Volodymyr Kubijovyč | |
|---|---|
Володимир Кубійович | |
 | |
| Deputy of the President of theUkrainian National Committee | |
| In office 17 March 1945 – 1945 | |
| Preceded by | Position established |
| Succeeded by | Position abolished |
| Chairman of theUkrainian Central Committee [pl;ru;uk] | |
| In office 1939–1945 | |
| Preceded by | Position established |
| Succeeded by | Position abolished |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1900-09-23)23 September 1900 Nowy Sącz,Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria–Hungary |
| Died | 2 November 1985(1985-11-02) (aged 85) Paris, France |
Volodymyr Kubijovyč (also spelledKubiiovych orKubiyovych;Ukrainian:Володи́мир Миха́йлович Кубійо́вич,romanized: Volodymyr Mykhailovych Kubiiovych; 23 September 1900 – 2 November 1985) was an anthropological geographer in prewarPoland, awartimeUkrainian nationalist politician, aNazi collaborator and a post-war émigré intellectual of mixedUkrainian-Polish background.[1][2]
During thewar Kubijovyč headed the social welfare and the economic committee called UCC (Ukrainian Central Committee [pl;ru;uk]). He was an anti-Semite and a proponent of ethnic cleansing.[3][4][5] In 1943, he was a founder of the14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS.[6][7][4][8] Kubijovyč was a supporter of theOUN-M,Andriy Melnyk's faction in theOrganization of Ukrainian Nationalists.[9][2] After the collapse ofNazi Germany, Kubijovyč settled inFrance. He later became the chief editor of theEncyclopedia of Ukraine and the secretary general of theShevchenko Scientific Society.[3] Kubijovyč also supported other projects of theUkrainian diaspora.[3] He died in Paris on 2 November 1985.
Kubijovyč was born in 1900 inNowy Sącz; his father Mykhailo was aGreek-Catholic of Ukrainian descent, while his mother was Maria Dobrowolska, aCatholic of Polish extraction.[2] He was baptized into theUkrainian Greek Catholic Church and, as he stated, became automaticallyRuthenian but grew up in mixPolish-Ukrainian surroundings and spoke bothUkrainian andPolish.[2] At age 13, he readMykhailo Hrushevsky's multi-volumeHistory of Ukraine-Rusʹ. Between the ages of 15 and 18, Kubijovyč studied cartography, he also read books byHenryk Sienkiewicz inPolish and other works inGerman.[2] In 1918, Kubijovyč enrolled on a doctoral programme at theJagiellonian University inKraków, butWorld War I and his enlistment into theUkrainian Galician Army interrupted his education.[2] He returned home on sick leave withTyphus before the end ofthe Polish-Ukrainian war and, in 1919, resumed his studies at theJagiellonian University inKraków. In 1923, Kubijovyč concluded his doctorate about the anthropological geography of theGorgany range of the easternCarpathian Mountains.[10] In 1928 successfully defended his habilitation on population displacement of peoples in the European part of the Soviet Union.[10] In 1932, he became a member of theShevchenko Scientific Society in Lwów (todayLviv).[2] During the years 1928 to 1939, Kubijovyč taught at Jagiellonian University as an associated professor, collaborated with various academic institution, and was a teacher in Kraków high schools.[10] In recognition of his work, Kubijovyč obtained a financial scholarship from the Polish Ministry of Religious Affairs and Public Education for his journey toCzechoslovakia andRomania.[11] He also received time off from his university duties.[2]
His scientific work included describing the boundaries of the Ukrainian ethnographic territory. Since they were larger than official statistics indicated, including lands west of theZbruch River, among others, this drew criticism from various circles and state institutions.[12] In 1939, was suspended him from lecture duties at the Jagiellonian University indefinitely, and lost his job as a teacher.[13]
He was an editor and co-author of the pioneering Ukrainian-languageAtlas of Ukraine and Adjacent Lands (1937) and the equally pioneering Ukrainian-languageGeography of Ukraine and Neighbouring Lands (1938, 1943).[citation needed]
Kubijovyč was a supporter of theOUN-M (Andriy Melnyk's faction in theOrganization of Ukrainian Nationalists).[9][2] He was one of the major Ukrainian collaborators withNazi Germany.[1][3][14] In April 1941, Kubijovyč askedHans Frank to create under the auspices of Nazi Germany an ethnically filtered Ukrainian area within theGeneral Government or an autonomous state, where Poles and Jews would not be allowed to live.[3][15][4][1]
