Showing posts with label Ukraine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ukraine. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 4, 2023

On parade for execution

‘500 Jews stood on parade for execution by shooting . . . lined up ready to be shot . . . I don’t much care for shooting defenseless people - even if they are only Jews. I prefer honest open combat.’ This is from the extraordinary diary of Felix Landau, a Nazi executioner of Galician Jews, who died 40 years ago today. He was eventually caught and tried for his crimes, serving only 10 years in prison, but his short diary stands as a horrifying first hand account of mass murderer.

Landau was born in Vienna in 1910 an illegitimate child given the name of his Jewish stepfather. In 1925, he joined the National Socialist Youth and was expelled from Catholic boarding school for active recruitment activities. In 1930, he joined Austrian Bundesheer (2nd Dragoner Squadron), yet by mid-1933 he had been expelled for Nazi actions. Thereafter, he joined the SS but was jailed for taking part in the assassination of Austrian chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss in 1934. 

On his release from jail in 1937, Landau renewed Nazi activities and became a naturalised German citizen. He married Marianne Grzonka in 1938, and they had two children. By this time he was employed as a police assistant in the Gestapo. In 1940, he transferred to the Gestapo’s intellitence service (KdS/SD), and then volunteered for the Einsatzkommando (the mobile killing squads) based first in Lwów, Poland (today Lviv, Ukraine), and later in Drohobycz.

By the latter part of 1941, Landau was in charge of organising Jewish labour, and he was living with a typist, Gertrude, whom he had met a year earlier. Having divorced his wife, he married Gertrude in 1943. After the war, in 1946, a former worker recognised him in Linz. He was arrested by the Americans but escaped from Glasenbach prison camp in August 1947. He changed his name to Rudolf Jaschke and started up an interior decorating company in Bavaria. In 1959, however, he was arrested and accused of participating in massacres. He was condemned to life imprisonment in 1962 at the Stuttgart Assize Court, but was released in 1973. He died on 4 April 1983. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Remember Together Across Borders, and from an article in the Los Angeles Review of Books

Landau’s name is remembered today because, briefly, he kept a diary in which he wrote about the horrendous atrocities - mass killings of Galician Jews - which he was undertaking for, and in the name of, the Nazis. The diary typescript in German is available online at Digital Kenyon; and the same website has published translations into English of several of the diary entries - as below. The translations were made by Tuviah Friedman, former Director of the Institute of Documentation of Nazi War Crimes in Haifa.

3 July 1941, Lemberg
‘On Monday 30.6.1941, after a sleepless night I volunteered . . . for a Commando Operation . . . At 4 PM on 2 July 1941, we arrived in Lemberg. In comparison Warsaw is harmless. Shortly upon arrival, the first Jews were shot by us. As is usual, some of the modern-time leaders become mad with a superiority complex, really imagine to be what they seem. . . Whilst writing the order is given to get ready. Commando operation with steel helmet and rifle, 30 rounds of ammunition . . . 500 Jews stood on parade for execution by shooting . . . lined up ready to be shot . . . I don’t much care for shooting defenseless people - even if they are only Jews. I prefer honest open combat.’

5 July 1941
‘. . . Today we might have our first hot meal . . . there is the smell of corpses everywhere when passing burnt houses. Time is filled out with sleep. In the course of the afternoon about another 300 Jews and Poles are put down. At a street corner we saw several Jews covered all over with sand. We looked at one another. All thought the same thing. The Jews had crawled out of the grave of the shot people . . .

Instead, they learn that Ukrainians had rounded up some 800 Jewish men and taken them up to the ruins of the Citadel on a hill. Landau’s Einsatzkommando unit was scheduled to shoot them the following day, but they were released and in the process a group of Wehrmacht soldiers beat them mercilessly:

We continued driving down the road. Hundreds of Jews with blood streaming down their faces, holes in their heads, broken hands and eyeballs hanging from their sockets are running along the road . . . soldiers standing with cudgels thick as fists lashing out and beating anyone crossing their path . . . Jews heaped row upon row, like pigs, whimpering terribly. Nothing against it only they should not let the Jews run around in this state. For today we have nothing else to do . . . Comradeship is still good . . . I am disappointed . . . too little combat, hence this bad mood.’

