25 June 2012. PenzaNews. The Day of Remembrance and Mourning, approved by the first President of Russia Boris Yeltsin in 1996, is commemorated annually on June 22. It is the date when Hitler’s Germany began the war against the Soviet Union. The Great Patriotic War claimed the lives of about 27 millions of Soviet men, women and children and the dates to commemorate its beginning are also established in Byelorussia and Ukraine. Traditionally, flags are flying at half-mast, laying of wreath ceremonies take place in all Russian cities and memorial services are held at the Orthodox churches, on June 22.

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In connection with this sorrowful date, news agency PenzaNews publishes an article of well-known researcher of history of the Baltic States, author of numerous scientific publications and several books, Dr. Mikhail Krysin entitled “June 22, 1941: The tragic pages of the history and four dates of the past”:

June 22, 1941: The Day of Remembrance and Mourning

22 June 1941 became the day of grief and memory of tens of millions of the victims. It is the day when cruel and bloody war against the USSR was started. The war for survival. On this day each of us should look back at the tragic events of history.

Peremyshl was a little town on the border between just occupied by Hitler’s troops Poland and the USSR (Lvov district of the former Ukrainian SSR). The western part of the city became German from the September 1939 and was named “Proemsel” (pol. Przemysl). The eastern part, the Soviet one, was called Peremyshl. At that time there were practically no Soviet regular troops in the Soviet part of the city. The only garrison consisted of the 1st company of the 66th Regiment from the 10th Division of the Railway troops of NKVD; some platoons of the 150th separate machine gun battalion from the so called 8th fortified zone; commandant’s staff; the staff of the 99th Rifle Division of the Red Army and one frontier post of the 92nd Peremyshl Frontier Detachment of NKVD.

At 3.30 a.m. on June 22, 1941, two divisions of Hitler’s Wehrmacht (overall strength about 12 thousand men) with the artillery support attacked the Soviet (eastern) part of the city. But just in the first minutes their advance failed. A unit of the Frontier Troops, consisted of five border guards under the command of Second Lieutenant Nechaev, supported by the soldiers of the Railway Troops of the NKVD, did not allow the Germans to capture the bridge across the San river, which had strategic importance; the Soviet troops had been keeping hold of it for some hours. All fords across the river were also blocked by the fire from two pillboxes (concrete dug-in guard posts) of the 8th fortified zone.

Fragment from the article of Vadim Gasanov, well-known documentary film producer of many films about the Great Patriotic War of the USSR and scientific editor of some books on the WWII and the Post-War period: “At about 10.00 a.m. on the June 22 the Frontier Troops, that had defended the bridge, were almost annihilated. Lieutenant Nechaev blew himself up with his last grenade – along with the Germans, who had then surrounded him. Despite the fire from the two Russian pillboxes, the Germans began to cross the river and captured nearly all the center of the city by midday. But the fights were still going on in the outskirts of the city – border guards and pillboxes’ garrisons continued to fire off. Obstinate Resistance of the NKVD and Red Army troops permitted the Soviet Command to regroup its forces on the border and to create a composite battalion from the Red Army and NKVD men under the leadership of Lieutenant of Frontier Troops Grigoriy Polivoda. By midday of June 23, the Soviet part of the city was fully cleaned of the German troops. The mixed battalion of Polivoda burst into the German part of Peremyshl, Proemsel, across the San river, i.e. into the Third Reich territory. Therefore, Peremyshl was the first Soviet town, recaptured from the Nazis already on June 23! Peremyshl was defended by the Soviet troops till June 27, 1941. Only because of the general worsening of the military situation on the Eastern front (i.e. German break-through to Lvov) the Soviet troops had to leave Peremyshl. But, despite all this, the garrison of one of the two Soviet pillboxes on the bank of the San river under the command of the Second Lieutenant Chaplin was still holding the defense until June 30, thereafter all these men were killed in a fight.”