In the spring of 1940, acting with the permission ofHans Frank, a number of Ukrainian self-help committees staffed by theOUN established in Kraków a coordinating structure called theUkrainian Central Committee [pl;ru;uk] (UCC). Volodymyr Kubijovyč was elected as its head. The UCC was the only officially authorized Ukrainian social welfare organization in theNazi-occupied Polish territories, with a mandate to care for the elderly, sick and homeless, and to look after the welfare of theUkrainian workers sent to Germany from theGeneral Government.[16] As part of its activities, it publishedanti-Semitic materials in the collaborationist press[17][18][19][4] In 1940, he was appointed professor of theUkrainian Free University inPrague.[20]
On August 16, 1942, a message from the Ukrainian Central Committee (UCC) was published in theLviv News [uk] newspaper stating, "Anyone who hides Jews or hinders their resettlement will be punished."[21] Resettlement in August 1942 meant the deportation of 40,000 members of Lviv's Jewish population toBelzec extermination camp.[22][23]
In 1943, Volodymyr Kubijovyč worked closely with a high-ranking member of theSS,Otto Wächter, in organizing theWaffen-SS Galizien.[24][6][7][4][8] On 2 May 1943, he publicly announced his willingness to take up arms and declared himself ready to join the newly formed UkrainianWaffen-SS.[4]
Throughout the war, Kubijovyč used his German contacts to shield the western Ukrainian population from Nazi policies. In 1943, as Ukrainian peasants in theZamość region were accused of resistance, Volodymyr Kubijovyč successfully intervened withHans Frank to prevent reprisals.[25] At other times, he was reduced to writing in protest to the German authorities against the impact of their rule of terror on the Ukrainian civilian population, which included unprovoked public abuse, arbitrary killings and mass shootings. Some of this material was later brought up as evidence at theNuremberg Trials.[26] In 1943 he communicated to Frank that "the Ukrainians would work for the [Reich's] final victory" and expressed appreciation for "the liberation from the Polish yoke due to the will of the Fuhrer and the glorious victory of the Wehrmacht".[5]
Kubijovyč also supported recruitment for forced labour in Galicia. According to him, it was carried out with order and adherence to deportation orders by Ukrainians in some areas but in other areas "the process equaled a “massive manhunt,” in which people were picked up off the street, out of their homes, during school, at the market, and in movie theaters without notice and shipped to Germany."[27]
According to some Ukrainian sources, Kubijovyč tried to use his official position to ameliorate Ukrainian-Polish wartime tensions inGalicia by calling for an end to the armed underground conflict between the two sides in 1944. These sources also credit him with saving some three hundred people, most of them Jews, from arrest by the Nazi authorities.[28] But in his correspondence with Nazi officials "he glorified Hitler, shared anti-Semitic tropes, and advocated the cleansing of Jews and Poles from the majority Ukrainian areas of theGeneral Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region".[5]
In a letter dated February 1943 and addressed to Hans Frank, Kubijovych wrote, "Arrests and shootings of persons unfit for work in the District of Sanok. During the period from 18 to 24 January 1943 about 300 persons were arrested in the neighborhood ofSanok in accordance with lists compiled some time before by the local mayors on orders of the authorities. Some of them were soon set free, but the fate of the rest is unknown to us and their families. The shootings which are daily taking place on the Jewish cemetery promise no good".[29] The Jewish population of Sanok, including the Jewish ghetto, had been eradicated by December 1942.[30] By February 1943, the Jews from Sanok had been deported toBelzec extermination camp.[31] In addition, Ukrainian auxiliaries had helped the Nazis with deportations and murders of Jews in Sanok.[32] A few sentences later Kubijovyč writes, "The current view is that now the shootings of the Jews [have] come to an end those of the Ukrainians begin".[29]
