Ukrainian People's Militia

Ukrainian People's Militia
Ukrainian: Українська Міліція German: Ukrainische Miliz
Membership card
Active	23 June 1941 – November 1941
Country	Selected cities and rural areas of General Government and Reichskommissariat Ukraine

Ukrainian People's Militia or the Ukrainian National Militia (Ukrainian: Українська Народна Міліція), was a paramilitary formation created by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in the General Government territory of occupied Poland and later in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine during World War II. It was set up in the course of the 1941 Operation Barbarossa following the Nazi German attack on the Soviet positions in eastern Poland. The formation, created in June 1941, preceded the official founding of the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police in mid-August 1941 by Heinrich Himmler. There is conclusive historical evidence indicating that members of the Ukrainian Militia took a leading role in the 1941 Lviv pogroms, resulting in the massacre of 6,000 Polish Jews, after the German army reached Lwów (Lemberg) at the end of June in Soviet-occupied eastern Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine). Initially the Ukrainian militia acted independently, with the blessings of the SS, but later were limited to joint operations (Aktionen) with German units or otherwise functioned directly under the Nazi command.

The Ukrainian People's Militia was active in occupied territories behind the Wehrmacht lines, assisting the German Security Police and the Einsatzgruppen while the army kept advancing in the direction of Zhytomyr, Rivne and Kiev. Heinrich Himmler was appointed Chief of SS and Police for the Eastern Territories on 17 July 1941 and decreed the formation of the Schutzmannschaften from among the non-German auxiliaries. In mid-August he regrouped the indigenous militia which had sprung up under the military rule to form the core of the official Ukrainische Hilfspolizei. Before that, members of the Ukrainian militia in formerly Polish cities with sizeable Polish-Jewish presence compiled lists of targets for the branch offices of the KdS and assisted with the roundups (as in Stanisławów, Włodzimierz Wołyński, Łuck). In Korosten, the Militia rounded up 238 Jews described as "a source of continuous unrest" and carried out the killings by themselves. In Sokal, on 30 June 1941 they arrested and executed 183 Jews dubbed "the commissars". Other locations followed.