Do we remember these heroes? Or should it not concern us? Somebody could say they were NKVD men, “Stalin’s butchers,” as they were usually called in the last 20–25 years… Why should we care? But the Polish historians and patriots still remember these events of 1941 and these men. Although the Government of Poland destroyed the monument to these Soviet soldiers, some Polish enthusiasts are still maintaining at their proper expenses and private donations that same Soviet pillbox, which was holding the defense up to June 30, 1941. Now it is a private museum “Kaponiera 8813.”

June 22 is the day, when everybody in Russia and other states of Europe have to think about the events of the past and present. The word “think” does not obligatory mean “re-think.” Unfortunately, today there are many people, not only journalists, but also professional historians, who deliberately re-interpret the history. It is inexcusable for the professionals who should always be correct and objective. And after all what took place in, for example, Peremyshl who can trust such “historians,” as Rezun (pseudonym “Suvorov”), who claims the USSR had prepared a “preventive war” against the Germany and pulled in some “strike armies” troops to new German border? However, Rezun’s books are sold practically in every bookstore in Russia.

Alas, the history revision is coming to be now not single, but mass phenomenon. Not only in the West, not only in the Baltic States or in the western Ukraine and Eastern Europe, but also in Russia. The history falsifiers forget that the Soviet Union exists no more. But their grant-donators from the West, who act as sponsors of different “orange” and other “color revolutions,” continued to identify the modern Russia with the Soviet Union. Evidently, they do not need economically independent, strong Russia. They need Russia, staying on its knees, deep sunk in a debt hole of the transnational bank corporations from the US, EU or somewhere else. All the falsification work is aimed at it.

Among the most active non-governmental public organizations, struggling against the revision of history, we can mention such institutions, as “Historical Memory Foundation” led by Alexander Dyukov, “Historical Perspective Foundation” led by Natalia Narochnitskaya, “The Society of the native special services research” led by Alexander Zdanovich, the United Edition of Russian Ministry of the Interior, as well as many Jewish NGOs, such as the Scientific-educational center “Holocaust” led by Ilya Altman. There are also many enthusiasts – historians, journalists, producers, including Vadim Gasanov, Alexander Kolpakidi, Vladimir Simindei, Boris Chertkov, Alexander Tkachenko, and many others. These men, though enthusiasts, are also professionals, but their projects do not receive any serious support from the Government, while the Presidential Commission of the Russian Federation to Counter Attempts to Falsify History to the Detriment of Russia’s Interests, which existed from 2009 up to 2012, did not make any success addressing this question.

In the connection with this tragic date, June 22, we should turn to another date from the past. Or, more precisely, to three dates.

August 23, 1939: Day of Remembrance for Victims of Totalitarian Regimes, or Day of Justifying of Collaborationism?

Not long ago, namely May 17, 2012, Nikolai Svanidze, Chairman of the Commission for interethnic relations and conscience freedom of Public Chamber of Russia, spoke against creation of the Day of Remembrance for Victims of Nazism and Racial Hatred. In view of this, it should be noted, that the meeting of Public Chamber was dedicated to the discussion, initiated by the Russian Information Agency REGNUM and dealt with the issue of establishment of the “Day of Remembrance for Victims of Nazism and Collaborationism.” REGNUM has collected about 10 thousand signatures for the creation of that Remembrance Day (indeed many participants spoke for “Remembrance Day for Victims of Nazism and Racial Hatred,” not “Collaborationism”). Well-known in Russia historian and publisher Alexander Kolpakidi proposed different dates to commemorate this Remembrance Day. One of the named dates was September 30, 1938, when the Munich Agreement was signed between the Hitler’s Germany, Great Britain, France and Italy about the partition of Czechoslovakia, which actually transferred this country to Hitler’s sphere of influence.

Chairman of another Commission of Public Chamber Iosif Diskin approved the idea, proposed by REGNUM, suggesting, however, that the Remembrance Day for Victims of Nazism and Racial Hatred (or Collaborationism) should be commemorated every year on January 27, internationally accepted by the UNO as International Day of Remembrance for Victims of Holocaust.