12 July 1941, Drohobycz
‘At 6 o’clock I am suddenly being woken out of my sleep. On parade for execution. Alright then, so I can play hangman and afterwards grave digger, why not? It’s  . . . strange, it is combat one loves, and then one has to shoot down defenseless people. 23 are to be shot, amongst them the women already mentioned. They are to be admired. They refuse to accept as much as a glass of water from us. I am designated a marksman and have to shoot eventual escapees. We drive along the road for a kilometer and then turn to the right into a wood. We are only 6 men  . . . and are looking for a suitable location for the execution and burial. A few minutes and we found such a place. The death candidates step forward with shovels to dig their own grave. Two of them are crying. The others appear to have tremendous courage. What may go through their minds at this moment? I think each has a small hope that somehow, he will not be shot after all. The death candidates are being paraded in three rows as there are not enough shovels. Strange, nothing moves in me. No pity, nothing. This is how it is, and that’s all there is to it. Only very gently does my heart beat when uncalled for emotions and thoughts awaken . . . And here I am today, a survivor standing in front of others in order to shoot them. Slowly the hole gets bigger and bigger, two of them are crying continuously. I keep them digging longer and longer: they don’t think so much when they’re digging. During work they are quieter. Valuables, watches and money are being put on one heap. After all of them are brought to a vacant place, the two women are made to stand at one end of the grave as first in line to be shot. Two men are already shot . . . in the undergrowth . . . The women stopped to the pit, tremendously composed and turned around. Six of us had to shoot them . . . three men to aim to the heart, three men to the head. I take the heart. The shots are heard and brain matter whiz through the air. Two in the head is too much.’

22 July 1941
‘. . . In the morning the workers ordered arrived. When I then wanted to go to the committee of the Jews, one of its members arrived and asked for my assistance, since the Jews refused to work there. I went over there. When these arseholes saw me, they ran away in all directions. A pity I didn’t have a pistol on me, or I would have shot some down . . . I declared that unless 100 Jews would fall in within one hour, I would choose 100 Jews to be shot. Scarcely 30 minutes later, 100 Jews arrived, and another 17 men for those that had escaped beforehand. I reported the incident and at the same time demanded that those that had run off were to be shot for having refused to work . . . 12 hours later, 20 Jews were killed.’

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Revolutionary, prime minister, author

