Michał Vituška

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Michał Vituška

General Michał Vituška (Belarusian Міхал Вітушка; 5 November 1907 Niaśviž – 16 April 2006, Munich) was a Belarusian politician and Nazi collaborationist during World War II.

Michał Vituška was born in the city of Niaśviž and studied in Belarusian gymnasiums in Kleck, Vilnia. He graduated from a university in Prague and the Warsaw University of Technology. During his years of study Vituška was an active participant of Belarusian cultural and political organisations.

In 1939 after the Soviet invasion the territories of West Belarus were annected by the USSR. The local population stayed not loyal to the Soviet occupants, so when Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, many people joined the forces of the Belarusian Central Rada, a Nazi puppet government set up in occupied Belarus, Vituška among them.

Still, soon some Belarusian national activists including Vituška formed a conspirative Belarusian Independence Party (Беларуская Незалежніцкая Партыя) and started preparing and anti-Nazi uprising with the goal to revive the Belarusian National Republic. The uprising did not take place and most members of the party fled to the West.

Meanwhile, special units of local collaborationists were trained by the Germans to infiltrate the Soviet rear. In 1944 thirty Belarusians (known as "Čorny Kot" (Black Cat) and personally led by Vituška) were airdropped by the Luftwaffe behind the lines of the Red Army, which had already taken over Belarus during Operation Bagration. Some other German-trained Belarusian nationalist units also slipped through the Białowieża Forest in 1945. By that time Vituška was given the status of a general by the Belarusian National Republic exile government.

The anti-Soviet partisans experienced some initial success due to disorganization in the rear of the Red Army. In 1945 Vituška became the coordination centre leader of the anti-soviet resistance partisan movement in Belarus. The NKVD had already infiltrated these units, and by mid 1950s they were neutralized. At the beginning of the 1950s most of the leaders of the resistance movement had to escape to the West.

Vituška hid from Soviet intelligence in several Western countries, but was not found by them unlike the Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera who was killed by the KGB in 1959.