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Two of the worst things someone can be are a Nazi and a traitor. To combine both is a special kind of
reprehensible, but that combination is exactly what the Kaminski Brigade was. An ethnically Russian
group of Nazi collaborators, the Kaminski brigade earned a dreadful reputation on the Eastern Front as
they joined the Nazi invaders to brutalise the people of Eastern Europe.
But who were the Kaminski Brigade? How did they earn their reputation? And how did they become so
evil that even the SS turned against them? Today on A Day In History, we’ll learn the truth behind the
Russian SS brigade that you never heard about.
The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 saw the swift conquest of vast areas of land and lots
of people. This presented new challenges for the German occupiers in control and security. While Nazi
racial ideology saw the Slavs as less than human, Germany was not yet at the stage of total ethnic
cleaning. Certainly, the Germans inflicted many racially-motivated atrocities as they advanced, but in the
newly occupied lands they recognised the reality that they would have to rule these racially-despised
people for some time. They also had to deal with the rebellious partisan groups mounting armed
resistance to Nazi occupation.
Like any conquering force, some level of local cooperation was needed. Chillingly, the Nazis found it.
There was no country the Nazis occupied where they did not find people willing to work with the Third
Reich, not even in the east. T
he Soviet government was despised by many and some had welcomed the
Germans as liberators from Communist oppression. Time and experience would change most people’s
minds, but there were hundreds of thousands of able-bodied men in Eastern Europe who threw their lot in
with invaders.
Starting in late 1941, the Germans recruited ethnic Russians and other minorities in the Soviet Union as
security forces to maintain order in Eastern Europe. One such group was assembled in the area of Lokot
in the Bryansk region of Russia. A local school teacher named Konstantin Voskoboynik, who was a
devoted anti-Communist, and his close friend, a distillery engineer and former Gulag inmae named
Bronislav Kaminski, approached the German occupiers in November 1941 to volunteer to organise a local
militia to deal with Communist partisans in the area. The Germans 2nd Panzer Army operating in the
region gave their approval and their work began.
#nazi #kaminski #holocaust #history
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Sources:
Charles D. Winchester, Hitler’s War on Russia, (2007)
Leonid Rein, The Kings and the Pawns: Collaboration in Byelorussia during World War II, (2011)
Nigel Cawthorne, The Story of the SS: Hitler’s Infamous Legions of Death, (2011)
Olga Beyda and Igor Petrov, ‘The Soviet Union’, in David Stahel (ed.), Joining Hitler’s Crusade: European Nations and the Invasion of the Soviet Union, 1941, (2017)
Rolf-Dieter Muller, (trans. David Burnett), The Unknown Eastern Front: The Wehrmacht and Hitler’s Foreign Soldiers, (2007)
Rolf Michaelis, The Kaminski Brigade, (2011)
Slawomir Kosim, ‘Russians in the Service of the Third Reich – Bronislav Kaminski’s RONA’, Chronicles of Terror, https://zapisyterroru.pl/dlibra/context?id=context5#_ftn6
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