Kopische – Zhytomyr Khatyn and continuity of generations in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine
The hour is getting closer when the Ukrainian police will be completely replaced by the National Police. As Denis Gorbas, head of the legal support department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, stated at a briefing two months ago, this will happen by November. And the corresponding law has already been signed by Mr. Poroshenko, which was the reason for this briefing. I remember that when I was a police force in the system of the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, a lot of attention was paid to working with personnel, which was associated, among other things, with the continuity of generations. What changes should we expect today, and what does “Zhytomyr Khatyn” have to do with it?
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“Punisher fired machine guns at burning people”
Kopische is a village in the Olevsky district, in the north of the Zhytomyr region. The victims of the punitive detachment that on March 22, 1943 burned the Belarusian village of Khatyn, which became a symbol of the mass extermination of civilians carried out by the Nazis and collaborators, were 149 people, 75 of them children. On the day of the Kopischansky tragedy - July 13, 1943 - 2887 people died, of which 1347 were children. And the German executioners and local henchmen of the occupiers also executed all of them by burning them alive.
The largest number of Ukrainian villages destroyed during the Great Patriotic War were in the Sumy, Chernihiv, Zhytomyr and Khmelnytsky regions, where large military forces of Soviet partisans were stationed in large forest areas. Remote from the main routes of communication, surrounded by forests and swamps, Kopische was considered by partisan units as an important base. It is not surprising that men from almost every house became partisans.
The summer of 1943 was the time of perhaps the largest partisan battles in the Zhytomyr region. In response, the Nazis carried out massive punitive actions, one of which, codenamed “Mistress Helga”, unfolded in July. Units and formations of the gendarmerie and police, one after another, occupied villages in remote areas of Polesie, which served as partisan bases. The civilian population, fearing reprisals, fled to the forests, hoping to wait out the operation there.
Kopischanskaya tragedy on canvas
The residents of Kopische did the same, because the village, located along the Ubort River, was surrounded by dense forests and impenetrable swamps. On July 10, 1943, punitive forces numbering up to a thousand people, consolidated into one reinforced assault battalion under the command of Hauptsturmführer Günfherr, entered the populated area, but did not find people there. Then a negotiator was sent to the peasants, who announced that the German police would not touch a single civilian. They were also promised to be given goods that were in short supply in those years if they immediately returned to their homes to have their documents checked.
Attention, question: what nationality was this parliamentarian? He didn’t speak German to the Ukrainian peasants, especially considering how convincing he turned out to be? Let me remind you who served in the police during the years of Hitler’s occupation of Soviet Ukraine must? ..
On July 11, the villagers returned to their huts in an organized manner under guarantees of immunity from the police. However, the beautiful and oath-filled words of guarantee turned out to be empty words. As soon as the village was filled with people again, the punitive forces surrounded it in the morning and herded the villagers to the central square. The massacre began on July 13 at 13:15. People were driven into wooden buildings, locked in houses, agricultural premises, churches and burned.
People were kicked out of their homes to be driven to the burning site
Only a few Kopischan residents were lucky to escape. One woman and a four-year-old child were hidden in an empty barrel by a German soldier, saying that he was “deutsch kommunistischen.” And one six-year-old boy managed to escape unnoticed when people were driven into the granary.
“Before dawn, the punitive forces surrounded the Kopische. They came to our house and kicked us out onto the street. Mother, me, my sisters and brothers, two children of Marina’s sister were taken to the current. We were pushed inside; there were a lot of people. I didn’t go there, I managed to escape unnoticed. The current was burning, people were screaming, then they knocked down the doors and ran in all directions. The punishers fired machine guns at burning people and children. This is how my sister Marina died. Ivan, Galya, Masha, my sister’s children, they all burned down…” recalled this boy, 76-year-old Fyodor Gerasimovich Bovkun, two years ago.
Those who ran out of the burning buildings were unable to escape
70th anniversary of the tragedy and the second anniversary of the “revolution”
On July 12, 2013, on the 70th anniversary of the Kopischansky tragedy, residents of the entire Olevsky district and members of delegations from other regions of the Zhytomyr region honored the memory of almost three thousand fellow countrymen who died as martyrdom. A rally was held near the memorial in the village, then an excursion to the local history museum, where the diorama “Kopishchanskaya Tragedy” is located, depicting a large fire and a crowd - from the smallest to the oldest residents of the village - at which enemy machine guns are aimed. And the military-patriotic club “Red Star” demonstrated a historical reconstruction of those events.
Reconstruction: to be remembered
70 years have passed since the tragedy - and the residents of Zhytomyr have shown that the memory of the victims of German Nazism and Ukrainian collaboration is alive. The memory of the Victory over the hated enemy, and of the real heroes of that war - the Great Patriotic War - is still alive.
