WITHIN A WEEK of Stetsko’s declaration of Ukrainian statehood in Lviv, […] the [Axis] established auxiliary police drawn from the local population, at first by seeking out volunteers, later through compulsion. They gave preference to ethnic Germans but sought out anyone with previous military or combat experience.³²
Usually that meant recruiting Red Army POWs or former Soviet police officers eager to prove their allegiance to the new régime; but sometimes, it entailed enlisting those who had fought the Bolsheviks in the civil war. Sergei Sukov, for instance, had served as a warrant officer in Denikin’s army before fleeing to Zabolottya, north of Lviv, where he still lived in June 1941. He recalled that when the [Axis] occupied the town, the whole population “gathered at the station out of curiosity.”
It was then that “the German officer addressed the people and said that we need to appoint an elder, a person to maintain order. Someone shouted—‘Here’s a White emigrant. He served in Denikin’s army. Let’s make him commandant. At the time, I was a little drunk and I stepped forward. The officer called me and said that ‘temporarily you will be the commandant and will help us.’”³³
Similarly, Fedir Lyashchenko, born in Bila Tserkva in 1899, had been drafted into the tsarist army in September 1916 and had served at various times under both Denikin and Petliura.³⁴ In August 1941, Lyashchenko was working as a tiler at the First of May Factory when the [Axis] appointed him chief of police in Bila Tserkva. “Tall, blond, with a military bearing, golden eyes, a straight nose,” he looked every bit the part.³⁵
Other members of the local auxiliary police had connections with the Ukrainian warlords of the civil war era. Andriy Terpylo, who served the [Axis] in Kyiv, was the son of Saveliy Terpylo, who had been part of Zelenyi’s gang (and likely Zelenyi’s kin). In addition, Andriy’s stepfather, Hryhoriy Kolesnik, had been arrested in 1929 for participating in Zelenyi’s gang. Andriy thus had a personal vendetta to fulfill.³⁶
Still others who collaborated with the [Axis] had been part of Petliura’s forces. Stepan Grabar, for instance, a native of Khonkivtsi, one hundred miles southwest of Vinnytsia, joined the army of the [so-called] Ukrainian People’s Republic after he was demobilized from the tsarist army. In 1932 he was arrested for failing to meet his bread production quota. His previous service in Petliura’s army was an aggravating factor that led to his sentence of eight years in exile.
By 1941, he had ample reason to despise the Bolsheviks, and tried to rile up prospective recruits by portraying the current war as a continuation of the civil war: “We need to volunteer for the German army, to fight the Soviets as I fought for Petliura in 1918,” Grabar said, according to a witness (Grabar himself disputed this statement in questioning). In December 1941, Grabar joined the regional police of Khonkivtsi and served in that capacity until the arrival of the Red Army in March 1944.³⁷
Many of those who served in the local police claimed in postwar testimonies to have been forced to serve or having done so out of fear. Others, though, were candid about their reasons, explaining that they volunteered to secure privileged access to looted goods, to avenge injustices committed by the Soviets against their relatives—or simply, in the words of Stepan Redesha, who also served in Zabolottya, because “I had many enemies in my village” and “I personally harbored a grudge against the Jews.”³⁸ Throughout the period of [Axis] occupation, these local police forces would play critical supporting rôles in the continuing genocide of the Jews.
[…]
According to Ivan Yatsenko, who testified in 1945, Fedir Lyashchenko, the police chief who had served with Denikin and Petliura, “took the most active rôle in the extermination of the Jewish population” in Bila Tserkva.⁵⁸
Another witness confirmed that “Lyashchenko ordered the police to escort Soviet citizens to the shooting site. He often sent Jews who had been detained throughout the city and region to jail. Later those Jews were shot.”⁵⁹