Shmal’tsovniki: Bounty Hunters in World War II Galicia, 1941–1944

Abstract

Among the most notorious forms of collaboration with the German occupation of District Galicia were the so-called shmal’tsovniki (szmalcownicy) or marodëry (profiteers), bounty hunters who betrayed Jews to the German police for cash rewards, apartments, food, and a host of other incentives. In this study of post-Soviet Russian, Ukrainian, German, Israeli, and Polish sources, the author has traced the nefarious roles these local collaborators played in the Holocaust. He has endeavored to outline the political economy of genocide in Galicia, tracing the transformation of relations among neighbors into a predatory hunt for Jewish men, women, and children who had been driven into hiding to escape persecution and genocide. Archival documents and eyewitness testimonies reveal that bounty hunters preyed not just on Jews, but also on so-called Righteous Gentiles, typically well-meaning Poles or Ukrainians whose acts of kindness were sometimes turned against them in the morally inverted world of the German occupation. In this way, the German occupation authorities generated a mass culture of fear and suspicion that facilitated the rounding up and liquidation of remaining Jews.