Despite these proposals, Nikolai Svanidze noted that “Nazism” and “Collaborationism” are completely different things, because “the first is an ideology and the second is the result of the circumstances.” Evidently, it would mean, that all the collaborationists should be treated as “victims.”

But the discussion was not closed thereupon. One of the participants asked the question, presumably conceived as figure of speech, “Who was the first collaborationist?” And thereupon added, that this “hypothetical person had less choice, than Josef Stalin, when signing the Non-Aggression Pact between the USSR and Nazi Germany.” So, it makes clear, what Remembrance Day these men want to commemorate.

The fact is that on August 23, 2011 (the anniversary of the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact) the EU for the first time commemorated the so-called International Day of Remembrance for Victims of Totalitarian Regimes. It should be noted that the date was proclaimed European Day of Remembrance not by the UN decree, but on the basis of the European Parliament resolution “On the European Conscience and Totalitarianism” (2 April 2009) and the conclusions of the Council of Europe “On the memory of the crimes committed by totalitarian regimes in Europe” (9–10 June 2011). On this occasion, Prime Ministers of Latvia and Hungary, Ministers of Justice of Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Croatia, Romania, Czech Republic, Spain, Sweden, Slovakia and Malta, as well as representatives from Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Italy and Portugal came together in the building of the Warsaw Uprising Museum and signed a document, later known as the Warsaw Declaration. It is not difficult to guess what its content is like, taking into account the participants and the topic of the meeting. Here is the preamble of the document: “Considering that Europe has suffered under totalitarian regimes, be they communist, national socialist or of any other nature, which have brought about unspeakable violations of fundamental rights and the complete denial of human dignity, of which the holocaust is the most horrendous manifestation…”

It should be noted, that the first “totalitarian” regime mentioned in the Warsaw Declaration is “communism”, which, evidently, is considered a bigger evil in comparison with Hitler’s National Socialism. “Better Hitler than Stalin,” these words were the main principle of some collaborationists. Why? The Warsaw Declaration contains no facts about the crimes of the Soviet power. And “the most horrendous manifestation” of totalitarian regimes is called the Holocaust, unleashed by the Nazis and their helpers-collaborationists who were not forced to do it on pain of death, but did it voluntarily; they are those who are now proclaimed as “fighters for independence” or “fighters against the communist regime,” – today this stamp is not less popular than in the Nazi times. Obviously, it is some kind of “indulgence” for modern “civilized” Europe which gives absolution to former collaborationists and those who try to justify them.

Another interesting thing should be mentioned here. There is not a word about other totalitarian regimes and their rulers, existed in 1920s–1940s in Europe in the text of the Warsaw Declaration. Was the Poland’s military rule of Jusef Pilsudski and his successors less bloody not only for the Red Army POWs in the early 1920s, but for any other political opponents, especially in Western Belorussian and Ukrainian regions, annexed by Poland in the early 1920s? Were the regimes of admiral Horthy and Hungarian Nazi Szalasi in Hungary, the Ulmanis regime in Latvia, the Pats regime in Estonia, Ante Pavelic in Croatia, the abbot Tiso in Slovakia, the dictatorship of Ion Antonescu in Romania, Benito Mussolini in Italy or Generalissimo Franco in Spain less bloody?

So it becomes clear, that these two “magic words” – National Socialism (i.e. Nazism) and the Holocaust – have been used with the only aim to quiet the public opinion in the EU countries, as well as in Russia and Israel (the main persecutors of Nazi war criminals) and to mask the real content of the Warsaw Declaration, which, indeed, is evident for every thinking man: The Warsaw Declaration of August 23, 2011, is directed first of all against the modern Russia. What does the European Union need it for? The purpose is as follows: to lift up the economy of the Eastern Europe States, being in the debt hole dug for them by the transnational financial corporations and other economy killers. Lifting up of the Eastern Europe States economy, apparently, is supposed at the costs of Russian Federation. Therefore, Russia would be pictured as “aggressor,” not liberator of half of Europe. All these measures, evidently, should push Russia to the same debt hole.

