Ukrainian Auxiliary Police

The Ukrainische Hilfspolizei or the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police was an official designation of the local police force established by Nazi Germany during World War II on the territory of Nazi occupied Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic renamed Reichskommissariat Ukraine after Operation Barbarossa.

The Ukrainian Auxiliary Police was created by Heinrich Himmler in mid-August 1941 under the control of German Ordnungspolizei. The actual Reichskommissariat Ukraine was formed officially on August 20, 1941. The uniformed force consisted to two categories of German-controlled Ukrainian armed organisations. The first comprised mobile police units most often called Schutzmannschaft, or Schuma, split into battalion-formations and deployed to anti-Jewish and anti-partisan operations in most areas of Ukraine. It was subordinated directly to the German Commander of the Order Police for the area.

The second category was the local police force (approximately, a constabulary), called simply the Ukrainian Police (UP) by the German administration, which the SS raised most successfully in the District of Galicia (formed August 1, 1941) extending south-east from the General Government. Notably, the District of Galicia – although considered by some to be part of the occupied Ukraine of today – was a separate administrative unit from the actual Reichskommissariat Ukraine. They were not connected with each other politically.

The UP formations appeared as well further east in German occupied Soviet Ukraine in significant towns and cities such as Kyiv. The urban based forces were subordinated to the city's German Commander of State protection police (Schutzpolizei or Schupo); the rural police posts were subordinated to the area German Commander of Gendarmerie. The Schupo and Gendarmerie structures were themselves subordinated to the area Commander of Order Police.

History


The local municipal police force (UP) in the occupied Ukrainian SSR came into existence right after the commencement of Operation Barbarossa. It was the result of an order issued on July 27, 1941 by the German commander in chief of the Order Police in occupied Kraków. The Ukrainian auxiliary police in the new District of Galicia fell under the command of the German office for the General Government.

An actual ethnic Ukrainian command centre did not exist. The top Ukrainian police officer, Vladimir Pitulay, rose to the rank of major and became the district commandant (Major der Ukrainische Polizei und Kommandeur) in Lemberg (now Lviv). A police school was established in Lviv by the district SS-and-Police Leader in order to meet plans for growth. The school director was Ivan Kozak. The total number of enlisted men in the new politically independent Distrikt Galizien amounted to some 6,000 volunteers including 120 low-level officers who served there. The units were used primarily to keep order and carry out constabulary duties. Their actions were restricted by other police groups such as the Sonderdienst, made up of Volksdeutsche; the Kripo (Criminal police); Bahnschutz (railroad and transport police); and the Werkschutz, who kept order and guarded industrial plants. They were supported by the Ukrainian Protection Police and the Ukrainian Order Police.

In the newly formed Reichskommissariat Ukraine the auxiliary police forces were named Schutzmannschaft battalions, and amounted to more than 35,000 men. The name of the formations reflected their geographic jurisdiction. The make-up of the officer corps were often representative of various local nationalities. Professor Wendy Lower from Towson University writes that although Ukrainians greatly outnumbered other non-Germans in the auxiliary police, only the Volksdeutsche Germans from Ukraine were given leadership roles. Many of those who joined the ranks of the police had served as militiamen under Soviet rule since 1939. Tadeusz Piotrowski wrote that the majority of Ukrainische Hilfspolizei came from the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-B, confirmed by John-Paul Himka, although Ivan Patryljak argued that the German authorities expressly forbade drafting known nationalists. According to Andrew Gregorovich (Ukrainian Review), the ethnic composition of Auxiliary Police reflected the demographics of the land and included Russians, Poles, and German Volksdeutsche drafted from the local population and Soviet POWs, but Browning (Ordinary Men) and Lower both insist that, for the German administration, nobody but the "Ukrainians and local ethnic Germans could be relied upon to assist with the killing". Also, according to Aleksandr Prusin most members were ethnic Ukrainians, hence the name or the force. The auxiliary police were directly under the command of the Germanic-SS, Einsatzgruppen, and military administration.

Participation in Holocaust and Nazi atrocities
Professor Alexander Statiev of the Canadian University of Waterloo writes that Ukrainian Auxiliary Police were the major perpetrator of the Holocaust on Soviet territories based on native origins, and those police units participated in the extermination of 150,000 Jews in the area of Volhynia alone. German historian Dieter Pohl in The Shoah in Ukraine writes that the auxiliary police was active during killing operations by the Germans already in the first phases of the German occupation. The auxiliary police registered the Jews, conducted raids and guarded ghettos, loaded convoys to execution sites and cordoned them off. Some 300 auxiliary policemen from Kiev helped organize the massacre in Babi Yar. They also took part in the massacre in Dnipropetrovsk, where the field command noted that the cooperation ran "smoothly in every way". Cases where local commandants ordered murder of Jews using police force are known. In killings of Jews in Kryvy Rih the "entire Ukrainian auxiliary police" was put to use.

