Lies Cloaked as Truth

Last spring, Canadian television aired SS in Britain produced by Julian Hendy of Yorkshire Television Ltd. It is about Ukrainians allegedly committing crimes as officers and men of the 14th Galician Waffen SS Division, in suppressing the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944 and Slovak National Uprising in the spring of 1944. Among other things, the documentary claims that Ukrainian combatants killed men and minor children in the Slovak village of Nizna Boca.

Since not many readers are likely to be versed in the history of this Ukrainian military formation, I will point out that the Halychyna Division (later known as the 1st Division of the Ukrainian National Army) was formed in April 1943, manned by young men from Western Ukrainian territories within the General Gouvernement, as the Germans called what was left of occupied Poland. As part of the Wehrmacht (German Army), it fought the Red Army supposedly for the sake of some future Ukrainian state. The reader should be further reminded that the Wehrmacht operating in Ukraine at the time included two regular Slovak divisions and no one has since thought of accusing the survivors of war crimes. In the Battle of Brody (June 17-22, 1944) the Halychyna Division was routed and in September-December 1944 the survivors were transferred to Slovakia for replenishment and reorganization. Several books and hundreds of articles have been written about the Halychyna Division and none mentions any Ukrainians taking part in acts of aggression against the civilian population during the Warsaw and Slovak uprisings. I by no means intend to justify those Ukrainians joining the Nazi armed forces, although many did so harboring lofty ideals, wishing to receive professional military training and weapons, in order to subsequently use both in their struggle for an independent Ukraine. Almost all of them were disillusioned, because Hitler had altogether different plans concerning Ukraine, such that the breadbasket of Europe was to become a colony of the Third Reich and the Ukrainians added to the Untermenchen (subhuman) labor pool of inferiors, along with the Russians, Poles, and other Slavs.

The British documentary offered “fresh evidence” concerning alleged purges by Ukrainian soldiers of the civilian populace at Nizna Boca. This so-called evidence, however, is very biased, as Ukrainians are attributed criminal acts they could not have perpetrated simply because they never took part in that particular combat mission. Thus, the narrator says a Ukrainian unit of the SS Halychyna Division entered the village of Nizna Boca in October 1944, and we see two old women residents of the village sharing their memories. They speak Slovak and we hear off-screen translation. One of them says that they (members of the punitive detail — Author) first burst into the local tavern and began to drink. The other adds that they searched village homes and locked all the men in the school. Five captives, among them 15-year-old Zagradnik, were kept there until morning. The first woman says those detained were shoved around and beaten. The other says the men were interrogated, sentenced to death, and shot. Zagradnik was just a boy. The first says he cried and called for his mother. He cried at the school, shouting mother, dear mother, you will never see me again. The other woman interjected that the boy was crying with despair. What did he do to deserve it? He was not even a soldier. And he cried so! He was led out of the school, taken to the bridge and shot there. He fell from the bridge into the water (we see the bridge and hear the water splashing). The first exclaims that the whole thing was horrible and that no one would ever forget it.

After these emotional and sincere words the narrator again declares that, according to German documents, Wittenmeyer’s unit of the 14th Waffen SS Division Galizien entered Nizna Boca that same day. One of the documents has it that Ukrainian volunteers with the 14th SS Division took part in hostilities and fought the rebels with utmost cruelty. If, until now, the audience did not know who the war criminals were as mentioned by the two women from Nizna Boca, after the above commentary everything is clear. They were Ukrainians. And an old woman adds to the commentary (which she never heard or saw) that they found no partisans and that her and other women’s husbands had to pay for this with their lives.

The British commentator goes on to say that the Nazis dispatched 40,000 troops, including two divisions, to crush the Slovak national uprising. To this Prof. David Ceaserani confidently adds that the Slovak uprising was a bloody violent conflict, killing tens of thousands of civilians without mercy from either side. Assuming that Ukrainian units did take part in suppressing the Slovak Uprising (he says), they could not have avoided involvement in that brutal ruthless campaign. In other words, what was earlier presented in the documentary as an actual fact, albeit retouched by the old women’s emotional eyewitness accounts, is referred to by the professor and expert in his field as an assumption; he has no documentary proof of Ukrainian participation in such massacres. Supposing that the authors of the documentary are in possession of such evidence, it stands to reason that those Ukrainians were indeed brutal and ruthless. In fact, this concept dominates the televised film, alternating authentic Slovak statements with the narrator’s biased anti-Ukrainian commentary. To enhance the factual aspect of the production, we are shown the school in which the civilian victims were interrogated, graves of those shot, and a memorial in Nizna Boca with the names of those killed in the massacre.

Among others, we see and hear Jan Stanislav, director of the Slovak National Uprising Museum, author of numerous papers dealing with the subject. In one of his works, Fascist Reprisals in Slovakia (Bratislava, 1989), he maintains that a total of 3,965 persons were killed during the Slovak National Uprising and buried in 186 mass graves. He lists dozens of Sonderkommando, including Wehrmacht, police, and the Slovak Hlinka Guard punitive units as taking part in the massacre. Not a word about any Ukrainian units. Now in the British documentary he allegedly refers to the Halychyna Division war criminals, saying that arson, terror, plunder, and vengeance were the basis of their craft. Being an unbiased researcher, he could not have referred to the Ukrainians. He certainly referred to the German punitive units. And the old women interviewed could not have ascribed mass shootings of innocent civilians to Ukrainians. From the British documentary it follows that the Ukrainian officers and men of the SS Halychyna Division were the most ruthless [war] criminals when crushing the Slovak National Uprising.