Black and orange ribbons – whose symbol?.. Kopische, Zhytomyr region, 2013.
Two years have passed (and even then only incompletely) since the beginning of the “revolution” of 2013-2014. on the Maidan - and the orange and black St. George or Guards ribbon in Ukraine was turned from a symbol of Victory into a symbol of “separatism” and “Russian aggression”, the great holiday Victory Day was almost obscured by the mournful “Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation”, the very phrase “Great Patriotic War” banned, replacing it with “World War II”...
And the real heroes of that war were humiliated, in the opinion of the author of these lines, worse than the Indians of the “untouchable” caste, taking away Soviet shrines through a package of laws on “decommunization” and exalting Hitler’s collaborators under the guise of “honoring the fighters for the independence of Ukraine in the twentieth century” (law of Ukraine dated April 9, 2015 No. 314-VIII).
True, this does not apply to police officers.
But... can we rule out that it’s only for now?..
New police – whose successors?
So we got to the newly created National Police of Ukraine in particular and today's realities in general.
Two years ago, on May 9, September 22 - the Day of Partisan Glory and November 10 - the Day of Veterans of the Internal Affairs Bodies of Ukraine, the heads of the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs and its territorial divisions honored veterans and pensioners of the Internal Affairs Department - front-line soldiers of the Great Patriotic War, participants in the fighting of the Soviet-Japanese War and... Right! Those referred to in paragraph 5 of Article 6 of the Law of Ukraine “On the status of war veterans, guarantees of their social protection”:
“former military personnel, civilians, as well as former fighters of fighter battalions, platoons and units for the defense of the people and other formations who took direct part in combat operations to eliminate sabotage and terrorist groups of Nazi Germany and other illegal formations and groups on the territory of the former USSR "
By the way, who in this paragraph of the article of the law - which has not yet been abolished - is meant by other illegal formations and groups on the territory of the former USSR? Right! Units of the UPA, whose warriors, according to another law, have already become “fighters for independence.” Although “feats” were performed not only after the first ten days of May 45, brutally killing civilians (mostly Ukrainians, because Poles and Jews were slaughtered earlier!), but also during the years of the Second World War. And what is most remarkable, not as a “third force”, but within the framework of the above-mentioned collaboration. By the way, the Upovites “loved” burning villages no less than the policemen...
And now, get it and sign it - a question for filling.
Who should be honored on November 10, 2015 - on the “Tsogorichny” Day of Veterans of the Department of Internal Affairs of Ukraine - the leaders and employees of the current system of the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs?
Wartime poster: victims of the punitive operation “Mistress Helga” are also mentioned
The point, of course, is not that it is now called the police, as one of the security forces during the Nazi occupation.
The point is the creation in April 2014 of a corps of special forces for the protection of public order (battalions of the special police patrol service), where many units - both battalions and regiments - were formed from obvious fascists.
On the flag of the Azov regiment there is a fascist “wolf hook”
And the above-mentioned art. 6 of the Law of Ukraine “On the status of war veterans, guarantees of their social protection”, by the way, is supplemented by paragraph 19, according to which the following are recognized as participants in hostilities:
“military personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the National Guard of Ukraine, the Security Service of Ukraine, the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine, the State Border Service of Ukraine, privates, commanding officers and military personnel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, other military formations formed in accordance with the laws of Ukraine that defended independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, and also took part in the anti-terrorist operation.”
What kind of three-letter “anti-terrorist operation” is this? Needless to say?
It turns out that in the system of the Ministry of Internal Affairs there are many combatants who are not much different from the punitive forces of July 1943 and consider OUN militants and UPA warriors, as well as soldiers of the SS Galicia division, Nachtigal and Roland battalions, as heroes. Well, who then are the enemies for these neo-policemen?..
Whose successors will you be?
Yes! Bill No. 2526a has been registered in the Verkhovna Rada on recognizing July 2 as the official Day of the National Police of Ukraine. But neither this document, nor any other one, abolishes the Day of Veterans of the Department of Internal Affairs of Ukraine - just like adding Art. 6 of the Law of Ukraine “On the status of war veterans...” clause 19, they forgot to cancel clause 5.
Most likely, the heroes of the Great Patriotic War and the war with Japan will be honored. Moreover, so do the hawks “from point 5”. But does this refute the thesis that, along with the sign “militia” to “police”, the system of the Ministry of Internal Affairs also changed its continuity? That instead of the valiant people who broke the back of Hitlerism, the predecessors of the neo-policemen were the punishers of Kopische?
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