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127-552: The Report was commissioned by Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger , chief of the SS and police in Kraków and was intended as a souvenir album for Heinrich Himmler. It was prepared in three distinct leather-bound copies for Himmler, Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger and Jürgen Stroop. One unbound "file" copy of the report ( das Konzept ) remained in Warsaw, in the care of Chief of Staff Max Jesuiter. According to

254-580: A German colonial empire overseas, leading to the Herero and Nama genocide and subsequent racial apartheid regime in South West Africa . World War I (1914–1918) intensified nationalist and racist sentiments in Germany and other European countries. Jews in eastern Europe were targeted by widespread pogroms . Germany had two million war dead and lost a substantial territory ; opposition to

381-536: A concentration camp. Despite many deaths, as many as 200,000 Jews survived the war inside the concentration camps. Although most Holocaust victims were never imprisoned in a concentration camp, the image of these camps is a popular symbol of the Holocaust. Including the Soviet prisoners of war, 13 million people were brought to Germany for forced labor. The largest nationalities were Soviet and Polish and they were

508-463: A few kilometers from a town. Victims were rounded up and marched to the execution site, forced to undress, and shot into previously dug pits. The favored technique was a shot in the back of the neck with a single bullet. In the chaos, many victims were not killed by the gunfire but instead buried alive . Typically, the pits would be guarded after the execution but sometimes a few victims managed to escape afterwards. Executions were public spectacles and

635-553: A food shortfall and planned the mass starvation of Soviet cities and some rural areas. Although the starvation policy was less successful than planners hoped, the residents of some cities, particularly in Ukraine, and besieged Leningrad , as well as the Jewish ghettos, endured human-made famine, during which millions of people died of starvation. By mid-June 1941, about 30,000 Jews had died, 20,000 of whom had starved to death in

762-507: A higher chance of survival. Although conditions varied widely between camps, Jewish forced laborers were typically treated worse than non-Jewish prisoners and suffered much higher mortality rates. In mid-1943, Himmler sought to bring surviving Jewish forced laborers under the control of the SS in the concentration camp system. Some of the forced-labor camps for Jews and some ghettos, such as Kovno, were designated concentration camps, while others were dissolved and surviving prisoners sent to

889-771: A member of the State Board for Youth Physical Training. On 27 June 1933, Krüger was promoted to SA- Obergruppenführer and appointed chief of Ausbildungswesen (Training). Cooperating closely with the Reichswehr , he used his new position to school the SA's recruits (an estimated 250,000) to become unit leaders. Krüger was not caught in the Night of the Long Knives , in which Röhm and many other high-ranking SA members were killed, and it has been speculated that his switch from

1016-560: A military career as a cadet in the military school at Karlsruhe and the military academy at Gross-Lichterfelde . In June 1914, Krüger was commissioned a Leutnant in the Imperial German Army 's 25th Royal Prussian Infantry Regiment. During the First World War , he served as a platoon leader , a company commander and the regimental adjutant . He was wounded three times, promoted to Oberleutnant and awarded

1143-518: A month, the rest - three months. (...) To us, all of you are not human beings, but a pile of dung (...). For such enemies of the Third Reich as you, the Germans will have no respect and no mercy. You will forget about your wives, children and families. Here, you will all die like dogs. The collective responsibility was the new law introduced by SS. If someone in the family committed an act against

1270-820: A nationwide pogrom in November 1938. After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, occupation authorities began to establish ghettos to segregate Jews. Following the June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union , 1.5 to 2 million Jews were shot by German forces and local collaborators. Later in 1941 or early 1942, the highest levels of the German government decided to murder all Jews in Europe . Victims were deported by rail to extermination camps where, if they survived

1397-684: A rapid rise in the SA ranks. He was promoted to SA- Oberführer (31 July 1931) and SA- Gruppenführer (10 September 1931). He commanded the SA- Gruppe Ost , encompassing the Berlin area, from April 1931 to July 1932. In July 1932 he was made leader of the Group Staff in the supreme SA leadership under SA- Stabschef Ernst Röhm , and he served as the SA representative to the Reich Defense Council. In October 1932, he became

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1524-659: A result of local and popular pressure, many small towns became entirely free of Jews and as many as a third of Jewish businesses may have been forced to close. Anti-Jewish violence was even worse in areas annexed by Nazi Germany . On 9–10 November 1938, the Nazis organized Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), a nationwide pogrom . Over 7,500 Jewish shops (out of 9,000) were looted, more than 1,000 synagogues were damaged or destroyed, at least 90 Jews were murdered, and as many as 30,000 Jewish men were arrested , although many were released within weeks. German Jews were levied

1651-525: A significant number of other European countries abandoned democracy for some kind of authoritarian or fascist rule. Many countries, including Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia, passed antisemitic legislation in the 1930s and 1940s. In October 1938, Germany deported many Polish Jews in response to a Polish law that enabled the revocation of citizenship for Polish Jews living abroad. The German Wehrmacht (armed forces) invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, triggering declarations of war from

1778-438: A similar or larger number of non-Jewish civilians and prisoners of war (POWs); the term Holocaust is sometimes used to refer to the persecution of these other groups . The Nazis developed their ideology based on racism and pursuit of "living space" , and seized power in early 1933. Meant to force all German Jews to emigrate , regardless of means, the regime passed anti-Jewish laws, encouraged harassment, and orchestrated

1905-551: A slight increase in rations to non-Jewish Poles, and combat the black market . In March 1942, killings began in Belzec, targeting Jews from Lublin who were not capable of work. This action reportedly reduced the black market and was deemed a success to be replicated elsewhere. By mid-1942, Nazi leaders decided to allow only 300,000 Jews to survive in the General Governorate by the end of the year for forced labor; for

