NEWS AND VIEWS: Why we joined the Galicia Division - a former volunteer remembers (08/05/01)

NEWS AND VIEWS

Why we joined the Galicia Division - a former volunteer remembers

by Wasyl Sirskyj

Future generations and those conducting research on the great tragedies that took place on the territory of Ukraine during World War II will find it difficult to understand why such a large number of young people in 1943 volunteered to serve in the ranks of the Galicia (Halychyna) Division under German officers. How could they cooperate with Hitler's Germany at a time when hundreds of villages in Ukraine were being intentionally burned by the Germans who had set them on fire with incendiary bombs, when thousands of our brothers were dying in Gestapo torture chambers and when millions of our youth were being deported to work as slave laborers in the Nazi German Reich?

Some naive researchers may even question why we chose Hitler's Germany as an ally rather than Stalin, the Red "liberator" of western Ukraine in 1939-1941.

The answer is very simple.

Throughout the Soviet occupation of western Ukraine from September 1939 to June 1941, during the daytime the Red "liberators" called us "blood brothers" and promised to build us a paradise. At night, however, black vans would drive up to the houses of Ukrainians and take them as victims to NKVD (KGB) torture chambers, where they were finished off with a shot in the back of the head. One or two days later their bodies would be buried in a park, with flower beds planted over them; no trace of their bodies was ever found. Symbolically, their lives and their dead bodies were transformed into fertilizer for a "flowering Ukraine."

The Germans behaved differently. They didn't hide their brutal behavior, which was intended to terrorize the populace, and openly considered us cattle or subhumans (untermenschen). For the least offense they shot our brothers before our eyes and did not disguise the graves of their victims with glorious parks, as did our "fraternal Russian brothers" from the East.

In the spring of 1943, after the overwhelming defeat of the German forces at Stalingrad, no one had any illusions about the possibility of German victory, so it is a mistake to talk of a pro-German orientation on the part of Ukrainians. The Germans had shown their true face to us during the very first weeks of the German invasion of the USSR and Ukraine in June 1941. They immediately arrested the members of the newly established Ukrainian government in Lviv; they shot political prisoners and hostages in Sokolivka, Stanyslaviv (now Ivano-Frankivsk) and Lutsk. These events and the inhuman German treatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war captured from the Red Army provoked only contempt and hatred rather than sympathy.

In this cruel situation, between the Red hammer and Hitler's anvil, we had to choose the lesser of several evils. We could choose to die as slave laborers in the factories of the Third Reich from Allied bombs, languish starving in concentration camps, wait for a bloody Soviet "liberation" from the East, or volunteer to join the ranks of the Galicia Division.

We chose the division because patriotism played a significant role in our decision. Former officers of previous Ukrainian military formations were able to persuade the youth of western Ukraine that the division, like the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen during World War I, could, in the appropriate circumstances, become the core of a future Ukrainian army. This hope was also shared by our great Church leader Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

However, the greatest stimulus that led to the formation of the Galicia Division was fear of a second Soviet Communist "liberation" of Galicia. We still had fresh memories of Communist atrocities in Vinnytsia, Zolochiv, Brody and Brygidky in Lviv. Thousands of our brutally tortured brothers and sisters were their victims. Fear of a second "liberation" forced us to make this cruel choice.

For example, in my small town of Sokolivka alone more than 300 young people were murdered by the Soviets. These victims included my older brother, Mykhailo, an invalid, whose body has not been found to this day.

We were concerned also about the possibility of compulsory mobilization by the German occupation army in Ukraine. The Germans in 1943 were still capable of conducting such a mobilization, and we decided that it was better to volunteer and to join "our" Galicia Division.

Someone might still ask: "But why didn't you join the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrainska Povstanska Armia UPA )?" The veteran officers of previous Ukrainian armies persuaded us that we could not form a regular army by hiding in the forests. The UPA's situation was especially difficult because it had to gain all its weapons and ammunition from the enemy, but it wasn't always easy to ambush the enemy.

I was persuaded by Dr. Yu. Vassiyan that UPA's guerrilla activities had no chance of success. I privately studied the German language with Dr. Vassiyan in the town of Brody in 1943. His main argument was that "In times of war speed plays the most crucial role. UPA can only rely on horses and the swiftness of young women acting as couriers. The enemy, however, has airplanes, tanks, cars, motorcycles and telephones. So...?"

In the end however, following the Battle of Brody in July 1944, in which the Galicia Division bravely fought against much larger Soviet forces, more than 3,000 well-trained Division soldiers survived the battle and ended up in the UPA, fighting in its ranks to the bitter end.

We should remember, for example, the heroism of Dr. Petro Skobelsky from Zolochiv, who, after escaping from Soviet encirclement at Brody, was invited by the UPA to care for the wounded and badly injured UPA personnel. When his UPA unit was forced to retreat rapidly, this doctor stayed behind to continue helping badly wounded UPA soldiers under his care, although he knew that this meant certain death when captured. He is buried in a grave in the village of Slovita in Lviv region.

One should also remember that UPA personnel had to fight in terrible circumstances determined by the enemy's cruel application of the rule of collective responsibility. For each German who was killed in a Ukrainian village the Gestapo would completely destroy the entire village, and for each Soviet who was killed, the NKVD would often deport an entire village to Siberia. In these circumstances a partisan war on two fronts appeared hopeless to us. And thus we chose the lesser evil - the Division.

Of some 50,000 UPA personnel only about 300 brave souls managed, with God's help, to make it to the freedom of the West. In contrast, almost 15,000 young Galicia Division members survived the war and thousands made it to the West. Thanks to the Division many thousands of Ukraine's most patriotic activists were able to leave for the West and in doing so saved themselves from certain death.

Wasyl Sirskyj, a veteran of the Galicia Division who lives in Waterloo, Ontario, sent this article to The Weekly in the hope that its publication would serve to refute various allegations aimed against division members. The article was originally published in the magazine Forum (No. 102, fall 2000).

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