Polish soldiers in the Wehrmacht/Waffen-SS?

[wm]

The Ukrainians were co-belligerents of the Poles (against the Soviets), Soviets, Germans (against the Soviets), and later Americans (against the Soviets), but they fought for their freedom, not for any Nazi goals.

In this, there were no different from other nations invaded (six in total) and subjected to genocide by the Soviets (five in total) as a result of the Hitler-Stalin pact (1939.)

The Ukrainians collaborated with the Germans against the Soviets, but after their provisional government was arrested and sent to concentration camps (1941), they mostly exploited the collaboration for their own purposes - to gain military experience, weapons, ammunition.
For example, in 1943, all Ukrainian policemen defected and formed the military core of the Ukrainian underground.

Smearing a guy without evidence of any crimes he committed, just because he was one of them, is childish, tabloid history. It was a complex history that resulted in the suffering and death of millions. Let's not reduce it to a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

A faction of the Ukrainian underground committed many crimes, but for the unspeakable hell that was created in Eastern Europe, two genocidal states were solely and equally responsible: Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia.

[Ken S.]

Well said.

[Orlov]

Dear participants of the discussion in this thread,
This thread is evolving to "Ukrainian", thanks Hunka - - meanwhile, his topic is "Polish soldiers in the Wehrmacht/Waffen-SS?"
Of course, there is no evidence about Hunka's service in the Galizisches SS Freiwilligen Regiment 4 (Polizei). With the fragmentary archives of the SS-Freiwilligen-Division Galizien, which did not commit war crimes in the area of Distrikt Galizien, only Distrikt Lublin.
Of course, let us remember all the Ukrainians' own purposes, but also the practically widespread Ukrainian support for Slebstreinigungsaktionen in the summer of 1941. About the participation of the Ukrainian OD, Hipo and Schuma Btl. during cooperation in the extermination of Jews in 1941-1942.
There would have been no genocide in the bloodlands thanks to the Hitler-Stalin Pact of August 23, 1939.
Coming back to the topic at hand, let me remind you - there was no Polnische Polizei ("dark blue police") in Distrikt Galizien and Generallkommissariate Wolhynien-Podolien.

[wm]

But who were those Ukrainians?
The Polish historian Grzegorz Motyka writes in his "Ukraińska partyzantka 1942-1960" that there is no evidence that OUN-B organized pogroms or even recommended participation in Nazi atrocities.

So maybe the Ukrainian masses of illiterate peasants living in abject poverty? The so-called black rabble? They would gladly loot and murder but that was impersonal. And they had no leadership or even were organized to any degree.

[Orlov]

Dear WM,
You will learn one day:
1) 1) If you have a question do you address the person you are discussing with in a cultured manner (obligatory with a honorific phrase)?
2) Are you formulating an illogical questions a musam? - Do you want to accidentally persuade me that I wrote about OUN-B?
3. Someday you will read and you will stop wandering in the historical fog:

• Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe, Stepan Bandera, The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist: Fascism, Genocide, and Cult , (Hannover: ibidem Press 2014);

• Christopher R. Browning i Jürgen Matthäus, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007);

• Christian Gerlach, The Extermination of the European Jews. New Approaches to European History, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016);

• Hannes Heer, Lemberg 1941: Die Instrumentalisierung der NKVD-Verbrechen für den Judenmord [in:] Kriegsverbrechen im 20. Jahrhundert, Hrsg. W. Wette, G.R. Ueberschär, (Darmstadt: Primus Verlag, 2001)

• Thomas Sandkühler, „Endlösung” in Galizien. Der Judenmord und die Rettungsinitiativen von Berthold Beitz 1941–1944, (Bonn: Dietz, 1996);

• it would also not be a bad idea to read - Jeffrey S. Kopstein, Jason Wittenberg, Intimate Violence. Anti-Jewish Pogroms on the eve of the Holocaust, (Ithaca-London: Cornell University Press, 2018).

PS: Ending the topic of Hunka - I am not convinced of his guilt - there are probably no documents about him - apart from the immigration documentation in Canada.
However, I recommend creating a new thread about Hunka - and not writing about Ukrainians from Eastern Galicia in a thread devoted to another topic.

[Steve]

“The Polish historian Grzegorz Motyka writes in his "Ukraińska partyzantka 1942-1960" that there is no evidence that OUN-B organized pogroms or even recommended participation in Nazi atrocities.”

Yaroslaw Stretsko reported to Bandera on the third day of the Soviet invasion “we are raising militias that will assist the extermination of Jews” then in July 1941 “Moscow and Jewry are the primary enemies of Ukraine …. I am of the opinion that the Jews should be exterminated and (see) the expediency of carrying out in Ukraine the German methods of exterminating the Jews”.

Stepan Lenkavskyi said on July 18 1941 at an OUN gathering in Lwow “as for Jews we are taking all measures leading to their extermination”.

From – The Soviet Counterinsurgency in the Western Borderlands by Alexander Statiev, pages 22 and 23. Statiev is a professor at the University of Waterloo Canada.

[wm]

On the third day...
But on the third day, there was no extermination of the Jews, and during subsequent weeks wasn't either.
And anyway, three weeks later, the entire Ukrainian government was sent to Auschwitz.

The Commissar Order was implemented slowly and demanded "vigorous measures against agitators, guerrillas, saboteurs, Jews, and complete elimination of any active or passive resistance" - not only against Jews.
The first (relatively) small execution happened in distant Latvia - on the second day. On the fifth, a larger one in Lublin.
At the end of the month, about 10,000 were executed in Minsk, including many Jews, but even more Jews were set free at the same time.
Stretsko couldn't mention something that still didn't exist.

And on August 19, 1941, the Senior Council of OUN decided that ghettoization or (better) deportation from Ukraine should have been supported and encouraged.

[Georg_S]

Plaese stay on topic. I dot want to start removing post
/Georg