2032-691: A special tax that raised more than 1 billion Reichsmarks (RM). The Nazi government wanted to force all Jews to leave Germany . By the end of 1939, most Jews who could emigrate had already done so; those who remained behind were disproportionately elderly, poor, or female and could not obtain a visa. The plurality, around 110,000, left for the United States, while smaller numbers emigrated to South America, Shanghai , Mandatory Palestine , and South Africa. Germany collected emigration taxes of nearly 1 billion RM, mostly from Jews. The policy of forced emigration continued into 1940. Besides Germany,

2159-628: A statement given in 1945 by Stroop's adjutant Karl Kaleshke to US authorities in Wiesbaden, he ordered Stroop's copy of the report burnt with other secret documents in Burg Kranzberg. After the war only two of the four copies were discovered, those belonging to Himmler and Jesuiter. Himmler's copy went to Seventh Army Intelligence Center (SAIC) and Jesuiter's to Military Intelligence Research Section (MIRS) in London . Several sources stated that

2286-511: A symbol of the ultimate human evil. The term Holocaust , derived from a Greek word meaning ' burnt offering ', has become the most common word used to describe the Nazi extermination of Jews in English and many other languages. The term Holocaust is sometimes used to refer to the persecution of other groups that the Nazis targeted, especially those targeted on a biological basis, in particular

2413-643: A term as a District Councillor ( Rattsherr ) in Berlin from 1933 through 1935. In July 1937, he was given a seat on the People's Court and he was appointed the Reich Supreme Authority for Equestrian Sports in January 1939. On 4 October 1939, Himmler appointed Krüger as the Higher SS and Police Leader ( Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer , HSSPF) to the German military administration in Łódź . This

2540-455: A variety of measures, including imprisonment in concentration camps . The Nazis forcibly sterilized 400,000 people and subjected others to forced abortions for real or supposed hereditary illnesses. Although the Nazis sought to control every aspect of public and private life, Nazi repression was directed almost entirely against groups perceived as outside the national community. Most Germans had little to fear provided they did not oppose

2667-587: A view to their ultimate disappearance from the country. Jewish students were gradually forced out of the school system. Some municipalities enacted restrictions governing where Jews were allowed to live or conduct business. In 1938 and 1939, Jews were barred from additional occupations, and their businesses were expropriated to force them out of the economy. Anti-Jewish violence, largely locally organized by members of Nazi Party institutions, took primarily non-lethal forms from 1933 to 1939. Jewish stores, especially in rural areas, were often boycotted or vandalized. As

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2794-731: Is controversial. Romanian soldiers killed tens of thousands of Jews from Odessa by April 1942. Prior to the invasion, the Einsatzgruppen were reorganized in preparation for mass killings and instructed to shoot Soviet officials and Jewish state and party employees. The shootings were justified on the basis of Jews' supposed central role in supporting the communist system, but it was not initially envisioned to kill all Soviet Jews. The occupiers relied on locals to identify Jews to be targeted. The first German mass killings targeted adult male Jews who had worked as civil servants or in jobs requiring education. Tens of thousands were shot by

2921-630: Is here; the annihilation of the Jews must be the necessary consequence." It took the Nazis several months after this to organize a continent-wide genocide. Reinhard Heydrich , head of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), convened the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942. This high-level meeting was intended to coordinate anti-Jewish policy. The majority of Holocaust killings were carried out in 1942, with it being

3048-586: The Sonderaktion Krakau action and deported on a cattle train to Sachsenhausen concentration camp ; fewer than 50 of the professors survived the war. From the very beginning he introduced the terror on a large scale. For every killed German in General Government by Home Army , ten random Polish civilians were shot. Regular arrests of Polish inhabitants of Warsaw, during the street Razzia ( Polish : łapanka ) and transporting them to

3175-645: The Generalplan Ost ). The plan was originating from Otto von Bismarck 's operations against - among others - Poles, mainly in Provinz Posen ( Greater Poland ) in the 19th century. Once Bismarck wrote to his sister in 1861: "Hammer the Poles until they despair of living [...] I have all the sympathy in the world for their situation, but if we want to exist we have no choice but to wipe them out: wolves are only what God made them, but we shoot them all

3302-764: The German genocide of the Polish nation : the extermination of six million Poles (three million of them Polish Jews) and massive destruction, degradation and impoverishment of the Polish state. He committed suicide in May 1945. Krüger was born in 1894 into a military family in Straßburg, Alsace-Lorraine , then part of the German Empire (today, Strasbourg , France ). He attended the gymnasium in Rastatt and then pursued

3429-579: The German occupation of Italy in September 1943, there were no serious attempt to deport Italian Jews, and Italy refused to allow the deportation of Jews in many Italian-occupied areas . Nazi Germany did not attempt the destruction of the Finnish Jews and the North African Jews living under French or Italian rule . An estimated 200,000 to 250,000 Germans were directly involved in killing Jews, and if one includes all those involved in

3556-497: The German–Soviet pact . The Soviet Union deported hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens to the Soviet interior, including as many as 260,000 Jews who largely survived the war. Although most Jews were not communists, some accepted positions in the Soviet administration, contributing to a pre-existing perception among many non-Jews that Soviet rule was a Jewish conspiracy. In 1940, Germany invaded much of western Europe including

