Dear Jaga,
The Warsaw Uprising and the terrible fate of the Poles who were deported to the East by the Sovjets is a well known history to me, because they are part of my Polish family heritage. I researched and read about the Warsaw Uprising because my grandparents were in the middle of it. My Polish grandmother wrote about it in her memoir. They were the victim of two main agressors, the German Wafffen SS and Ukrainian Nazi troops. I know that next to the Ukrainians there were Russians and Baltic Nazi supporters in Warsaw too. Mainly of
the Russian S.S. Sturmbrigade R.O.N.A. of
Bronislav Kaminski. I remember reading about three very dangerous and murderous groups in the Warsaw Uprising; (
1)
Oskar Dirlewanger's terrible and vicious
SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger (
36th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS) (
2)
the Ukrainians, and (3)
Bronislav Kaminski and his
Russian S.S. Sturmbrigade R.O.N.A. .
On July 25 the Ukrainian
Petro Dyachenko was the member of the Ukrainian Central Committee (UCC) formed in
Kraków on the German side. Dyachenko was on the staff of
Polisskaja Sich (later joining
the Ukrainian Insurgent Army,
UPA, which massacred tens of thousands of Polish civillians) in
1941–1944. In
March 1944 he took part in organizing
the 31st Schutzmannschafts Battalion (Ukrainian Legion of self-defense in
Holms)
on the German side. In
August 1944 he became commander of
the 31. Schutzmannschafts-Bataillon der SD. After the outbreak of
the Warsaw Uprising,
Dyachenko was ordered to organize a military unit out of the battalion and he participated in
crushing of Polish resistance against Nazis. For his actions during
the Warsaw Uprising,
Dyachenko was awarded the First Class to his Iron Cross
in
1944.
Jaga, my Polish grandmother and grandfather narrowly escaped being killed by German/Austrian
Waffen SS in
Warsaw (during the war my grandfather as a member of
the Polish intelligentsia was watchful for the German/Austrian
Gestapo/
SD who were actively searching for him. He always had his suitcase ready, and he had Polish resistance who informed him about
Gestapo raids [łapanka's] or actions -they had infiltrated
the Gestapo). During
the Warsaw Uprising my grandmother was a marched in front of the SS as
human shield, to '
protect' them against
the bullets of the snipers of the
Armia Krajowa (AK) (she wrote and told me about how she felt the bullets flying closely around her. The AK snipers were really good, and the Germans feared them.
Often these snipers were Polish women). Secondly my grandparents were nearly looted or robed of their meager possessions by
Ukrainain SS soldiers who rounded them up on a Warsaw street in
Mokotow. My grandmother very smartly said that
they were already under the custody of German SS and that their belongings belonged to
the Germans. The Ukrainians left them alone. But they killed, maimed, raped and hurt many other Varsovians. My grandmother was (mentally and physically) a very strong woman. Later she became a sort of leader of Polish women who were sent to Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, where they were treated very badly. It is a miracle that she survived. That must have been due to her strength and her knowledge of the German language. She was born and raised in the Austrian (Habsburg, Austrian-Hungarian empire) part of Poland and thus had received a German language education. As a young woman she had been to Vienna in the early 20th century.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petro_Dyachenkopl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petro_DiaczenkoNow back to the subject,
Bronislav Kaminski and his
Russian S.S. Sturmbrigade R.O.N.A. .
Bronislav Kaminski
Bronislav Kaminski in May 1944Bronislav Vladislavovich Kaminski (Russian: Бронисла́в Владисла́вович Ками́нский, June 16, 1899, Vitebsk Governorate - August 28, 1944, Litzmannstadt) was a collaborationist and the commander of
the S.S. Sturmbrigade R.O.N.A. (also known as
Kaminski Brigade and earlier as
the Russian National Liberation Army -
Russkaya Osvoboditelnaya Narodnaya Armiya,
RONA), an anti-partisan formation made up of people from the so-called Lokot Autonomy territory in the Nazi Germany occupied areas of Russia, which was later incorporated into
the Waffen-SS as
the S.S. Sturmbrigade R.O.N.A.. The Germans planned to base the creation of
the 29th Waffen Grenadier Division of
the SS RONA (
1st Russian) on this same unit. However, during
the Warsaw Uprising, where one mixed regiment of the brigade was engaged, German commanders decided that
the brigade was too undisciplined and
unreliable.
Kaminski was called to
Łódź to attend a leadership conference. He never reached it; officially, Polish partisans were blamed for an alleged ambush in which
Kaminski and a few
RONA officials (including brigade chief-of-staff Waffen-Obersturmbannführer
Ilya Shavykin) were
killed. Some sources say he was placed in front of a military tribunal and then executed by firing squad, others that
he was shot when the Gestapo captured him.
Bronislav (also transliterated German-style as "
Bronislaw")
Kaminski was born in
Vitebsk Governorate, Russian Empire, now in Polatsk Raion,
Belarus. His father was of
Polish descent and
his mother was German.
Kaminski considered himself a Russian. He studied at the
Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University then served in
the Red Army during
the Russian Civil War. After demobilization he returned to the Institute, and after graduation
worked at a chemical plant.
Kaminski with a German police unitjagahost.proboards.com/thread/16792/norman-davies-on-warsaw-rising
