May 28, 2004
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by
Andrew Gregorovich
There were about 459 villages in Ukraine completely destroyed with all or part of their population by the German Army. There were at least 27 Ukrainian villages in which every man, woman and child was killed and the village completely destroyed.
At least 160 Nazi concentration camps, some holding tens of thousands of prisoners, were established in Ukraine. Many Ukrainians were also sent to Auschwitz and other death camps in Poland. The janowska (Yanivska) Camp in Lviv was especially notorious because the Commandant, SS officer Gustav Wilhaus, used to sit on his balcony and with his automatic rifle use the inmates in the yard as target practice, even shooting children. .
It is known that the Germans intentionally starved Ukrainian cities; that Ukrainian prisoners of war in concentration camps were starved to death; that disease was rampant ; and that because about 2,000,000 houses and apartments were burned at least 10,000,000 Ukrainians were left homeless in the war exposing them to freezing in the winter.
Wilhelm Keitel gave an order to the German Army in the East: "for the killing of a single German soldier we should retaliate by the execution of 50-100 persons". The death penalty was applied to Ukrainian hostages: up to 200 innocent Ukrainians were executed for one German attacked by guerillas. In spite of this a total of 460,000 German soldiers and officers were killed by partisans in Ukraine during the War.
Jewish Partisans
Major-General Eberhardt, the German Commandant of Kiev, on November 2, 1941 announced that: "Cases of arson and sabotage are becoming more frequent in Kiev and oblige me to take firm action. For this reason 300 Kiev citizens have been shot today." This seemed to do no good because Eberhardt on November 29, 1941 again announced: "400 men have been executed in the city [of Kiev]. This should serve as a warning to the population."
"UKRAINIANS! Whoever hides a red army soldier ... WILL BE SHOT" says a German 1941 proclomation in Ukrainian and German.
The death penalty was applied by the Germans to any Ukrainian who gave aid or merely information or directions to the UPA or Ukrainian guerillas. If you owned a pigeon the penalty was death. The penalty was death for anyone who did not report or aided a Jew to escape, and many Ukrainians were executed for helping Jews. Death was the penalty for listening to a Soviet radio program or reading anti-German leaflets.
The USSR also sacrificed countless Ukrainian lives in its "cannon fodder" military procedures. Soldiers were marched across minefields by foot to clear them by their deaths. When the USSR retreated in June 1941 it executed over 19,000 political prisoners in Lviv and other west Ukrainian cities.
Comments (2)
Wow...that's really cruel. :
as someone half Ukrainian Jewish, this seems like close stuff...
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