Religious Concessions: The Orthodox Question and Religious Vindication

The Orthodox question and its future character was one which also consumed the attention of the GG authorities. For Frank and the administrators of that new administrative creation, the question placed them in a position of arbiter between the Reich and the ethnic minorities vying for influence over the church. The GG occupation policy of divide et impera and exploitation of Ukrainian sympathies appeared here as they leveraged Ukrainian desires to gain concessions in competency conflicts with the central Reich authorities in order to achieve their envisioned occupation plans. As such, the Orthodox question became an episode in which the GG administration defined its own internal policy in contrast to one imported from the Reich; something which further characterized it as a separate administrative entity and a true Nebenland.⁶²²

Early areas of intervention and focus for the Ukrainian Central Committee were the Chełm and the southern Podlasie regions. It was there that religious vindication, in other

621 “Raport bieżący Wydziału Bezpieczeństwa Departamentu Spraw Wewnętrznych Delegatury Rządu RP, dotyczący kwestii ukraińskiej (November 3, 1943)” in Archiwum Adama Bienia..., 399-400.

622 Christoph Kleßmann, “Natzionalsozialistische Kirchenpolitik und Nationalitätenfrage im Generalgouvernment (1939-1945),” Jahrbücher für Geschsichte Osteuropas vol. 18 no. 4 (December 1970), 575-576.

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words, the reacquisition of former Orthodox churches and buildings seized or polonized by the interwar Polish governments, was advocated. For Kubiiovych and the UTsK, religious vindication was also a step toward the establishment of a Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church from the remnants of the prewar Polish one for the Ukrainian faithful of the GG. In one report, he explained this as “an element deeply rooted in the history and psychology of the Ukrainian people. Therefore the positive treatment of religious needs is an extremely urgent matter for Ukrainians.”⁶²³

A Ukrainian Orthodox Church would define Ukrainian ethnic adherents, something which, according to him, went hand in hand especially in the eastern Lublin district. Dmytro Doroshenko – former minister of foreign affairs under Skoropads’kyi, the onetime head of the DWI in Berlin, and a past professor of Orthodox Church history at the University of Warsaw – condemned interwar Polish politics towards the Orthodox faithful in a 1940 brochure he published in Berlin. More than that, he presented a Ukrainian program toward the Orthodox Church after Poland’s collapse:

The position of the Orthodox Church on territory which after the fall of Poland were included in the General Government under German administration deserves serious attention. About half a million Ukrainian Orthodox adherents in the Chełm region, Podlasie and Lemko region (excluding émigrés) found themselves under German authority. This population, liberated from Polish bondage and from the custody of Polish and Russophile Orthodox hierarchs, exhibits [characteristics of] a natural movement to renew its religious life.⁶²⁴

The religious regional character was rooted in Kubiiovych's prewar academic research in which he contended the correlation between faith and ethnicity – two elements directly coinciding with one another and best defining ethnicity.⁶²⁵ The search for a Ukrainian-ethnic tradition within the Orthodox Church was not something new uncovered by Kubiiovych but was rooted in nationalist rhetoric. Religion was seen as an extremely important moral strength binding the nation. Whether Greek Catholic or Orthodox, it was viewed as a foundation for state building. As Papierzyńska-Turek noted, the most important ideal for nationalists in this respect looked to unite Ukrainian territory through the churches.⁶²⁶

623 AAN, Regierung des Generalgouvernements (RdGG), sygn. 423, “Die Innere Verwaltung im Distrikt Warschau – Bericht II: Halbjahresbericht,” p. 70.

624 Quoted in Andrzej A. Zięba, “Biskupstwo krakowsko-łemkowskie i jego arcypasterz Palladiusz (Wydybida-Rudenko). Karta z dziejów ukrainizacji Łemkowszczyzny w dobie drugiej wojny światowej” in Richnyk Ruskoi Bursy / Rocznik Ruskiej Bursy (2008), 104.

625 Shablii, Volodymyr Kubiiovych: Entsyklopediia zhyttia…, 59-60; III Ukraїns’kyi statystychnyi richnyk 1935 (Varshava-Krakiv-L’viv: 1935), 248. The almanac compiled by Kubiiovych examined Orthodox statistical and parish documents to determine Orthodox belonging there. His findings, published in a statistical journal, concluded the presence of a large Ukrainian minority within those territories, ones denationalized following the shift of the Ukrainian ethnographic boundary – from along the Wieprz to the Bug River.

