Dzmitryi Kasmovich

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Dsmitryj Kasmowitsch ( Belarusian Дзмітрый Касмовіч , Russian Дмитрий Космович / Dmitri Kosmowitsch , even Dimitri Kosmowicz written; * 21st September 1909 in Nesvizh , Russian Empire ; † 23. April 1991 in Stuttgart , Germany ) was a Belarusian political activist.

In the course of the Eastern campaign, Kasmowitsch hoped to establish an independent Belarus with the help of the German occupiers. In the summer of 1941 he became the commander of the auxiliary police in Minsk . Between 1942 and 1943, Kasmovich helped organize Belarusian military units in the Bryansk , Mahiljou and Smolensk regions . He gained prominence in the administrative area of Army Group Center , as he succeeded in driving partisans from large areas near Bryansk and Smolensk, and became chief of the auxiliary police in Smolensk.

Life

Kasmovich was born on September 21, 1909. Until 1927 he attended a secondary school in Radaschkowitschy and studied at various universities in Belgium , Poland and Yugoslavia . Kasmowitsch campaigned for the independence of Belarus and was particularly active in the Belarusian student movement. In Belgrade he joined a political organization that wanted to fight for the independence of Belarus. From 1931 to 1934 he served in the Polish Army . From 1940 to 1941 Kasmowitsch studied at the Belarusian Polytechnic Institute .

Second World War

When Kasmowitsch took up his post as commander of the Smolensk auxiliary police , the Grishin partisan brigade, consisting of 2,000 people, had holed up in the forests of Demidow , where there was no fixed front and it was accordingly difficult to fight them. The partisans confiscated livestock and food and harassed the population, who therefore turned to Smolensk for protection. General Pohl, commander and city commander of Smolensk, instructed Kasmowitsch to organize self-protection. In Smolensk itself, Kasmowitsch organized a motorized combat group that could be used in emergency situations. The total strength of the local militias in the Smolensk region was about 3,000 men.

In the summer of 1942, a German military commander's car exploded on the road between the village of Kasplja and Smolensk. According to statements by the head of the Kasplia police force, Sergei Setkin, Kasmovich is said to have traveled to Kasplja to order him to find all the communists and Jews. The more than 150 people arrested are said to have been brought to the building of a former hospital, where they were registered and monitored. During the mass shooting that took place in Kukina Gora on July 1, 1942 , Kasmovich is said not only to have watched the executions, but also to have directed them and to have taken the gun himself when some groups were shot. Old people and children were thrown into pits and buried alive. When the earth moved, Kasmowitsch is said to have stepped on it with his boot. After the shooting, he is said to have learned that a woman hid her baby in a bundle of straw before she was shot. According to Sergey Setkin's testimony, Kasmovich grabbed the child by the foot and shot him in the head. He carelessly tossed the body aside. A total of 158 people were killed in Kasplja.

At a meeting with the Russian Nazi collaborator Andrei Vlasov , Kasmovich declared that he would only be willing to work together if Vlasov guaranteed Belarus as an independent state. In the course of the Smolensk Operation , Smolensk was recaptured by the Red Army in autumn 1943 , so that Kasmowitsch had to withdraw.

In 1944 he became major in the Belarusian Home Guard and was a participant in the Second Belarusian People's Congress . In March 1945 he became an officer in the Dallwitz airborne battalion .

post war period

After the end of the war, Kasmowitsch fled to Switzerland . In France he was responsible for the distribution of food rations at the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration . He was recruited by the British secret service in a DP camp and smuggled into Great Britain . After returning to Germany in the 1950s, Kasmowitsch organized Belarusian Nazi collaborators for the US State Department's Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) while he was an accountant for the United States Army . In 1952 the OPC pursued the goal of uniting Belarusian nationalists in a Belarusian National Liberation Committee in Germany, which should be under the leadership of Kasmovich. This did not happen, however, mainly because Mikola Abramtschyk , President of the Rada BNR , feared that the US would lose funding. Abramtschyk stated that Kasmowitsch was a former communist functionary and a major Nazi collaborator and was now employed by MI6 . Kasmowitsch then fell into depression and began to drink heavily. At the request of Radaslau Astrouski , the President of the Belarusian Central Council , Kasmovich was expelled from the Belarusian liberation movement, which led to internal disputes within the Belarusian community in exile. Nonetheless, from 1954 until his death in 1991, he remained a representative of the Beloruthenian Central Council within the Central Committee of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations . In October 1954, Kasmovich helped organize the Belarusian National Liberation Front and also wrote for the anti-communist newspaper Barazba (The Struggle). He later became president of the Belarusian National Liberation Front and represented it in the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations. From 1966 to the late 1970s he was chairman of the delegation of the Belarusian Liberation Movement to the World Anti-Communist League . In 1967 Kasmowitsch was one of the founders of the European Freedom Council.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d e f Antonio J. Munoz, Oleg V. Romanko: Hitler's White Russians. Collaboration, Extermination and Anti-partisan Warfare in Byelorussia, 1941-1944. Europa Books, Bayside NY 2003, ISBN 1-891227-42-4 , p. 449
  2. a b c Sven Steenberg: Wlassow: Traitor or Patriot? Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 1968. p. 77
  3. Sven Steenberg: Vlassow: Traitor or Patriot? Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 1968. p. 78
  4. Sven Steenberg: Vlassow: Traitor or Patriot? Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 1968. p. 79
  5. Как в Смоленске под немцем… спектакли ставили. In: rabochy-put.ru. July 11, 2011, accessed November 20, 2016 . (Russian)
  6. ^ A b Scott Anderson: Inside the League: The Shocking Expose of How Terrorists, Nazis, and Latin American Death Squads Have Infiltrated the World Anti-Communist League. Dodd, Mead, 1986, ISBN 978-0396085171 , p. 44 ( PDF )
  7. Stephen Dorril : MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service , Simon & Schuster , 2002, ISBN 0743203798 . P. 221
  8. a b Stephen Dorril : MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service , Simon & Schuster , 2002, ISBN 0743203798 . P. 222