The Vinnytsia Mass Graves and Some Other Soviet Sites of Execution
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TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface by L.R. Wynar...................................................... vii Acknowledgements ......................................................... xii Editorial Policy ............................................................... xv I. INTRODUCTION by lhor Kamenetsky Humanitarian and Anti-Humanitarian Trends in Modern History ............................................................1 The Vinnytsia Case and the Yezhovshchyna Era.. ................ .15 The Role of the Local Ukrainian Population and of the German Occupation Forces in the Vinnytsia Case .....................................................22 The Vinnytsia Mass Graves and Some Other Soviet Sites of Execution ........................ 31 Conclusion.. ................................................................... .35 11. TESTIMONIES AND HEARINGS M. Seleshko, Vinnystsia - The Katyn of Ukraine (A Report by an Eyewitness) ............................41 Petro Pavloyvch, I Saw Hell: Fragment of Reminiscences........................................................... .52 Bishop Sylvester, The Vynnytsya Tragedy.. ........................ .54 Archbishop Hyhoriy, P. Pavlovych, K. Sybirsky, Testimony on the Crime in Vynnytsya ............................................................ .56 lhor Kamenetsky, Interview with an Eyewitness in August 1987 .......................................... .60 Archbishop Hyhoriy, Funeral Eulogy Delivered at Vinnytsia, October 3, 1943.. ....................... .63 Congressional Hearings, The Crimes of Khrushchev, Part 11.................................................... .66 I11 . EVALUATIONS AND COMPARISONS Apollon Trembowetskyi. Who Were These 'Enemies of the People'? ..............................................79 Leonid Lyman. On the Fourth Anniversary of Vinnitsa ....................................................................82 Louis Fitz Gibbon. Vynnytsya - The Forgotten Forerunner of Katyn ...................................................86 Orysia Tracz. Fiftieth Anniversary of Vinnytsia................................................................... 88 IV . GERMAN GOVERNMENT REPORT ON VINNYTSIA (1944) OFFICIAL MATERIAL ON THE MASS MURDER OF VINNYTSIA Foreword .....................................................................91 I. Forensic Medical Report Report of the Chairman of the German Society for Forensic Medicine and Criminal Investigation ......... 95 Protocol of the International Commission of Foreign Medical Examiners ................................133 Protocol of the German Professors of Forensic Medicine from German Universities .................... 137 Summary ........................................................... 140 I1. Criminal Investigation Report Report of the Criminal Findings on the Mass Murder in Vinnytsia .........................................142 Protocols of Police Questionings ............................ 154 List of Victims Identified as of October 7, 1943 ........ 168 111. Legal Report ......................................................... 211 Report by Dr . Ziegler. President of the Senate and Legal Expert ................................. 211 Protocol of the Investigation ................................. 215 Notes ................................................................................. 234 Illustrations ......................................................................... 237 Bibliography ........................................................................ 253 Editor's Final Note ............................................................... 260 Index .................................................................................. 261 By Lubomyr R. Wynar I The publication of this collection of documents on the massacre of approximately nine thousand persons in the Ukrainian town of Vin- nytsia during 1937 through 1938 by the NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs) is very timely and broadens the historical source base on Stalinist genocide policies toward Ukrainians in Soviet Ukraine. At the same time, it presents prima facie evidence on the activities of Soviet security police (NKVD) during the Yezhov period in the 1930s. When compared to the Katyn massacre of over 10,000 Polish Army officers and intellectuals who were taken prisoner by the Red Army in 1939 and executed by the NKVD in 1940, the Vinnytsia mass murder is relatively unknown to many Western students of Stalinism and Soviet history. It is important to recall that the Soviet government had accused the Germans of both the Katyn and Vinnytsia massacres. However, on the basis of extensive evidence, records, testimonies and medical examination of the corpses, it was determined that both of these crimes against the Polish and Ukrainian peoples were committed by Soviet security police, prior to the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The recent XXVIIth Party Congress of the Soviet Union (1986) and the All-Union Conference of the Soviet Communist Party (1988) rein- 'For details see U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on the Katyn Forest Massacre, The Katyn Forest Massacre. Hearings before the Select Committee . 