Former soldiers of the Galicia Division – approximately 8,500 Ukrainians, former soldiers of the Galicia Division which was formed as part of the German armed forces in the Second World War, who were transferred to the United Kingdom after the war.
In May 1945, when Germany surrendered to the Allied Powers, the Galicia Division was based in Austria. Retreating westwards to avoid capture by the advancing Soviet Red Army, most of its members (about 10,000) surrendered to the British Army and were temporarily interned near Spittal.
Former soldiers of the Galicia Division at the Hallmuir POW camp near Lockerbie, Scotland. 1948.
Soviet army commanders claimed that the Ukrainian members of the division were Soviet citizens and demanded their repatriation to the USSR on the basis of agreements reached at the Yalta Conference. The British government’s position, however, was that only those persons who were Soviet citizens before September 1939 were subject to repatriation, as it did not recognise subsequent territorial changes in Eastern Europe. Most members of the division were originally from pre-war Polish-ruled Galicia, so the Yalta provisions on repatriation did not apply to them. Only the relatively small number of those who came from the pre-war USSR were subject to the provisions, but even in these cases the British government was reluctant to enforce repatriation.
In May and at the beginning of June 1945 the division was transferred to Italy and interned in a camp near Bellaria on the Italian east coast. There, about 1,000 division members were persuaded by a Soviet repatriation commission to return to the Soviet Union voluntarily. In October 1945 the remaining members of the division were moved to a camp near Rimini, a short distance from Bellaria.
From the end of 1945 the British government began to consider how to deal with the division’s members in the longer term. The matter became more urgent in February 1947 when the Allied Powers signed the Treaty of Peace with Italy, due to come into force in September of the same year. Britain did not wish to leave the division behind after removing its troops from Italy, fearing the Italian government might succumb to Soviet demands for the forced repatriation of the Ukrainians. On 1 April 1947 the British Cabinet took the decision to transfer the division to the UK. Whereas in Italy its members were designated surrendered enemy personnel, upon transfer to the UK they were reclassified as prisoners of war.
During May and June of 1947, 8,570 Ukrainians were transported by sea from Venice to Britain. The group included 17 female nurses, a number of priests and several civilian relatives of members of the division. The ex-soldiers were accommodated in prisoner-of-war camps, mainly in central and eastern England and southern Scotland. Most were engaged to work as agricultural labourers, where they earned a reputation as conscientious workers.
The transfer of the division to the UK was initially viewed by the British government as a temporary measure forced upon them by circumstances, rather than a long term solution, and discussions about the future of the ex-soldiers continued. The Home Office, in particular, sought opportunities for removing them from the UK. The possibility of transferring groups of the men to Canada, the USA and Argentina were investigated, but proved unrealistic at the time. In November 1947 the Ministry of Agriculture began to consider the possibility of including some of the ex-soldiers in the European Volunteer Workers (EVW) scheme, under which it was recruiting workers from displaced persons’ camps in Germany and Austria. At first, the ministry was prepared to take 4,700 of the ex-soldiers, while the remainder, including those in poor health or disabled, were to be transferred to the British Zone of Occupation in post-war Germany. This led to protests by the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain and a number of British charities. Eventually, as a result of the rising demand for additional labour, it was decided that almost all of the ex-members of the Galicia Division would be released from prisoner-of-war status and engaged to work under the EVW scheme. The process was carried out between August and October 1948.
In December 1948 a decision was taken to deport to Germany at the end of the month about 300 ex-members of the division. In protest against the decision, a general strike of Ukrainian EVWs took place on 28 December 1948. Two days later the Home Office announced that only 81 persons were to leave: 45 who chose to go, mainly to rejoin relatives, and 36 with records of unsatisfactory behaviour as prisoners of war. As a result, over 8,000 former soldiers of the Galicia Division were allowed to remain in the UK as EVWs. Many of them subsequently emigrated to other countries.
Bibliography
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Zahachevskyi, E., Bellaria - Rimimi - Anhlia: reportazh-spohady, Chicago-Munich: Vyd-vo Bratstva kolyshnikh voiakiv 1 UD UNA, 1968.
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