Unfinished denazification. To 70th anniversary of Nuremberg Trials

This year we mark the 70th anniversary of the Nuremberg Tribunal, which included representatives of the Allies and for the first time in the history condemned the atrocities of the whole country – Nazi Germany. Not only the hierarchy of the "Third Reich" – politicians, generals, chiefs of punitive structures, fanatic doctors – but entire institutions, organizations, corporations and firms (for example, "Farbenindustry", which supplied gas to gas chambers and concentration camps).

The Trials also became a precedent of a global scale in the activities of the newly formed United Nations Organization, which exemplified unity of the peoples of the world in opposition to evil and aggression brought by Nazism and fascism ¹.

However, the Ukrainian government did not hold any commemorative events to mark Nuremberg, although the recently enacted law on "decommunisation" also implies "denazification". While the notorious "decommunisation" is in full swing, the activities on coverage of crimes committed by the Nazis and their collaborators are not observed in Ukraine. The only memorable event in Kiev has become a unique exhibition "The Nuremberg Trials – the Judgment of History ", organized by the Museum of the History of the Tithe Church and the Osher Shvartsman Library 2 .

And it is unique due to the fact that the exhibition is based on the exclusive photographs and historical documents from the personal archive of the Tribunal member, Kievite Arseniy Alexandrovich Kudriavtsev. Many of the displayed photos are certainly shocking, for example, pictures of executed criminals.

However, they remind us of man's responsibility before God and neighbour. As the Scripture says, "for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Matt. 8:36.

Hitler and his clique, guided by the desire to gain the whole world, forgot about their souls. The Nuremberg Tribunal, exposing their crimes in the face of history and humanity, however, gave them the opportunity to think about repentance and God.

Some of the sentenced to death in their last word on the scaffold remembered the Lord, but it seems that the only one who truly repented of his complicity in the crimes of fascism was Ribbentrop.

Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893 -1946) is the German Foreign Minister (1938-1945), Hitler's foreign policy advisor. Hanged by the verdict of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg on October 16, 1946.

According to the book "Secret Diary" by one of the accused, Albert Speer, Foreign Minister Ribbentrop during the Trials lost all his "greatness" (pride and arrogance), and converted to Christianity, which even seems strange (impossible). It was he – Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop – confessed and communed before the sentence was executed. During the process, the detainees were attended by a Catholic priest.

Ribbentrop's last words on the scaffold with a noose around his neck were the following: "God, save Germany. God, be merciful to my soul. My last wish is that Germany would regain its unity and mutual understanding between East and West would lead to peace on Earth. "

One of the major collective decisions of the Allied coalition was an item on the denazification of Germany. It was a complex of lustration measures aimed at cleansing the postwar German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, education, law, and politics from the influence of Nazi ideology.

It is the Supervisory Board, whose secretary general was A. A. Kudriavtsev, – a joint body of the USSR, the USA, Great Britain and France, created for supreme power in Germany – passed laws that defined the circle of persons covered by the denazification, and approved the creation of special courts to hear their cases.

The Germans who were not the Nazi Party members were usually not persecuted. And in general in the western occupation zone denazification was rather formalistic. In the period 1948-1955, investigation, trials and tribunals ended, and many of the previously convicted received a pardon.

Many Nazi functionaries responsible for Hitler's crimes settled down in the FRG – not only in business but also in the newly established government structures. For example, the famous general Gehlen headed the intelligence service of the new Germany.

Among other things, the United States and the United Kingdom almost prevented emigration of former Nazis: the Nazis wanted in Europe escaped to Latin America or to the same US and Canada. Many moved to serve in the US (Walter Dornberger, Wernher von Braun) and received citizenship. Almost all of them, with sentences in absentia in Europe, safely waited amnesty and then either returned home or stayed to live out in exile.

The same loyalty, more precisely indulgence, was manifested to the collaborators and accomplices of Hitler’s regime, in particular – UPA warriors and their "spiritual fathers". Even more than that, the terrorist activities of these organizations and personages in the Soviet Union was strongly supported and funded by the former Western Allies.

