... Although the
Waffen-SS as a whole was declared to be a criminal organization at the
Nuremberg Trials, the Galician Division has not specifically been found guilty of any war crimes by any war tribunal or commission. However, numerous accusations of impropriety have been leveled at the division, and at particular members of the division, from a variety of sources. It is difficult to determine the extent of war criminality among members of the division.
[40] If prior service in Nazi police units is a measure of criminality, only a small number were recruited from established police detachments. Among those who had transferred from police detachments, some had been members of a coastal defence unit that had been stationed in France, while others came from two police battalions that had been formed in the spring of 1943, too late to have participated in the murder of Ukraine's Jews. According to Howard Margolian, there is no evidence that these units participated in anti-partisan operations or reprisals prior to their inclusion into the division. However, before their service within the police battalions, a number of recruits are alleged to have been in Ukrainian irregular formations that are alleged to have committed atrocities against Jews and Communists. Nevertheless, in their investigations of the division, both the Canadian government and the
Canadian Jewish Congress failed to find hard evidence to support the notion that it was rife with criminal elements ...