3683-603: The Iron Cross , 1st and 2nd class. In August 1919, he joined the Freikorps Lützow  [ de ] , which he left in March 1920. He then entered civilian employment as a clerk to a bookseller and to a publisher until 1922. He got married, went to work for a waste disposal firm from 1924 to 1928 and then became a self-employed businessman. While working at the refuse company, he probably met Kurt Daluege , who

3810-815: The Lublin District of the General Governorate. 45,000 Jews were deported by November and left to fend for themselves, causing many deaths. Deportations stopped in early 1940 due to the opposition of Hans Frank , the leader of the General Governorate, who did not want his fiefdom to become a dumping ground for unwanted Jews. After the conquest of France, the Nazis considered deporting Jews to French Madagascar , but this proved impossible. The Nazis planned that harsh conditions in these areas would kill many Jews. In September 1939, around 7,000 Jews were killed, alongside thousands of Poles, however, they were not systematically targeted as they would be later, and open mass killings would subside until June of 1941. During

3937-492: The Roma and Sinti , as well as Soviet prisoners of war and Polish and Soviet civilians . All of these groups, however, were targeted for different reasons. By the 1970s, the adjective Jewish was dropped as redundant and Holocaust, now capitalized, became the default term for the destruction of European Jews. The Hebrew word Shoah ('catastrophic destruction') exclusively refers to Jewish victims. The perpetrators used

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4064-576: The Soviet threat. Hitler believed that Jews controlled the Soviet Union , as well as the Western powers, and were plotting to destroy Germany . Amidst a worldwide economic depression and political fragmentation , the Nazi Party rapidly increased its support, reaching a high of 37 percent in mid-1932 elections , by campaigning on issues such as anticommunism and economic recovery. Hitler

4191-462: The Third Reich to do slave labor for German industry (for among others: Krupp , Audi , IG Farben , Porsche , Volkswagen ...), or straight to concentration camps, were organized on his orders. The deportation to the concentration camp was practically equal to the death sentence. One of the men from units subordinated to Krüger: SS- Hauptsturmführer (captain) Karl Fritzsch , nota bene

4318-485: The Ukrainian Sonderdienst shot to death in mass killings more than 83,000 Jews. Krüger's men, hand-in-hand with Order Police battalions , Einsatzgruppen and Wehrmacht were conducting during a few years time, the genocide program of quelling guerrilla activity, so-called: " anti-partisan " fighting in the General Government. During these operations, which meant to be against Polish "bandits", as

4445-571: The Wola Massacre , or deported to extermination camps for fear of additional Jewish resistance developing. Nevertheless, in early 1944, more than 70,000 Jews were performing forced labor in the General Governorate. Unlike the killing areas in the east, the deportation from elsewhere in Europe was centrally organized from Berlin, although it depended on the outcome of negotiations with allied governments and popular responses to deportation. Beginning in late 1941, local administrators responded to

4572-606: The ghettos . Soviet prisoners of war in the custody of the German Army were intended to die in large numbers. Sixty percent—3.3 million people—died, primarily of starvation, making them the second largest group of victims of Nazi mass killing after European Jews. Jewish prisoners of war and commissars were systematically executed. About a million civilians were killed by the Nazis during anti-partisan warfare , including more than 300,000 in Belarus. From 1942 onwards,

4699-399: The postwar settlement united Germans across the political spectrum. The military promoted the untrue but compelling idea that, rather than being defeated on the battlefield, Germany had been stabbed in the back by socialists and Jews. The Nazi Party was founded in the wake of the war, and its ideology is often cited as the main factor explaining the Holocaust. From the beginning,

4826-404: The rise of nationalism in Europe and industrialization that increased economic conflicts between Jews and non-Jews. Some scientists began to categorize humans into different races and argued that there was a life or death struggle between them . Many racists argued that Jews were a separate racial group alien to Europe . The turn of the twentieth century saw a major effort to establish

4953-701: The 1947 trial of Oswald Pohl , as exhibit 503. On June 10, 1948, the Himmler/SAIC copy of the Stroop report and Katzmann Report were handed over by Fred Niebergal, head of Office of Chief of Counsel for War Crimes – OCCWC, to Bernard Acht, head of the Polish Military Mission in Nuremberg. It was used in Stroop's trial at Warsaw Criminal District Court in July 1951, and transferred afterwards to

5080-727: The German Bundesarchiv also had a copy in Koblenz . But, in reply to inquiries by Richard Raskin, the Bundesarchiv stated that the third copy of report was never in their possession. The two known copies held by the Allies were introduced as evidence at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg , sharing the document number 1061-PS, and used in the trial as "US Exhibit 275". The report

5207-653: The German Jews out of public life by the end of 1934, the regime passed the Nuremberg Laws in 1935. The laws reserved full citizenship rights for those of "German or related blood", restricted Jews' economic activity, and criminalized new marriages and sexual relationships between Jews and non-Jewish Germans . Jews were defined as those with three or four Jewish grandparents; many of those with partial Jewish descent were classified as Mischlinge , with varying rights. The regime also sought to segregate Jews with

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5334-538: The German occupiers and other non-Jews. Although the majority of Holocaust victims died in 1942, the killing continued at a lower rate until the end of the war in May 1945. Many Jewish survivors emigrated outside of Europe after the war. A few Holocaust perpetrators faced criminal trials. Billions of dollars in reparations have been paid, although falling short of the Jews' losses. The Holocaust has also been commemorated in museums, memorials , and culture . It has become central to Western historical consciousness as

