Honestly I really hate how with World War II media in general, people will pride themselves on "humanizing all sides" but most of the time it just means they're doing Clean Wehrmacht and everyone else, especially the Communists and Jews, are the real bad guys

"War is complicated." Literally anyone who's read about World War 2, especially the Holocaust and collaboration, can tell you this. The problem is that a lot of people then use this to do Clean Wehrmacht.

Like, people will write a story where literally everyone is in the Red Army and they still spend the whole time getting mad about the USSR and think it's unrealistic to include even one Communist character who isn't an evil commissar.

I just read an oral history by a Holocaust survivor of his hometown and how it affected everyone and he interviewed everyone: Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, and even a few Nazis he managed to track down. Despite vague anticommunist remarks he still didn't do the Clean Wehrmacht.

Also a lot of people's accounts clearly contradicted each other. The Poles and Ukrainians swore they did everything they could but it was all the Germans and also the Judenrat were just as bad.

Meanwhile, a lot of Jews had fond memories of their Polish and Ukrainian friends pre-WW2, and some of them just straight up said that they couldn't trust any Poles or Ukrainians anymore because their neighbors stood by or helped out during the massacres.

And while everyone acknowledged that Ukrainians and Poles suffered, it was still obvious that they weren't targeted for total annihilation and none of them could grasp that they could be a victim of one thing but still victimize others.

And even the Germans still did everything they could do to make themselves seem like helpless bystanders, a lot of them constantly stressed that they did everything they could and even helped one or two Jews out but they were ultimately victims of fate.

And it still demonstrated that the whole "Nazi who feels bad about what they did" is a lie they told themselves to feel better. Even if they had a few personal reservations, it didn't matter to their victims.

The best example of this is Roman from Annychka because he is literally the only one who believes he's the most moral Hilfspolizei and his actual breaking point is when Serafyma makes a comment about him being good with a gun even though he got dumped at his own wedding.

And even if it's a good fictional example, the main conflict is still the partisans vs Nazis in 1943 and the viewer is basically supposed to assume that the town was ethnically homogenous to begin with.

Movie talk aside, in Together and Apart in Brzezany (the oral history I mentioned), while everyone missed the Polish-Jewish-Ukrainian coexistence, they also acknowledged that it was always precarious and even interethnic friendships still had unspoken tension.

The most visible prewar tension in Brzezany was between Poles and Ukrainians but they were still antisemitic; it's just that the political situation in interwar Poland and the rise of Ukrainian nationalism meant it was more likely to turn violent at that moment.

Honestly, the most heartbreaking story was about a Jewish interviewee Bela and her best friend Halyna, who was already involved in the Ukrainian nationalist movement.

Halyna didn't really get why Jews didn't want to support Ukrainians even though they were both oppressed by the Poles and even after Bela explained they had different objectives, Halyna told her that one day the Ukrainians would get their revenge.

Even though they lost touch before the war and never saw each other again, Bela constantly wondered what Halyna was up to during the war but preferred to focus on the good times. So decades later, she decided to go back to visit Brzezany to see how it had changed.

Even though Brzezany was all Ukrainian by the end of the war, there were still enough traces of the pre-war Jewish community that she could have told you about each building and the modern demographics made it even more unsettling.

Even though Bela and her tour group (who were also from Brzezany) showed up during a Ukrainian Constitution Day celebration, the locals wanted to know what brought them there and she asked about her old prewar friends including her best friend Halyna.

Turns out, Halyna was now Brzezany (now Berezhany)'s hometown hero and everyone wanted to tell Bela about her pre-war BFF. This story is already insanely bleak so you'd think this would be some kinda good news but this is actually where the most depressing part begins.

Everyone wanted to take Bela to Halyna's grave so she could pay tribute. Even though she left before the war, her relatives who survived the war had told her about how the Banderites were the worst.

This whole visit was already emotionally draining and Bela declined the offer because it pushed her over the edge. She knew something was up when everyone wanted to talk about Halyna, but she just wanted to hold onto those memories.

Turns out that Halyna was not only an active OUN/UPA member, but the Soviets put her in prison in 1940 and she got out when they retreated in 1941.

In addition to being in charge of the regional Ukrainian Red Cross, she was a personal confidant to Roman Shukhevych, the head of the UPA. She helped him set up a bunker to hide out from the Soviets.

When the Soviets finally came to his bunker, she heard a gun go off and tried taking poison. She survived but the Soviets arrested her anyway. They sentenced her to 25 years in prison, she came home in 1971, and she was loyal to Shukhevych until her death in 1979.

There’s another insanely bleak UPA story in the book but this thread is long enough, I made my point about WW2 being a land of contrasts but clean Wehrmacht/UPA is bad, and I’ll share it later.