by Omer Bartov
25 Posadowski 2002, p. 398, testified that in March 1944 the Soviets “caught a Pole named Wolff, a German citizen or ethnic German, who had collaborated with the Gestapo, put him in the Czortków prison, and conducted a show trial, in which he was condemned to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out at the bus terminal.”
26 R. Dobrecka, AŻIH 301/2274; S. Dobrecki, AŻIH 301/3611. Both recorded in Łódź, likely in 1946.
27 Kornblüh 1948.
28 USHMM, RG-15.084M, reel 38, 1997.A.0125; AŻIH 301/197. See also Samuel Eizen, YIVO, RG 1187, Series 2, No. 1187, Box 1, folder 19.
29 M. Szpigiel, AŻIH 301/3492, Łódź, March 10, 1948; E. Grintal (Nachtigal), SFV 34780, Netanya, Israel, September 21, 1997. Nusia Wacher reported that “around the town of Tłuste, there were five Wehrmacht labor camps and all young people from the entire area who had survived worked in them until the Russians liberated us in March 1944.” She recalled, “In March 1944 (Purim) the goyim murdered 42 Jews with knives in the camp of Hołowczyńce at night while they were sleeping.” Private correspondence with author, Caracas, Venezuela, November 1, 2003, March 12, 2004, October 12, 2004. See also on these camps, “Vathie” or “Vati,” and the German air raid on Tłuste in Szwarc 1945; Nusia Mützel, BArch (Außenstelle Ludwigsburg), 301aa5, vol. 81, pp. 121–23, 124–29; AŻIH 964/817 and 2335/2383; Bernhard Seidenfeld, YVA 033/324, Haifa, Israel; Margules 1960; Zvi Fenster, BArch (Außenstelle Ludwigsburg) 301aa5, vol. 81, May 20, 1968, pp. 95–111: “Camps in the Czortków District”; H. (Hersch, Zvi) Fenster, AŻIH 301/1310. See also Z. Fenster, “Bericht über die Vernichtung” (July 1941–April 1944), August 2, 1968: International Tracing Service archives, Bad Arolsen, Germany (ITS), 821 88099-0-1. Komański, “Ludobójstwo i czystki etniczne,” 14, on the murder of Jews by Ukrainians wielding “axes and other sharp tools” in Jezierzany, July 1941.
Chapter 7: NEIGHBORS
1 V. Petrykevych diary.
2 Tsentalnyi derzhavnyi arkhiv vyshchykh orhaniv vlady ta upravlinnia (Central State Archives of the Supreme Bodies of Power and Government of Ukraine, Kiev, hereafter TsDAVO), fond 3833, op. 1, spr. 134, December 15, 1943, pp. 76–79.
3 G. Motyka, “Der Krieg im östlichen Galizien,” Karta 1 (2000): 36–37. See also M. Terles, Ethnic Cleansing of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, 1942–1946 (Toronto, 1993); K. Stadnik, “Ukrainian-Polish Population Transfers, 1944–46,” in Warland, ed. P. Gatrell et al. (London, 2009), 165–87. On Buczacz, see N. Davies, Europe: A History (New York, 1996), 1034–35; Urban, Droga Krzyżowa, 52–55. See also “Kartotek zbrodni ukraińskich w Małopolsce Wschodnie w latach 1939–1945,” BOss., 166629/I, vol. 1, pp. 319, 329–31, 337, 353, 356, 378, 390, 464, 476; “Informacja Wschodnia,” BS, P. 349 Cim., 1943–44: September 1943, pp. 22–26; December 1943, pp. 97–99; March 1944, pp. 162–63, describing the Germans as “indifferent to the Ukrainian anti-Polish campaign.”
4 V. Petrykevych diary; W. Wołkowski, AZHRL, Lublin, 1958, pp. 1–25, concluding that 835 Poles were killed in “mass murders carried out by Ukrainian murderers” in eighteen towns and villages in the Buczacz district. For numerous additional eyewitness accounts from the surrounding districts, see J. Wołczański, Eksterminacja (Kraków, 2006), 2:22–27, 92–94, 98–99, 105–7, 111–12, 116–17, 126, 128, 130, 141, 244, 248–49, 398–401, 428–30, claiming that “one could always come to an understanding with the Germans,” since among Poles they found “civilized people who spoke German,” but that “the so-called Banderites” accomplished “the extermination of the Polish nation” in Galicia.
