Oskar Dirlewanger

Oskar Paul Dirlewanger (26 September 1895 – ) was a German military officer, convicted child molester, and war criminal. He is best known for commanding the Dirlewanger Brigade, a penal military unit of the Waffen-SS which served in World War II. Dirlewanger's unit is often considered the most notorious Waffen-SS unit, committing some of the conflict's most infamous atrocities, with Dirlewanger himself regarded as perhaps Nazi Germany's "most extreme executioner", engaging in constant acts of violence, rape, and murder. He died after the war while in Allied custody.

Dirlewanger had an impressive career as a junior officer during World War I. He fought in the post-World War I conflicts in Germany as a minor commander in the Freikorps militia movement, with the troops he led then also characterized by excessive violence, Through his service with the Condor Legion during the Spanish Civil War, he was politically rehabilitated despite his criminal record, allowing his return to favor within the Nazi Party. He was a habitual offender, convicted in interwar Germany for illegal weapons possession and child molestation. During World War II, he was appointed and headed a special Waffen-SS unit that was officially named after him and was composed for the most part of conscripted convicts and other prisoners.

Serving mostly in Poland and Belarus, he has been closely linked to many atrocities, being responsible for the deaths of at least tens of thousands. In Belarus alone, Dirlewanger may be responsible for around 120,000 killed and 200 villages destroyed. and he personally kept numerous women as his sex slaves. He also repeatedly engaged in systematic looting, amassing stolen property for personal use. His unit is noted to have committed the worst crimes of the bloody suppression of the Warsaw Uprising, alongside the Kaminski Brigade, though Timothy Snyder described the behavior of Dirlewanger as being even worse. His brutality was not limited to just civilians and captured enemy combatants, as he was ruthless to his men, whom he would beat and kill if they displeased him. as well as Poland,

Dirlewanger deserted in April 1945, before being captured thereafter by French authorities in June and then died shortly afterward while in Allied custody. Although postwar rumors claimed that he had survived and fled abroad, most notably to Egypt, these were later disproven following the exhumation and forensic identification of his remains in 1960, which confirmed that he died in 1945.

Early life

Oskar Dirlewanger was the son of August Dirlewanger, an attorney and a merchant, and his wife Pauline Dirlewanger (née Herrlinger). Dirlewanger's paternal grandfather worked in Stuttgart as a surgeon and vaccinator, and his maternal grandfather as a primary school teacher. In December 1893, August and Pauline married in Esslingen am Neckar on December and shortly before the birth of their first daughter, they moved to Würzburg. Their first daughter, Mathilde Dirlewanger was born on 7 June 1894. On 26 September 1895, the second child of the family, Oskar Paul Dirlewanger was born. Three years later on 28 December 1898, their second daughter, Elfriede Dirlewanger was born. His religion was noted as Evangelical Christian.

World War I

Dirlewanger enlisted in the Württemberg Army on 1 October 1913, and served as a machine gunner in the "König Karl" Grenadier Regiment 123, a part of the XIII (Royal Württemberg) Corps and as a one-year volunteer. With the outbreak of World War I on 2 August 1914, Dirlewanger's unit, as part of Crown Prince Wilhelm's 5th Army, was sent to the Western Front, where he initially took part in the Battle of the Ardennes and later fought in France and Luxembourg.

While serving on the Western Front, Dirlewanger was wounded several times, as a result of which he became "40 percent disabled." He received the Iron Cross 2nd Class and 1st Class, having been wounded six times, and finished the war with the rank of lieutenant, in charge of a company on the Eastern Front. According to his German biographer Knut Stang, Dirlewanger's WWI frontline experiences and their violence and barbarism determined his later life and "terror warfare" methods, in addition to his amoral personality shaped by sexual sadism and alcoholism.