After assassination of Otto Bauer, the Nazi vice-governor of theDistrict of Galicia, Volodymyr Kubijovyč made a speech at the funeral on February 15, 1944 glorifying Hitler and the German army.[33]
As theRed Army approached in 1944, Kubijovyč and his Ukrainian Central Committee fledGerman-occupied Poland to Germany.[1]
At the time ofNazi Germany's capitulation Kubijovyč was in theAmerican occupation zone, from where he moved toFrance. In Germany, he reorganized theShevchenko Scientific Society as anémigré institution. He acted as its secretary general from 1947 to 1963, and, from 1952, president of its European branch.[citation needed]
Inexile, Kubijovyč became the chief editor of the Ukrainian-languageEncyclopedia of Ukrainian Studies (Entsyklopediia ukrainoznavstva, 10 vols., 1949–84), the largest scholarly project undertaken by Ukrainian émigrés during theCold War. Reflecting Kubijovyč's own strongUkrainophile views, it was intended to preserve the Ukrainian national heritage, which he saw as being neglected and downgraded under the Soviet rule. The English translation of its thematic section,Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopædia, was published in two volumes in 1963–71. A revised and expanded English-language edition of the ten-volume alphabetic part appeared under the titleEncyclopedia of Ukraine inCanada in the 1980s and 1990s, only after Kubijovyč's death, and is presently being put on-line.
During his exile inFrance Kubijovyč enjoyed considerable prestige as the most prominent Ukrainian scholar in the West. He drew the respect of the Polish intellectualJerzy Giedroyć, another resident of Paris, who noted in his autobiography that Kubijovyč had behaved honourably during the war ("Zachował się świetnie"). In 1991, afterUkraine declared independence from the Soviet Union, scholars in Ukraine began reprinting Kubijovyč's major works, especially his encyclopedias, making them available to a wider readership in the home country for the first time.[citation needed]
In his later years, Kubijovyč published three volumes of memoirs describing his experiences in interwar Poland and during the Second World War, and his émigré scholarly life in Germany and France during theCold War. The most wide-ranging of these was the Ukrainian-language volume titledI Am 85 Years Old (Paris and Munich, 1985).
Volodymyr Kubijovyč died on 2 November 1985 inParis.
After the collapse of theSoviet Union, the hostile Soviet propaganda line on Kubijovyč lost its official status and was replaced by a nationalist line. His works, including his encyclopedias, were published in Ukraine where they are now in wide circulation.[citation needed] Kubijovyč's print edition has been criticized for not having an entry onThe Holocaust and stating within the entry on "antisemitism" that no Ukrainian "anti-Semitic organization or political party" has ever existed[5] (the expanded Internet edition has a 2007 article on the "Holocaust" byDieter Pohl,[34] but the 1984 entry on "Anti-Semitism" by Bohdan Wytwycky with the latter statement remains).[35] It also includes pseudoscience in relation to race, referencing theories by one of the foremost racial theorists in Nazi GermanyLudwig Ferdinand Clauß [de] in an attempt to analyze the psychology of the Ukrainian population.[36][improper synthesis]
In 1975, Kubijovych published an account of history titled "The Ukrainians in the Generalgouvernment – 1939–1941".[37] The National Archives of Canada has a Volodymyr Kubijovyč collection. It consists of 28 volumes, with each volume being 20 cm of files, that were donated between 1987 and 1993.[38] None of the documents appear to have been digitized.
In 2000 a pre-stamped envelope was issued by theUkrainian postal service honouring the hundredth anniversary of Kubijovyč's birthday.[39] In the 2020s, Director of theUkrainian Jewish Committee, Eduard Dolinsky, has been a vocal opponent on the veneration of Kubijovyč, stating that Kubijovyč should be remembered as a direct accomplice in the murder of Ukrainian Jews and the plunder of their property.[40]
TheUniversity of Alberta'sCanadian Institute for Ukrainian Studies has an endowment of $437,757 CAD, that is used to support the institute's encyclopedia projects.[41] The endowment was established in November, 1986 with support from theGovernment of Alberta.
