Kaminski Brigade, also known as Waffen-Sturm-Brigade RONA, was a collaborationist formation composed of Russian nationals from the territory of the Lokot Autonomy in Axis-occupied areas of the RSFSR, Soviet Union on the Eastern Front.
It was founded in late 1941 as auxiliary police with 200 personnel. By mid-1943 it had grown to 10,000–12,000 men, equipped with captured Soviet tanks and artillery. Bronislav Kaminski, the unit's leader, named it the Russian National Liberation Army ().
After the Wehrmacht lost the Battle of Kursk in August 1943, RONA personnel retreated to the territory of Byelorussia, especially to the Lepel area of Vitebsk, where they participated in German security operations, committing numerous atrocities against the civilian population . The unit was absorbed into the Waffen-SS in June 1944. After Operation Bagration (June to August 1944), the RONA retreated further west, and by the end of July 1944, the remains of the Kaminski unit (3 to 4 thousand—some sources estimate 6 to 7 thousand) assembled at the SS training camp at Neuhammer (now Świętoszów). On the base of the Kaminski unit, SS leaders planned to form an SS division – the 29th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS RONA (1st Russian).
The Warsaw Uprising began on the same day that Heinrich Himmler signed an order for the establishment of the division (1 August 1944). The division formation was never implemented and part of the brigade was sent to Warsaw, where the unit again committed numerous atrocities. On 18 August 1944, Kaminski was killed in unknown circumstances. By August 27, 1944, having found the brigade too undisciplined and unreliable, the German commanders removed it from Warsaw. The unit was sent to Slovakia, and deployed against Slovak partisans. After the end of October 1944 the brigade was disbanded and the remaining personnel absorbed into General Andrey Vlasov's Russian Liberation Army.
History
In Russia
In October 1941, the Nazi Germany military advance into the Soviet Union reached Lokot area near the city of Bryansk and captured it on October 6, 1941. In November 1941, an engineer at the local alcohol plant, Bronislav Kaminski, and a local technical school teacher, Konstantin Voskoboinik, approached the German military administration with proposals to assist them in establishing a civil administration and local police. The Lokot area was, before the beginning of the war on the Eastern Front, designated for the incarceration of people forbidden to return to their previous homes in major cities of the Soviet Union – as Kaminski himself was. Voskoboinik was appointed by the Germans as starosta of the "Lokot volost" and head of the local militia unit.
The militia headed by Voskoboinik began with 200 men, and was to assist the Germans in conducting their different activities, which included murders of civilians loyal to or accused of loyalty to the Soviet authorities or Soviet partisans. By January 1942 militia numbers were increased to 400–500.
During a targeted raid under the command of Alexander Saburov on January 8, 1942, Voskoboinik was mortally wounded. After his death Kaminski took over command and expanded the militia.
In co-operation with German forces, the militia began anti-partisan operations and by the spring of 1942, its number increased to 1,400 armed personnel. The estimated number of Soviet partisans in this area was as high as 20,000 – they controlled almost the entire rear area of Army Group Center's area of operations.
In mid-March 1942, Kaminski's representative assured the German Second Panzer Army at Orel that Kaminski's unit was "ready to actively fight the guerillas" and to carry on a propaganda campaign against "Jew-Bolshevism" and Soviet partisans. Thereafter, commander of 2nd Army Generaloberst Rudolf Schmidt appointed Kaminski as mayor of the Army Rear Area 532 with its center in the town of Lokot. On 19 July 1942, after approval from Commander of Army Group Centre,Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, Schmidt and 532 Area commander Volksdeutsche, Kaminski received a certain degree of autonomy and nominal self-rule and self-governing powers under the supervision of Major von Veltheim and Colonel Rübsam.
Kaminski was made a chief major of the Autonomous Administration of Lokot (comprising eight raions) and brigade commander of the local militia.