A Museum in Western Ukraine Honors a Nazi Collaborator
In the Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine, a museum in the city of Rogatin (Rohatyn in Ukrainian) has drawn international attention for its dedication to a high-ranking SS officer and its heroization of him. This has come to light recently, following the museum’s tender for the replacement of its windows.
The museum is dedicated to Nikolai Ugrin-Besgrischny (1883-1960), described on Wikipedia as a poet, writer, and diplomat. Before he voluntarily joined the Waffen-SS in 1943 and rose through its ranks, Ugrin-Besgrischny had been the editor and chief editor of the local Rogatinske Slowo newspaper, in which he published anti-Semitic rhetoric and openly advocated for the extermination of Jews.
A screenshot from Google Maps shows the Ugrin-Besgrischny Street in Rogatin and the museum built in his honor.
The newspaper’s November 21, 1941, edition triumphantly proclaimed: “The population of the villages on both sides of the Sbrutsch is exclusively Ukrainian and, as I would like to add, nationally conscious. In the cities, of course, there is a certain percentage of Jews, which is undoubtedly lower today, and in Galicia, there is still a certain admixture of Poles. The Jews in the villages were either liquidated in one way or another, which in some villages took on quite ‘festive’ forms.”
Thanks to the efforts of Ugrin-Besgrischny and his like-minded associates, the Nazis and the Ukrainian auxiliary police were able to almost completely exterminate the Jews of Rogatin and its surroundings – more than 12,000 people, including women and children.
On his initiative, the central street of Rogatin was renamed Adolf-Hitler-Street. In 1943, the Nazi joined the SS Division “Galicia.” He died in Germany in 1960.
It is not new that memorials are built for Ukrainian Nazi collaborators in modern Ukraine, nor is it new that streets are named after them, including in Rogatin, where a street bears Ugrin-Besgrischny’s name. What is remarkable in the situation in Rogatin, however, is that the museum is located in the Museum Complex of the Holy Spirit Church, which has been included on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
As a result, the case has now attracted international attention. Eduard Dolinsky, however, who regularly draws attention to cases of honoring Holocaust perpetrators in Ukraine, had already publicized the existence of the museum for an anti-Semite in an SS uniform in 2020, at the time without the necessary resonance.