5 Rutyna interviews in March and June 2006; Studium Polski Podziemnej (Polish Underground Trust, London), Lol 5/11o, April 30, 1943, pp. 90–96, 99, 104–7. While stressing “the colossal loss of the Polish population,” the report added, “The loss of the Jewish population remains beyond comment.” M. Sobków, “Völker am Scheideweg,” Karta 1 (2000): 77.
6 V. Petrykevych diary. Soviet reconnaissance units reached Buczacz the day before, March 23. On the massacre in Korościatyn, see also Sobków, “Völker am Scheideweg,” 77, claiming that 160 Poles were butchered there.
7 Sobków, “Völker am Scheideweg,” 78; BOss., 16599/II, “Ilu na jest Polaków,” p. 242.
8 Transcript of interview with S. Kubasiewicz by Frank Grelka in 2005, and written reminiscences he provided. See also “Repatriacja,” Luszpiński, http://www.luszpinski.pl/doc (accessed October 21, 2016).
9 TsDAVO, fond 3833, op. 1, spr. 134, March 23, 1944, pp. 1–4; May 27, 1944, pp. 65–66; Sobków, “Völker am Scheideweg,” 82, 85. See also Edward Hładkiewicz, YVA 06/337, Milewski, pp. 3–4: “Krupa from the hamlet of Kizia” near Koropiec “murdered his wife, since she was Polish,” and describing the massacre in Korościatyn; Wołczański, Eksterminacja, 1:141; H. Komański et al., eds., Ludobójstwo dokonane przez nacjonalistów ukraińskich na Polakach w województwie tarnopolskim 1939–1946 (Wrocław, 2004), 170–71, 651–53, 664–68, 673–74. Father Kazimierz Slupski saved several Jews in Puźniki, including the gymnasium teacher Adolf Korngut and the Judenrat member Bernhard Seifer. See W. Bartoszewski et al., eds., Righteous among Nations (London, 1969), 337–39; W. Tannenzapf et al., Memories from the Abyss (Toronto, 2009), 113–16. For an account of a massacre in February 1945 in the mixed village of Zaleszczyki Małe (Ukrainian: Mali Zaleshchyky), see Franciszek Kowalski, AW, II/1339, esp. pp. 1–8, 15–37. The AK reported the killing of over one hundred Poles, “mostly women, old people and children,” in Burakówka (Ukrainian: Buryakivka), Zaleszczyki county, on December 17–18, 1944, as well as in various villages in Buczacz and Czortków Counties, with the result that “the number of those registered for departure to the West has greatly increased.” PAK, DATO, Report No. 5, January 1, 1945, single page. Other atrocities in IPN Kraków, S 37/03/zn, vol. 3, November 22, 2002, pp. 412–13; Komański, “Ludobójstwo i czystki etniczne,” 14–15, 22–25; Józef Kroczak, AZHRL.
10 BOss. 16721/I, Stanisławów PKO (Polski Komitet Opiekuńczy, Hilfskomitee, Polish Welfare Committee) to Kraków RGO (Rada Główna Opiekuńcza, Main Welfare Council), June 8, 1944, pp. 325, 331, 333; V. Petrykevych diary. See also Polish analysis of UPA and local self-defense groups, spring 1944, AAN, zesp. 1325, DRK (Delegatura Rządu na Kraj, the Polish government in exile’s underground delegation to Poland), 202/III-126, p. 14.
11 See n. 3 above.
12 BOss. 16721/I, October 1–15, 1944, pp. 138–49.
13 See also district chief Hans Kujath’s report on evacuating the Czortków district: BArch R52 III/2, March 20, 1944, pp. 5–8; and account of the visit to Buczacz by Galicia’s governor Otto Wächter on April 8, 1944, soon after its recapture, mentioning the presence of “about 1,000 Jews, who had hidden in the area,” and for whom the retreating “Bolshevik troops had no time”: BArch R52 III/2, April 9, 1944, pp. 60–65.
