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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Apropos Julian Hendy’s article, “The Waffen SS Division Galizien Is Far From All of Ukraine” (The Day, No. 21, July 16, 2001)

4 September, 2001 - 00:00

The Day continues to discuss Prof. Mykola Mushynka’s article “Lies Cloaked as Truth” published in Slovakia about the British documentary SS in Britain directed by Julian Hendy, accusing a number of Ukrainians living in Great Britain, former servicemen of the Waffen SS Division Galizien, of war crimes in Slovakia during World War II, specifically during the Slovak uprising in 1944. Mr. Hendy responded by insisting on his vision of the issue. The Day carried his article and now gives the floor to a Ukrainian author.

Proceeding from what Julian Hendy wrote, one can arrive at the only obvious and undeniable conclusion. The first prerequisite is that Mr. Hendy is, without doubt, of sound mind and fully aware of what testimony is all about; that it must be demonstrable; what syllogism actually means: one, two, and conclusion. We further proceed from the postulate that Mr. Hendy is a balanced individual possessing sufficient moral and ethical virtues.

Thus we will try to use the above assumptions to consider what the British film director presents as official evidence and proof of some of the SS Halychyna Division men taking part in the suppression of the Slovak uprising. To begin with, his article does not contain a single fact corroborating that any of the “SS-men” of the battle group Kampfgruppe Wittenmayer allegedly committing war crimes, shooting peaceful civilians (e.g., suspected guerrillas or partisans), were Ukrainians. There is no such evidence, period. Neither Dr. Stanislav, nor any of the other witnesses quoted by Mr. Hendy as sources of first and secondhand information offer testimonies indicating that the war criminals under study were of Ukrainian parentage. Moreover, Pavlina and Etela Begmerova are not sure which of the thirty SS divisions raided their village and killed its inhabitants.

The British film director mentions captured Nazi documents which he describes as “unequivocal,” indicating that the Wittenmayer unit was “in [the] process of occupying Nizna Boca... The Ukrainian volunteers of the Fourteenth Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS used in the operation fought excellently.” Granted, the said Kampfgruppe was used in that operation, yet this does not mean that it was the only such battle group on the mission. Likewise, it is anyone’s guess whether Fourteenth SS Halychyna Ukrainian volunteers took part in the shooting of civilians, contrary to what Mr. Hendy infers from the Wittenmayer unit being “in [the] process of occupying Nizna Boca...” In fact, I am amazed at the British producer’s naХvetО and gullibility). It stands to reason to assume that the Nazi documents contain misinformation meant to conceal the actual involvement of German- Hungarian or other SS-men or even Slovak Nazis in the massacre. Father Jozef Tiso’s men also fought the partisans? Even more interestingly, Mr. Hendy writes, “I know that many different people joined the SS Division Galicia for very many reasons.” What makes him so convinced that the Kampfgruppe Wittenmayer men allegedly taking part in the atrocities were Ukrainians? There is no supporting evidence whatever.

More alleged evidence provided by the British producer, which he considers undeniably condemning, is the opinion voiced by Jozef Bystricky, director of the Slovak Military Historical Institute in Bratislava: “He detailed some nine separate incidents where Slovak researchers held the Fourteenth SS Division Galizien responsible for crimes against the Slovak population.” Unfortunately, no details are given, leaving the whole issue ambiguous. One can only wonder why Mr. Hendy believes that the Halychyna Division was entirely made up of Ukrainians. He says there were people of different ethnic origin and with varying convictions among the volunteers. He further maintains that “misconduct” is at least indirect evidence of complicity in war crimes. An amazing statement, to say the least, considering that such information comes from German sources. One such source reads, “The Slovaks in general complain about the Ukrainians, that they are a bunch of crooks... even doing deals with the Partisans.”

Mr. Hendy further points out that the Slovak population, particularly farmers “reacted with great relief to the news that all of the Ukrainian military forces would be withdrawn from Slovakia and replaced with Hungarian soldiers.” Was it because the Hungarians would be doing no deals with the Slovak partisans? “It’s also said about these Ukrainian soldiers that they’ve no longer any interest in the war and have already obtained civilian clothing in order to desert.” Some SS-men, some Nazis! The British producer quotes from a Nazi intelligence report stored in the German Federal Archives (Koblenz, FRG): “In Slovak circles, hostile to Germany, they are considered mercenaries, who are not fighting for the ideals of a new Europe, rather simply for personal enrichment through robbery and plunder.” In other words, the Ukrainian soldiers were considered ill-disciplined, bent on wrongdoing and “personal enrichment.” It is further stated that even circles friendly to Germany complain about these people who are “doing deals with the Partisans.”