5461-492: The Germans and their allies targeted villages suspected of supporting the partisans, burning them and killing or expelling their inhabitants. During these operations, nearby small ghettos were liquidated and their inhabitants shot. By 1943, anti-partisan operations aimed for the depopulation of large areas of Belarus. Jews and those unfit for work were typically shot on the spot with others deported. Although most of those killed were not Jews, anti-partisan warfare often led to

5588-463: The Germans called partisans, the murders of women and children were carried out on a daily basis. For a help given to the partisans by local farmers and their families, the entire villages were burnt to the ashes with all inhabitants (so-called pacification action ). Such "disciplinary" campaigns were a commonplace in Poland under German occupation - more than 300 Polish villages were destroyed (within

5715-850: The Holocaust, as well as profiting from unclaimed deposits made by Holocaust victims. Beginning in 1938—especially in Germany and its annexed territories—many Jews were drafted into forced-labor camps and segregated work details. These camps were often of a temporary nature and typically overseen by civilian authorities. Initially, mortality did not increase dramatically. After mid-1941, conditions for Jewish forced laborers drastically worsened and death rates increased; even private companies deliberately subjected workers to murderous conditions. Beginning in 1941 and increasingly as time went on, Jews capable of employment were separated from others—who were usually killed. They were typically employed in non-skilled jobs and could be replaced easily if non-Jewish workers were available, but those in skilled positions had

5842-716: The III Reich to be Germanised, or work as slaves for German industry or farms. Only 800 children of Zamość  [ pl ] were successfully reclaimed after the war. Disagreements with governor general Hans Frank led to Krüger's dismissal on 9 November 1943. He was replaced by Wilhelm Koppe . Due to Krüger, Koppe and their troops and policemen, altogether more than 6 million Poles (2.9 million of them were Polish Jews) were killed in gas chambers, in forced labour camps, during mass shootings, from hunger, disease, cold or because of mandatory expulsions from their houses or farms, and transportation of these empty-handed victims on

5969-432: The Jews killed in the Holocaust died by poison gas. Thousands of Romani people were also murdered in the extermination camps. Prisoner uprisings at Treblinka and Sobibor meant that these camps were shut down earlier than envisioned. Plans to kill most of the Jews in the General Governorate were affected by various goals of the SS, military, and civil administration to reduce the amount of food consumed by Jews, enable

6096-1034: The KC PZPR archive. In 1952 it was transferred to the Główna Komisja Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce (Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Poland) archive and subsequently to its successor, the Institute of National Remembrance (Polish: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej or IPN), where it remains. In 1948 the Jesuiter/MIRS copy of the report went to the National Archives (NARA) in Washington, D.C. , where it continues to be held. In 2017,

6223-507: The NARA copy has the same number of photographs on 52 pages. 37 photographs appear in both copies, although not always with the same size, crop or order and occasionally with different captions. Sixteen shots in each copy are different, although often very similar, as they depict the same events. Altogether, in both versions of the report, there are 69 unique photographs. The identity of the photographers who accompanied Stroop's headquarters during

6350-827: The Nazis—not unlike other nation-states in Europe—dreamed of a world without Jews , whom they identified as "the embodiment of everything that was wrong with modernity ". The Nazis defined the German nation as a racial community unbounded by Germany's physical borders and sought to purge it of racially foreign and socially deficient elements. The Nazi Party and its leader, Adolf Hitler , were also obsessed with reversing Germany's territorial losses and acquiring additional Lebensraum (living space) in Eastern Europe for colonization. These ideas appealed to many Germans. The Nazis promised to protect European civilization from

6477-571: The Netherlands , Belgium , Luxembourg , France , and Denmark and Norway . In 1941, Germany invaded Yugoslavia and Greece . Some of these new holdings were fully or partially annexed into Germany while others were placed under civilian or military rule . The war provided cover for " Aktion T4 ", the murder of around 70,000 institutionalized Germans with mental or physical disabilities at specialized killing centers using poison gas. The victims included all 4,000 to 5,000 institutionalized Jews. Despite efforts to maintain secrecy, knowledge of

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6604-476: The Netherlands was higher than neighboring countries, which scholars have attributed to difficulty in hiding or increased collaboration of the Dutch police. The German government sought the deportation of Jews from allied countries. The first to hand over its Jewish population was Slovakia , which arrested and deported about 58,000 Jews to Poland from March to October 1942. The Independent State of Croatia had already shot or killed in concentration camps

6731-440: The SS to the SA was only for pragmatic reasons, especially in the light of Krüger transferring the SA armouries of which he was in charge to the Reichswehr as soon as the purge began. On 25 January 1935, Krüger re-entered the SS, was given the rank of SS- Obergruppenführer and placed on Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler 's personal staff. In February 1936, he was appointed Inspector of Border Guard Units. On 16 May 1938, he

6858-413: The Stroop Report was submitted by Poland and included in UNESCO's Memory of the World Register. The Report was a 125-page typed document, bound in black pebble leather , with 53 photographs. It consisted of the following sections: The copies have slight discrepancies in textual and graphical layout, and in the photographs they contain. The IPN copy of the report has 53 photographs on 49 pages, while

6985-445: The United Kingdom and France . During the five weeks of fighting, as many as 16,000 civilians, hostages, and prisoners of war may have been shot by the German invaders; there was also a great deal of looting. Special units known as Einsatzgruppen followed the army to eliminate any possible resistance. Around 50,000 Polish and Polish Jewish leaders and intellectuals were arrested or executed . The Auschwitz concentration camp

