Yevhen Pobihushchyi

Yevhen Pavlovych Pobihushchyi-Ren (né Pobihushchyi; 15 November 1901 – 28 May 1995) was a Ukrainian military commander and Axis collaborator who served as commander of the Roland Battalion and Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201, and as one of the commanders of 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician).

Early life and career Yevhen Pavlovych Pobihushchyi was born on 15 November 1901, in the village of Postolivka, Ternopil Oblast, in what was then the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria within Austria-Hungary into a family of Ukrainian educators. At the age of 17, he joined the Ukrainian Galician Army following the founding of the West Ukrainian People's Republic, and participated in the Polish–Ukrainian War as an artilleryman. He returned home in May 1920 with the rank of senior corporal.

Following the war, he joined Plast, and was arrested in 1920 for refusing to celebrate Polish independence. Pobihushchyi originally intended to take over his father's school, studying at both the in Lviv and the Greek Catholic Saint John the Baptist Theological Lyceum in Stanislawów (now Ivano-Frankivsk). However, due to Polish opposition to Ukrainian-language education, he could not get a job and was conscripted into the Polish Armed Forces infantry in 1925. Beginning in 1928, he studied at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, eventually earning a doctorate in political economy. At this time, he also unsuccessfully sought a doctorate from the Ukrainian Free University, being rejected in part due to his alleged ties to the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), a far-right political organisation advocating for Ukrainian independence from Poland.

In the spring of 1940, Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201 was active both in fighting the Belarusian partisans and killings of civilians, including Jews, though the role of the battalion in the Holocaust remains to be studied in depth.

Leadership of the 14th Division of the SS In January 1943, Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201 was disbanded for refusing to renew their contracts, and their leaders were detained in Lviv. While Shukhevych fled, Pobihushchyi remained imprisoned until Easter Saturday 1943, and was to be executed or sent to Majdanek concentration camp until , a Galician German, successfully negotiated his release in return for participation in the creation of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician). Pobihushchyi was among the staff of the division until 1944.