14 DATO, fond P-69, op. 1, spr. 8. An undated report for the Ternopil oblast cites 7,000 civilians shot and 1,839 deported to Germany: fond R-274, op. 1, spr. 123, p. 17.
15 BArch Baden-Württemberg, GLA-K, 309 Zug. 2001-42/868, Sonderband 32, exhumation protocols, interrogation transcripts, and reports, trans. from Russian into German for the trial of Brettschneider et al., pp. 11–18.
16 Among the early commission members were Abram Eber, Markus Kleiner, Józef Kornblüh, and Samuel Rosental; testimonies were given by Samuel Horowitz, Alicja Jurman, and David Seiler. Later the commission included Abba Reiner; chief of the district health department Brandwein; and the doctors Anderman and Chalfen. SEC, HDA SBU, m. Ternopil, spr. 14050-P, p. 151. See also M. Sorokina, “People and Procedures,” Kritika 6/4 (2005): 797–831.
17 The 14th SS Volunteer Division “Galicia,” whose creation was announced in April 1943, brought eighteen thousand Ukrainians into the ranks of the Waffen-SS. Many of them died in a futile battle with the Red Army the following year; numerous survivors joined the UPA, alongside thousands of deserting Ukrainian policemen. D. R. Marples, Heroes and Villains (New York, 2007), 183–93. Sipo concluded that �
�the Ukrainian population perceives the authorization of a Ukrainian military formation as expressing the will of the Reich to make positive use of Ukrainians for the construction of the East, to some extent in preference to the Poles”: Meldungen aus dem GG [Generalgouvernement, General Government], 1–31.5.1943, BArch R58/7743, p. 9. Father Yevtemyi Bobretskyi of the Basilian monastery in Buczacz became divisional chaplain; he later died in Siberia. Myzak, For You, Holy Ukraine, 4:10–14. Lvivski Visti’s lead article, May 8, 1943, reported, “The first day of recruiting volunteers . . . was conducted in a good atmosphere and numerous applicants were registered.” The July 8 issue describes a May 1 recruitment launch assembly on Fedor Hill led by Landkommissar Hoffer, Kreishauptmann Kujath, and Ukrainian district committee chair Mykhailo Rosliak, with fifteen thousand people and six hundred horsemen. Biblioteka Uniwersytecka we Wrocławiu (University Library in Wrocław), 3842 IV, microfilms 101, 102, 116, 126, 151. See also Krakivski Visti, May 29, 1943, issue 113, p. 3: Ossolineum Wrocław, 295.897 II.
18 V. Petrykevych diary. The German Security Police reported at the time, “The situation on the Eastern Front . . . has further exacerbated the anxiety of the Ukrainians about the Bolsheviks. . . . The Ukrainian intelligentsia, which works especially closely with the German administration, is already trying to find out from German officials, what will become of it in case of a Bolshevik victory.” BArch R70 Polen/204, pp. 8, 11.
19 M. Khvostenko, reminiscences collected by M. Kozak, March 27, 2003.
20 J. Trembach, recollections recorded by R. Kryvenchuk, collected by Mykola Kozak, 2003. See also Halpern, Family and Town, 89. The Polish Izabela Kocik testified that in spring or summer 1943 “I saw my classmate Marysia, whose surname was probably Aszkinazy, at the head of an eight-person column” on the main street of Czortków, “surrounded by a group of armed German gendarmes and Ukrainian policemen. Marysia, a very good and polite girl, gave me such a desperate look, that I will never forget her gaze to my last day. I knew she was going to her death.” IPN Kraków, S 37/03/zn, vol. 2, September 6, 2002, p. 389.
21 Hałkiewicz interview, 2004; Rutyna interviews in March and June 2006.
22 M. Szczyrba, USHMM RG-15.084 M Reel 38 (1997.A.0125) UC (AŻIH 301/3684), Warsaw, May 7, 1945, pp. 1–20.
23 M. Boczar, Minkowice Oławskie, August 1, 1947, AŻIH 303/VIII/222, pp. 49–50. The five Jews included Basia and Sara Strauber of Potok Złoty, likely relatives of Fabian and Josef Strauber of the same town. See Strauber 1947; J. Strauber, deposition, New York, August 11, 1969, BArch B162/5185, pp. 7117–18.