7112-541: The Wartheland and General Governorate in 1939 and 1940 on the initiative of local German administrators. The largest ghettos, such as Warsaw and Łódź , were established in existing residential neighborhoods and closed by fences or walls. In many smaller ghettos, Jews were forced into poor neighborhoods but with no fence. Forced labor programs provided subsistence to many ghetto inhabitants, and in some cases protected them from deportation. Workshops and factories were operated inside some ghettos, while in other cases Jews left

7239-510: The assistance of local collaborators and rewards offered for their denunciation. The death penalty was sometimes enforced on people hiding them, especially in eastern Europe. Rescuers' motivations varied on a spectrum from altruism to expecting sex or material gain; it was not uncommon for helpers to betray or murder Jews if their money ran out. Gerlach argues that hundreds of thousands of Jews may have died because of rumors or denunciations, and many others never attempted to escape because of

7366-415: The bare fields of General Government. Almost the entire population of Polish Jews was exterminated. Travelling Roma were treated by German authority equally to Jews ( Romani genocide ). The economical downfall of the Polish industry, the railway network, the agriculture, the forestry and total destruction of the country (the retreating Germans blew up Polish sea port in Gdynia ) were not in connection with

7493-499: The beginning of September, all German Jews were required to wear a yellow star, and in October, Hitler decided to deport them to the east and ban emigration. Between mid-October and the end of 1941, 42,000 Jews from Germany and its annexed territories and 5,000 Romani people from Austria were deported to Łódź, Kovno, Riga, and Minsk . In late November, 5,000 German Jews were shot outside of Kovno and another 1,000 near Riga, but Himmler ordered an end to such massacres and some in

7620-406: The borders after 1945). In the most of cases, before the fire was set to the village, all the peasants were gathered in the biggest village building and burnt alive. Earlier, several grenades were thrown into the crowd. Among other deeds committed by Krüger were: responsibility for eliminating rebellions in the extermination camps, providing victims for the medical experiments typically resulting in

7747-401: The civilian population. On 8 July 1944, Krüger was given the rank of General der Waffen-SS . From June to August he took over the command over the SS Division Nord in northern Finland. From August 1944 until February 1945 Krüger was commanding general of the V SS Mountain Corps . In February 1945 he was Himmler's representative at the German southeast front and in April and May 1945 he

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7874-409: The country's population in 1933. They were wealthier on average than other Germans and largely assimilated, although a minority were recent immigrants from eastern Europe. Various German government agencies, Nazi Party organizations, and local authorities instituted about 1,500 anti-Jewish laws . In 1933, Jews were banned or restricted from several professions and the civil service . After hounding

8001-488: The death or permanent disability, setting up forced labour camps, the employment of police and SS in the deportations of Jews from ghettos in General Government to extermination camps. He was in charge of driving out (ethnic cleansing) of over 116,000 Polish farmers (30 thousands of them were children) from the area around Zamość , known as Aktion Zamosc . Most of the children were sent to concentrations camps and to labor camps. Blond and sufficiently young were being sent to

8128-489: The deaths of Jews. The systematic murder of Jews began in the Soviet Union in 1941. During the invasion, many Jews were conscripted into the Red Army . Out of 10 or 15 million Soviet civilians who fled eastwards to the Soviet interior , 1.6 million were Jews. Local inhabitants killed as many as 50,000 Jews in pogroms in Latvia, Lithuania , eastern Poland , Ukraine, and the Romanian borderlands. Although German forces tried to incite pogroms, their role in causing violence

8255-438: The decision to switch to other methods of killing. Most historians agree that Hitler issued an explicit order to kill all Jews across Europe, but there is disagreement as to when. Some historians cite inflammatory statements by Hitler and other Nazi leaders as well as the concurrent mass shootings of Serbian Jews , plans for extermination camps in Poland, and the beginning of the deportation of German Jews as indicative of

8382-643: The deportation of Jews to their area by massacring local Jews in order to free up space in ghettos for the deportees. If the deported Jews did not die of harsh conditions, they were killed later in extermination camps. Jews deported to Auschwitz were initially entered into the camp; the practice of conducting selections and murdering many prisoners upon arrival began in July 1942. In May and June, German and Slovak Jews deported to Lublin began to be sent directly to extermination camps. In Western Europe, almost all Jewish deaths occurred after deportation. The occupiers often relied on local policemen to arrest Jews, limiting

8509-415: The deputy ( Schutzhaftlagerführer ) Auschwitz commander, once said to a new transport of Polish prisoners: You came here not to a holiday in Zoppot , but to the German concentration camp, from which the only way out is through a chimney. If you do not accept that, you can walk straight onto the wires. If there are Jews in the transport, they have no right to live longer than two weeks, Catholic priests -

8636-440: The early twentieth century, most Jews in central and western Europe were well integrated into society, while in eastern Europe, where emancipation had arrived later, many Jews continued to live in small towns , spoke Yiddish , and practiced Orthodox Judaism . Political antisemitism positing the existence of a Jewish question and usually an international Jewish conspiracy emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth century due to

8763-404: The end of 1941, more than 80 percent of the Jews in central Ukraine, eastern Belarus, Russia, Latvia, and Lithuania had been shot, but less than 25 percent of those living farther west where 900,000 remained alive. By the end of the war, around 1.5 to 2 million Jews were shot and as many as 225,000 Roma. The murderers found the executions distressing and logistically inconvenient, which influenced

8890-494: The end of July. The vast majority of civilian victims were Jews. In July and August Heinrich Himmler , the leader of the SS ( Schutzstaffel ), made several visits to the death squads ' zones of operation, relaying orders to kill more Jews. At this time, the killers began to murder Jewish women and children too. Executions peaked at 40,000 a month in Lithuania in August and September and in October and November reached their height in Belarus . The executions often took place

