Krakow special

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The Krakow special was an action by the German National Socialists at the beginning of the German occupation of Poland . On November 6, 1939, 183 Krakow university teachers were arrested and taken to the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps.

course

On November 6, 1939, two months after the attack on Poland and the occupation of Krakow by the Wehrmacht , the lawyer Bruno Müller , who was also the head of SS-Einsatzkommando 2 / I, resigned as speaker for a lecture on the “German standpoint in Science and Higher Education ”at Jagiellonian University . Come were professors and assistants as well as some students, even from the Mining Academy Krakow and the Business Academy Krakow . The supposed lecture turned out to be a trap. All participants in the meeting, a total of 183 people, were arrested by a detachment of the German security police led by Müller and taken to the Montelupich prison in Kraków . 15 people arrested were released after a short time.

Victim

168 scientists were brought to three prisons in Breslau on November 9th and from there to Sachsenhausen concentration camp at the end of November . Among the 168 deportees were Aleksander Birkenmajer , Franciszek Górski , Henryk Ferdynand Hoyer , Zdzisław Jachimecki , Władysław Konopczyński and Leon Wachholz . Twelve deportees died after a short time under the conditions of detention. Three other (Jewish) university professors were murdered in various concentration camps. Reinhard Heydrich and his superior Heinrich Himmler declared in internal reviews in 1940 that the aim of the order was to shoot thousands of leading Poles .

Survivors

The survivors were released due to international protests - even Mussolini allowed himself to be persuaded to intervene - by October 1941. Some of them died shortly after their release from the consequences of their imprisonment in the camp (e.g. Arnold Bolland ) or were arrested again, deported back to the concentration camp and murdered there, for example:

memory

There is a plaque in the Collegium Novum of the Jagiellonian University to commemorate the victims of the “Cracow Special Campaign”. In addition, every year on November 6th, black flags are hung on the buildings of the Jagiellonian University and the rector lays wreaths on the graves of the victims.

literature

"Cracow Special" (1997)
  • Jochen August (Ed.): "Special Campaign Krakau". The arrest of the Krakow scientists on November 6, 1939. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 1997, ISBN 3-930908-28-X .
  • Henryk Pierzchała: Torn from the clutches of the SS state. The “Krakow Special”. with a foreword by Roman M. Zawadzki; Translation from Polish ( Wyrwani ze szponów Państwa-SS ). Kraków: Poligrafia Kurii Prowincjalnej Zakonu Pijarów, 1998 Table of contents at DNB

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Himmler's speech on September 7, 1940, in: Documents on the Nuremberg Trial , quoted by Jochen August: “Sonderaktion Krakau”. The arrest of the Krakow scientists on November 6, 1939. Hamburg 1997, ISBN 3-930908-28-X , p. 19.