24 E. Czechowicz, Szczecin, October 2, 1947, AŻIH 303/VIII/223, pp. 70–72. See also J. B. Michlic, “Rescuer-Rescuee Relationships in the Light of Postwar Correspondence in Poland, 1945–1949,” Yad Vashem Studies 39/2 (2011): 169–207. On Altschüler, who was also a member of the Jewish police, see BArch B162/5181, December 5, 1968, pp. 5892–97; BArch (Bayreuth, Lastenausgleicharchiv), ZLA 1/220643600, M1.3/173/2/5, pp. 22–23, 32–34, 37–38, 49–50; AŻIH 313/3, March 21, 1947.
25 DATO, fond R-1, op. 1, spr. 101, August 1, 1944, pp. 103–6.
26 DATO, fond R-1, op. 1, spr. 101, September 6, 1944, pp. 130–42.
27 Bilas, Punitive System of Repression, 2:478–82, 514–17.
28 DATO, fond P-69, op. 1, spr. 32, p. 4; op. 11, spr. 22, pp. 1–2, 12–13.
29 DATO, fond P-69, op. 11, spr. 22, pp. 1–2; spr. 31, September 25, 1946, pp. 35–37; November 17, 1946, p. 30.
30 DATO, fond R-1, op. 1, spr. 561, January 31, 1947, p. 150; spr. 871, April 1–July 1, 1947, pp. 93–96; September 20, 1947, pp. 97–98; fond P-69, op. 1, spr. 31, January 1, 1947, pp. 38–40; spr. 54, pp. 66–67.
31 DATO, fond P-69, op. 1, spr. 65, pp. 19–34; spr. 47, pp. 10–11; fond R-1, op. 1, spr. 871, October 25, 1947, pp. 100–101; October 23, 1947, pp. 102–3; “Memorial” society, Buczacz branch, estimate based on local primary sources and secondary works. For Soviet reports of crimes by their own troops and officials, see DATO, fond P-10, op. 1, spr. 1, p. 105; spr. 6, p. 13; spr. 10, pp. 61, 75; spr. 31, pp. 15, 55; spr. 713, p. 122; fond P-19, op. 1, spr. 23, p. 2; spr. 146, p. 117; fond P-69, op. 1, spr. 11, p. 14; spr. 33, pp. 53–54; spr. 35, pp. 1–2; spr. 61, pp. 15, 20; spr. 64, p. 52; spr. 65, p. 37; spr. 87, p. 11. See also V. Serhiichuk, Ten Tumultuous Years (Kiev, 1998, in Ukrainian and Russian), 425–26.
32 DATO, fond P-69, op. 1, spr. 65, pp. 19–34; spr. 284, April 19, 1945, pp. 2–3, 13–14, 29 (likely September–October 1945); spr. 608, June 20, 1945, pp. 5–6.
33 On November 1, 1947, the Ternopil region reported taking in 35,106 Ukrainian immigrant families from Poland, for a total of 155,621 people. Of those, 1,575 families with 7,105 persons were settled in the Buczacz district in 1,575 houses that had formerly belonged to relocated Poles, to deported families of OUN-UPA members, or to murdered Jews. These “young citizens of Soviet Ukraine, along with other working people,” were now “happily and tirelessly working in order to reach the goals of Stalin’s postwar 5-year plan.” DATO, fond R-1833, op. 2, spr. 101, pp. 1–7.
AFTERMATH
1 Pasichnyk interview, 2006.
2 I. Duda, Buczacz (Lviv, 1985, in Ukrainian).
3 Pasichnyk interview, 2006; O. Synenka, For the Homeland, for My People (Ternopil, 2002, in Ukrainian), 151–55.
4 Ivan Yosypovych Synenkyi, PA, October 29, 2004; transcript of interview with O. Synenka and I. Senekyi by Sofia Grachova and Andriy Pavlyashuk, Buczacz, March 2, 2006.