Hence another inference, which Mr. Hendy believes to be a most convincing proof of the Slovaks’ unfriendly attitude to the SS Halychyna Ukrainian men: “According to reports from many Slovaks we have learned that the Ukrainians complain about the Bolsheviks and always say that they are much more trouble than the Germans.” All this is proof, indeed, that the Ukrainian “SS-men” cared nothing about the tasks set them by the Germans. Moreover, the testimonies quoted earlier would seem quite sufficient for a positive view on those SS-men, people bitterly disillusioned about the Germans and their goals. The British producer, nevertheless, is eager to convince the reader that their conduct, even if not to be qualified as that of war criminals, serves to prove that those Ukrainian soldiers did take part in “killings and reprisals against the civilian population.”

To begin with, any connection between the two assumptions is totally unclear. It is not just a group of Ukrainians; they are consciously set off against people of other ethnic origin. Could there be a slight touch of xenophobia? The author obviously enjoys citing what we consider offensive testimonies: “...the Hungarians are much more reasonable, that is more humane, than the Ukrainians...” What made them more humane? Were the Bolsheviks more to their liking than the Germans? Or maybe they were less inclined to desert and make deals with the partisans? All this is hard to understand unless the author is a Ukrainophobe, God forbid. It is difficult and at the same time easy to grasp the world outlook of the author of this odious documentary. Likewise it is hard to comprehend the connection between the Kampfgruppe Wittenmayer (more on it further on) and the Ukrainians. After all, a division is a large military unit made up of a great many servicemen. The author snatches out and focuses on separate acts committed by separate men, as attested by Nazi (sic) sources, and believes this sufficient evidence of those Ukrainians being criminals. Incidentally, the officers and men of the Halychyna Division were replaced so often that, by the time it had reached Great Britain, it was anyone’s guess who had fought in Slovakia or Italy whence it would be transferred to Great Britain and interned. What made the British producer title his documentary, SS in Britain?

And then the British producer’s story becomes totally confusing. He sites examples, one about a boy shot in Nizna Boca because he had a Russian coin (he was “just 15 years old... arrested for having a Russian coin his pocket”). A Russian coin? In 1944? A coin dating to tsarist Russia could have well been brought by a Russian ОmigrО. Or was it a Soviet coin? All the examples cited by Mr. Hendy are remarkably disarranged and logically unsupported. In a word, the evidence provided by no means suffices to infer that any of the men of the Fourteenth Grenadieren Waffen SS Division Galizien settling in Great Britain are war criminals.

In addition, I am surprised to note the author’s interestingly purposeful selection of incriminating testimonies portraying Ukrainians as war criminals. Doing a project concerning World War II events, he should know, of course, that a large part of the Halychyna Division men had close and distant relations suffering from atrocities perpetrated in 1941 by retreating Stalin’s troops in Western Ukraine, particularly in Volyn, Halychyna, and nearby territories. Stories and eyewitness accounts of that period are truly horrifying, but apparently Mr. Hendy is not interested.

And consider the hundreds of Ukrainian villages plundered and burned down, mostly by Nazi and partially by Hungarian troops (possibly involving Slovak or Italian units)? Considering the British producer’s argumentation, anything is possible. He focuses on several servicemen allegedly of Ukrainian parentage, who are supposed to be war criminals. This is simply atrocious. What about the Ukrainians being a people that has suffered the world’s greatest losses at the hands of the Nazis and the Communist totalitarian regime? Perhaps this means only much ado about nothing to the British producer as a humanist and antifascist?

Mr. Hendy is an educated man, so he must know that it all started with the Ukrainian intelligentsia being annihilated in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in the 1920s-1930s, followed by 5-6 million villagers killed by the Holodomor Manmade Famine in 1932-33. I mention this because I am sure that Mr. Hendy has no right to forget any of this, or that 10% of the residents of Western Ukraine were exiled to Siberia, ad infinitum, in the early postwar years.

Ukrainians that found themselves under the Nazi occupation were later considered contaminated by the Nazi spirit; some would be left to starve to death in 1946-47, others packed in boxcars in Central Ukraine and sent to GULAG death camps on charges of unfulfilled work quotas and perish.

Who but Ukrainians waged a heroic struggle against Communist totalitarianism in 1943-53, defending the free world, Britain included, with Europe shuddering in anticipation of Stalin’s armored hordes pouring in?

