Germans View Film On Wartime Ukraine

On June 15 Germany’s WDR television channel showed a 45 minute documentary about the Ukrainian village of Peremoha (Victory) 50 km. from Kyiv. More than half a century ago an SS unit literally razed the village to the ground.

Shortly before the sixtieth anniversary of Nazi German invasion of the Soviet Union, WDR journalists decided to show using the example of one village how Ukraine endured the horrors of World War II. In essence, the village Peremoha embodies over 300 Ukrainian villages that were destroyed. The film shows the dwellers of Peremoha, called Yarlivka during the war, telling about what they had endured. In 1943 SS troops burnt alive or shot dead several hundred villagers for helping the partisans. Those who survived — mostly women and children — were deported to Germany as slave laborers, and now every third villager is a former Third Reich Ostarbeiter. When the laborers returned, they were accused of collaborating with the Nazis, and for this reason many Peremoha residents vanished in the Stalinist prison camps.

It is no accident that German journalists made a film about Peremoha rather than any other village. The point is that the name of this village is known to some extent in Germany thanks to the Wiesbaden-based Martin Niemoeller Foundation. This foundation has been aiding Peremoha for two years in an attempt to revive good attitudes toward the Germans among the victims of Nazism. The foundation takes care of the village’s well-being and extends substantial assistance to the villagers. Every summer Peremoha hosts community work camps attended by young Germans.