9017-417: The extermination camps later dug up human remains in search of valuables. The property of deported Jews was also appropriated by Germany's allies and collaborating governments. Even puppet states such as Vichy France and Norway were able to successfully lay claim to Jewish property. In the decades after the war, Swiss banks became notorious for harboring gold deposited by Nazis who had stolen it during

9144-454: The final decision having been made before December 1941. Others argue that these policies were initiatives by local leaders and that the final decision was made later. On 5 December 1941, the Soviet Union launched its first major counteroffensive . On 11 December, Hitler declared war on the United States after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor . The next day, he told leading Nazi party officials , referring to his 1939 prophecy , "The world war

9271-682: The forces that participated in liquidating the ghetto, and to get close to the combat areas. Apart from a dozen candid photographs taken by Polish firefighter Leszek Grzywaczewski , those are the only photographs of the Ghetto Uprising taken inside the ghetto. Some of them became highly recognized images of World War II and the Shoah . Photographic captions in the Report are handwritten in the Sütterlin style. The captions contain few facts about

9398-523: The ghetto after a final selection, and around 20,000 or 25,000 managed to hide in the ghetto. Misdirection efforts convinced many Jews that they could avoid deportation until it was too late. During a six-week period beginning in August, 300,000 Jews from the Radom District were sent to Treblinka. At the same time as the mass killing of Jews in the General Governorate, Jews who were in ghettos to

9525-550: The ghetto to work outside it. Because the ghettos were not segregated by sex some family life continued. A Jewish community leadership ( Judenrat ) exercised some authority and tried to sustain the Jewish community while following German demands. As a survival strategy, many tried to make the ghettos useful to the occupiers as a labor reserve. Jews in western Europe were not forced into ghettos but faced discriminatory laws and confiscation of property. Rape and sexual exploitation of Jewish and non-Jewish women in eastern Europe

9652-604: The ghetto would be raided without warning, usually in the early morning, and the extent of the operation would be concealed as long as possible. Trawniki men would cordon off the ghetto while the Order Police and Security Police carried out the action. In addition to local non-Jewish collaborators, the Jewish councils and Jewish ghetto police were often ordered to assist with liquidation actions, although these Jews were in most cases murdered later. Chaotic, capriciously executed selections determined who would be loaded onto

9779-550: The ghetto, and set it on fire. These ghetto uprisings were only undertaken when the inhabitants began to believe that their death was certain. In 1943, larger uprisings in Warsaw , Białystok , and Glubokoje necessitated the use of heavy weapons. The uprising in Warsaw prompted the Nazi leadership to liquidate additional ghettos and labor camps in German-occupied Poland with their inhabitants massacred, such as

9906-535: The invasion, synagogues were burned and thousands of Jews fled or were expelled into the Soviet occupation zone. Various anti-Jewish regulations were soon issued. In October 1939, adult Jews in the General Governorate were required to perform forced labor. In November 1939 they were ordered to wear white armbands. Laws decreed the seizure of most Jewish property and the takeover of Jewish-owned businesses. When Jews were forced into ghettos, they lost their homes and belongings. The first Nazi ghettos were established in

10033-457: The journey, most were killed with poison gas. Other Jews continued to be employed in forced labor camps where many died from starvation, abuse, exhaustion, or being used as test subjects in deadly medical experiments . Although many Jews tried to escape, surviving in hiding was difficult due to factors such as the lack of money to pay helpers and the risk of denunciation. The property, homes, and jobs belonging to murdered Jews were redistributed to

10160-431: The killings leaked out and Hitler ordered a halt to the centralized killing program in August 1941. Decentralized killings via denial of medical care, starvation, and poisoning caused an additional 120,000 deaths by the end of the war. Many of the same personnel and technologies were later used for the mass murder of Jews. Germany gained control of 1.7 million Jews in Poland. The Nazis tried to concentrate Jews in

10287-461: The largest number of Jews . Romania deported about 154,000–170,000 Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina to ghettos in Transnistria from 1941 to 1943. Jews from Transnistria were also imprisoned in these ghettos, where the total death toll may have reached 160,000. Hungary expelled thousands of Carpathian Ruthenian and foreign Jews in 1941, who were shortly thereafter shot in Ukraine . At

10414-439: The majority of its Jewish population (along with a larger number of Serbs ), and later deported several thousand Jews in 1942 and 1943. Bulgaria deported 11,000 Jews from Bulgarian-occupied Greece and Yugoslavia , who were murdered at Treblinka, but declined to allow the deportation of Jews from its prewar territory . Romania and Hungary did not send any Jews, which were the largest surviving populations after 1942. Prior to

10541-690: The military actions only. Most of the victims have perished due to political doctrine, classifying all the Slavic nations as subhumans, and other administrative and compulsory orders and restrictions set up by the new government, with SS-Obergruppenführer Krüger as the most senior commander of SS and Police in German-occupied Poland. I have nothing against - after the war will be won - the extermination of all this Slavic mob. The Polish Secret State ordered his death, but an assassination attempt on 20 April 1943 in Kraków failed when two bombs hurled at his car missed

10668-437: The most part, only those working in armaments production were spared. The majority of ghettos were liquidated in mass executions nearby, especially if they were not near a train station. Larger ghettos were more commonly liquidated during multiple deportations to extermination camps. During this campaign, 1.5 million Polish Jews were murdered in the largest killing operation of the Holocaust. In order to reduce resistance,

