Letters from Vienna #213
Letter to Horst von Wächter X
The Anglo-American Empire and the Rise of Fascism VII
Dear Horst,
many thanks for your prompt reply to my last missive and your characterization of my “attempt to uncover fascist thinking in contemporary history…as pale and unimportant”, which I’m sure it is.
Yes, you’re perfectly right: there are many “unanswered questions” and I’ll do my best to deal with just a few of them. In one point, at least, we are agreed: the system is indeed very sick and extremely corrupt.
“I only want to go into what you write about the Galician division” you wrote. “It was only founded by my father in 1943 and saved with the help of General Anders and the Vatican – Archbishop Buchko. It was also one of the few SS units to be accompanied by military chaplains and any crimes severely punished – see Michael Melnyk, The History of the Galician Division of the Waffen-SS, with whom I have worked.”
“To my knowledge, the charges against it have been investigated and dismissed twice – first at its rescue and again in Canada.”
I couldn’t find anything in the literature about General Anders playing a key role (doubtlessly you’ll enlighten me on that point!) but there is a footnote in Simpson’s “Blowback” about Archbishop Buchko’s saving intervention, which deserves to be quoted in full:
“Perhaps the most dramatic single escape through church channels was the 1946 deliverance of an entire Ukrainian Waffen SS division – some 11,000 men, plus many of their families – with the personal assistance of Pope Pius XII. Most of the rescued men, it is true, were no more than simple soldiers caught in a compromising position by events beyond their control. Many of the men in the division, however, were veterans of Ukrainian collaborationist police and militia units that had enthusiastically participated in anti-Semitic and anti-Communist pogroms in their homeland. Some of them – a smaller number – had served as guards in the Nazis’ death camps in Treblinka, Belsen, and Sobibor. Many of these men were destined eventually to serve in political warfare projects underwritten by the CIA. Hundreds of them are known to live in the United States and Canada today.”
“The Ukrainian SS division surrendered to British troops in early 1945 and was interned at the Rimini POW camp north of Rome. Most of them were facing forced repatriation to the USSR under a clause of the Yalta agreement governing return of POWs who had been captured in enemy uniform. If they returned, they would almost certainly be executed for treason or serve long prison sentences in gulag labor camps.”
“But that spring General Pavlo Shandruk, the leader of a Ukrainian liberation committee that had been founded under Nazi auspices, contacted Archbishop Ivan Buchko, a high-ranking prelate in Rome specializing in Ukrainian matters for the Holy See. Shandruk pleaded with Buchko by letter to intervene on behalf of the Ukrainian soldiers who had served in SS units, particularly what Shandruk termed the “1st Ukrainian Division,” which was in fact the 14th Waffen SS division “Galicia.” Shandruk hoped that Archbishop Buchko might reach the pope himself with the general’s plea for mercy on behalf of his men.”
““Archbishop Ivan (Buchko) answered my letter very soon informing me that he had already visited the Division,” Shandruk recalled later. “In a special audience (at night) the Archbishop had pleaded with His Holiness Pope Pius XII to intercede for the soldiers of the Division, who are the flower of the Ukrainian nation…I learned from the Archbishop…that as a result of the intercession by His Holiness, the soldiers of the Division were reclassified merely as confines (rather than prisoners of war), and the Bolshevik agents were prohibited to visit the camps.” Although the troops were still confined to the POW camp at Rimini, they were, according to Shandruk, “out of reach of Communist hands” and no longer subject to repatriation to the USSR. By the spring of 1946 Shandruk, backed by Archbishop Buchko and the Ukrainian Relief Committee of Great Britain, had arranged with the British government to extend “free settler” emigration status to the Ukrainian Waffen-SS veterans at Rimini and to assist them in resettling in Canada, Australia, and other Commonwealth countries.”[1]
Sol Littman is a good deal harsher in his judgement:
“Valery Styrkul, author of the booklet We Accuse published by Dnipro Publishers (Kiev), states that sub-units of the Division participated in a variety of death-dealing activities while still in training. He cites the execution of Soviet prisoners-of-war at Szebnie, the liquidation of Poles, Gypsies and Jews in the town of Moderowka and the reinforcement of German units guarding the concentration camp at Szebnie. “On November 6, 1943, (SS-men from the Galician Division) helped shoot some 500 Jewish inmates in a forest near the village of Dubrocow. “Cadets of the Halychna Division were involved in a similar action in the forest near Wawrzice.”