626 Papierzyńska-Turek, Między tradycją z rzeczywistością..., 80-82.

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Within Chełm County lay the town of Podgórze⁶²⁷ whose Catholic Church became the first noted example of Ukrainian Orthodox vindication. On October 21, 1939 the head of the municipal council sent a letter to the church pastor calling on him to immediately handover church keys to an Orthodox representative – a lay townsperson. As the letter stipulated, this informal transfer would formally change the church from Roman Catholic to Orthodox.⁶²⁸ To win over their cause and justify theirs, Ukrainians and Poles of Podgórze looked to the German military officers stationed in the region to be arbiters of this conflict. Following some reluctance, the German decision cautiously undertaken by a Wehrmacht major called for the prewar status quo to remain in effect; namely for the church to remain in Catholic hands until a resolution between clergy and local administrators be adopted. In case of Ukrainian religious needs, he deemed the church serve that purpose as well; following an agreement between the pastor and the local mayor.⁶²⁹ A statistical table which outlined the number of villages under the jurisdiction of the Podgóże church along with the number of Catholic and Orthodox faithful in each was also compiled and given to the Catholic pastor “to present before the necessary authorities.” Within the 15 nearby villages under the church’s administration lived 2,053 Catholic and 908 Orthodox followers.⁶³⁰

A final decision came in early November via a letter sent from the Chełm Landrat to the Lublin district chief. In it, he specified the Poles justification for leaving the church in Catholic hands; they presented an old parochial record ledger from 1792 as proof that the church was in rightful hands. The administrator recognized this religious dispute as important for “local coexistence” between the Catholic Poles, who he described as the “suppressors of other nationalities,” and the Ukrainians who “see in the Führer and the German army liberators from twenty years of bondage.” Withholding from making a definitive decision, he awaited for one from the highest administrative levels in Kraków. He saw this matter, although local in nature, as one which bore greater importance for the overall General Government and occupation practice in general.⁶³¹

Following the establishment of the GG, only a large portion of one prewar autocephalous Orthodox diocese, the Warsaw one, fell under German occupation. Statistical data listed the Ukrainian Orthodox adherents in the GG as numbering about 240 thousand in the Chełm and southern Podlasie regions, with a smaller number in the Lemko region.⁶³² Two bishops, Metropolitan Dionysius and his auxiliary, remained as hierarchs.⁶³³ Of a total 93

627 In many documents, both Polish and German-language ones, alongside the use of the name Podgóże, the name Spas – from the interwar period – is also used in reference to that town.

628 AAN, RdGG, sygn. 429, Note to Roman Catholic pastor Andrzej Tacikowski in Podgórze, October 21, 1939, p. 4.

629 Ibid, Letter from Tacikowski to Wehrmacht lieutenant, November 7, 1939, p. 12. In his certification, Major Golli stipulated that any church disorder was to be immediately reported to the Landrat; the perpetrators of which would be “sharply punished.”

630 Ibid, Gemeinde Staw – Zaświadczenie, November 6, 1939, p. 6.

631 Ibid, sygn. 429, Letter from Tacikowski to Wehrmacht lieutenant, November 7, 1939, p. 11.

632 Ibid, Das Kirchenwesen, n.d., p. 81. This data closely resembles the numbers presented by Kubiiovych – 240 thousand Orthodox adherents and 180 thousand latinized Uniates. See Ukraїntsi v Heneral’nii Huberniї, 287.

633 Grzegorz Jacek Pelica, Kościół prawosławny w województwie lubelskim (1918-1939) (Lublin: Fundacja Dialog Narodów, 2007), 63, 394-395. The interwar Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church consisted of 5 diocese: Grodzieńsk, Polessia, Warsaw, Vilnius, and Volhynian. Dziennik Ustaw Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej no.

