NAZI CORRUPTION IN UKRAINE DURING THE OCCUPATION IN WWII
By Volodymyr HINDA
(UE). - “If you had money, preferably reichsmarks or tsarist gold rubles, during the German rule, you could buy, as you can now, anything — from gold to weapons — and buy yourself out of anything,” says Yurii Vozniuk, who lived in the village of Ivankiv, Zhytomyr oblast, in the years of occupation.
Lviv University Professor Zaretsky, who stayed in Lviv during the occupation, said about that-day life: “In general, you could do everything for money: all you had to do was grease a German palm. In brief, what was happening at the time was theft and bribery. Nobody had ever seen a system like this.”
At first glance, the recollections of people who went through the Second World War may seem a bit exaggerated, for Germans have always been distinguished for their discipline, while what we see here is an outright accusation of corruption. But archival documents confirm that in those times “barter trade and profiteering was in full swing [in Ukraine], and the ‘Aryans’ excelled at it continuing after the Jews.” Germans sadly admitted that Ukraine became “the Reich’s flea-market” in a matter of months.
Once the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, they organized a new system on the occupied territories, with their own laws and order. The “new masters” regarded active and total exploitation of the seized lands, including those in Ukraine, for the Reich’s benefit as their topmost priority. As a result, this country saw an enormous shortage of commodities, an artificial revaluation of the mark with respect to the Soviet ruble (the exchange rate was 1 mark against 10 rubles), unstable and, hence, skyrocketing “fixed prices,” and a spread of speculative operations — among the Germans and the local populace alike.
One of the main factors that caused rampant corruption and profiteering at the time was insufficiently centralized government. German bureaucrats considered it their duty to make a fortune on the occupied territories, without caring too much for law and order. These attitudes very soon infected the Wehrmacht soldiers, who tried to cash in on almost everything, from selling their uniforms (the local populace liked using German overcoats as thermal clothing after re-dyeing them) to “pushing” firearms. Yet currency speculation was the most common way for German soldiers to make money.
The pattern was rather simple: servicemen would sell German marks in Ukraine at the rate of one to twenty and mail them to Germany, where their relatives properly deposited them at the official exchange rate of one to ten, thus doubling their profits in this simple way. Clearly, the German authorities took a dim view of their subordinates’ behavior because this weakened discipline in the army, so they meted out severe punishments to culprits, including execution by firing squad.
German soldiers kept saying in their letters home that money literally “grows on trees” in Ukraine and “one can make a fortune here in no time.” Indeed, people who had a knack for commerce would quickly get rich in Ukraine after doing just a few speculative operations, for example, with salt, a short-supplied item at the time, which cost 1,000 reichsmarks for 100 kg at the black market. They would also buy second-hand German suits in the Reich for a song and sell them at 600 Reichsmarks apiece on the occupied territories.
In addition to the military, German state railway employees would also, by force of their profession, be involved in profiteering. The Kyiv SD (security service) chief reported in 1942 that they “took an active part, together with the Ukrainian populace, in black market speculations.” As a rule, railroad men performed the functions of “shuttle traders,” transporting short-supplied goods. Profiteering and barter were, in fact, a lifestyle for the populace on the occupied territories and the main source of income for most Ukrainians. It should be noted that while Germans saw speculative operations as just an opportunity to get rich, the Ukrainian populace regarded it as a way to survive in those hard and hungry years.
Admitting their inability to combat this evil, Germans concluded as early as in the fall of 1942 that “Ukraine was a paradise for speculators.” The country turned into one large marketplace (we saw something of the kind at the dawn of independence): everybody was a trader — from children to feeble old men and women. The well-known writer Anatolii Kuznetsov noted in his documentary novel Babyn Yar that he, a boy at the time, would “do business” by selling matches at 10 rubles per box and walnuts at 3 rubles apiece.
Furthermore, one could find any kind of goods at a marketplace if, of course, one was in the money. Valentyn Terno, who lived through the German occupation of Kyiv and was an eyewitness of those events, rapturously described in his memoirs Scattered Reminiscences of a Strange Childhood the range of goods at the city’s markets: “During the occupation, you could see any-thing at the Jewish Market (located on what was Galicia Square and is now Victory Square) but the Jews themselves. There was an extremely wide choice of goods — from museum art items and rare books to old-fashioned dresses, lace drawers, broken fans, Esmarch’s enema devices, keyless locks, and lockless keys.”
What worried Germans more than profiteering was deep-rooted corruption in administrative offices. Especially active in this were local Ukrainian officials who used to take both money and foodstuffs for their services. For example, according to the newspaper Holos Volyni, the management of the Zhytomyr Housing Department alone was bribed into issuing over 500 apartment permits to local residents in September 1941. As a result, when this came to the occupiers’ knowledge, they dismissed the entire department’s staff.
One of the “gravy trains” of that time was the office of a house manager. House managers kept records of the unemployed and submitted this information to those who recruited workforce for Germany. To avoid being put on this list, most people were prepared to shell out any bribe. Knowing this, house managers could refrain from putting a jobless person on the list, as a rule, for a reasonable fee or foodstuffs. There being no fixed rate, everything depended on the deal the giver and the taker could make.