In April 2023, a majority of people who partook in a vote regarding the renaming ofPrzhevalsky Street [uk] in Kyiv voted to rename the street after Volodymyr Kubijovyč.[39][42] Anonline petition was launched through Kyiv City Council to prevent the renaming, which received 696 signatures, after a motion for the renaming was adopted by the city council. However, following a complaint from Israeli ambassador to UkraineMichael Brodsky, themayor of Kyiv,Vitalii Klychko, personally intervened and prevented the street from being renamed.[43] In July 2023, a Ukrainian village was deciding between Levko Matsievich Street and Volodymyr Kubijovyč Street for the renaming of Chelyuskin Street.[44] There is currently a street honouring him inIvano-Frankivsk Oblast. Since 1992, there has been a street named after him inLviv.[45]
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)Volodymyr Kubiiovych ... top Ukrainian collaborator in occupied Poland ... a prewar academic and ardent nationalist ... hoped for the emergence of an autonomous Ukrainian region within the borders of the General Government or an ethnographic state closely associated with the Third Reich.
He was born ...into a mixed ethnic and religious family - his father Mykhailo, a Greek-Catholic of Ukrainian extraction; his mother Maria Dobrowolska, a Catholic of Polish extraction...Throughout the wartime period, he remained sympathetic and loyal to the original OUN, represented by Andri Melnyk.
The head of this important academic project (Encyclopedia of Ukraine) was Volodymyr Kubiiovych, one of the major Ukrainian collaborators with the Nazis, and who, after the Second World War, became the Secretary General of the Shevchenko Scientific Society.(page 452)..In April 1941, Kubiiovych asked Hans Frank, head of the General Government, to set up an ethnically pure Ukrainian enclave there, free from Jews and Poles (Page 226)
In organizing Waffen-SS Galizien, Wächter worked closely with Volodymyr Kubijovyc, an enthusiastic proponent of ethnic cleansing. In April 1941 he requested that Hans Frank set up an ethnically pure Ukrainian enclave in the General Government, free from Jews and Poles. Kubijovyc benefited from Aryanization of Jewish property and published anti-Semitic materials in the collaborationist press...In contact with majority society the veterans generally omitted their background in theWaffen-SS. Within their community, however, it was regarded as merit. Among the more prominent alumni were Volodymyr Kubijovyc, who after the war came to edit the Encyclopedia of Ukraine
Yesterday Professor and head of the collaborationist Ukrainian Central Committee, Volodymyr Kubiyovych, Colonel and founder in 1943 of the Waffen-SS "Galicia" Division, Alfred
...with Ukrainians including Professor Kubijovych, the leading Ukrainian collaborator with the German occupiers.
In spring 1940, with the acquiescence of Frank, these committees formed a coordinating body in Cracow called the Ukrainian Central Committee (UCC) and elected Volodymyr Kubijovyè, a well-known geographer, as its head. The UCC was a Ukrainian social-welfare agency whose mandate was to look after the sick, the aged, and homeless children, to care for public health and education, to help prisoners of war, and to represent the interests of the Ukrainian workers from the General Government who were sent to Germany.
The Ukrainian Central Committee was the only officially sanctioned Ukrainian political and community organization in the Generalgouvernement, i.e. territory which came under German control already in the fall of 1939...Ukrainian support for the intended SS Division, thus, for example, from the Ukrainian Central Committee, a nonpolitical, but influential social welfare and economic organization headed by Volodymyr Kubiyovych.
In spring 1940, with the acquiescence ofHans Frank, these committees formed a coordinating body inKraków called the Ukrainian Central Committee (UCC) and elected Volodymyr Kubijovych, a well-known geographer, as its head. The UCC was a Ukrainian social-welfare agency whose mandate was to look after the sick, the aged, and homeless children, to care for public health and education, to help prisoners of war, and to represent the interests of the Ukrainian workers from theGeneral Government who were sent to Germany. The Germans made it very clear that the UCC was not to have any political prerogatives whatsoever.
During this period the Ukrainian Committee, headed by Volodymyr Kubijovyc, took on a pronounced anti-Jewish position.
Using his German connections, Kubijovyč tried to protect the Ukrainian interests in the General Government. In 1943, he successfully intervened with Governor General Hans Frank to stop the killing of Ukrainian peasants in the Zamosc region for their alleged resistance.
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)