Persecution of Poles
Defining nationality of Ukrainian policemen using present-day classifications is problematic, because in German occupied eastern Poland (see: District of Galicia) there was no perception of de jure Ukrainian independent statehood. Some Ukrainian Hilfspolizei who harbored a pathological hatred for Poles and Jews – resulting in acts of mass murder – remained formally and legally Polish from the time before the invasion until much later. Thirty years after the war ended, one former Ukrainian policeman, Jan Masłowski (a.k.a. Ivan Maslij), was recognized in Rakłowice near Wrocław by Polish survivors of massacres committed by Ukrainische Hilfspolizei in the towns of Szczepiatyn, Dyniska, Tarnoszyn, Niemstów, and Korczów. He was sentenced to death in Poland in 1978.

On November 13, 1942, members of the Ukrainische Hilfspolizei robbed and executed 32 Poles and 1 Jew in the village of Obórki (pl), located in prewar Wołyń Voivodeship. After the crime the village was burned down. On December 16, 1942, the Ukrainian policemen, led by Germans, killed 360 Poles in Jezierce (former powiat Rivne).

In Lviv, in late February and March 1944, the Ukrainische Hilfspolizei arrested a number of young men of Polish nationality. Many of them were later found dead and their Identity documents stolen. The Government Delegation for Poland started negotiations with the OUN-B. When they failed, Kedyw began an action called "Nieszpory" (Vespers) where 11 policemen were shot in retaliation and the murders of young Poles in Lviv stopped.

Role in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army formation
For many who joined the police force, enlistment served as an opportunity to receive military training and direct access to weapons. Bandera's OUN leadership on March 20, 1943 issued secret instructions ordering their members who had joined the German auxiliary police to desert with their weapons and join with the military detachment of OUN (SD) units in Volyn. The number of trained and armed policemen who in spring 1943 joined the ranks of the future Ukrainian Insurgent Army were estimated to be 10,000. This process in some places involved engaging in armed conflict with German forces as they tried to prevent desertion.

Battalions
By 1942, after the military administration was replaced with the regular Gendarmerie in occupied East, the strength of the Schutzmannschaft had increased tenfold. However, the new recruits were mostly not in the battalions. Instead, they took up the individual post duty as militias in place of former local Ordnungsdienst. The actual Security Battalions (or Schumas, Schutzmannschaft Bataillone) comprised only one-third of the overall strength of the formation. As a matter of course, the static police wore black uniforms from the pre-war German stock which was no longer used and kept in storage. The black uniforms of the former Allgemeine-SS including their characteristic field caps were simply stripped of German insignia and given to Schutzmannschaft to use with the new patches. Gradually, the mobile units were issued field-grey uniforms (picured). The desired size of each battalion was about 500 soldiers divided into three companies of 150 men each, with 50 staff members.


 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 51 (ukrainische), disbanded in May 1943
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 53 (ukrainische), formed in August 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 54 (ukrainische), formed in September 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 55 (ukrainische), formed in August 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Wacht Bataillon 57 (ukrainische), since July 1944 as Schutzmannschaft-Brigade Siegling, in August, 30th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 61 (ukrainische), since July 1944 as Schutzmannschaft-Brigade Siegling, in August, 30th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 62 (ukrainische), since July 1944 as Schutzmannschaft-Brigade Siegling, in August, 30th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 63 (ukrainische), since July 1944 as Schutzmannschaft-Brigade Siegling, in August, 30th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 101 (ukrainische), formed in July 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 102 (ukrainische), formed in July 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 103 (ukrainische), formed in July 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 104 (ukrainische), formed in July 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 105 (ukrainische), formed in November 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 106 (ukrainische), formed in November 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 107 (ukrainische), formed in November 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 108 (ukrainische), formed in July 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 109 (ukrainische), formed in July 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 110 (ukrainische), formed in July 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 111 (ukrainische), formed in July 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 113 (ukrainische), formed in July 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 114 (ukrainische), formed in July 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 115 (ukrainische), formed in July 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 116 (ukrainische), formed in July 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 117 (ukrainische), formed in July 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Battalion 118, formed in July 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 119 (ukrainische), formed in November 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 120 (ukrainische), formed in November 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 121 (ukrainische), formed in November 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Battalion 122 (ukrainische), formed in July 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Battalion 123 (ukrainische), formed in July 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Battalion 124 (ukrainische), formed in July 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 125 (ukrainische), formed in November 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 129 (ukrainische), formed in July 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 130 (ukrainische), formed in July 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 131 (ukrainische), formed in July 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 134 (ukrainische), formed in November 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 136 (ukrainische), formed in November 1942.
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 137 (ukrainische), formed in October 1942.
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 138 (ukrainische), formed in October 1942.
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 139 (ukrainische), formed in October 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 140 (ukrainische), formed in October 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 143 (ukrainische), formed in August 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 144 (ukrainische), formed in August 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 145 (ukrainische), formed in August 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 146 (ukrainische), formed in August 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 155 (ukrainische), formed in November 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 156 (ukrainische), formed in November 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 157 (ukrainische), formed in November 1942
 * Schutzmannschaft Bataillon 158 (ukrainische), formed in November 1942.