A statement published on the website of the US Embassy in Estonia on August 23, 2011 is also worth mentioning. It says, inter alia, that “more than 70 years ago Nazi Germany and the USSR, signing the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union, ensured that Europe and the entire world was placed on an inexorable path to war.”

Moreover, in conclusion the authors of the Warsaw Declaration called on the Council of Europe and Human Rights Commission “to support activities of non-governmental organizations… which are actively engaged in researching and collecting documents related to the crimes committed by totalitarian regimes and in spreading the knowledge of history,… to use the existing financial support programs for such activities.” And it has long been known, who practically “bought” a significant part of the scientific elite of Russia for grants.

January 27, 1945: International Day of Remembrance for Holocaust and Nazism Victims

The United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 60/7 on November 1, 2005 to designate 27 January as the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.
This day has been commemorated since 2006 though in some countries it had been commemorated before. For example, in Germany and Russia, it is also known as the International Day of Remembrance for Victims of Nazism.

Then the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan called the International Day of Commemoration to honor the victims of the Holocaust, “an important reminder of the universal lessons of the Holocaust, a unique evil which cannot simply be consigned to the past and forgotten.”

President Vladimir Putin said the following, “I consider this unanimous decision firm will of the international community to pass on the truth about barbaric crimes of Nazism to future generations, to protect humanity from the evils of xenophobia, racism and extremism.”

What does this day mean to Russia and the whole world? On January 27, 1945 the Red Army (troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front) liberated the Nazis’ biggest concentration camp Auschwitz (pol. Oswiecim) located near the eponymous Polish town near Krakow. Back in 2003, on this day President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany Paul Spiegel has fairly emphasized the role of the Red Army in liberation of prisoners of Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz.

Who said that the Day of Remembrance for Victims of Nazism is not our memorable date?

Even the SS personnel, who had left the camp the day before the forward units of the 1st Ukrainian Front reached it, gave first aid to the sick and exhausted prisoners, some of who could not even walk. It were they wearing the Soviet uniform, who brought the prisoners confidence in the future, confidence that they would be alive. “We were liberated,” that was all the prisoners of the camp Ota Kraus and Erich Kulka, both the Czech Jews, who later fought against the Hitler’s troops in the 1st Czechoslovak Corps could say on January 27.

It should also be reminded that there were Soviet prisoners of war in Auschwitz (Oswiecim) as well. At the end of October 1941 there were about 12 thousand people imprisoned in a special enclosed zone consisted of 9 barracks. Some of these POWs became the victims of the early experiments with gas, so called Zyklon B, that was widely used for the mass killings of the detainees in gas chambers.

Here is an extract from the book Death Factory by Ota Kraus and Erich Kulka:

“On the first day prisoners were ordered to check in their uniform for disinfection. And nobody, except the prisoners who distributed food and the staff of the working team, which included only a few hundred people, none of the 12 thousand prisoners received any clothes, shoes, or underwear back. The prisoners of war were left without clothes. Three times a day they had a roll call outside in all weather. The prisoners died from the cold. They were fed worse than us, with beetroot only.”