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parishes of the diocese, 53 lay in the Chełm region of the Lublin District, 28 on Lemko territory found in the Kraków district and 12 within the Warsaw District.⁶³⁴

Immediately the Germans set to work bringing the prewar Autocephalous Polish Church under their authority. The first step was the house arrest by the Gestapo of the two mentioned hierarchs. In a report to the Reich Foreign Ministry, a German diplomat in Warsaw noted that “archbishop Metropolitan Dionysius lives in Warsaw and is healthy. By order of the Gestapo, he is under house arrest.” In a subsequent note, he suggested keeping the matter of house arrest a quiet one.⁶³⁵ In a postwar report, Dionysius described his arrest:

“In the fall of 1939…I was arrested by the Gestapo and accused of begin a polonophile, which stemmed from, among other things, my proclamation to the faithful following the eruption of war with the Germans, reminding them of their loyalty toward the state.”⁶³⁶ On November 10, 1939 Seraphim, the Orthodox bishop of Berlin and all of Germany, who belonged to the semi-autonomous Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, came to Warsaw to overtake ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Out of duress, Dionysius wrote him a letter in which he stated “the fall of the independent Polish state, with whose existence was tied the existence of the independent autocephalous Orthodox Church, prevents the further autocephalous existence of this Church.” Furthermore, he wrote that a religious union with Berlin was a matter which lay in the interests of Germany and the new state order. He asked Seraphim to officially administer over the Orthodox faithful and join the Warsaw diocese under his ecclesiastical jurisdiction.⁶³⁷

A prewar Gestapo report provides more detailed insight into who Seraphim was. Born Karl Lade in Leipzig in 1883, the report noted first and foremost that he was an ethnic German; a Reichsdetusch. In 1904 he converted to Russian Orthodoxy from Protestantism and in 1916 completed theological studies in St. Petersburg. He remained in the Soviet Union until 1925 where, as a result of secret police invigilation and pressure, he joined the politically-controlled ‘living church’ sect of Orthodoxy. Further police pressure caused him to flee to Yugoslavia where he offered his services to the synod of the Russian Orthodox

88, 1317-1325; no. 103, 1545-1583. Dionysius’ auxiliary was Bishop Timotheus Szretter. During the 1938/1939 academic year, Szretter worked in the theology department at Warsaw University where he taught homiletics. In 1938 he entered into a monastic lifestyle before being appointed auxiliary bishop.

634 Jan Sziling, Kościoły chrześcijańskie w polityce nieieckich władz okupacyjnych w Generalnym Gubernatorstwie (1939-1945) (Toruń: Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika, 1988), 69. As a result of the territorial division of the prewar Polish state between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, 4 other diocese of the prewar Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church along with 8 bishops fell either within the new USSR borders or within Soviet-occupied Lithuania.

635 Mikhail Vital’evich Shkarovskii, Natsistskaia Germaniia i Pravoslavnaia Tserkov’ (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Krutitskogo Patriarshego Podvor'ia, 2002), 113-115. Sziling, Kościoły chrześcijańskie w polityce nieieckich władz..., 69. Metropolitan Dionysius remained under house arrest in his summer residence in Otwock, a town southeast of Warsaw, until the end of November 1939. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, Bishop Timotheus lived in the Orthodox monastery of St. Onufrii in Jabłeczna, a village within the Biała Podlaska County of eastern Poland.

636 Stefan Dudra, Metropolitan Dionizy (Waledyński) 1876-1960 (Warszawa: Warszawska Metropolia Prawosławna, 2010), 77.

637 AAN, RdGG, sygn. 427, Geschichte der autokephalen orthodoxen Kirche in Polen, n.d., p. 135; BA, Kanzelei des Generalgouverneurs R 52 II/247, Bericht über den Aufbau im GG bis 1. Juli 1940, p. 106; BA, Außenpolitisches Amt der NSDAP NS 43/32, Abschrift den 23 November 1939, p. 83.

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Church beyond Russia. Soon, he was sent to minister to Orthodox faithful in Vienna and later Germany. According to the report, the Reich authorities looked favorably on him in leading Orthodoxy in Germany particularly because of his ethnic German background; something which superseded his Russophile religious alignment.⁶³⁸

