Pavlo Schandruk

General Pavlo Schandruk

Pavlo Teofanowytsch Shandruk ( Ukrainian Павло Феофанович Шандрук , Polish Paweł Szandruk * 16 ^{. Jul} / 28. February  1889 ^greg. In Borsuky in Kremenets , Russian Empire ; † 15. February 1979 in Trenton , New Jersey ), an officer in the Kaiserlich- Russian Army , General in the Armies of the Ukrainian People's Republic and the Second Polish Republic and Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian National Army . He was a holder of the Virtuti Militari order , a military historian and the author of several books.

Life

Schandruk was born on February 28, 1889 in Borsuky ( Ukrainian Борсуки ), then Volhynia , now in the Laniwzi district of the Ukrainian Ternopil Oblast . In 1911 he completed his studies in linguistics and history at the philological and historical Prince Besborodko Institute in Nischyn , in 1913 he also graduated from the Aleksandrejewsk Military School in Moscow and embarked on a military career in the Russian army. During the First World War , he served, among other things, in supplies and in the infantry. Schandruk earned several awards and was gas wounded during the fighting. He ended the war with the rank of captain of staff .

During the October Revolution he resigned and went to his Ukrainian homeland. There he served in the ranks of the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic from 1917 to 1920, until he was promoted to major general in April of the same year and took part in the war against the Bolsheviks . At the end of the year he and his units managed to break out and retreat across the Sbrutsch into Polish territory, where he was interned in Kalisz . After his release, Schandruk became involved in Petljura's government-in-exile , and in 1936 Schandruk joined the Polish army and completed further training at the Wyższa Szkoła Wojenna , Poland's leading military academy.

From 1940 to 1944 he ran a cinema in the Polish town of Skierniewice , where, among other things , he let Polish friends hunted by the Gestapo work under false identities.

Second World War

For Schandruk, the Second World War began with the attack on Poland in September 1939. During the fighting on September 23, in the position of colonel , he managed to save the 19th Polish Brigade from destruction in the Battle of Tomaszów Lubelski . For this achievement he was later honored with the Virtuti Militari Order of Merit . After the defeat of the Polish army, he was imprisoned in a German prisoner of war camp, from which he was soon released because of his injuries.

Ukrainian National Army

At the end of 1944, by agreement of all Ukrainian exile groups, Schandruk was given the leadership of the Ukrainian National Council in Germany. The task of this council was to represent the interests of Ukraine before the Hitler government . At the same time he was appointed Commander in Chief of the Ukrainian National Army. This approximately 50,000-strong army was made up of Ukrainian voluntary organizations of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS , including all members of the SS-Galicia .

Through skillful negotiation, Schandruk actually succeeded shortly before the end of the war in swearing in the soldiers, not on Hitler , but on the freedom of Ukraine. Standards and badges no longer bore swastika and runes, but Ukrainian symbols.

surrender

At the end of the war, Schandruk's troops surrendered without resistance to the US and British forces in Austria. Most of the soldiers were interned in British prisoner-of-war camps in Rimini , Italy . Schandruk asked to take him to London , where he met the general of the Polish forces in exile, Władysław Anders , whom he had already known from the war year 1939. There he succeeded in convincing General Anders to vouch for all members of the Ukrainian National Army with the Western victorious powers and to certify their origin from Galicia , regardless of which part of Ukraine the soldiers came from. Thus, they were considered Polish citizens who could not be extradited to the Soviet Union .

After the war

Schandruk lived in Germany for several years before emigrating to the United States in 1949 . In 1965 he was honored by General Anders with the Virtuti Militari Order of Merit for his services in the defense of Poland . In America he also found time to write some books. He died in Trenton, New Jersey and was buried in the cemetery of St. Andrew's Ukrainian Orthodox Memorial Church in South Bound Brook , New Jersey .

Web links

• List of all recipients of the Virtuti Militari 1792–1992 , by Professor Z. Wesołowski
• Arms of Valor, New York (1959) , General Pawlo Schandruk