13th Belarusian Police (SD) Battalion

Belarusian collaborationist formation March 2023 thumb|Patch thumb|Members of the 13th Belarusian Police Battalion SD, 1943 13th Belarusian Police (SD) Battalion (de Schutzmannschafts Bataillon der SD 13) was a Belarusian collaborationist formation in German service, established to combat partisan activity, primarily Soviet, and to guard concentration and POW camps.Grzybowski 2010 463 Unlike other units of the Belarusian Auxiliary Police, the 13th Battalion was directly subordinate to the Security Service (SD) of SS.Grzybowski 2010 461 The formation of the unit began in January and February 1943 in Minsk, based on the already existing structures of the Belarusian SD.Grzybowski 2010 463 Primarily Belarusians joined the unit, and there were also Poles and Russians among them.Grzybowski 2010 464-465 Recruitment was essentially voluntary, although there were cases of forced mobilization.Grzybowski 2010 465 The officer and non-commissioned officer were both the Germans and the Belarusians. German Sturmbannführer Junskers was the commander of the battalion, but Belarusian officers were commanders of companies.Grzybowski 2010 463 Members of the Belarusian People's Self-Assistance, a nationalist organization created by the Germans, which activists intended to become the beginnings of Belarusian statehood, took part in the formation of the unit, trying to turn it into a Belarusian national unit.Grzybowski 2010 471-472 13th Battalion took part in numerous anti-partisan campaigns and pacification on the territory of Belarus in the years 1943–1944.Grzybowski 2010 466-467 Members of the unit also took part in the liquidation of Jewish ghettos (Hlybokaye, Minsk, Vileyka, possibly Valozhyn),Grzybowski 2010 467 and guarded the KoldychevoRein 2017 185 and Maly Trostenets concentration camps.Grzybowski 2010 467 Later, the battalion's units took part in the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944.Grzybowski 2010 472-473 For a brief period in 1944, the 3rd Company of the 13th Battalion was stationed in German-occupied Adriatic Littoral and its staff was in Trieste.Hryboŭski 2007 References Bibliography Hryboŭski Jury 2007 Беларускі легіён СС: міфы і рэчаіснасць The Belarusian SS Legion: Myths and Reality https://www.belhistory.eu/archives/1837 Belarusian Historical Review be 14 1–2 Grzybowski Jerzy 2010 An Outline History of the 13th (Belarusian) Battalion of the SD Auxiliary Police (Schutzmannschafts Bataillon der SD 13) The Journal of Slavic Military Studies 23 3 461–476 10.1080/13518046.2010.503147 144787727 Grzybowski Jerzy Białoruski ruch niepodległościowy w czasie II wojny światowej 2021 978-83-8229-251-0 Warsaw pl Belarusian independence movement during World War II Rein Leonid The Waffen-SS: A European History Oxford University Press 2017 978-0-19-879055-6 Böhler Jochen Oxford, Great Britain 6. Eastern Europe: Belarusian auxiliaries, Ukrainian Waffen-SS soldiers and the special case of the Polish 'Blue Police' Gerwarth Robert Category:Belarusian Auxiliary Police