Paragraph 6 of the Charter of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal designated a circle to be condemned of "leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation and implementation of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing offenses."

The materials of the Tribunal featured the UPA structure as one of the collaborationist forces in occupied Europe which cooperated with the Nazis, in particular, with the Abwehr. Punitive UPA detachments were created by German secret services by the Nazi model. More than 16% of the UPA fighters served in the German army, in the Ukrainian and German police and gendarmerie. The Germans supplied the UPA with 100 thousand rifles and machine guns, 10,000 machine guns, 700 mortars, a lot of ammunition, etc. This was evidenced in the court by the former Nazi Abwehr leaders Lahousen, Stolze, Lazarek and Paulus.

According to witness Lazarek, "S. Bandera received from the Germans 2.5 million marks – that is as much as Melnik receives" (leaders of OUN-B and the OUN-M – the Editor's note).

According to the former Field Marshal Paulus, "in addition to groups of Bandera and Melnik, the Abwehr centre and the Abwehr command 202 used Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC)." In the training camps of the governorship-general, the priests of the Ukrainian Uniate Church were also trained, they "took part in the performance of our tasks along with other Ukrainians."

Besides the "pastors" -Uniates, members of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church actively cooperated with the OUN and Bandera and "served" them, or rather instigated crimes against humanity, in particular, Petliura’s nephew, "the founder of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church" and the first "primate" of the "Kiev Patriarchate" Mstislav Skripnik (1898-1993).

In 1990, at the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv he was enthroned as the first Patriarch of the UAOC. After the creating in 1992 of the Kiev Patriarchate he was proclaimed its primate with the title of Patriarch. Skripnik did not live (d. 1993) until the moment when Filaret (Denisenko) and his minions split up with former UAOC allies. Nevertheless, as the name of "goody" Skripnik (despite not very high rating of the UAOC) is given to Nikolai Ostrovsky Street, a former Soviet "holy". Why – only out of a desire to "decommunize" anything and everything? May there be another reason? That Skripnik as Sheptitsky is a common double-face and Hitler’s accomplice?

Here in the photo is Stepan (future "Primate Mstislav") Skripnik, who with the arrival of the Germans in Rovno in 1941 headed the collaborationist "Council of Confidence." Pictures were published in the Nazi newspaper "Volyn" on September 7, 1941.

Due to the fact that denazification in the western zone of occupation was held selectively, accomplices of the German dictator were able not only to safely live there for fun, but also to emigrate to other countries. After Ukraine gained independence, some of them returned home, having the same familiar world outlook. In particular, Mstislav Skripnik, shortly before his death, in the early 1990s, became the founder of the UOC-KP – a structure that, in the name of God, using the indulgence of the authorities, commits absolute lawlessness against the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church and its faithful and parishioners.

On June 5, 1990, in Kiev at I Council of the UAOC Mstislav was elected Patriarch of Kiev and All Ukraine. In October 1990, he once again arrived in Ukraine, visiting Kiev and Lvov. On November 18, 1990, at the St. Sophia Cathedral of Kiev his "enthronement" took place: Mstislav became the first "patriarch" of the UAOC. After the creating in 1992 of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate Mstislav (Skripnik) was proclaimed its "primate" with the title "patriarch".

On 1-10 July, 1992, Mstislav (Skripnik) paid a visit to Kiev from the US. Mstislav was granted the former sanatorium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Puscha-Voditsa, near Kiev. On July 2, Mstislav met with the Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk. We can only guess what they were talking about, but judging by subsequent events, probably of church raiding in favour of "KP". Journalists were not admitted to Skripnik.

He died in Grimsby, Canada. He was buried at the cemetery in South Bound Brook, NJ, United States.