On 22 August 1914, Dirlewanger was wounded twice during the Battle of the Ardennes. He was shot in the foot and sabred in the chest. On 4 October 1915, he was awarded the Württemburg Bravery Medal in Gold. He once again spent five months in several military hospitals at Trier and Esslingen recuperating from his recent wounds. They departed Romania 26 November 1918 and arrived in Germany on 28 December 1918. He ended the war as an Oberleutnant der Reserve and, on June 1919 his service was assessed as very positive. Historian French MacLean described Dirlewanger as having "an outstanding military record in World War I" and that his service "was indeed an impressive military record for a junior officer". At the same time, he studied at the Higher Commercial School in Mannheim, but was expelled from it for antisemitism. In 1919, Oberleutnant Dirlewanger formed a temporary defense platoon and fought as its leader against communists in various parts of the Weimar Republic. In that same year, he had suppressed several strikes in the town of Backnang, Kornwestheim, Untertürkheim, Aalen, and Schorndorf, and a year later in Heidenheim, as well as Communist revolts in Stuttgart and Esslingen. By 13 March 1920, now as a member of the Freikorps Haas, Dirlewanger served as the commander of an armored train (Geschützter Zug Dirlewanger) in Stuttgart.

Later, he commanded an armed formation of students which was set up by him under the Württemberg "Highway Watch". After the Nazi Party gained power, Dirlewanger was celebrated as the town's "liberator from the Red terrorists" and received its honorary citizenship in 1935.

Career, NSDAP and Sturmabteilung

Between his militant forays, Dirlewanger studied at the Goethe University Frankfurt, and in 1922, obtained a doctorate in political science (Dr. rer. pol.). He wrote his doctoral thesis as an analysis and critique of the planned economy, titled: “Critique of the idea of a planned management of the economy." Between 1919 and 1922, he was a member of Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund, the largest and most active antisemitic organization in the Weimar Republic. During the Nazi Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923, Dirlewanger attempted to drive some armored cars, owned by the Stuttgart police authorities, from Stuttgart to Munich. Shortly after the failed putsch, he allowed his party membership to lapse. He rejoined the NSDAP in 1926 and received a new membership number of 13,556. However, he was forced to leave the party when he started working as an executive director of a textile factory owned by a Jewish family in Erfurt from 1928 to 1932, where he renounced active service in the SA but financially donated to the SA, possibly obtaining the money by embezzling from his company. In 1933, after the Nazi seizure of power, Dirlewanger was rewarded by being made deputy director of the Heilbronn employment agency, a strategic post for local-level Nazi leaders.

thumb|Dirlewanger in 1934

thumb|[[Gottlob Berger, Dirlewanger's patron and protector]]

thumb|Oskar Dirlewanger at a parade in Heilbronn, 1937

Dirlewanger was repeatedly convicted for illegal arms possession and embezzlement. In 1934, he was convicted and sentenced to two years' imprisonment for "contributing to the delinquency of a minor with whom he was sexually involved". Dirlewanger also lost his job, his doctor title, and all military honours, and was expelled from the party. Soon after his release from the prison in Ludwigsburg, he was arrested again on the same charge and sent to the Welzheim concentration camp, but more likely it was for creating a disturbance before the Reich Chancellery, demanding the reversal of his criminal charges. Dirlewanger was released and reinstated in the general reserve of the SS following the personal intervention of SS-Brigadeführer Hanz B., the Chief of the Reinforcement Office (Ergänzungsamt) and his wartime companion and local NSDAP cadre comrade Gottlob Berger, who was also a long-time personal friend of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and had become the head of the SS Main Office (SS-Hauptamt, SS-HA).