To verify the alleged facts provided by the British producers, I traveled to where the on-location shooting had been made. I spoke with Jan Stanislav, director of the SNU Museum, staff archivist Maria Cemanova in Banska Bystrica, the two elderly women featured in the documentary: Pavlina Begmerova (b. 1921) and Etela Begmerova (b. 1917), Nizna Boca Village Elder Marcela Gerichova, et al. All confirmed that no Ukrainians of the SS Halychyna Division took part in suppressing the uprising at Nizna Boca. They further said that the statements they had made for the British documentary referred to Nazi SS-men and Hlinka Guard punitive units doing the shootings at the village. This part of the statements was edited out of the film. What the women had spoken about before the camera had nothing to do with Ukrainians, but everything to do with the Nazis and Slovak fascists. In other words, their truthful eyewitness accounts had been tampered with and deliberately made anti-Ukrainian by the producers, something the Slovaks featuring in the documentary would even dream of.

While in Nizna Boca, I photographed a memorial plaque and two memorials of NSU victims. They make it perfectly clear that residents of that village had been shot by “German fascists [i.e., Nazis] and members of the Hlinka Guard punitive division.” The village chronicle written immediately after the uprising was crushed, bearing the village council’s seal, has several pages dealing with the shootings, stressing time and again that the innocent villagers were shot by the Germans and Slovak fascists. The chronicle makes no mention of Ukrainians and the document was made available to the camera crew.

Both women interviewed in the documentary were positive that no Ukrainians took part in suppressing the uprising at the village, although both had been prompted to testify to the contrary by the authors of the film; they had been asked whether any of the Sonderkommando men spoke Ukrainian or Polish, whether any sported the tryzub [trident, the Ukrainian national emblem] as part of their insignia, and so on. And both women said no time and again, stressing that they were all Germans and Slovak Hlinka Guards. I taped their testimonies.

I spoke with Jan Stanislav, manager of the NSU Museum in Banska Bystrica, and he also resolutely denied any Ukrainian involvement in or with the shootings of Nizna Boca insurgents.

Incidentally, Julian Hendy, the producer of SS in Britain, promised to send copies of the documentary to the museum and Nizna Boca. He never did, for reasons best known to himself. In other words, the people figuring in the film learned what it was all about from me. They were outraged by the politically manipulated story it presents.

A detailed account of my trip tracing down the British documentary in Slovakia was carried by the Visti Kombatanta (Toronto - New York, 2000, No. 4, pp. 85-94). The television company mentioned was commissioned to translate it into English. Meanwhile, the BBC played SS in Britain in London, on Christmas Eve, Eastern Orthodox style (January 7, 2001). That same day the biased British production was transmitted by other European channels, also in Poland. This caused an international scandal and outrage not only among Ukrainians in Great Britain but the world over. It was highlighted by the media. In particular, Radio Liberty broadcast a special 40 minute program on January 18 in its regular Ukraine and the World series (moderator: Marian Drach). The Warsaw-based Ukrainian newspaper Nashe slovo (2001, No. 3, p. 2) described the documentary as “another anti-Ukrainian psychosis” and the Supreme Administration of the Association of Ukrainians in Poland sent a letter of sharp protest to the management of Polish television, reading in part, “It is a generally known and repeatedly stressed fact that there were no SS Halychyna Division units deployed in Warsaw. The fact was mentioned, among other things, by the Polish expert Richard Torzecki. Taking part in suppressing the uprising were German units composed of other nationals. Among them were individual soldiers of Ukrainian parentage, but the 14th Halychyna Division was routed in July 14, at Brody... We were surprised to learn that Polish television officials resorted to an anti-Ukrainian propaganda scheme despite the articles and research papers published on the subject definitively explaining the matter.”

Thus the British documentary (several ethnic Slovaks took part in the production process) is a deliberate falsification of the facts, aimed at discrediting Ukrainians in the eyes of the international community. One can only guess at its political objective.

1. It is an established fact that in 1947 several thousand former SS Halychyna Division combatants were transferred from POW camps in Villach (Austria), Bellaria, and Rimini (Italy) to Great Britain where they formed several organizations to help free Ukraine from its Russian Soviet shackles. After Ukraine proclaimed independence in 1991 they have been active participants in its development, something those advocating Great Russia cannot stand, doing their utmost to discredit Ukrainian nationalists, by resorting to blatant lies.

2. Slovakia’s modern foreign policy strategy is aimed at the country’s membership in European structures (e.g., the Council of Europe, NATO, etc.). Certain extremist nationalist and chauvinistic Slovak organizations (especially those abroad) are determined to whitewash fascist Premier Jozef Tiso of Slovakia (he was tried, sentenced to death, and executed). They want to prove that he was not responsible for crushing the Slovak National Uprising, and not even the Germans, but only Ukrainians. And the proof offered is the village of Nizna Boca. There are eyewitnesses still alive and they can refute this falsehood, but they could die shortly and then the lies would become truth. Apparently, this is what the producers of the anti- Ukrainian documentary count on.

In any case, I believe that Ukraine as a sovereign state should voice its sharp protest against the demonstration of such slanderous documentaries, because if it remains silent there will be an increasing number of such provocations, and they will by no means contribute to Ukraine’s positive international image.