As a result, about 450 people from 12 thousand Soviet soldiers were alive by March 1942. They were sent to the camp of Auschwitz-II (Birkenau), where they carried out heavy construction work. The book Death Factory also contains the memoirs of Auschwitz prisoner No. 20904 Jiri Baranowski from Prague: “The first prisoner to rebel was a Soviet prisoner of war. While working on a wood-stock, he hacked with an ax the SS-man who beat the prisoners. SS personnel in response killed all the prisoners of this order and for a long time Soviet prisoners of war were not sent at work. After a six-month stay in Birkenau, only 100 Soviet prisoners of war survived. Then the SS-men changed their attitude towards them. Soviet survivors became of particular concern to the SS-men! The prisoners became a special team and worked at the food stock only. They were fed pretty well. These measures aimed at bribing Soviet people to use them against the prisoners from other countries. The SS-men thought that they did it, so entrusted Soviet prisoners of war to do very important job: if any of the prisoners disappeared, they alone, unaccompanied by the SS-men, were sent to find them within a large chain of entanglements. What a glaring mistake! Once, when Soviet POWs were looking for a runaway, on the very border of a large chain of entanglements they suddenly capsized a guard tower with SS-men and killed them. They took their weapons and escaped. There were 60 Soviet people, and most of them successfully fled. Neither alive nor dead have they been seen at the camp. The daring escape raised the selfconsciousness of all the prisoners. The number of escapes increased, despite the crackdown of SS-men.” Nazis hoped that Soviet prisoners of war could and should have become collaborationists. But they chose another path.

September 30, 1938: The Munich Pact, or Who was the first collaborationist?

Now let us return to the question of one of the participants of the discussion on May 17, 2012, “Who was the first collaborationist?” – a person who allegedly “had less choice than Josef Stalin during conclusion of the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union.” One can ask another question, “Who and when started separation of Europe?” The answer to the both questions is the same.

Heads of Governments of Germany, Britain, France and Italy signed the Munich Agreement on September 30, 1938, which, in fact, transferred all of Czechoslovakia in the sphere of influence of the Third Reich. Poland also participated in the partition of Czechoslovakia. The Soviet Union had repeatedly suggested Western countries to create a military alliance against Hitler’s Germany during the 1930s and even offered its assistance to Czechoslovakia in connection with the threat of Nazi aggression. To accomplish this, the Soviet troops had to be allowed to Czechoslovakia through Poland. Neither of these two countries gave its consent to it. Britain and France, which had agreements on mutual military assistance with both Czechoslovakia and Poland, did not want to assist either. Czechoslovakia was divided, and the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain who returned from Munich after the ceremony told the British, “I have returned from Germany with peace in our time.”

And it was precisely the peace that Hitler wanted. Even before the World War I (and especially after Hitler came to power), the German staff officers engaged in plans of Europe occupation were afraid of a two-front war most of all. World War I became a complete defeat for Germany. It was no coincidence that in the book Mein Kampf [included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials, the distribution of which is banned in the Russian Federation] Hitler wrote that Germany should either become an ally of Soviet Russia and fight against Britain, or conclude an alliance or peace with England and capture the whole continental Europe. Hitler made the choice himself: Germany should become a continental power, which owns the whole Europe, capture the “eastern territories” necessary for “the great German race,” and make “Slavic subhumans” slaves to work for their industry. And let the UK, having a huge Navy and being an ally or a friendly but neutral power, have colonies all over the globe, as long as it did not open a second front in the West when the war against Russia started.

Only Winston Churchill, who apparently understood the real value of the Munich Pact dated September 30, 1938, warned of its consequences (despite being a staunch anti-Soviet, proponent of intervention in Russia during the Civil War, and initiator of the Cold War after World War II).

Poland, by the way, also got its share after the division of Czechoslovakia, the Cieszyn region. Since the early 1930s the Polish government had longed to take part in Hitler’s campaign against Russia in the East, but soon Poland itself fell victim to Hitler’s aggression. Reichsmarschal Hermann Wilhelm Goering becalmed the Poles during one of his trips in the Bialowieza Forest (Reichmarshal was an avid hunter), giving Foreign Minister Josef Beck a hint on Poland participation in the Eastern campaign. But at that time the German General Staff had been already working on the so-called «Weiss» plan, plan for the invasion of Poland. Hitler was preparing a war against the Soviet Union and Poland being a “cordon sanitaire” was no longer relevant.

