Wartime and Post-War Criminal Prosecution of Persons Involved in Nazi Crimes in the Kharkiv Region

The article sheds light on an issue neglected in both Ukrainian and international historiography — the prosecution of persons involved in Nazi crimes in the Kharkiv region. The source base of the study includes legislative and regulatory documents, thematic collections of documents, and archival criminal cases of former members of the Ukrainian auxiliary police who served with the GFP (secret field police) group 560, security police and SD of the ‘General District of Kharkiv’, and the Ukrainian police battalion under SD command. Despite the differences that existed between the Allies, the prosecution of Nazi war criminals became a key condition for the restoration of peace and establishment of a new world order after the end of World War II. In later years, the growing tensions between the two military-political blocs of NATO and the Warsaw Pact notwithstanding, the issue of bringing to justice persons involved in the bloody crimes of Nazism continued to remain important in international politics. A major step in the cause of punishing the crimes of National Socialism was the adoption by the UN General Assembly of the Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity. Trials of German citizens involved in mass murder of civilians and prisoners of war in the city of Kharkiv and Kharkiv Oblast mainly took place after the end of the war. Based on the analysis of criminal cases of persons convicted both by the Allies and by Germans courts, it can be stated that few individuals were brought to justice for crimes committed in the region. For the most part, they received minimum prison terms and were punished for other crimes. Most Nazis escaped responsibility altogether. The criminal prosecution of Soviet citizens who participated in massacres of civilian population and prisoners of war in Kharkiv Oblast began immediately after the liberation of the region in 1943 and continued until the end of the 1980s. Collaborators who served in German penal institutions were assiduous executors and accomplices of Nazi crimes. Unlike German citizens, the vast majority of them received a severe punishment. Notably, there was no concept of ‘collaborationism’ in the Soviet criminal code; so, crimes committed by collaborators were classified as ‘treason to the Motherland’. Despite the contradictory nature of the prosecution of Soviet citizens involved in Nazi war crimes, it should be noted that not a single such individual was rehabilitated even in the 1990s. In other words, even by post-Soviet standards, their actions were considered war crimes with no statute of limitations.