Spanish Civil War

Dirlewanger next went to Spain, where he enlisted in the Spanish Legion during the Spanish Civil War. In November 1939, von Thoma wrote: He was reinstated into the NSDAP, albeit with a higher party number (No. 1,098,716). His doctorate was also restored by the University of Frankfurt on 4 April 1941. Shortly after his return to Germany, Dirlewanger took up work as an independent auditor of commercial books. Dirlewanger's case was reopened when the third chamber of District Court in Württemberg-Hohenzollern issued its final ruling on 20 May 1940. On 30 April, Dirlewanger sent a letter to the court stating that he was wrongly convicted and refused to file a petition for clemency, as he believed that by doing so he would imply guilt. Instead, he requested that his case be reopened. Following his exoneration by the Higher State Court in Stuttgart, he requested that the party court proceedings be resumed and that his NSDAP membership be restored. He also stated that he had suffered significant financial hardship as a result of the wrongful conviction and requested that party dues from the time of his expulsion until 1 May be waived. However, he expressed willingness to pay all dues from 1 May onward, and asked for a swift resolution of his application. Himmler eventually agreed and instructed his personal secretary, Rudolf Brandt, to notify the Waffen-SS Replacement Department to take the necessary steps to hasten Dirlewanger’s admission. Such unit was created in Oranienburg on 1 July, originally as the Wilddieb Kommando Oranienburg, later known as the SS-Sonderkommando "Dirlewanger" or the so-called Dirlewanger Brigade. Dirlewanger was given the task of conducting military training among poachers serving their sentences in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In 1941, his misconduct was the subject of an abuse investigation by the SS Court Main Office judge Georg Konrad Morgen, who accused Dirlewanger of wanton acts of murder, corruption, and the crime of Rassenschande or race defilement with a Jewish woman named Sarah Bergmann. According to Morgen, who in his investigation was assisted by the local Gestapo chief and former criminal police detective Johannes Müller, "Dirlewanger was a nuisance and a terror to the entire population. He repeatedly pillaged the ghetto in Lublin, extorting ransoms." Once Dirlewanger poisoned 57 Jews on his own initiative. Acts committed by Dirlewanger include burning the genitals of women he abused with a petrol lighter, whipping them naked, and injecting strychnine into Jewish girls and then watching their death agonies in the officers' mess. Dirlewanger would often rape children, whether boy or girl, and then shoot them afterwards, with many of his victims being from the Lublin ghetto. Morgen requested Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger, the Higher SS and Police Leader for the General Government, for an arrest warrant against Dirlewanger, but Krüger was blocked by Berger. Morgen stated that:

According to historian Peter Longerich, "Dirlewanger's leadership of the Sonderkommando was characterized by continued alcohol abuse, looting, sadistic atrocities, rape, and murder—and his mentor Berger tolerated this behaviour, as did Himmler, who so urgently needed men such as Dirlewanger in his fight against 'subhumanity'." It was important to the Reichsführer, however, that the detachments within the Sonderkommando did not belong to the Waffen-SS, but merely serve it. In his letter to Himmler, SS-Brigadeführer Odilo Globocnik (later the leader of the Operation Reinhard, the extermination camps for Polish Jews) initially recommended Dirlewanger as "an excellent leader." During the Ministries Trial after the war, Berger said: "Now Dr. Dirlewanger was hardly a good boy. You can't say that. But he was a good soldier, and he had one big mistake that he didn't know when to stop drinking." He was notoriously brutal toward his own men, forcing their compliance by involving them in the unit's murders. He maintained control through draconian discipline that ignored military law, frequently resorting to arbitrary beatings and even the execution of his own soldiers. He was described by historian Richard C. Lukas as "an ascetic-looking man who treated his own men as brutally as he treated the Poles. Beating them with clubs to maintain discipline was not uncommon. He even casually shot men he did not like." Another one of Dirlewanger's punishments included the "Dirlewanger coffin", in which a soldier could be locked up in a narrow box for days. Eventually, due to how egregious Dirlewanger's disciplinary methods were and as a result, dropping troop morale, Himmler issued an order tailored towards the battalion to place limits on the disciplinary authority of Dirlewanger. Historian Richard Rhodes wrote how the "resulting organization was so vicious—enthusiastically extorting, raping, torturing and murdering Poles and Jews—that it even disgusted men like Globocnik, who had it transferred out of the General Government and into Byelorussia to fight partisans."

thumb|SS-Obersturmbannführer Dirlewanger (right) standing next to a group of [[NSDAP officials at a Nazi parade near Kielmeyerhaus, Germany, in December 1943. Dirlewanger was still recuperating from a gunshot wound to his chest, received during anti-partisan operations in Belarus, explaining why he is holding a cane and saluting with his left arm.]]

thumb|SS-Obersturmbannführer Oskar Dirlewanger and an SS-Oberscharführer resting during an anti-partisan operation in Belarus, 1943

