Rescuing

Ukraine

In his "The Nazi Genocide of the Jews and the Ukrainian Population, 1941-1944", M I Koval provides details of assistance rendered by a substantial number of individuals to Jews, invariably at great risk to themselves.   From the outset the occupying Germans mobilised a vast propaganda apparatus to persuade the Christian Ukrainians that the Jewish population deserved to be disposed of.   Many Ukrainians were hostile to the USSR and Bolshevism/communism, and the Germans, in line with fundamental Nazi (Hitlerite) beliefs, lost no time in propagating their equation of  Bolshevism/communism with Jews and Judaism.  It is not clear whether the small minority of Ukrainians who from the outset participated in, and often initiated, pogroms against Jews, required such encouragement from the Nazi indoctrination machinery.  The majority of the population of the Ukraine, along with that in other occupied countries, primarily assumed the role of bystanders.  The ideological beliefs of these bystanders no doubt spanned the whole continuum from anti-Semite to, the few, philosemites.  Beyond the bystanders, at the other end of the continuum from those who actively participated in and instigated pogroms and other barbarities, were those who actively endeavoured to counter the Nazi program of Judeocide.  There are hundreds of documented cases of Ukrainians who came to the assistance of Jews. The Uniate Church, particularly archbishop Andrii Sheptyts'kyi, and the Baptists were especially active in this respect. 

"Sheptyts'kyi must have been the only Catholic priest in Europe to publicly raise his voice in favor of the Jews, as in his address "Thou shalt not kill" and the letter sent to Hitler, where he protested the involvement of Ukrainians in anti-Jewish actions.  Moreover, Sheptyts'kyi in the above-mentioned address, distributed in Galicia, suggested that honest people should turn their backs on local murderers whose hands are covered with innocent blood.  He himself gave asylum to 150 children and fifteen rabbis, thus saving their lives.   About 500 believers helped their pastor.  ...[His] example was followed by some other Uniate priests. In the Przemysl woods, with the assistance of foresters, they hid 1,700 people.  On several occasions, clergymen prevented pogroms against Jews.   ...[At the same time,] there were also clergymen who regarded the Holocaust as "God's punishment" and refused any assistance to the Jews. (p.55)

...

The inhabitants of Lvov saved 2,000 people.   O.V.Masliak, the director of the Lvov library of the Academy of Sciences, gave asylum to eight Jews in his apartment.  And in the library itself, 200 people were hidden. (p.55)

...

[It is necessary also to mention] the assistance offered by guerrilla units.  Many of them, especially the mobile ones, in one way or another maintained contacts with Jews who were seeking help.  As a rule, guerrillas would protect them, create camps for civilians, and accept them as fighters.  Thus, 154 Jews fought in A. F. Fedorov's unit; 102 in V.A. Begma's; 97 in S.A. Kovpak's....    Where possible, national Jewish units were formed.... (p.56)

...

Decent Ukrainians, people from other ethnic groups, whatever their number might have been, did not turn their backs on the wretched victims of Nazism.  In Galicia alone about a hundred Ukrainians were executed for this "crime."  The data come from German court martial reports and media releases.  But it is far from reflecting the overall picture.  For instance, in 1942, the 4V SS unit executed the Ukrainian mayor of the town of Kremenchug, Sinitsa-Veshovski, for helping the Jews. (p.57)

The article by M I Koval appears in Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR. Zvi Gitelman (ed.) Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. This work contains many other interesting articles.