BURIED LIVES, UNBURIED PAST: SOVIET HOLOCAUST JUSTICE IN WESTERN UKRAINE, 1965-1969 By OLESYA DUDENKOVA A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2014 © 2014 Olesya Dudenkova To Dmitriy, Diana, Tatyana, Daniel and Maksim for being more than amazing siblings, but also my best friends. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my thesis advisor, Dr. Norman Goda, for his support and guidance. His dedication to my research motivated and challenged me to ask difficult questions and attempt to discover answers. I consider myself very fortunate to have had such an outstanding scholar and professor as my advisor. I am also grateful for Dr. Vassili Schedrin for being so interested and dedicated to my work. As a committee member, his expertise and advice was invaluable. Additionally, I would like to thank the UF Center for European Studies for their funding and resources, as well as the UF Center for Jewish Studies for funding portions of my research. I am thankful for the opportunity I had to work at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum; the archives provided the majority of documents used for my research and interaction with many scholars proved vital for the nascent stages of my project. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................4 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ..........................................................................................................6 ABSTRACT .....................................................................................................................................7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................8 2 EASTERN GALICIA AND HOLOCAUST IN L’VIV .........................................................20 3 SS WACHMÄNNER: THE CASE OF OLEKSANDR KIRELAKHA .................................33 4 EVOLVING SOVIET LAW AND POLITICS ......................................................................44 5 L’VIV TRIAL IN 1966 ..........................................................................................................56 6 OLEKSANDR KIRELAKHA TRIAL II ...............................................................................79 7 CONCLUSION: ANALYSIS AND QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH ............108 APPENDIX: SELECTED TRANSLATED DOCUMENTS.......................................................115 LIST OF REFERENCES .............................................................................................................137 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................................141 5 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union ESC Extraordinary State Commission JAC Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee KGB Committee for State Security (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti) OUN Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists SS Protection Squadron (Schutzstaffel) UkSSR Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic In transliterating Russian and Ukrainian words and proper names, I followed the Library of Congress system and used the contemporary spellings, rather than historical versions. For example, I used the spelling “Kyiv” for Ukraine’s capital. For some German words I used their original spelling in order to preserve the meaning, such as Wachmänner. Translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. 6 Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts BURIED LIVES, UNBURIED PAST: SOVIET HOLOCAUST JUSTICE IN WESTERN UKRAINE, 1965-1969 By Olesya Dudenkova May 2014 Chair: Norman J.W. Goda Major: History Beginning in 1965, the Soviet Union launched an extended series of trials of former Nazi collaborators known as Wachmänner. These Soviet citizens had served as SS guards for Germany during World War II. The majority faced trial immediately after the war, but received amnesty in the mid- 1950s. From 1965, the Soviet authorizes reopened military tribunals and brought these men to trial once more. This research focuses on several trials in the western Ukrainian city of L’viv from 1965- 1969. The trials display the post-Stalinist Soviet legal system at work with its extensive and thorough investigations. They also provide information about the Holocaust in Ukraine, including details regarding massacres, labor camps and Jewish resistance. Additionally, the trials raise important questions about Soviet justice and memory. This study focuses on the trials as part of a greater phenomenon in domestic and global politics during the Cold War, as well as their pedagogical role at the local level. 7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION In his study on major Holocaust trials, Lawrence Douglas explained that criminal law has faced the dual challenge to “represent and judge the Holocaust’s horror.”1 Despite the limitations of the law, numerous courts in various countries have attempted to serve justice for the crimes committed during World War II and the Holocaust. In doing so, many trials provided “principled judgment and historical tutelage” in their respective contexts.2 The Soviet Union is not an exception. However, the Soviet trials deserve careful scrutiny when considering their judgment and representation, or the lack thereof, of Holocaust crimes. Beginning in 1965, a second wave of trials of Nazi collaborators began in the Soviet Union, with military tribunals judging cases in several cities throughout the republics. Why did Soviet authorities hold trials of Nazi collaborators more than twenty years after the war? Furthermore, what can these trials reveal about the Holocaust and the Soviet response to Jewish suffering? This study focuses on trials in the western Ukrainian city of L’viv, as part of a greater phenomenon in domestic and global politics as well as their pedagogical role at the local level. The records of the Soviet Politburo have not been declassified, and researchers have limited access to other records showing the authorities’ decision-making processes. Therefore, the exact reasons leading the Soviet authorities to open military tribunals and try Nazi collaborators in the mid to late 1960s are unknown. Furthermore, the trials received limited press coverage at all levels – global, national and local. Nonetheless, nothing in the Soviet Union happened in isolation. Thus, one can analyze these trials by considering Soviet politics of the 1 Lawrence Douglas, The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 5. 2 Douglas, Memory of Judgment, 2. 8 1960s, both domestically and internationally. The Ukrainian context, particularly that of Western Ukraine and L’viv, is also vital. Furthermore, these Soviet trials add another dimension of global Holocaust justice in the 1960s. Several articles on the early Soviet military tribunals during the 1940s exist. Alexander Prusin explains that few scholars have studied Soviet military trials because of limited archival access and the apparent Soviet tendency to use trials as vehicles of propaganda.3 However, Prusin believes that examining court documents can provide valuable information about Soviet legal practice, as well as historical material on the Holocaust in the Soviet Union. During the immediate postwar era, most trials were held in places that once had high populations of Jews such as Kyiv, Riga and Minsk. Despite public knowledge of Nazi crimes, the trials did not discuss Jewish suffering explicitly; instead, the Soviet courts used euphemisms such as “massacres of Soviet citizens.” The propaganda that accompanied the trials served as a pedagogical tool and the ideological platform against foreign and domestic enemies. Additionally, the Soviet authorities considered the international arena and showed their commitment to punishing Nazi criminals. Nonetheless, Prusin asserts “Although the Soviet press still downplayed the Holocaust by pointedly referring to the murdered Jews as “Soviet citizens,” the trials became the first instances that revealed to the Soviet public the scope of the Jews’ tragedy and made it an inseparable part of the history of the Great Patriotic War.”4 3 Alexander Victor Prusin, “’Fascist Criminals to the Gallows!’: The Holocaust and Soviet War Crimes Trials, December 1945 – February 1946” in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, V17 N1, Spring 2003, pp. 1-30. 4 Prusin, “’Fascist Criminals to the Gallows!,’” 9. 9 Ilya Bourtman’s article on the Krasnodar trial of 1943 supports much of Prusin’s argument.5 Bourtman examines the public trial of eleven Soviet citizens accused of betrayal and collaboration, eight of whom were publicly hanged. His detailed study of this trial and its media coverage indicates that the Soviet authorities functioned with political, ideological and instrumental motivations, both at in the national and global arenas. Bourtman suggests that the Soviet authorities had several reasons for holding trials, including: “exacting revenge and extracting retribution; deterring future collaboration; cleansing Soviet society of ‘enemies of the state’; garnering evidence for reparations claims; countering Western allegations of Soviet wrongdoing and enabling the authorities to draw parallels between Soviet justice and Western justice.”6 Although Bourtman points out that