Volodymyr Vynnychenko, a key figure in the early 20th century history of Ukraine, was born 140 years ago today. However, after failing to win independence from Russia for his country, he remained permanently in exile and focused on his writing career, producing many successful novels, plays and short stories. He also kept a detailed diary all his adult life - to date some five volumes have been published.
Vynnychenko was burn on 28 July 1880 in what is now central Ukraine but was then part of the Russian Empire. His father, once a peasant, married his mother, a widow with three children. In 1900, he enrolled in Kiev University, and the same year he joined the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party. Within a year or two, though, he was expelled from the university for taking part in revolutionary activities. During the years leading up to the First World War, he fled abroad many times to avoid arrest (though spent a year in prison at one point), returning clandestinely to continue his revolutionary activities. In 1911 he married Rosalia Lifshitz, a French Jewish doctor. He was a member of the executive committee of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers’ party (USDRP) and editor of its journal Borot’ba. During the war he lived in Moscow illegally, returning to Ukraine in 1917 to become a prominent leader in the struggle for independence. 
Vynnychenko was vice-president of the Central Rada (formed as a governing council for Ukraine) and was the first president of the general secretariat. He then headed the opposition Ukrainian National Union and the Directorate of the Ukrainian National Republic before the independence movement was crushed by the Soviets. Thereafter, in exile again, he organised the Ukrainian Communist Party and began to negotiate with the Soviet authorities for an independent Ukrainian socialist state. He was offered high-level posts in the Soviet Ukrainian government but, ultimately, efforts to attain an independent state failed. He returned to exile, first in Germany then France, focusing on his literary career - he had been publishing short stories since his student years. He produced many novels and plays, some of which were translated and performed across Europe. He also published a memoir, Rebirth of a Nation. A many-volume edition of his works was published in the 1920s, but, subsequently and until the 1980s, his works were forbidden in Ukraine. He died in 1951. Further information can be found at Wikipedia, the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine, and in the Encyclopedia of Nationalism (edited by Alexander J. Motyl and available for preview at Googlebooks).
Vynnychenko was a dedicated diarist, starting in 1911 and continuing throughout his life. To date, five volumes of his diaries have been published (in Ukrainian) by the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press: vol 1 (1911-20); 2 (1921-25); 3 (1926-28), 4 (1929-31) and 5 (1932-36), all edited and with annotations by Hryhorii Kostiuk). Some references to the diary can be found in the English-language, Faces of Displacement: The Writings of Volodymyr Vynnychenko by Mykola Soroka (McGill-Queen’s Press, 2012).
Of volume 4 of the diaries, the publisher says: [This] is an excellent primary source for the study of the life and thought of this major Ukrainian figure as well as of the cultural climate of Eastern and Western Europe from 1929 to 1931. Living in exile in France, Vynnychenko recorded his interaction with West European cultural figures, as well as his relations with the Ukrainian intelligentsia and émigré politicians. This volume contains many of his theories and musings on political, cultural, and philosophical issues. In particular, Vynnychenko comments extensively on the growing Stalinist repressions in the Ukrainian SSR and on the global economic crisis. This unique document, full of intimate reflections, political visions, and philosophical and psychological contemplations, will be of interest to a broad audience concerned with Ukrainian and world literature, culture, and history.’ A review of the same volume can be found in the January 2015 edition of East/West Journal of Ukrainian Studies (available online at ResearchGate). 
I have been unable to find any extracts translated into English and I have, therefore, chosen at random two extracts in Ukrainian from volume 1, scanned them with an OCR programme, and then translated them into English using Google’s automatic translation facility. The resulting text is surprisingly readable, though, of course, I cannot vouch for its accuracy.
25 May 1918
‘It is necessary to read Ukrainian history with bromine - before that it is one of unhappy, senseless, helpless stories, before that it is painful, annoying, bitter, sad to reread how an unhappy, obsessed, shabby nation did only that during all time of the state (or rather: semi-state) existence, which gnawed on all sides: from the Poles, Russians, Tatars, Swedes. The whole history is a series, an uninterrupted, continuous series of uprisings, wars, fires, famines, raids, military coups, intrigues, quarrels, undermining. Isn’t that the same thing happening now? They just wanted to live a state life, as the old story begins: Moscow is full of energy and does not want to let go. On the other hand, Poland is already standing, having prepared legions. The stronger one came, drove Moscow away, pushed the Poles away, and grabbed him by the throat and squeezed everything he could. The fourth, Austria, also sucked in from the side.’
23 June 1920
‘Surprisingly, when it seemed to them that I had agreed to what they liked, I was immediately given a car and even a separate train to move to Kharkiv. When it turned out that they were wrong, that I was standing on my own, so there is not even a place in a regular train. We have to beg to be allowed to leave. “All-Ukrainian Starost” Petrovsky has a separate car, cook, salon, etc. He promised to take me with him. But. It turns out that there is no place for me in his car, he recruited “specialists” for Ukraine from here. need not be.
And again we have to state that we were there in Vienna, extremely naive. Here people are such lonely people as everywhere. The worker Petrovsky, a communist and revolutionary, also sees the greatest value of life in saloon cars, cars, telephones and trifles ... [This sentence is interrupted].’

Wednesday, February 20, 2019

Making of a Russian censor

‘The minister of education summoned me for a talk. I arrived at 1 o’clock. “The matter of your appointment to the Press Committee,” the minister said to me, “has taken a rather serious and delicate turn. The emperor has expressed his desire for your appointment [. . .] “Yes,” I replied, “this really puts me in an awkward position. I am prepared to undertake any kind of work which would offer at least some hope for a cause which means so much to me as learning and literature. But if this committee was created for the moral supervision of literature, as its members claim it was, there are no grounds for its existence and it doesn’t have a leg to stand on. If it is going to turn into a secret committee, it is standing on muddy ground and I don’t want to soil myself on it.” ’ This is the Ukrainian, Aleksandr Nikitenko, writing in his diary, exactly 160 years ago today, about being offered a top posting as a central committee censor - all the more remarkable an achievement since he had been born into serfdom. The diary was published in English, some 100 years after his death, as The Diary of a Russian Censor.