However, his cause lives on. Moreover, in the current Ukrainian situation, it goes to the next level: multiplied anti-Orthodox forces, primarily supporters of anathema "Filaret" – a faithful follower of the first "patriarch" – organized the unprecedented persecution of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Nationalist and Russophobe aspirations prioritized by the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the KP, in complete contradiction with God's commandments, flourished in the independent Ukraine also due to the fact that the Ukrainian accomplices of Hitler escaped punishment then. They got away with the lustration and denazification. Although otherwise, they might have repented as the above mentioned Ribbentrop.

Perhaps, he can be compared with the repentant bandit, I do not know. The Lord knows better where the soul of the former minister eventually is thanks to Nuremberg.

Other bandits – including in cassocks – escaped the Tribunal, after decades returned to their homeland to commit new assault, including spiritual one, and infect a new generation with it.

That may be the reason why the Ukrainian government preferred not to remember about the anniversary of Nuremberg.



References:

1. In accordance with the sections of the Indictment on which the defendants were found guilty, and on the basis of Article 27 of the Charter, the International Military Tribunal sentenced:

1) Hermann Göring – to death by hanging,
2) Rudolf Hess – to life imprisonment,
3) Joachim von Ribbentrop – to death by hanging,
4) Wilhelm Keitel – to death by hanging,
5) Ernst Kaltenbrunner – to death by hanging,
6) Alfred Rosenberg – to death by hanging,
7) Hans Frank – to death by hanging,
8) Wilhelm Frick – to death by hanging,
9) Julius Streicher – to death by hanging,
10) Walter Funk – to life imprisonment,
11) Karl Doenitz – to ten years imprisonment,
12) Erich Raeder – to life imprisonment,
13) Baldur von Schirach – to twenty years imprisonment,
14) Fritz Sauckel – to death by hanging,
15) Alfred Jodl – to death by hanging,
16) Arthur Seyss-Inquart – to death by hanging,
17) Albert Speer – to twenty years imprisonment,
18) Konstantin von Neurath – to fifteen years imprisonment,
19) Martin Bormann – to death by hanging.

2. This is what one of the organizers of the exhibition, Eugenia B. Kudriavtseva, director of the Research Museum of the History Department of the Church of the Tithes, said:

"The story should start with Arseny Aleksandrovich Kudriavtsev, my husband's grandfather. He received higher technical education, became a military engineer, knew several languages, spoke fluently English and German. This was the reason why he, having survived the siege of Leningrad as a member of the city's defense, was sent to the headquarters of G. K. Zhukov in Germany. There he attended the Nuremberg trials as a member of the Soviet delegation, and later presented the Soviet side in the Supervisory Board of Germany – a collegial body of the winner-countries to govern Germany, responsible for the inaction of new laws in its territory, the economic recovery and denazification. In 1946 he was appointed General Secretary of the Supervisory Board of Germany. After the completion of the work of SBG, Arseny Kudriavtsev returned to Kiev ... Being a people person, he often talked with the representatives of the Union delegations in Germany, made friends with many British and Americans due to the lack of a language barrier. The atmosphere of postwar Germany contributed to this as well – it was the euphoria of victory, friendships were easily made. At that time Arseny Kudriavtsev met the American correspondent H. Eisele, who presented my grandfather photos that he made almost every day to "remember history." In the pictures are the leaders of post-war Germany. There were a lot of reportage shots, made in an informal setting. They accounted for the lion's share of my grandfather’s folders, which he brought home. I must say that Arseny Kudriavtsev was very orderly, almost pedantic. All documents in these folders have signatures. Separately, he kept 12 shots and a sheet of paper printed as a blueprint. These photos depicted hung Nazi criminals immediately after the execution. Separately was a photo of Hermann Göring, after the suicide. The execution, as you known, was attended by representatives of the media, and immediately after the execution the bodies of those executed were photographed to avoid substitution and ensure the world community that the sentence had been really carried out. Some of these photos are put on the Internet, but my grandfather had all 12 originals. On a sheet of paper there are 24 names with the sentence. It was the Indictment of the Nuremberg Trials to the main Nazi criminals. Such copies were distributed among the members of the delegation."