5 Synenka and Senekyi interview, 2006; K. Sapir Weitz, “The Landscape of Their Childhood: Ruhama Albag’s Journey in the Footsteps of Great Hebrew Writers” (in Hebrew), Maariv, February 16, 2015, http://www.maariv.co.il/culture/literature/Article-463561 (accessed August 26, 2016); R. Albag, To the Place: Following the Booksteps (Tel Aviv, 2015, in Hebrew); R. Albag, “It’s the ‘Synagoga,’ Not Something Else,” Haaretz, September 28, 2001, B13.
6 T. Pavlyshyn, “The Holocaust in Buczacz,” Nova Doba 48 (December 1, 2000, in Ukrainian).
7 O. Chorniy, “The Front in Buczacz,” Nova Doba 45 (November 10, 2000, in Ukrainian).
8 Duda, Buczacz; PA, Buczacz City Museum: this record contains many more similar cases. The collaborationist Lvivski Visti reported on February 29, 1943, on an anti-Bolshevik meeting of “497 representatives of the Ukrainian population of the Buczacz district” in protest of “the Bolshevik policy of conquest,” asserting “that communism is alien to us” and vowing to “fight against Bolshevism” and “work together with Greater Germany” in order “to bring about the final victory.” BUW, 3842 IV, microfilm 43.
Index
A note about the index: The pages referenced in this index refer to the page numbers in the print edition. Clicking on a page number will take you to the ebook location that corresponds to the beginning of that page in the print edition. For a comprehensive list of locations of any word or phrase, use your reading system’s search function.
Ackermann, Josef, 214–15
Ackermann, Klaus, 214, 227
Adler, Hania, 189
Agnon, Shmuel Yosef, vii, 33, 82, 292–93, 295
elections and, 6
and founding of Buczacz, 8
and Ottoman siege and destruction of Buczacz, 12
and socialism in Buczacz, 30–31
and synagogue in Buczacz, 13
Albag, Ruhama, 295
Albrecht, Mojżesz, 171, 175–76
Alpinski, 256
Altchiler, Munio (Maurycy Altschüler), 283
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 98
anarchism, 32–33
Anderman, Janek, 176, 253, 347n, 360n
Anderman, Max, 26, 356n
Anderman, Pesach, 152
Anderman, Sala, 347n, 356n
Anderman, Zev, 252–53
Ansky, S., 61–62, 88, 316n
anti–Semitism, 28, 57, 114, 311n
Buczacz and, 25, 92–95, 100, 121–22, 131, 241
and demoralization of Jews, 99–100
elect
ions and, 115–16
Galicia and, 20, 24, 34
guiding principle of, 100
investigating Nazi crimes and, 231
Jewish politics and, 32, 96, 119, 333n
Köllner and, 186
and negative depictions of Jews, 121–22
Poland and, 21, 24, 65, 68, 71, 94, 100–101, 121–22, 127, 131, 133–34, 152, 154, 156, 333n
Ruthenia and, 20–23
of Siewiński, 39–42, 44–45, 47, 51, 54, 67–68, 70–71
Soviets and, 24, 131, 133, 152, 154
Ukrainians and, 21, 101, 121, 126–27, 332n
World War I and, 24, 40–42, 44–45, 47–48, 50–54
Antochów, Wiesław, 356n–57n
Arabs, 86
Armenians, Armenia, 7, 11, 78, 129
Austrians, Austria, xi, 16, 65, 68, 194, 358n
Buczacz occupied and ruled by, 13, 15–16, 62–63
education and, 29, 93
elections and, 34, 311n
and relations between Russia and Ukraine, 76
World War I and, 43, 45, 46, 52, 54–59, 62–63, 313n
Austro–Hungarian Empire, x, 109
dissolution of, 63–64
education and, 26
multiethnicity of, 37
World War I and, 38, 40, 53–54, 63–64, 314n, 316n
Balfour Declaration, 83, 83
Banach, Alexius, 181
Bandera, Stepan, 162, 267
Banderites, 267, 268, 270–72, 274, 282, 349n, 359n, 363n
Barącz, Sadok, 7, 15
Baran, Mykhailo and Ilko, 253
Barg, Georg, 205, 354n
Barr, James, 103–5
Bartov, Hanoch (Helfgott), 1, 3