Rehearsal for Volhynia: Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201 and Hauptmann Roman Shukhevych in Occupied Belorussia, 1942

Abstract

This article is part of the special cluster titled Conceptualizations of the Holocaust in Germany, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine since the 1990s, guest edited by Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe. In 2007, Roman Shukhevych (1907–1950), the commander of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), was designated an official Ukrainian state hero. He has since become the object of an elaborate cult of personality. Lauded for his resistance to the Soviet authorities in 1944–1950, Shukhevych is highly controversial in neighbouring Poland for the ethnic cleansing that the UPA carried out in 1943–1944, as he commanded that organization. Over a few months, the UPA killed around ninety thousand Poles, expelling hundreds of thousands of others. The brutal efficiency of this campaign has to be seen in the context of the larger war, not least Shukhevych’s training by Nazi Germany, in particular the military experience he obtained as a captain in the Ukrainian formation Nachtigall, and as a commanding officer in Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201, which served in occupied Belorussia. This article is an attempt at reconstruct Shukhevych’s whereabouts in 1942, in order to establish the context and praxis under which Shukhevych operated until deserting the auxiliary police in January 1943.