Nikitenko was born in Sloboda, Ukraine, in 1804 or 1805, a serf and the property of Count Nikolai Sheremetev, for whom his educated father acted as an estate manager. By 1822, he was working in Ostogozhsk scraping a living as a private tutor. In 1924, he came to the notice of several educated and influential individuals, who then helped him, first, to become a free man, to take up residence in the household of E. P. Obolensky (a future Decembrist), and to study history and philosophy at the Saint Petersburg University. In 1826, he published his first article ‘On Overcoming the Misfortunes’, and was subsequently hired as secretary by the district superintendent of education, K. M. Borozdin. In that position, he compiled a commentary for the new censorship code. He married in mid-1833.

By 1834, Nikitenko had been appointed professor of philology at the university, and in 1837, he was awarded his Doctor of Philosophy (with a dissertation ‘On Creative Power of Poetry or Poetic Genius’). From 1833 to 1848, Nikitenko was a member of the local censorship committee, and a liberal one it seems, since he was arrested on more than occasion for allowing certain literary works to be circulated. From 1853, he worked for the Ministry for People’s Education as extraordinary commissioner; and from 1859 until 1865 he served as a member of the Central Censorship Department, ardently promoting the importance of literature. Otherwise, he acted as editor for several publications, such as Sovremennik (1847-1948) and Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnogo Prosveshcheniya (1856-1860), and Severnaya Pochta (1862). He died in 1877. A little further - though not much - biographical info can be gathered from Wikipedia, the Saint Petersburg Encyclopaedia, or H-Net. In 2001, Yale University Press published Nikitenko’s Up from Serfdom. My Childhood and Youth in Russia, 1804-1824 as translated by Helen Saltz Jacobson. Some pages of this can be read at Amazon.

A dozen of so years after Nikitenko’s death, in 1888-1992, a diary he had kept throughout his adult life was published in three volumes. An English edition, abridged, edited and translated by Jacobson, was brought out in 1975 by University of Massachusetts Press as The Diary of a Russian Censor. This can be previewed at Googlebooks. The Saint Petersburg Encyclopaedia says of the diary that it provides ‘a unique and valuable source for the study of the history of Russian society, literature and culture’. Here are two extracts, from the English translation, written as Nikitenko was reflecting on whether to accept an offer to join the central censorship department.

20 February 1859
‘The minister of education summoned me for a talk. I arrived at 1 o’clock.

“The matter of your appointment to the Press Committee,” the minister said to me, “has taken a rather serious and delicate turn. The emperor has expressed his desire for your appointment, and now I am conveying his wish to you. Count Adlerberg has informed me about it.”

“Yes,” I replied, “this really puts me in an awkward position. I am prepared to undertake any kind of work which would offer at least some hope for a cause which means so much to me as learning and literature. But if this committee was created for the moral supervision of literature, as its members claim it was, there are no grounds for its existence and it doesn’t have a leg to stand on. If it is going to turn into a secret committee, it is standing on muddy ground and I don’t want to soil myself on it.”

We talked about it for a long time and finally I promised Evgraf Petrovich that I would try my best to change this whole situation for the better.

While we were discussing this, Mukhanov arrived, and I immediately got involved in a conversation with him on this issue.

Mukhanov tried to prove to me that the committee had no reactionary intentions; that it did not have anything in common with the Committee of April 2; that the emperor was certainly not interested in creating a similar apparatus.

“Personally, Your Excellency,” I replied, “I am not worried about it becoming another Committee of April 2, because I think that’s impossible. I consider the very thought of it repugnant to the spirit of our times as well as an insult to our enlightened emperor. But I can’t hide the fact from you that the public is very prejudiced against this new committee.” ’

26 February 1859
‘All week I’ve been busy thinking about the proposal to join the committee and have been involved in discussions with them about it. I was invited to a meeting on Monday, the 23rd, where I came face to face with Count Adlerberg, Timashev and Mukhanov.

I was received very courteously, particularly by Count Adlerberg. I had made up my mind to express frankly both my convictions and my views on the committee, so they could decide for themselves whether I could participate in their affairs. They listened to me very attentively.

