A few weeks ago, in an article, I touched on the subject of the mistreatment of prisoners of war in our city during World War I. However, such incidents occurred not only in Kharkiv at that time, but also throughout the province. Although I should note right away that the human rights situation in our region was two-sided.
In the monthly reports submitted by district police chiefs to the governor of Kharkiv regarding the conditions of detention for prisoners of war, we read the following:
- Employers treat prisoners of war working on farms, in factories, and on smallholdings in the district under my jurisdiction with the utmost courtesy and fairness.
- In their free time, prisoners of war mend their clothes and shoes, do their laundry, and so on. Some even attend church services.
- In their daily lives alongside the peasant workers, the prisoners of war keep their distance from them and behave well. There is no evidence that they are influencing those around them in a way that would benefit their enemies.
- “There were no instances of prisoners of war asking questions about matters of military significance.”
Although the above may raise legitimate doubts, this information is quite reliable. For example, Archbishop Anthony (Khrapovitsky) of Kharkiv mentions in his documents from the time of World War I that in the Kharkiv Governorate, Galician, Moldavian, and Serbian prisoners of war, Czechs, and Slovaks of the Orthodox and Uniate faiths attended Orthodox services with great devotion.
The governor of Kharkiv periodically received complaints from concerned citizens who were troubled by the overly loyal and lenient treatment of German and Austro-Hungarian soldiers. For example, a resident of the city of Bohodukhiv, who wished to remain anonymous, wrote in October 1916:
“Having received reliable information regarding the inexcusable conduct of the owners of the ‘A. Schneider and Kalitaev Partnership’ flour mill in Bohodukhiv, I have the honor to bring to Your Excellency’s attention that for over a year now, a prisoner of war from the Austrian regiments has been staying at the aforementioned mill; he lives in private lodgings and appears in public wearing civilian clothing, whereas he is officially listed as working on the Kalitaevs’ estate and is not registered as a resident of Bohodukhiv. Realizing that the mill owners’ actions are unlawful, I trust that the information I have provided will be verified and that the Austrian prisoner of war will be deprived of the comfortable life the mill owners have arranged for him, while a Russian man performing the same work languishes in poverty.”
Moreover, the results of a detailed investigation into the conditions of prisoners of war in the Bohodukhiv District in August 1916 spoke for themselves. For example, on Yuli Leopoldovich König’s estate in Gutya, 647 prisoners lived in the barracks of 12 farmsteads. There was almost no strict supervision over them, and the prisoners often left without permission. All of them were decently clothed, and their food and wages were even better than those of the other workers. And if they worked diligently, they even received financial bonuses for their labor. In my view, these truly excellent living conditions should come as no surprise, since the members of the König family were German by nationality, and the majority of the managers of their estates had renounced their German citizenship in favor of citizenship in the Russian Empire shortly before the war began or even during the war itself. Detailed inspections of each of these 12 estates also confirmed that living conditions were more than humane.
There were 42 prisoners of war working on the Smakovsky estate in the village of Zubovka. Their living conditions and food there were also decent, and they performed their work conscientiously and carefully. In Murafa, however, the prisoners of war lived in the homes of local peasants. And when I was in Uzhhorod, the descendants of Austro-Hungarian soldiers told me many stories about how their ancestors, upon returning to their homeland, recalled the attitude of the local population in the Kharkiv Governorate toward them in 1916–1917 with great fondness. In other settlements in our region, the conditions under which they were held were quite mixed. In Kolontaevo, for example, the peasants complained that the prisoners of war were extremely reluctant to work; the prisoners, in turn, claimed that they worked from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m. and were given very little to eat. In the town of Krasnokutsk, some of the 80 prisoners were decently dressed, while others, on the contrary, were dressed in rags. However, the peasants in that town did complain that in the evenings, soldiers from Austria-Hungary and Germany would go out with local girls.
In general, a great deal about the conditions of their detention at that time depended on the personality and attitude of the person in charge of the farm where the prisoners worked. I think there are few people today who haven’t heard of the famous Sloboda Ukraine industrialist, entrepreneur, sugar manufacturer, and patron of the arts, Pavel Ivanovich Kharitonenko. But many who admire this family would be surprised to learn that it was precisely on his estates where the most human rights violations were documented following inspections of the conditions in which prisoners of war were held.
At the Yankovsky estate, which consisted of five farmsteads, 341 people were kept to work. They had only one pair of underwear each, and many of their outer garments were completely tattered. Since they had no shoes, they walked barefoot. Their rations were extremely meager. There were also documented and proven cases of guards beating the prisoners. At the Parkhomov estate, spanning the lands of six farmsteads, 252 people worked. Thankfully, the conditions in Yankovka were not replicated there; however, the areas where the prisoners lived were extremely dirty and lacked mattresses. A major scandal in the fall of 1916 was also caused by the “activities” of Yegor Kuzmich Rudenko, who served as manager of the Ivanovskaya farm under another Sloboda Ukraine native well-known today, Count Nikolai Vladimirovich Kleinmichel. The manager was accused of systematically torturing the prisoners of war who worked there.
Incidentally, inspections of living conditions could be either scheduled in advance or conducted in response to requests from the prisoners of war. After all, in 1916, they were by no means without rights. The collections of the State Archives of the Kharkiv Region contain numerous complaints regarding conditions of detention and human rights violations, addressed to the governor of Kharkiv, the mayor, the zemstvo council, and so on. Admittedly, some of these complaints turned out to be false upon investigation… If the Kharkiv authorities turned a blind eye to actual violations in their treatment or ignored them, the prisoners of war would appeal to higher authorities—namely, the U.S. consulates in Kharkiv or Odessa. The fact is that the United States did not enter World War I until early April 1917; until then, it had maintained neutrality. During that period, under an agreement between the governments of Austria-Hungary, Germany, and the United States, American consuls were tasked with protecting the interests and rights of their citizens residing in the Russian Empire. A consulate was established in Kharkiv at the start of the war, when the U.S. consul stationed in Odessa wrote to the governor of Kharkiv on August 29, 1914:
“Since there is no U.S. consulate in Kharkiv, I have the honor to respectfully request that Your Excellency provisionally recognize Mr. Samuel S. Feiz as Acting Consul of the United States of America in Kharkiv.”
Upon taking office as consul, Samuel Feiz began handling the affairs of German and Austrian citizens almost immediately. For example, he represented and defended the rights of Pavel Ludwigovich Jaffe, a German who owned a car dealership on Yekaterinoslavskaya Street, in court. Prisoners of war also filed numerous complaints with the U.S. Consulate in Odessa regarding human rights violations or requesting improvements to their conditions. Such requests were forwarded from there to Kharkiv, and our city’s authorities were simply obligated to respond to them:
It is difficult to determine at this time which of these complaints were legitimate and which were not. However, it is an undeniable fact that U.S. diplomats played a significant role during World War I in ensuring respect for human rights and international conventions within our city and region. All that remains is to compile all the documents regarding the prisoners of war they were able to save.
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