BDC-RS); BArch 162/4148; Sandkühler, Endlösung, 78, 87, 454–55; Pohl, Judenverfolgung, 416–17. See also Verwaltungsordnung für die Gemeindeverbände im Distrikt Galizien (Lemberg, 1942), 19–28; “Material der 1.
Kreishauptleutetagung des Distrikts Galizien am 2.IX.1941,” Instytut Pamięci Narodowej (Institute for National Memory, Warsaw, hereafter IPN), 196 NTN-286, pp. 103, 111–13, 119, 125, 127; 196 NTN-258, p. 285.

  9 See also M. Wizinger, YVA 03/3799, pp. 9, 13–14; M. Halpern, YVA M-1/E, 2310 (hereafter Halpern 1948), p. 4 (39); J. Kornblüh, Archiwum Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego (Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw, hereafter AŻIH), 301/2605 (hereafter Kornblüh 1945). The last two claim that the victims included Jews.

  10 Z. Gerber, SFV 23336, November 28, 1996 (hereafter Gerber 1996); letter by M. Kleiner (in English, hereafter Kleiner 1951), Föhrenwald, April 10, 1951, in Kaznovskyi indictment; S. Rosen, YVA M-49/1935 AŻIH 03/2055 (hereafter S. Rosen 1960); Wizinger, YVA, 4–5; M. Halpern, BArch B162/5163 (hereafter Halpern 1965), pp. 436; Halpern 1948; Halpern, Family and Town, 45–46.

  11 Kornblüh 1945; S. Rosental, AŻIH 301/2086; Wizinger, YVA, 7–8; Halpern 1948; I. Szwarc, USHMM RG-15.084M, Acc. 1997.A.0125, reel 5, AŻIH 301/327 (hereafter Szwarc 1945); I. Gelbart, YVA 033/640, E/640, E/21-1-8 (hereafter Gelbart 1948); Katz, Our Tomorrows, 34. See also the account of “six weeks of lawless hooliganism” with “scores of Jewish victims” by Zelig Heiss, YVA, M1Q/51, March 10, 1948.

  12 S. Rosen interview with author, Tel Aviv, March 12, 2002 (hereafter S. Rosen 2002); Gelbart 1948. Gelbart later wrote that Bobyk “did all he could to express his good relationship with the Jews” and that “any Jew could turn to him during the German rule without any difficulty.” I. Gelbart, “Fourth Testimony,” in Sefer Buczacz, 275–76. Worman 1976 described Bobyk as “rather a liberal man” who “even helped Jews on some occasions.” Wizinger, YVA, 8; Kornblüh 1945. See the list of Ukrainian and Polish physicians in German-ruled Buczacz, which includes Wladimir Hamerskyj (Volodymyr Hamerskyi), Alexius Banach, and Witold Ratayski: APK zesp. 228, p. 1; 235, pp. 55, 57.