BOOK NOTES: New CIUS Research Report covers Ukrainian Central Committee (1939-1944) (08/12/01)

BOOK NOTES

New CIUS Research Report covers Ukrainian Central Committee (1939-1944)

"The Correspondence of the Ukrainian Central Committee in Cracow and Lviv with the German Authorities, 1939-1944." Edmonton: CIUS Press, 2001. Two volumes, 1,289 pp., $100, cerlox binding (ISBN 1-894301-61-7).

The Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press has published a lengthy research report on the Ukrainian Central Committee (UCC, Ukrainskyi Tsentralnyi Komitet, Ukrainischer Hauptausschuß), which acted as the representative body of the Ukrainian population in the Generalgouvernement (Galicia and the lands of southeastern Poland) during World War II.

The report, 1,289 pages in length, is titled "The Correspondence of the Ukrainian Central Committee in Cracow and Lviv with the German Authorities, 1939-1944." It includes photoreproductions of a large selection of German-language correspondence drawn from the UCC archives, which are preserved at the National Archives of Canada in Ottawa. Documents that could not be reproduced legibly from their originals are given in transcription.

The compiler and author of the introduction, Dr. Wasyl Veryha of Toronto, has published several books on Ukrainian history and is the vice-president of the Ukrainian World Congress and of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in Canada.

The documents selected for inclusion originated at UCC headquarters in Lviv (and Krakow in 1944) and in the four sectors of the Generalgouvernement in which Ukrainians resided during the German occupation: (1) the provinces of Pidliashia and Kholm (Chelm) in the Lublin district; (2) a band of settlements along the left bank of the Sian River in the Krakow district, including the cities of Peremyshl (Przemysl) and Yaroslav (Jaroslaw); (3) the Lemko region in the Carpathian Mountains, bordering on Slovakia; and (4) the district of Galicia, established in 1941 following the German invasion of the USSR. The total Ukrainian population of the Generalgouvernement is estimated to have been more than half a million.

Under the leadership of the well-known geographer Volodymyr Kubijovyc, the UCC conducted general social and relief work, seeking to cooperate with foreign relief organizations via the German Red Cross. Its representatives were attached to the administrations of the Krakow and Lublin districts, while UCC branches in towns and cities carried out relief work on the local level. The UCC construed assistance to the needy as meaning not only material aid (money, food and clothing), but also support for those who needed education and professional training.

The committee was funded by cash donations and contributions in kind from individual Ukrainians, as well as government and municipal subsidies, also in the form of cash, food and clothing, including donations from the International Red Cross. Working in difficult wartime conditions, often at considerable personal risk, UCC personnel sought to protect the Ukrainian population from arrest and incarceration, as well as the worst excesses of the occupation regime's food and labor requisitions.

The documents reproduced in this report, which detail the problems faced by the UCC and efforts to resolve them, are an indispensable primary source for the history of the German occupation of Ukraine.

This CIUS Press Research Report (No. 61) is available for $100. Payments by check, money order or credit card are accepted by: mail, CIUS Press, 352 Athabasca Hall, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E8; by telephone, (780) 492-2972; or by fax, (780) 492-4967. Shipping and handling charges are $10, and Canadian customers are required to pay an additional 7 percent GST. Prices outside Canada are in U.S. dollars.

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