82nd Congress, 1st and 2nd session 1915-1952. (Washington: U.S. Government Print- ing Office, 1952), 7 parts; On the Vinnytsia massacre see The Crimes of Khrushchev. Part 2. U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Un-American Activities. House of Representatives. 86th Congress, First Session (Washington: U.S. Government Print- ing Office, 1959). See also Ihor Kamenetsky's "Introduction" to this publication, pp. 31-32. vii forced Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and his appeal to Soviet his- torians to fill the "blank spots" in Soviet history with an objective re- examination of historical events. Gorbachev's denunication of Stalin's personality cult and his crimes were instrumental in the initiation of a number of articles within the Soviet press dealing with qualitative and quantitative analyses of the killings committed by Stalin and his associates.' In a special report to The New York Times, Bill Keller discusses the mass graves in Bykovnia forests near Kiev which are "the latest focus of a grisly search for the undiscovered or unacknowledged burial grounds of the millions killed by Stalin's repression^."^ The mass graves in the Bykovnia forests, similar to the recently discovered graves at Kuropaty near Minsk in the Byelorussian SSR where the NKVD murdered over 100,000 Byeloru~sians,~reveal the staggering dimension of genocide committed by the Stalinist killing machine, especially in the Ukrainian and Byelorussian republics. In view of the recent Soviet discussion of Stalin's atrocities at By- kovnia, Kuropaty and KatynI5the question is to what extent has the Vinnytsia massacre been discussed in the Soviet Ukrainian and Russian 5ee Paul ~uinn-Judge," Soviets Raise Count on Stalin Victims," Christian Science Monitor, vol. 81, no. 44, (Jan. 30, 1989), p. 3. According to Russian historian Roy Medvedev, "Thirty six million people fell victim to Stalinist repressions between 1927 and 1953" excluding those who died from hunger during the 1930s. See also Felicity Barringer, "Stalin Victims Are Mourned by Throngs," The New York Times, vol. 138, no. 47, 703 (Nov. 28, 1988), Sec. A, p. 7. 'Bill Keller, "Mystery of Ukraine Graves: Whose Victims Were They?" The New York Times, vol. 138, no. 47,801 (March 6, 1989), p. 1. According to the Associated Press, estimates of the buried victims in Bykovnia vary from 6,000 to 300,000. Ukrainian villagers "broke five decades of terrified silence to accuse Joseph Stalin's secret police after the Ukrainian government erected a mon- ument in May 1988 blaming Nazi occupiers for the crime. The villagers forced Ukrainian authorities in December to establish the commission, saying three previous investi- gations had covered up the truth." See "Soviet commission says '30s massacre com- mitted by Stalin's police, not Nazis," The Denver Post, (March 25, 1989). According to the Associated Press, the TASS agency stated that an examination of archival records confirmed that victims in Bykovnia were the so-called "people's enemies," accused in the 1930s with counter revolutionary activities. It is important to note that on May 7, 1989, representatives of the Ukrainian Society Memorial and thousands of Ukrainian residents of Kiev held a mass meeting at Bykovnia in order to commemorate the mass murders committed by the NKVD. 'Zenon Poznyak, "Kuropaty. A National Tragedy That Everyone Should Know About," Moscow News, no. 41, 1988. According to Poznyak, Kuropaty "was a place where people were shot on a mass scale. It was a 'murder place' which operated every day from 1937 to June 1941." 'On Katyn, see Thomas S. Szayna, "Addressing 'Blank Spots' in Polish-Soviet Relations," Problems of Communism, vol. 37, (Nov.-Dec. 1988), pp. 37-61. viii presses? There is some modest indication that Ukrainian intellectual circles in Soviet Ukraine are searching for archival sources on Stalin's crime in Vinnytsia as well as other Ukrainian cities and villages. Anatolii Ben, a Ukrainian journalist, after consultation with B.I. Oliinyk, Sec- retary of the Ukrainian Writers Union (Spilka Pys'mennykiv Ukrain~),~ travelled to Moscow in order to interview Russian archivist Dmitri Yurasov, for the purpose of obtaining data on Stalin's Ukrainian vic- tims. Ben's interview with Yurasov was published in the Ukrainian Soviet newspaper Molod' Ukrainy (Youth of Ukraine) in September of 1988.7During the interview Yurasov stated that according to his