10795-457: The new regime. The new regime built popular support through economic growth, which partly occurred through state-led measures such as rearmament . The annexations of Austria (1938), Sudetenland (1938), and Bohemia and Moravia (1939) also increased the Nazis' popular support. Germans were inundated with propaganda both against Jews and other groups targeted by the Nazis. The roughly 500,000 German Jews made up less than 1 percent of

10922-540: The new rules (for example: failure to comply with the curfew), all the members of the family were sent to concentration camp. In the case, when a serious disobedience was committed by a farmer, the whole village was under process of pacification (mass execution by burning). Due to harsh "politics" of the occupiers, the shortage of the food and medications in the cities and towns was extreme. The Poles were starving (average food allocation amounted to 2,600 calories for Germans, 700 for Poles and 400 for Jews). The worst situation

11049-601: The number who were deported. In 1942, nearly 100,000 Jews were deported from Belgium , France , and the Netherlands . Only 25 percent of the Jews in France were killed; most of them were either non-citizens or recent immigrants. Si Kaddour Benghabrit and Abdelkader Mesli saved hundreds of Jews by hiding them in the basements of the Grand Mosque of Paris and other resistance efforts in France. The death rate in

11176-527: The operation is unknown. Franz Konrad confessed to taking some of the photographs; the rest were probably taken by photographers from Propaganda Kompanie nr 689 . In addition to the photographs found in the reports, there were about 45 additional photographs that were not included. According to Yad Vashem , these were found in Stroop's possession when he was captured by the Americans after the war. Some of those photographs were closely related to those used in

11303-442: The organization of extermination, the number rises to 500,000. Genocide required the active and tacit consent of millions of Germans and non-Germans. The motivation of Holocaust perpetrators varied and has led to historiographical debate. Studies of the SS officials who organized the Holocaust have found that most had strong ideological commitment to Nazism. In addition to ideological factors, many perpetrators were motivated by

11430-426: The peak of the genocide, as over 3 million Jews were murdered, with 20 or 25 percent of Holocaust victims dying before early 1942 and the same number surviving by the end of the year. Gas vans developed from those used to kill mental patients since 1939 were assigned to the Einsatzgruppen and first used in November 1941; victims were forced into the van and killed with engine exhaust. The first extermination camp

11557-632: The photos' content, and in some cases do not match the images at all. The captions often express the racist mindset of the report's authors. Many of the places, people and events depicted were not identified until after the report's publication. Photographs included in one of the two copies of the Stroop Report. Image captions include a reference and translation of the original German caption, followed by current photo caption. Click on images for more information. Friedrich-Wilhelm Kr%C3%BCger Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger (8 May 1894 – 10 May 1945)

11684-480: The phrase " Final Solution " as a euphemism for their genocide of Jews. Jews have lived in Europe for more than two thousand years. Throughout the Middle Ages in Europe, Jews were subjected to antisemitism based on Christian theology , which blamed them for killing Jesus . In the nineteenth century many European countries granted full citizenship rights to Jews in hopes that they would assimilate . By

11811-519: The population - on SS commanders' orders - public executions by shooting or hanging were conducted. The systematic process of kidnapping around 200,000 children from Polish families for further Germanisation was also Krüger's domain. People disabled mentally or with Down syndrome were secretly killed by the authorities (mainly by Sicherheitspolizei ). Later on, the gas vans were invented by German doctor of chemistry and SS- Untersturmführer August Becker (not subordinated to Krüger), to make

11938-406: The possibility of better treatment from the occupiers, or ideological motivations such as nationalism and anti-communism. According to historian Christian Gerlach , non-Germans "not under German command" caused 5 to 6 percent of the Jewish deaths, and their involvement was crucial in other ways. Millions of Germans and others benefited from the genocide. Corruption was rampant in the SS despite

12065-832: The previous Aktion T4 programme —amid increasing talk among German administrators in Poland of large-scale murder of Jews in the General Governorate. In late 1941 in East Upper Silesia , Jews in forced-labor camps operated by the Schmelt Organization deemed "unfit for work" began to be sent in groups to Auschwitz where they were murdered. In early 1942, Zyklon B became the preferred killing method in extermination camps after gassing experiments were conducted on Russian POWs in late August 1941. The camps were located on rail lines to make it easier to transport Jews to their deaths, but in remote places to avoid notice. The stench caused by mass killing operations

12192-440: The proceeds of the Holocaust being designated as state property. Different German state agencies vied to receive property stolen from Jews murdered at the death camps. Many workers were able to obtain better jobs vacated by murdered Jews. Businessmen benefitted from eliminating their Jewish competitors or taking over Jewish-owned businesses. Others took over housing and possessions that had belonged to Jews. Some Poles living near

12319-439: The prohibition of relationships, including fraternization, between German and foreign workers, which imposed the penalty of imprisonment and death. Gerlach estimates that 200,000 Jews survived in hiding across Europe. Knowledge of German intentions was essential to take action, but many struggled to believe the news. Many attempted to jump from trains or flee ghettos and camps, but successfully escaping and living in hiding

12446-542: The prospect of material gain and social advancement. German SS, police, and regular army units rarely had trouble finding enough men to shoot Jewish civilians, even though punishment for refusal was absent or light. Non-German perpetrators and collaborators included Dutch, French, and Polish policemen , Romanian soldiers, foreign SS and police auxiliaries , Ukrainian Insurgent Army partisans, and some civilians. Some were coerced into committing violence against Jews, but others killed for entertainment, material rewards,

12573-492: The report, as they depicted the same events. Many of those additional photographs are described in reputable sources as coming from the Stroop Report, even if they do not appear in either of the surviving copies. The high-quality photographs taken for Stroop constitute a unique documentation of the final stage of liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto. The photographer was permitted access to Stroop's inner circle, to accompany