On November 5, 1939, during a pan-Ukrainian conference held in Chełm, a temporary church council, consisting of 10 (later expanded to 16) priests, deacons and lay men was called to life with the intention of administering to the religious needs of the local Ukrainians until Orthodox life was officially reorganized. For its territorial administrator, the council chose Fr. Ivan Levchuk.⁶³⁹ Its legal advisor was Stepan Baran, a political activist and native of Eastern Galicia who fled to the GG following the invasion of the Red Army, settling in Chełm. Born in Krukienice in 1879, he studied law and philosophy in Lwów, Berlin and Vienna; earning his law degree in 1909. As with many other Ukrainians of his generation, he was also involved in the revival and formation of Ukrainian statehood. During the interwar period he associated himself politically with UNDO, serving in the Polish Sejm from 1928 to 1939.⁶⁴⁰ Baran also wrote for the Lwów newspaper Dilo from 1908 through 1939 and later, during the war, for Krakivs’ki Visti, serving as a correspondent for the Lublin region.⁶⁴¹ He advocated for Ukrainian interests in education and agriculture. As a parliamentarian he publically denounced the Polish government’s church vindication campaign in 1938, both from the Sejm podium and to the prime minister. Concerning Orthodox property confiscation or destruction, he explained: “They [churches] were also never under the rule of the Polish people because of the simple fact that neither the local Ukrainian Uniate populace, nor the subsequent Orthodox populace on this territory, ever belonged to, then nor now, the Polish nationality; belonging instead then, and today, in their mass to the Ukrainian nationality.”⁶⁴²

638 BA, NS 43/32, Geheime Staatspolizei Bericht Betreffend Bischof Seraphim, April 25, 1938, p. 43.

639 AAN, RdGG, sygn. 427, Geschichte der autokephalen orthodoxen Kirche in Polen, n.d., p. 136; Makar, Kholmshchyna i Pidliashshia…, 33. These decisions of the Chełm church council were one of the last matters which Metropolitan Dionysius approved on November 16, 1939. Levchuk was no stranger to acting or working in the role of a temporary or interim administrator. Following the end of World War I and the Orthodox vacuum which emerged in the Lublin region as a result of the lack of a defined Polish state border, Levchuk was nominated by then bishop Dionysius to act as his representative in Chełm as well as in the Lublin and Chełm diocese’. Grzegorz Pelica argues that the appointment of Levchuk to represent Dionysius in the former Chełm diocese stemmed from the lack of a bishop there, and because of the importance of the Chełm region for the Orthodox Church, both in matters of vindication and ecumenical regulation, meaning returning it to Orthodox administration. See Pelica, Kościół prawosławny w województwie lubelskim…, 91; 95-96.

640 Torzecki, Kwestia ukraińska w Polsce..., 189-190; Małgorzata Smogorzewska (ed), Posłowie i penatorowie Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej 1919-1939: Słownik biograficzny, vol. 1 (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Sejmowe, 1998), 82. In 1918 Baran worked within the short-lived West Ukrainian People’s Republic as a secretary in its first government. In 1918-1919 he was a member of both, the Ukrainian National Council (Rada Narodova). In October 1930 he was arrested and interned following the dissolution of parliament. As a parliamentarian he worked in various commissions including: from 1928, budgetary and land reform; from 1935, self-government administration; from December 1937 treasury; from 1938 self-government once again. He maintained two law firms, in Zaleszczyki and Tarnopol; was the director of the Ukrainian Cooperative Bank in Tarnopol, the head of the regional Ridna Shkola circle and a board member of the local Prosvita Society.

641 Entsyklopediia Ukraїnoznavstva, (ed) Volodymyr Kubiiovych, vol. 1 (L’viv: Naukove Tovarystvo im.

Shevchenka, 1993), 90; Kubiiovych, Ukraїntsi v Heneral’nii Huberniї, 277.

642 Cerkiew Prawosławna na Chełmszczyźnie. Przemówienia i interpelacje posłów i senatorów ukraińskich w Sejmie i w Senacie (Lwów: UNDO, 1938), 7.

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A similar council was also organized in Warsaw under the leadership of Ivan Ohiienko – linguist, historian, professor, church and cultural activist. He completed studies at Kyiv University in 1909. In 1918 he was professor at his alma mater and in 1919 helped establish the Ukrainian University at Kamieniec Podolski where he served as first rector. A member of the government of the Ukrainian People’s Republic (minister of education, minister of religious affairs), he moved to Warsaw and served as professor of Church Slavonic at Warsaw University from 1926 to 1932.⁶⁴³ According to Edward Kasinec, the combination of his strong philological and paleographic training along with his deep knowledge of the development of the Ukrainian literary language and ecclesiastical life served him well when he wrote a history of the Ukrainian book, entitled Istoriia ukraїns’koho drukarstva.⁶⁴⁴