Meanwhile, there were clear-cut unofficial prices for those who wished to buy themselves out of having to do compulsory work “for the Fuhrer’s benefit. For example, in Kharkiv this privilege cost 500 rubles, and those who did not want to dig trenches had to part with 1,000 rubles. Those who had 5,000 to 10,000 rubles in the pocket could evade being deported as slave labor to Germany.
Paradoxically, one could buy oneself freedom from prosecution or a reduced prison term in those hard times, as one can now. Even those arrested by the notorious Gestapo, where very few people, especially if they were suspected of links with the resistance movement, remained alive, could quickly come back home if somebody was prepared to bail them out with a certain amount of money.
For example, the Zhytomyr resistance fighter Liudmyla Vyrvych, who was thrown into the local Gestapo dungeons, managed to escape the inevitable death thanks to a bribe given to the investigating prosecutor. The Gestapo man received 10,000 rubles from the underground group and dropped the case.
A similar thing happened in September 1943 to Mykola Petrenko, a partisan in Troyaniv district, Zhytomyr oblast. He was apprehended by the Troyaniv gendarmerie, when they were checking his documents. The Gestapo investigation almost immediately proved that the detained belonged to the local partisan detachment, and he faced capital punishment. However, in exchange for 20,000 rubles, the German prosecutor made sure that Petrenko was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment instead of execution by firing squad. Underground fighters and partisans themselves confirmed these facts in their postwar reports on the work they had done.
Sometimes local residents had to bribe criminal police to make it investigate cases thoroughly and impartially. For example, the underground fighter Yurii Savchenko was once forced to resort to this. He noted, among other things, in his report of Jan. 28, 1945, that, after selling a cow at the local market for 40 gold rubles, he and his wife came to a local caf to eat and had their money stolen. He turned in desperation to the police for help but, according to the plaintiff, the police chief hinted that they could find his money in the shortest possible time provided he and his deputy received “a certain amount as a kickback” for the work done. Savchenko gave the police chief and his deputy 100 and 500 rubles, respectively, and got back his money exactly the next day.
It is common knowledge that at the initial stage of the Soviet partisan movement in Ukraine the “people’s avengers” were short of weapons and explosives. The partisans would find various ways out of the difficult situation: they would pick up ammunition on battlefields, steal weapons from the Germans or Ukrainian policemen, and seize them by force from small police units. In addition to this way of filling their own arsenals, they would also actively resort to buying weapons from Germans and collaborationist units they controlled. For instance, in his book Beyond the Frontline Hero of the Soviet Union Anton Brynsky, who commanded a special-purpose partisan unit of the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army’s General Headquarters in Rivne oblast, mentions buying explosives from Germans for gold. The author notes, incidentally, that this kind of operation could be carried out using this precious metal only.
The underground fighter O. Kuzenko (Cherkasy oblast) mentioned the same in her report to the authorities on Nov. 22, 1946. She says one of the partisan messengers often bought firearms from Hungarians using Soviet money.
Financial scheming and unjustified expenses were considered a customary thing in the period of occupation. For example, the Kyiv SD chief noted in one of his 1942 reports that an audit in the city’s central department store revealed commercial machinations and large-scale embezzlement. Shortly before this, in late 1941, Germans dismissed the entire staff of the Kyiv Sport and Physical Culture Department because they had been embezzling the allotted funds. The same fate befell Kyiv’s Education Department.
In general, it was both the Ukrainian bureaucrats employed at occupation institutions and Germans who actively resorted to machinations with education funds. Ample proof of this is the yearly report of the Education Department in Cherniakhiv district, Zhytomyr oblast, for the 1942-1943 academic year. The document reveals the following embezzlement scheme: a few fake schools were organized and registered in the district, and the funds allotted for managing them and paying salaries to teachers were pocketed by department executives. According to this report, this kind schools “functioned” in such Cherniakhiv district villages as Vyshpil (85 pupils), Zorokiv (80 pupils), Mala Horbasha (40 pupils), and Ivankiv (45 pupils).
That no educational institutions worked in these villages in the years of occupation was confirmed by the villagers we interviewed, although everything is different on paper. To make things look more plausible, district education officials reported the really existing number of school-age children. Moreover, they even produced pay lists that bore teachers’ signatures.
In their turn, German bureaucrats would embezzle in the same way the funds allocated for opening schools for the Volksdeutsch (ethnic Germans who resided outside the Reich). One of the documents on education in the Zhytomyr General District says that there are 122 Volksdeutsch schools in the district, but in reality this figure is at least twice as high as the real one (according to the occupiers’ press, there were about 60 of such institutions there). Taking into account the Nazis’ attempts to establish Volksdeutsch educational institutions, we can estimate that they allotted funds for 112 schools. The frauds could use real data on the number of children and teachers thanks to the statistical survey conducted in the region on Sept. 10, 1941, on the occupiers’ initiative. This campaign enabled them to obtain true data on the number of schools, pupils and teachers, and these figures were repeatedly used in financial machinations.
This is how the well-known Ukrainian historian Ivan Krypiakevych, who stayed in Lviv during the occupation, characterized the occupiers who dealt with cultural affairs: “The German administration was extremely venal and easy to bribe. If you wished to get a Ukrainian book published, you were to turn to a German official and drink with him all night through. Only after this you could expect this German to agree.”
When Germans were retreating from Ukraine, most of their bureaucrats considered it necessary to burn all financial documents so they would not expose their misdeeds following an audit.