Did Stalin have a choice after the Munich Pact in 1938? He had a choice before August 1939, that is, until the collapse of talks with the British and the French, and he took advantage of it, once again suggesting the governments of Great Britain and France to create a single anti-Hitler coalition. France more or less presented its war plans for war in the West against Germany, Great Britain did not. Moreover, the British representative, Admiral Drax even did not have the authority to enter into such an agreement. The negotiations failed. Poland did not want to see the Soviet troops on its territory at all and even flattered itself with the hope to participate in the Eastern campaign. After that, the choice was the following: to enter a war against Germany in defense of Poland, which still considered itself an ally of Germany, and regarded the Soviet Union as its principal enemy; or establish a temporary peace. The fact that it was temporary was obvious to both Moscow and Berlin.

Now let us compare two dates: September 30, 1938 and August 23, 1939. The Munich Pact and the so-called Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Who was the first to start the division of Europe and who was the first collaborationist?

Despite speaking of the Soviet “annexation of several territories in Eastern Europe,” Director of the German Historical Institute in Moscow, Bernd Bonwetsch says that “if one thinks in terms of real politics, and that was the way all the European powers including Poland thought during the prewar years, the cooperation of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany is understandable in that situation. The USSR was isolated and not ready for war. Peace was vital to it!”

And this is what the Russian historian Vladimir Simindei said of the Munich agreement, “The answer to this question [who started the division of Europe?] is well- know to historical science, but is not suitable for propaganda clichés of European bureaucrats. Appeasement of the aggressor in the West at the expense of the destruction of Czechoslovakia, and whetting its appetite for the East – all this was done by London and Paris, while Moscow resisted the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia at the political level as a pledge of a new big war.”

This opinion is shared by another Russian historian Alexander Kolpakidi, who offers, in response to the demarche of the European Union on August 23, 2011, to give a fitting reply, which must be “plain, adequate and very accurate.” The Russian public, the Russian historical community should “force” the native government to put forward an initiative – namely, to insist on the UN’s declaration of the Day of Remembrance for Victims of Fascism and Collaborationism.”

What is collaborationism?

Nikolai Svanidze declared at the meeting in the Public Chamber of Russia on May 17, 2012, that all the habitants of the German-occupied Soviet territory (which was 40% of the former USSR), i.e. about 80 millions of Soviet people and members of their families could be considered “collaborationists,” because they were “forced to work for the Germans.” However, this is extremely wrong and unfair to all those people. Now it is time to go back to the question, “Have these people any choice?”

Why did Juri Uluots become a collaborationist? He was the last prime minister of Estonia who became a member of “the Estonian self-administration” affiliated with the German occupation administration, and actively encouraged the Estonians to “fight against the Soviets” under the banner and in the uniform of the SS troops. And Juri Uluots was not repressed during the Soviet times although, according to history revisionists, the Soviets destroyed all the national intelligentsia in Estonia, and especially its prominent figures.

Why did not Lithuanian General-Lieutenant Stasys Rashtikis become a collaborationist, despite the fact that he was an ardent nationalist and anti-communist, and even was a member of the Provisional Government of Lithuania headed by Kazys Skirpa, dispersed by the Germans in August 1941? Despite the fact that the Germans had repeatedly suggested him to become commander of some Lithuanian “national” force, or to be more exact, to help mobilize the Lithuanians under the banner of Hitler.

As for the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian police goons and thugs, they willingly participated in the most massive and brutal executions of Jews, Communists, and Soviet prisoners of war not being forced to do it. All police battalions were formed in the Baltic States on a voluntary basis. By the way, they later formed the backbone of the 15th and 19th Latvian and 20th Estonian Divisions of Waffen SS. And there are a lot of these cases which took place in the Baltic countries. Consequently, there was a choice.