I told them of the public’s negative attitude toward the committee; that it considered it another April 2nd committee; that I personally considered it an impossibility today and thought their committee could not be either repressive or reactionary; that its sole function was to serve as an intermediary between literature and the emperor and to influence public opinion by getting the government’s views and aims across via the press in much the same way as literature did by bringing its ideas to the public.

They took all this very well. Then I added that if I were to sit on the committee, it would have to be with the right to vote. It was decided that I would give them a memorandum containing the gist of my remarks and that I would bring it with me on Thursday.

Today, Thursday, I read my memorandum to them in which I outlined my ideas in greater detail. Enlarging upon the thesis that literature did not nurture any revolutionary schemes, I took the position that there wasn’t the slightest reason to take repressive measures against it; that ordinary censorship measures were completely adequate; that literature couldn’t and shouldn’t be restrained by administrative measures; and that, perhaps, the committee should limit itself, according to the emperor’s wishes, to keeping a watchful eye on the mood of the public and to guiding public opinion, rather than literature, on to the right path.

I forgot to mention that, on Monday, after my discussion with the committee, I went to see the minister and told him that I was demanding voting rights. He completely supported my demand and tried to persuade me to accept the position of administrative director of the committee on that condition, since the voting right would put me in a position where I could undoubtedly be a force for good.

He also told me that, on Sunday, at the ball, he had spoken to the emperor about me and referred to me as one, who, in his opinion, could be more useful on the committee than anyone else. The emperor turned to Adlerberg and said: “Hear that, Aleksandr?” Earlier, too, while the committee was being formed, the minister had proposed my name for membership along with the names of Vyazemsky, Tyutchev, Pletnyov, and E. P. Kovalevsky (his brother).

After all this my memorandum was accepted, and tomorrow a report goes to the emperor. The die is cast. I am now embarking on a new career in public service. I shall certainly encounter difficulties - and enormous ones, too. But it would be wrong and dishonest of me to evade them, to refuse to do my part. There will be a great deal of gossip. Perhaps many will reproach me because I, with my spotless reputation, have decided to sit on a tribunal which is considered repressive. But that’s exactly the point, gentlemen. I want to stifle its appetite for repression. If I can work effectively - fine. If I can’t. I’ll leave.

In any case, I am absolutely determined to fight to the bitter end against repressive measures. But, at the same time, I am convinced that literature ought not to sever all its ties with the government and assume a hostile stance. If I am right, then it is incumbent on one of us to hold on to this tie and to assume the role, so to say, of a connecting link. I shall try to be that link.

Perhaps I shall succeed in convincing the committee that it must approach this sort of business in broad statesmanlike fashion; that it should not war with ideas, with literature, or with anything at all, because it is not a clique but a public figure; that it should not irritate people; that it has an enormous responsibility toward Russia, the emperor and posterity, and that because of this responsibility, it must not get involved in petty literary squabbles, but should look beyond all that and view literature as a social force which can do a great deal of good for society. Yes, I shall assume this new responsibility, if I am given the right to vote. Tyutchev, Goncharov, and Lyuboshchinsky warmly endorse my decision.

I think even the committee understood the purity of my intentions. Not a word was mentioned there about any kind of benefits or rewards. As far as salary is concerned, I shall be satisfied with the first figure to be named. As far as my other activities are concerned, it goes without saying that I shall have to curtail them.’

Monday, April 19, 2010

Charge of the Light Brigade

‘Many officers of Light cavalry were killed, and a number slightly wounded. There were no infantry early in the morning, and when they did come they were not engaged. The light cavalry were murdered in doing work, when infantry should have been first engaged, and artillery were indispensable. A very fine, warm day.’ This is Edward Hodge, a British army officer born 200 years ago today, writing in his diary about the Charge of the Light Brigade, one of the most famous incidents of the Crimean War.

Born in Weymouth, Dorset, on 19 April 1810, Edward Cooper Hodge was the only son of Major Edward Hodge, a soldier who distinguished himself throughout the Napoleonic wars but who died when his son was only five. Educated at Eton, Edward Cooper developed a reputation at rowing. In 1826, he left the school to join his mother and sisters in Paris. Aged 16, he was given a Cornetcy in the 13th Light Dragoons but, after only four months, switched to the 4th Dragoon Guards, in which he served throughout his army career, reaching the rank of general. He died in 1894. A little more biographical information is available from the British Medals and Irish Masonic History websites.

