THE LIFE WAY OF THE COLLABORANT: ON THE MATERIALS OF THE ARCHIVE-INVESTIGATION CASE OF GUSTAV YAKOBOVSKY

Abstract

The article deals period of Gustav Gustavovich Yakobovsky’s life – an ethnic German, a Soviet citizen who initially built his career in the field of education, but during the years of the Nazi occupation of Ukraine he took the path of collaboration. The main attention is paid to collaboration of Gustav Yakobovsky with the invaders as a translator of the SD in Dnepropetrovsk. During his work in the SD G.G.Yakobovsky was involved in Nazi war crimes, that is why a study of the collaborator’s biography helps to understand the period of occupation in Dnepropetrovsk region in 1941–1943 and the history of the local Resistance movement.In particular, the archival materials of the case compiled as a result of the investigation of Yakobovsky in 1948 provide the following information. Gustav Yakobovsky was born on 19.05.1912 in the village of Karlovka in Katerinoslav province in a family of ethnic Germans – descendants of colonists. After leaving Shevchenko Nikopol Labour School in 1928, he graduated from Nikolaipolsky technical school (1933) and the biological faculty of Dnepropetrovsk State University (1938). After receiving a university diploma, he worked as an assistant in the Department of Biochemistry and at the same time he was the Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Biology. Being a university student he married to a former classmate in the technical school О.A. Herzenok. They raised daughter Adele. The unremarkable life of the Soviet intellectual changed in 1941 with the outbreak of the German-Soviet military conflict. At the beginning of German occupation of Dnepropetrovsk he got a job in a death squadron (Einsatzgruppe) as a translator with SD investigator Erich Bing, where he worked from October 9, 1941 to March 1942. Later, from the beginning of 1942 he worked as a personal translator of SD head in Dnepropetrovsk (Hauptsturmführer Plata, and after a change of leadership from January 1942, Sturmbanführer Mulde). From March to September 1942, he worked in department ІІІ of the SD, and from September (?) 1942 to August 1943 in department IV of the SD in Dnipropetrovsk.During the period of service he translated interrogations of arrested Soviet citizens, worked with agents, processed information for the SD, went to arrests, and took part in destroying local underground organizations. In Juny 1943, participating in the rout of a clandestine group (Sinelnikovskaya operation), he was seriously wounded and afterwards was taken to Germany for treatment, where he remained until the Nazi regime surrendered. During his service in the Third Reich, he was awarded Iron Cross 2nd class for military contributions and the Wound Badge 3rd class. To study the future fate of the collaborator is a promising direction of the scientific research. His work for the Wehrmacht in Germany, attempts to legalize after the war and ways to avoid punishment for collaboration, the circumstances of his arrest in the Soviet zone of Germany, the investigation and the court in the Ukrainian SSR – all these are the subjects of research in the following scientific publications.