“By March 1944, the scattered units of the Division had completed their training and reassembled at Neuhammer where they began divisional maneuvers. Although the Red Army was drawing closer, the growing strength and boldness of the Soviet partisans made it necessary to divert large segments of the Division to the task of keeping order behind the lines. Himmler, in a letter to Koppe, the Supreme SS and Police Chief in the East, gave his permission to use the Galicia Division in any way necessary to hold down resistance.”
“In February 1944, two of the Division’s three available regiments consisting of some 2,000 men, were separated from the rest of the Division and assigned to fight the Soviet partisans. Organized as a special battle group (SS-Kampfgruppe) under the command of Division officers SS-Obersturmbannführer Friederich Beyersdorff and Battalion Commander Hauptsturmführer Bristot, they were dispatched to the Chelm area to counter the partisans that had penetrated the Generalgouvernment.”
“Chief Executive Officer Wolf-Dietrich Heike reports: “Not surprisingly, the aforementioned task force did not perform its duties well. Soon after reports of the unseemly behavior of the unit began to arrive at the Division.” Heike attributes this “unseemly behavior” to the soldiers’ lack of training and the “age-old antagonism between Poles and Ukrainians.” These factors may have played a role in the cruel slaughter visited on numerous Polish villages, but the promiscuous use of terror as a weapon to suppress opposition – a practice with which Heike was undoubtedly familiar – offers a better explanation.”
“On November 23, 1943, the Beyersdorff detachment – along with other police units – is reported to have raided the village of Kokhanivka. Eleven villagers were shot, five hanged and thirty-nine tortured to death. Twenty old people and fifty children were locked in a village home and burned to death. One hundred persons were taken for brief rises in Gaswagens. The Gaswagens were trucks fitted with hoses that brought the asphyxiating carbon monoxide fumes from the engine’s exhaust into the passenger chamber. Styrkul claims: “Legal bodies investigating the war crimes of the SS Halychna Division had tortured more than 2,000 civilians to death in Poland, shipped 20,000 persons off to Germany and burned down 20 villages.””
“By early June 1944, the detachment took up position in the Lviv region. That same month it staged a reprisal raid on the village of Ozhidiv in which twenty-five villagers were shot, seven hanged and fifteen beaten and tortured to death. On July 13, a raid on the Olesko district resulted in the deaths of 162 residents by gun, rope and club while gas vans accounted for another 120. The village of Pidhirtsi received similar treatment in a series of mid-June actions. Ozhevits was destroyed on July 10 and more than 595 residents of Zolochiv were murdered between July 12 and July 20 by Beyersdorff’s special squads. All in all, it is estimated that the special detachment shot, hanged, gassed and burned more than 1,500 men, women and children between February 1943 and March 1944 when it rejoined the Division. It also rounded up thousands of able-bodies young men and women for forced labour in Germany.”[2]
I shan’t bore you with the litany of sins listed by Sol Littman but suffice it to say: they deserve investigation, which, at this late hour is extremely difficult indeed as most of the witnesses are no longer with us.
The point of the matter is: the Ukrainian 14th Waffen-SS was most probably involved in crimes against humanity. Why both Sol Littman and Olesya Khromeychuk (“Undetermined Ukrainians”) devote so much time and space to the whitewash that followed the war escapes me. What I wanted to show was the double standards, double think and sheer hypocrisy governing the way your father has been dealt with compared to some of the worst criminals. One has been demonised and the others got off scot free.
The interesting question is: why?
Best,
Michael
[1] pp.180-181 Blowback, Christopher Simpson
[2] pp.73-74 Pure Soldiers or Sinister Soldiers, Sol Littman