In February 1942, Dirlewanger and his unit were assigned to the "bandit-fighting" (Bandenbekämpfung), the Nazi counter-insurgency against the Soviet partisans in rural Belarus, as well as (with the Final Solution now in motion) the extermination of Belarusian Jews (already concentrated in the ghettos) above all. One incident recounted by an anonymous member of the unit described how a village of around 2,500 was killed in such way, with Dirlewanger himself at the forefront of the massacre. Rounded-up civilians were also routinely used as human shields and marched over minefields, According to the historian Paul R. Bartrop, at least 30,000 Belarusian civilians were killed under Dirlewanger's orders; while other estimates put it at around 200 villages destroyed and more than 120,000 people killed. Dirlewanger also personally maintained a group of five to six sex slaves, who were typically aged between 14 and 18, selecting these girls from civilian populations during "anti-partisan" operations in the Soviet Union. Jewish girls that Dirlewanger had sexual relations with were later executed on his orders so that they could not testify of the crimes he had committed. for his unit's actions such as during Operation Cottbus (May–June 1943), during which Dirlewanger reported 14,000 alleged partisans killed. Himmler himself still noted the brutality of Dirlewanger, stating "The tone in the regiment is, I may say, in many cases a medieval one with cudgels and such things. If anyone expresses doubts about winning the war he is likely to fall dead from the table.

In his August 1943 report to the Nazi ideology chief Alfred Rosenberg, Wilhelm Kube, the Generalkommissar for Generalbezirk Weißruthenien, complained about the effects that Dirlewanger and others had in Belarus:

[[File:SS-Obersturmbannführer Dirlewanger and Battalion Staff, 1943.jpg|thumb|

SS-Obersturmbannführer Oskar Dirlewanger and battalion staff outside of their headquarter in Lohoisk, 1943]]

thumb|SS-Grenadier Karl Johannes Jung. A career criminal who was transferred to the SS-Sonderbataillon Dirlewanger for probation service.

thumb|250x250px|Members of the 2nd Battalion "Kampfgruppe Steinhauer" SS-Sonderregiment "Dirlewanger" in [[Śródmieście, Warsaw|central Warsaw in 1944]]

thumb|upright=1.1|Polish civilians murdered in the [[Wola massacre in Warsaw, August 1944]]

In the early summer of 1944, during Operation Bagration, his Sonderregiment suffered heavy losses while fighting against the regular forces of the Red Army. Its remnant managed to retreat back to Poland. There, it was then hastily rebuilt and reformed as a Kampfgruppe formation under the command of SS-Gruppenführer Heinz Reinefarth and used in the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising, fighting first against the Polish insurgents since early August and later also helping to defeat the Polish People's Army's attempt to help Warsaw through a bridgehead in late September. Here, Dirlewanger, again using human shields and his other notorious methods from Belarus, gained further reputation for his brutality, becoming known in Poland as the "Executioner of the Warsaw Uprising". During early August, the Kampfgruppe Dirlewanger participated in the Wola massacre, together with Reinefarth's collection of police and security SS units systematically exterminating tens of thousands of residents of the Wola district of Warsaw. The role of Dirlewanger in the beginning days of the massacre may have been limited, and Dirlewanger himself may not have arrived until 7 August. According to Snyder, Dirlewanger burned three of Wola’s hospitals with patients inside, while the nurses were "whipped, gang-raped and finally hanged naked, together with the doctors" to the accompaniment of the drinking song "In München steht ein Hofbräuhaus".

During his time in Warsaw, Dirlewanger acquired a translator by the name of Dr. Kryńska, who gained insight into Dirlewanger. He described Dirlewanger as totally believing in the "racial mission to 'cleanse' the east." He further noted that Dirlewanger was "extremely greedy" and that he "looted incessantly". The stolen property was systematically forwarded to his own warehouse in Germany, which already held goods looted from Belarus.

The brutality of Dirlewanger himself was further described by Mathias Schenck, a Belgian national who was serving in the area as a German Army combat engineer: "There is also that small child in Dirlewanger’s hands. He took it from a woman who was standing in the crowd in the street. He lifted the child high and then threw it into the fire. Then he shot the mother." According to Schenck, Dirlewanger also had a habit of hanging people every Thursday, whether it be Poles or his own men, often being the one to kick the chair out from underneath them.