Throughout the war, Ohiienko espoused pro-German sympathies. One German administrator described meeting him: “…I again got the impression that the Orthodox Church sincerely expects German military victory.”⁶⁴⁵ The Warsaw council, as stipulated by Ohiienko, sought to work toward the canonical return of Orthodox life on GG territory as well as gathering together all Ukrainians interested in this issue.⁶⁴⁶ Alongside him was Petro Vydybida-Rudenko. Born in Podolia in 1891, he completed his seminary studies there and in Russian Tomsk before undertaking studies at the mathematics faculty at Kyiv University. A member of the Central Rada, he later served as assistant to the finance minister of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. Ordained in June 1921 by Dionysius, he worked within the Volhynia voivodship for over four years. In 1935 he worked in Warsaw within the autocephalous administration, later serving as the financier for the Orthodox Church retirement fund; a position and place in which he remained following the eruption of war.

Later that year he proclaimed monastic vows at the Holy Domitian Pochayiv Lavra monastery, becoming in October 1935 an archimandrite or monastic superior.⁶⁴⁷

Following its formation, the Chełm council drafted resolutions aimed at temporarily organizing Orthodox life there. This meant ukrainization as, alongside the council’s Ukrainian character, many of the stipulations aimed to add strong Ukrainian tones to church

643 Entsyklopediia Ukraїnoznavstva, (ed) Volodymyr Kubiiovych, vol. 3 (L’viv: Naukove Tovarystvo im.

Shevchenka, 1994), 863; Pelica, Kościół prawosławny w województwie lubelskim..., 387-388.

644 Edward Kasinec, “Ivan Ohienko (Metropolitan Ilarion) as Bookman and Book Collector: The Years in the Western Ukraine and Poland.” Harvard Ukrainian Studies, vol. 3/4 no. 1 (1979-1980), 477-479 Marian Jurkowski, “Profesor Ivan Ohijenko,” Warszawskie Zeszyty Ukrainoznawcze no. 3 (1996), 277-281; Wołodymyr Lachocki, “Iwan Ohijenko (metropolitan Iłarion) – działacz niepodległościowy, uczony i hierarcha ukraińskiego Kościoła prawosławnego,” Biuletyn Ukrainoznawczy no. 6 (2000), 61-71.The remainder of Kasinec’s article is devoted to Ohiienko the book collector, in which the author lists and presents the selected works from the Ohiienko library, which he bequeath to the St. Andrew’s College of the University of Manitoba.

645 Zamojszczyzna-Sonderlaboratorium SS. Zbiór dokumentów polskich i niemieckich z okresu okupacji hitlerowskiej vol. 2, ed. Czesław Madajczyk (Warszawa: Ludowa Spółdzielna Wydawnicza 1979), 60.

646 “Do vsikh ukraїns’kykh tserkovnykh organizatsii,” Krakivs’ki Visti vol. 1 no. 46 (3 June 1940), 4.

647 AAN, RdGG, sygn. 429, Abschrift-Lebenslauf Archimandrat Palladius, July 12, 1940, pp. 347-348;

Entsyklopediia Ukraїnoznavstva, (ed) Volodymyr Kubiiovych, vol. 5 (L’viv: Naukove Tovarystvo im.

Shevchenka, 1996), 1927; “Khto takyi iepyskop Palladii?” Krakivs’ki Visti vol. 2 no. 30 (February 12, 1941), 3;

Kubiiovych, Ukraїntsi v Heneral’nii Huberniї, 312.

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life.⁶⁴⁸ This appeal was also the first formal step toward demanding for the formation of a separate Orthodox diocese for the Chełm-southern Podlasie regions; an area described by the Germans as “the spokesman of Ukrainian separatist desires.”⁶⁴⁹ Dionysius, in his last act of ecclesiastical authority prior to internment, approved this resolution, giving it his blessing.

A meeting held in Warsaw among local GG officials noted that they knew nothing of the Seraphim’s appointment. They agreed that solutions to the Orthodox question would not be arbitrarily accepted from Berlin but needed the consultation of GG officials.⁶⁵⁰ During a December GG meeting, regarding the position of Seraphim, deliberations suggested: “The [prewar] metropolitan had stepped down and placed the leadership of the Orthodox Church in the hands of the Orthodox Archbishop of Berlin, Seraphim Lade. It is advisable to approve

W dokumencie Uniwersytet Jagielloński (Stron 162-200)