Hodge is remembered largely because of a diary he kept during the Crimean War. It was edited by the Marquess of Anglesey, and published by Leo Cooper 1971 as Little Hodge: Being Extracts from the Diaries and Letters of Colonel Edward Cooper Hodge Written During the Crimean War, 1854-1856.

The Crimean War, part of a larger conflict for influence over lands once dominated by the Ottoman Empire, was fought in the mid-1850s between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the British, French and Ottoman Empires. The Battle of Balaclava, on 25 October 1854, was one of the key events of a campaign within the Crimean War to capture Sevastopol, Russia’s principal naval base on the Black Sea. And much the best remembered event of that battle if not of the whole Crimean War is the Charge of the Light Brigade, which was immortalised in a poem by Alfred Tennyson.

Hodge’s diary is filled with short succinct entries, though one of the longest is for the day of the Battle of Balaclava. Here is that entry, and another short one for the following day.

25 October 1854
‘The Russians in great force attacked the outposts and forts garrisoned by the Turks, who were quickly turned out with a loss of 9 guns.

In fact the Turks, opposed by at least ten times their number, put up an heroic resistance which gave the allies more than an hour’s invaluable breathing space.

After suffering 170 casualties, they were driven from the first three redoubts. The Russians now poured infantry into these, and brought up to them a number of field-pieces. All this time Lucan could do nothing but make threatening demonstrations whilst falling back before the slowly advancing Russians, and ordering his horse artillery to try to reply to their much bigger guns. On Sir Colin Campbell’s advice, Lucan soon withdrew to the left, so as to be out of the line of fire of both the Russian guns and the 93rd, and in a position to attack the flank of the Russians should they charge the Scottish infantry. This now happened.

Their cavalry attacked the 93rd, who perceived them with a volley, and turned them.

The left column was only a small part of Liprandi’s mounted arm, perhaps 400 in number. Almost immediately after its defeat, a large body of cavalry came into the plain and were charged by the Greys and the Inniskillings. We were in reserve, and I brought forward our left and charged these cavalry in flank. The Greys were a little in confusion and retiring when our charge settled the business. We completely routed the hussars and cossacks, and drove them back.

[The editor, the Marquess of Anglesey, says here: ‘A more pithy description of the charge of the Heavy Brigade does not exist.’]

They retired, and then Lord Raglan should have been satisfied. The Russians retired to a strong position, a valley with batteries on the heights in front and on each flank. There was a battery of 9 guns in front of us, and a body of cavalry, and all these batteries on the heights.

Lord Raglan ordered the light cavalry to charge these guns and cavalry. They did so in the most gallant manner, but at the sacrifice of nearly the Brigade. The guns played upon them at about 200 yards from the batteries in front and flank. They advanced, took the guns, and charged the cavalry, who met them well. They were so knocked to pieces by the guns that the cavalry overpowered them, and they were obliged to retire having lost in every regiment some two 3rds of their men and officers. We advanced to cover their retreat, but the batteries got our range and began cutting us up terribly. I was not sorry when we were ordered to retreat.

[The editor says here: ‘Except for the facile way in which the blame for it is unhesitatingly placed upon Raglan, this is a surprisingly accurate outline of the famous Charge of the Light Brigade.’]

The Russians did not follow, or quit their strong position, and we remained on the ground till 8pm, when we were ordered to return to our camp, and to go to the rear some two miles, which we did.

Both my servants got brutally drunk, and I found them lying on their backs, and with difficulty I was enabled to save my baggage. I got up my bed in Forrest’s tent and slept there.

Our loss today was 1 killed (Ryan), 1 severely (Scanlan) and 4 slightly wounded.

Many officers of Light cavalry were killed, and a number slightly wounded. There were no infantry early in the morning, and when they did come they were not engaged. The light cavalry were murdered in doing work, when infantry should have been first engaged, and artillery were indispensable. A very fine, warm day.’

26 October 1854
‘I find my rascally servants not only got drunk, but they committed robberies upon the officers’ stores. They have lost my tent, and I only wonder that I have any kit left. I am most uncomfortable with such blackguards as these about me. I am far from well today. I am much purged and griped.’