Willem Polak

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Willem Polak (full name Willem Albertus Polak ; born May 31, 1915 in Amsterdam , † May 4, 1993 in Hanover ) was a Dutch member of the Waffen SS and war criminal .

Willem Polak attended school in Amsterdam and worked as a driver and mechanic. He was noticeably tall at 1.92 m and became a member of the Waffen SS during the Nazi era . In World War II he fought on the Eastern Front . When he returned to the Netherlands, he became a member of the Henk Feldmeijer special command . In the command, also known as the Sonderkommando Silbertanne , he was involved in at least four murders and shot at least three times himself. He shot a resistance fighter at his doorstep. On August 4, 1944, he and SS member Bart Slop murdered the 50-year-old farmer Dirk Ubbels in Beemster .

On January 1, 1949, he was sentenced to death by the Amsterdam Special Court. On November 12, 1949, the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment . In 1952 he succeeded together with the war criminals Herbertus Bikker (1915–2008), Klaas Carel Faber (1922–2012), Antoine Touseul (1921–1991), Sander Borgers (1917–1985), Willem van der Neut (1919–1983) and Jacob de Jonge to flee the prison in Breda . He escaped to Germany and was arrested in Hanover on May 16, 1953 with forged identity documents . He was not extradited to the Netherlands because foreign SS members had received German citizenship on the basis of a “Führer decree” from May 1943 . This legal opinion was shared by the post-war lawyers. As a German citizen, he could not be extradited to the Netherlands. In 1959, he was charged with murder in the Lüneburg district court in Germany . The trial ended in acquittal because the court found no features of murder and it agreed that refusing to shoot would have put Polak at risk. In the following years the Dutch government made only half-hearted attempts to get extradition from Germany.

Polak then lived on in Hanover, married and had a daughter. Neighbors described him as friendly. In an interview with a Dutch journalist at the end of the 1980s, he said that "you could think anything about him - except that he was a bad person."

He died on May 4, 1993 and was buried anonymously in the Lahe city cemetery.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Arnold Karskens : Gezochte oorlogsmisdadiger Willem Polak overleden on tpo.nl (ThePostOnline)
personal data
SURNAME Polak, Willem
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Polak, Willem Albertus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch member of the Waffen SS
DATE OF BIRTH May 31, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Amsterdam
DATE OF DEATH May 4th 1993
Place of death Hanover