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Practicing Law in the Occupied Ukraine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Nikolas Laskovsky
Nikolas Laskovsky*
Affiliation:
Fordham University
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Extract

It was my lot to work as a lawyer in the Ukraine in 1943. The year might be characterized as falling within the “second phase” of the war with Germany, for the majority of the population had become bitterly hostile to the occupiers. When the Germans crossed the frontiers, many Ukrainians hoped that the German armies would become “liberators” from the bolshevist system, for the Bolshevik dictatorship's social and economic policy had led many citizens of the Ukraine to adopt a defeatist attitude. The population was quickly disillusioned by German conduct during the first phase of the war. Even the man in the street saw clearly that the occupied provinces were the first to suffer the intolerable exploitation of the German military machine.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , April 1952 , pp. 123 - 137
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1952

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References

1 The “German and Special Court” will be referred to hereafter as the “German Court” for the sake of brevity.

2 The karbovantsy constituted the occupation currency, ten of them being equivalent to one German occupation mark.

3 The Germans reinstituted the practice formerly prevailing before the Russian Revolution in some parts of the Empire, namely the grouping of several provinces under a Commissar General (formerly termed a Governor General under the Empire). Thus, an intermediate administrative level was provided between the Provincial Commissars and the Reichskommissar of the Ukraine.

4 Such cases were those concerning “voluntary slaughtering of cattle,” if the defendant admitted his guilt and the case was considered to be completely without question of fact. There was also jurisdiction over cases involving minor violations of law.

5 In such cases the preparatory work was done by the Justice of the Peace, but the final decision was made by the Provincial Commissar.

6 These were set forth in a special instruction of the Reichskommissar of the Ukraine, which listed those articles of the German Criminal Code for violation of which the Justices of the Peace had jurisdiction.