There were, of course, ordinary people who were not volunteers, but the subject to compulsory mobilization — their choice was much smaller. Being in Lithuania and Latvia, they fled from troop trains, beat German soldiers and policemen, and sometimes even fired on the Germans. Many of them were later shot, others were sent to Salaspils (Latvia) or Poneryay (Ponyri, Lithuania). There were local officials of the occupying apparatus, who helped the guerrillas, hiding Red Army Men, Jews and communists; and some of them paid with their life for it. For example, the starosta (head) of the Dobele Volost in Latvia was shot by the retreating Latvian legionnaires for being harbored a Jew who had fled from the Riga ghetto. Most of these people’s names are unknown; and their fate was sad. It should be reminded that the famous poet and anti-fascist Musa Jalil, who had died in Berlin prison Moabit, was drafted in the so called “Volga-Tatar Legion,” created by German Command of the Soviet POWs. Military units, which the Nazis tried to create from the “eastern subhumans,” also had their own underground resistance groups and communist cells. Most of them were killed. They were killed by the Nazis, not the NKVD. So all of them can not be considered collaborationists.

Furthermore, there were collaborationists in Auschwitz. By the end of the war, when all the “Aryans” fit for military service were called to the front, the majority of its staff were ethnic Germans (folksdeutsche) from different countries of Eastern Europe. If you look through their lists, you will find out that about a quarter or even a third of the surnames are Slavic or non-German surnames. Many of them even could hardly speak German. Some of them enjoyed their position because it gave them unlimited power over prisoners. Some of them, on the contrary, helped prisoners escape, or at least survive. And here are two examples.

The first example: A German criminal Boem who was senior at the block (they were called “kapo”) and beat other prisoners to death, was enlisted in the SS troops in September 1944, still being in the camp. He was not a member of the National Socialist Party, but a simple recidivist criminal who became a collaborationist. He had a choice, and he made it. Generally administration of the camp chose “kapo” from “the green,” i.e. German criminals (wearing a green triangle on the striped lager robe as the distinctive sign). These people even had their own “apartment” and brothels in the camp. In the camp’s last years, all of them without waiting for the sentence were invited to join the SS troops. No one refused. Later they were sent to fight the guerrillas.

The second example: Romanian SS-man Pestek from the Auschwitz guard, despite wearing the SS uniform, was a member of an underground resistance organization. In the spring of 1944, he helped one prisoner to escape and went to the partisans himself. But then Pestek illegally returned to the camp (he was considered a deserter there) and tried to withdraw a group of prisoners, including his beloved Czech Jew Rene Neimanova. However, Pestek was betrayed by one of the prisoners, criminals, and shot after a month of torture.

Thus, these people – a former criminal Boem, and a former SS-man Pestek – also had a choice, although more rigorous than those of influential politicians, and sometimes even between life and death. But some preferred to die rather than become collaborationists and criminals. By the way, even in Soviet times (of course, taking into account the mistakes in domestic politics under Stalin) these people were not always judged harshly. Latvian and Estonian legionnaires who were considered prisoners of war and traitors, were released shortly after the war. But then it was discovered that many of them were free-will police goons. So, new investigations were started. Many were condemned for nothing. Others, by contrast, escaped the deserved punishment. Those who were forcibly conscripted into military service or work (including in the legions of the Waffen SS) can not be considered collaborationists in the full sense of the word.

So who was the first collaborationist? It were those who started the first repartition of Europe by signing the Munich pact with Hitler in the framework of the so-called policy of appeasement of the aggressor on September 30, 1938 which led to the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, giving the aggressor complete freedom of action in Europe. First collaborationists should be considered Prime Ministers of Britain, France and Italy: Neville Chamberlain, Eduard Daladier and Benito Mussolini, who allowed Hitler to start his campaign to the East to conquer “living space” for the “Aryan race chosen by God.” The heads of these countries, unlike the Soviet Union in 1939, had a choice. They did it by giving Hitler not only Czechoslovakia but the whole Europe and even their own people.

That is why on the Day of Remembrance and Mourning, June 22, Russian citizens can also make a choice: to accept the Day of Remembrance for Victims of Totalitarian Regimes on August 23, actually falsifying the facts of history, or openly name the true collaborationists and speak in favor of establishment of Memorial Day for Victims of Fascism and Collaborationism. It would be fair to set the memorable date precisely on September 30, the very day when the Munich Pact was signed.