Alarmed by reports coming from the regular German Army commander in Warsaw, General Nikolaus von Vormann, the Army High Command chief General Heinz Guderian appealed directly to Adolf Hitler himself to have Dirlewanger immediately removed from the city. Hermann Fegelein, a member of Hitler's entourage and a liaison officer of the Waffen-SS, confirmed the allegations and described Dirlewanger's men as "real hoodlums". His opinion prompted Hitler to order Himmler to deal with the situation regarding Dirlewanger as well as another notorious commander in Reinefarth's grouping, Bronislav Kaminski. The latter's force of Russian collaborators, the Russian People's Liberation Army, deemed out-of-control, was indeed withdrawn outside Warsaw and the disgraced Kaminski along with some of his staff were assassinated by the Gestapo in a secret purge. Nothing, however, happened to Dirlewanger, probably due to his continued protection by Berger. Another estimate is around 100,000 people murdered by Dirlewanger's unit, primarily in Belarus and Poland. For its part, treated by Reinefarth's staff and Dirlewanger himself as disposable urban assaults troops, the Kampfgruppe Dirlewanger suffered extremely heavy losses, in two months losing 315 percent of its initial strength (2,733 casualties compared to 865 men and 16 officers originally sent into the city), having been continuously replaced by constant reinforcements of new convict soldiers. It emerged from Warsaw as a Sturmbrigade, by then with only a few of the 50 members of the original "poacher" hard core group still alive in addition to Dirlewanger. In recognition of his bloody work to crush the uprising, Dirlewanger received his final promotion, to the rank of SS-Oberführer, on 12 August 1944. In October, he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, approved by Hitler and recommended for it by his superior officer in Warsaw, Reinefarth; after the war, Reinefarth lied about his role in Warsaw, denying Dirlewanger had been under his command and even publicly denying having been a member of the SS, and was never punished.

thumb|upright| SS-Oberführer Oskar Dirlewanger after receiving the Slovak War Victory Cross following the suppression of the Slovak National Uprising. [[Banská Bystrica, 31 October 1944.]]

Dirlewanger then led his men in joining the efforts to put down the Slovak National Uprising in October 1944, During its activation and counter-insurgency operations in Slovakia, the brigade engaged in widespread criminal misconduct, including looting, rape, and selling weapons to partisans, actively destabilizing the region and drawing harsh condemnation from other SS commanders. Despite being tasked with security, the brigade's extreme depredations against the local population were so severe that some officers claimed the Dirlewanger troops acted "worse than partisans." Eventually, he and his men were posted to the front lines of Hungary, where his brigade were quickly defeated on 15 December 1944 during the battle of Ipolysag, and then to eastern Germany to continue fighting against the advancing Red Army. In February 1945, the unit was expanded again by Himmler's order and redesignated as the 36th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS. On February 15, Dirlewanger was seriously wounded in action while fighting against Soviet forces near Guben in Brandenburg and sent to the rear. It was his 12th and final combat injury. Without Dirlewanger's leadership, his unit began to disintegrate despite attempts to reorganize it, virtually ceasing to exist by late April. On 22 April, Dirlewanger himself deserted and went into hiding.

Death

thumb|Dirlewanger (right) after his arrest by French colonial troops from the [[2nd Moroccan Infantry Division|2/5th Moroccan Rifle Regiment]]

On 1 June 1945, Oskar Dirlewanger was arrested by the French occupation zone authorities near the German town of Altshausen in Upper Swabia. At the time of his capture, Dirlewanger was wearing civilian clothes, using a false name, and hiding in a remote hunting lodge. He was recognised by a Polish Jewish former Stary Dzików concentration camp inmate and brought to a nearby detention center.

Dirlewanger reportedly died around 5–7 June 1945 in a prison camp at Altshausen as a result of ill treatment (officially from natural causes). There are numerous conflicting reports of the nature of his death: the French said that he died of a vascular collapse and was buried in an unmarked grave; or he was beaten to death by armed Poles, presumably former forced laborers or former French military prisoners (of Polish origin); or Polish soldiers in French service (29 Groupement d'Infanterie polonaise); or former inmates and prison guards.

According to political scientist Martin A. Lee, as well as historians Angelo de Boca and Mario Giovana, Dirlewanger survived the war and subsequently lived in Egypt tutoring the guards who provided security to the president Gamal Abdel Nasser. Likewise, Benjamin Netanyahu has written that, alongside hundreds of other Nazi officials, Dirlewanger fled to Egypt, where he became a bodyguard to Nasser. Peter Levenda, quoting different sources, believes that following his exile in Egypt he had converted to Islam. These theories and reports were proven false after the exhumation of Dirlewanger's remains in 1960, verifying his death in 1945 as a result of "the brutal torture by Polish guards" (Polnischen Wachmannschaften, otherwise unidentified and still mysterious to this day), yet have continued nevertheless.