I am especially impressed by what I can only describe as Mr. Hendy’s antediluvian naivete. He accuses “Ukrainian SS-men” of murdering five civilians, never mentioning the Churchill-Stalin pact, with the British premier giving formal consent to the deportation of several hundred thousand former Soviet POWs, civilians, among them young men and women, Don and Kuban Cossacks, people that had never been Soviet citizens, leaving them at Stalin’s mercy, subjecting them to inhuman tortures and execution, as most would be sent to GULAG camps and never return.

I remember visiting Canada in 1990 and meeting with former Kyiv residents who shared their dreadful experiences from the 1930s; even sixty years later they shuddered at the memory. They spoke of trainloads of Soviet citizens returning to Stalin’s lair. Now and then trains would stop, some of the doors open by accident, showing the bodies of suicides. People would take their own life rather then head for the GULAG and the living hell of the Communist empire. Why not make a film about those crimes against humanity, Mr. Hendy? You are a British subject, have you still no pangs of conscience? No desire to do something to redeem your fault toward all those people, among them quite a few Ukrainians? Are you at peace with yourself? Again, considering that you are a person of sound mind (personally, I have no doubt whatever!), a highly cultured and well-educated individual, I find it hard to believe that you can take seriously all that “evidence” which you have provided. Could it be a consciously anti-Ukrainian stand?

We know that there are anti- Ukrainian sentiments in the West, and that such feelings more often than not are the result of public opinion tampered with in the 1930s, 1940s, and especially 1950s by Left and Communist-Stalinist propaganda. Ukrainians in general, and in particular those struggling against the totalitarian Soviet empire, were portrayed — and the idea was painstakingly inculcated by the Soviet propaganda — as bandits, turncoats, and Nazi collaborators. Add here the Leftist intelligentsia worshipping Moscow until the XX Congress of the Soviet Communist Party. Some believed they had to fight everything directed against the “progressive anti-imperialist” Soviet Union and did so until the Red empire fell. Many of these have vociferously denounced Ukraine’s liberation and democratic efforts by force of habit, simply because such activities were anti-Soviet.

Assuming that Mr. Hendy was not governed by any self-interested considerations, he must have fallen prey to such brainwashed public opinion, at best. It is also true that an anti-Ukrainian bias remains in numerous Western so-called progressive circles. I witnessed it in the 1990s, visiting Canada and Great Britain. It is now clear that this irrationality does not serve the understanding among nations.

In conclusion, I would like to cite the following example to illustrate this biased stand. I was on an official trip in Canada, in 1990, when I heard Comrade Kuras (then a top-level Communist functionary in Ukraine) on Kyiv Radio. He declared that the Communist Party of Ukraine acknowledged the fact of the Holodomor manmade famine of 1932-33. The news was received with the greatest joy by those very people we knew as “bourgeois nationalists,” courtesy of Soviet propaganda, because they had always known the truth, that the Holodomor had been engineered by the Communist leadership to exterminate the Ukrainian peasantry. It was an act of genocide, by UN standards. I asked them what made them so happy, for they had known it all along. They replied, “We are so happy because no one has believed us here in Canada. They thought we were traitors and collaborators casting aspersions on our Fatherland, because they were convinced no government could have acted that way against its own people.”

This is what happens when mass Communist propaganda comes into play. As for Mr. Hendy’s motivation, the issue remains open. Be it as it may, we will not follow in his footsteps, furnishing shaky evidence like the found in his documentary. After all, an unprincipled, biased, and cynical homo or even animal sapiens may well maintain that the author has produced a garbled version to distract the public from the suffering experienced by the Ukrainian people under the Nazis and Communists, thus to prevent the Western intelligentsia from repenting after covering up horrible Communist atrocities, including the death of six million Ukrainian peasants in the heart of Europe.

The kind of logic and demonstrability of evidence shown by the British producer in his article allows one to assume that, since some of the Halychyna Division men joined the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, remaining until 1953 in the vanguard of the struggle waged by the Free World during the Cold War against Communist totalitarianism, the documentary under study is meant to discredit those champions. Another possibility is that the producer invented all those stories about Ukrainian Nazi war criminals to use such negative information about Ukraine to vent his xenophobia, so he chose the most vulnerable object: a handful of old ethnic Ukrainians living in Great Britain. However, we will not follow this course, bearing in mind sapienti sat and noblesse oblige: a clever person will understand anyway and one’s status imposes certain obligations, which holds true all over the civilized world. We do hope that Mr. Hendy will find an opportunity to make amends to the people he has so undeservedly insulted.

By Veniamyn SIKORA, Ph.D. (Economics), member of the Royal Economic Society of Great Britain
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