The story of Soviet citizens who served in German military units during World War II is often reduced to the Russian Liberation Army of General Andrei Vlasov. But there was another, far more ruthless formation that history has largely overlooked: the Kaminski Brigade, a renegade Russian unit that became part of the Waffen SS and left a trail of murder across occupied Soviet territory and Poland. The reasons some Soviet citizens turned against their own country were complex. Many in non-Russian Soviet republics, such as Ukraine, initially welcomed German troops as liberators from Stalin’s brutal policies, only to realize the Nazis were just as oppressive.
Others, including Russians, joined out of ideological hatred for Soviet communism. Meanwhile, of the roughly 3 million Soviet prisoners captured by the Germans, around 2 million died from starvation and disease, and many surviving POWs volunteered simply to escape the slave labor system. The Kaminski Brigade began in late 1941 as a 200-man auxiliary police unit in the Lokot area near Bryansk, which had been captured by German forces on October 6 of that year. It was founded by Bronislav Kaminski, a local engineer, and Konstantin Voskoboinik, a school teacher, who offered their services to the Germans.
The region had been a punishment zone established by Stalin, so Kaminski and his men harbored a deep hatred for the communists, a hatred they would express through notorious violence. From the start, the unit was used to commit atrocities, hunting down loyal Soviet citizens and anyone suspected of ties to the partisans. By January 1942, the unit had grown to 500 men, and as Soviet partisan activity increased in German rear areas, it swelled to 1,400 men by spring. In March of that year, the German Second Army made Kaminski mayor of Army Rear Area 532, headquartered in Lokot, granting him considerable autonomy over his own fiefdom.
From June 1942, the brigade operated with regular SS and police forces in massive anti-partisan operations, actions that resulted in the deaths of nearly 1,200 people and the deportation of more than 12,500 others to concentration camps. By then, Kaminski’s force exceeded 6,500 men. He renamed his militia the Russian National Liberation Army, distinct from Vlasov’s organization, and introduced conscription in autumn 1942, also recruiting former Soviet POWs from nearby labor camps. The brigade’s equipment improved when it gained a couple of Soviet BT-7 tanks and a 76-mm artillery gun.
By January 1943, its ranks numbered almost 10,000 men, and its armory included a KV-2, two T-34s, three BT-7s, and two BT-5 tanks. In the lead-up to the Battle of Kursk in 1943, the brigade was heavily involved in anti-partisan actions and reprisal operations against civilians. Kaminski erected a gallows outside his headquarters, where bodies were always on display, and it has been estimated that his men killed around 10,000 civilians during that period. Transferred to Vitebsk in Belarus, the brigade fought intense battles against strong Soviet partisan forces there.
Desertions were a persistent problem, and in one horrific act of deterrence, Kaminski strangled nine of his own men to death in front of the rest of the unit. Casualties were severe, with about 70 percent of the brigade killed, wounded, or missing. Despite this, SS chief Heinrich Himmler was so impressed that he awarded Kaminski both the Iron Cross first and second class on the same day. In March 1944, the unit was renamed the People’s Army Brigade Kaminski.
The following month, it was attached to SS Kampfgruppe von Gottberg, one of Himmler’s most murderous police formations, which also included the infamous Dirlewanger Brigade of criminals and psychopaths. Kaminski’s men took part in three so-called anti-partisan operations in which entire villages were burned, inhabitants tortured, and survivors shot or sent to slave labor camps. More than 20,000 civilians died in the process. In June 1944, the brigade was formally absorbed into the Waffen SS and renamed Waffen Sturmbrigade RONA, with Kaminski given the rank of SS-Brigadeführer.
Plans called for his unit to help form a new Russian SS division for combat on the Eastern Front, but those plans were overtaken by events in the summer of 1944. When the Warsaw Uprising broke out in August 1944, Kaminski’s battle-hardened men were sent to help crush the Polish resistance. While fighting in the city, the brigade engaged in mass private looting and raped large numbers of women. In exchange for their participation, they sustained heavy losses, with 500 men killed.
The Germans, disgusted by the Russians’ conduct, decided to remove them from Warsaw entirely. On their way out, the brigade was attacked by Polish Home Army troops in the forests, losing another 250 men along with their artillery and much of their stolen loot. Kaminski himself and several staff members were ordered to a command meeting in Lodz, but they never arrived. What happened to them remains unclear.
Polish Home Army troops may have ambushed and killed them, or captured and executed them. Another possibility is that the Gestapo arrested and liquidated the group before they reached the meeting, as they had become an embarrassment to the Germans. What remained of the Kaminski Brigade was absorbed into General Vlasov’s Russian Liberation Army in September 1944, forming one of its infantry regiments. After the war, those who survived faced varying fates, with many handed over by the British and Americans to the Soviets.
For decades, the Soviet government continued to track down, convict, and execute members of these collaborationist forces, with the last known execution taking place as late as 1978.