Investigation

The rumours about Dirlewanger still being alive circulated around Altshausen and across all of Germany. Althausen's mayor, Franz Sproll, was forced to react, especially since Oskar Stammler, editor-in-chief of Revue, filed a complaint against Dirlewanger. Sproll then requested that the presumed grave where Dirlewanger had been buried be exhumed to prevent public unrest. However, according to Schwäbische Zeitung, the exhumation request was declined by the public prosecutor's office, which stated that it held no significant value. Half a year later, the public prosecutor's office decided to approve the request and had actually been investigating the case since April 1960.

Clasp to the Iron Cross (1939) 2nd Class (24 May 1942) and 1st Class (16 September 1942)
Wound Badge (1939) in Gold (9 July 1943)
German Cross in Gold (5 December 1943)
Close Combat Clasp in bronze (19 March 1944)
Bandit-warfare Badge in Silver (1944)
Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross (30 September 1944)
Slovak War Victory Cross (1944)

The table below lists the ranks held by Oskar Dirlewanger during the period of 1940–1945, along with the corresponding dates of promotion:

{| class="wikitable"

!Ranks

!Date of Promotion

|SS-Obersturmführer der Reserve (lieutenant)

|1 July 1940

|SS-Hauptsturmführer der Reserve (captain)

|1 August 1940

|SS-Sturmbannführer der Reserve (major)

|9 November 1941

|SS-Obersturmbannführer der Reserve (lieutenant colonel)

|12 May 1943

|SS-Standartenführer der Reserve (colonel)

|19 March 1944

|SS-Oberführer der Reserve (senior colonel)

|12 August 1944

Legacy

Assessment

Dirlewanger has been called "a psychopathic killer and child molester" by Steven Zaloga, "a professional killer, fully malefic" by Richard Rhodes, "an expert in extermination and a devotee of sadism and necrophilia" by J. Bowyer Bell, and a "sadistic, amoral alcoholic" by Knut Stang, who also stated that Dirlewanger was regarded as perhaps Nazi Germany's "most extreme executioner". The unit is considered the most infamous in Belarus and Poland, Nikolaus Wachsmann called him "one of the most odious characters in the pantheon of SS villains". Chris Bishop called Dirlewanger the "most evil man in the SS" as well as "perhaps the most sadistic of all commanders of World War II". Christian Ingrao stated that Dirlewanger's unit committed the worst atrocities of the Second World War. Timothy Snyder stated that Dirlewanger's force committed more atrocities than any other unit involved in the creation of what the Germans termed the "dead zones" (Tote Zonen) in Belarus, adding that "in all the theaters of the Second World War, few could compete in cruelty with Oskar Dirlewanger". Douglas E. Nash similarly called Dirlewanger "one of the most heinous criminals in military history", He has been called "one of the greatest genocidal perpetrators the world has ever known" and "an exceptional sadist whose cruelty knew no bounds." Alan Clark wrote that Dirlewanger's crimes against "Polish girls are hardly printable even today [i.e. 1965], combining as they did the indulgence of both sadism and necrophilia." According to Heath, "Dirlewanger was without any doubt one of the most evil, sadistic and sexually depraved individuals in the Third Reich. His appetite for alcohol, rape, sadism and violence shocked even the most hardline Nazis." Heath, however, expressed skepticism towards the accusations of necrophilia, saying that despite Dirlewanger's career being characterized by "child rape, murder, perversion, sadism and alcoholism," there has been no proven evidence of necrophilia and that "one can only assume that such assumptions are the result of literary fabrication." Nevertheless, he declared Dirlewanger was "a living embodiment of evil and depravity and all the proof that anyone could need that monsters do exist."

Modern day

Wolfsbrigade 44, a German Neo-Nazi group banned by the German government in December 2020, used "44" as code for "DD", short for "Division Dirlewanger".

In a Russian TV mini-series Operation Deserter (2020), Oskar Dirlewanger was played by Russian actor Vadim Lyalko.

In an Uzbek-Belarusian movie Uzbek Woman (2022), Dirlewanger was played by Belarusian actor Yevgeniy Ivkovich.