12700-593: The same when we can get at them." Reichsführer SS expressed the German doctrine against Untermenschen by these words: The sole goal of this schooling is to teach them simple arithmetic, nothing above the number 500; writing one's name; and the doctrine that it is divine law to obey the Germans. I do not think that reading is desirable. As the highest commander in charge he looked after the execution of Operation Harvest Festival in district of Lublin, when during one day in November 1943 SS, Order Police (101st Police Battalion from Hamburg volunteered for this operation) and

12827-415: The secondary schools were teaching only basics. Lessons of history, geography and the Polish literature ceased to be performed. The primary education in the countryside was not allowed during the next five years, leaving - in 1945 - a couple of million teenagers, barely able to write and read. In Galicia for every book given to the German authorities, a bottle of alcohol was the pay (one of the assumptions of

12954-498: The senior Nazi leadership voiced doubts about killing German Jews. Executions of German Jews in the Baltics resumed in early 1942. After the expansion of killings to target the entire Soviet Jewish population, the 3,000 men of the Einsatzgruppen proved insufficient and Himmler mobilized 21 battalions of Order Police to assist them. In addition, Wehrmacht soldiers, Waffen-SS brigades, and local auxiliaries shot many Jews. By

13081-697: The target. Six months later, he wrote in a letter: I have lost honour and reputation due to my four-year struggle in the GG ( General Government ) ( German : Ich habe für meinen vierjährigen Kampf im GG Ehre und Reputation verloren ). From November 1943 until April 1944 Krüger served with the SS Division Prinz Eugen conducting Nazi security warfare in occupied Yugoslavia. While ostensibly engaged in anti-partisan fight in Yugoslavia, this unit became notorious for committing atrocities against

13208-428: The trains. Many Jews were shot during the action, often leaving ghettos strewn with corpses. Jewish forced laborers had to clean it up and collect any valuables from the victims. The Warsaw Ghetto was cleared between 22 July and 12 September. Of the original population of 350,000 Jews, 250,000 were killed at Treblinka, 11,000 were deported to labor camps, 10,000 were shot in the ghetto, 35,000 were allowed to remain in

13335-401: The victims were robbed of their remaining possessions, forced to undress, had their hair cut, and were chased into the gas chamber. Death from the gas was agonizing and could take as long as 30 minutes. The gas chambers were primitive and sometimes malfunctioned. Some prisoners were shot because the gas chambers were not functioning. At other extermination camps, nearly everyone on a transport

13462-454: The victims' property was looted both by the occupiers and local inhabitants. Around 200 ghettos were established in the occupied Soviet Union, with many existing only briefly before their inhabitants were executed. A few large ghettos such as Vilna, Kovno , Riga , Białystok , and Lwów lasted into 1943 because they became centers of production. Victims of mass shootings included Jews deported from elsewhere. Besides Germany, Romania killed

13589-475: The war. Some of the goods - crucial to Polish cultural heritage like paintings: Battle of Grunwald or Prussian Homage , were hidden in a local farms. If they were seized by the occupiers, they would be destroyed as anti-German. Policies aimed at cultural genocide resulted in the deaths of thousands of scholars and artists, and the theft and destruction of innumerable cultural artifacts. All Polish theatres were disbanded, likewise all universities were shut, and

13716-683: The west and east were targeted. Tens of thousands of Jews were deported from ghettos in the Warthegau and East Upper Silesia to Chełmno and Auschwitz. 300,000 Jews—largely skilled laborers—were shot in Volhynia , Podolia , and southwestern Belarus. Deportations and mass executions in the Bialystok District and Galicia killed many Jews. Although there was practically no resistance in the General Governorate in 1942, some Soviet Jews improvised weapons, attacked those attempting to liquidate

13843-584: The whole process faster, more discreet and taking the burden of participating in a mass shootings from ordinary soldiers. Krüger supervised the action of destroying Polish historical buildings (without military significance), cultural sites and in general Polish culture - both by stealing the art works or - if they were related to Polish history - burning some of them on the spot (vide: medieval synagogue). More than 500,000 of Polish and international (paintings by da Vinci , Raphael or Rembrandt ) piece of arts were stolen. Most of them never come back to Poland after

13970-410: The whole process military or para-military forces were used, acting on orders of local SS or police commander. In the case of refusal to deliver on time, severe punishments like beatings or arrests were applied. Some of them were resulting in sending to a concentration camps. All sorts of repressions were introduced, including the death penalty (without formal accusation or a lawful trial). To terrorize

14097-576: The worst-treated groups except for Roma and Jews. Soviet and Polish forced laborers endured inadequate food and medical treatment, long hours, and abuse by employers. Hundreds of thousands died. Many others were forced to work for the occupiers without leaving their country of residence. Some of Germany's allies, including Slovakia and Hungary, agreed to deport Jews to protect non-Jews from German demands for forced labor. East European women were also kidnapped, via lapanka , to serve as sex slaves of German soldiers in military and camp brothels despite

14224-588: Was Chełmno in the Wartheland, established on the initiative of the local civil administrator Arthur Greiser with Himmler's approval; it began operations in December 1941 using gas vans. In October 1941, Higher SS and Police Leader of Lublin Odilo Globocnik began work planning Belzec —the first purpose-built extermination camp to feature stationary gas chambers using carbon monoxide based on

14351-745: Was a German paramilitary commander in charge of, and personally involved in progressive annihilation of the Polish nation, its culture, its heritage and its wealth. Long before the war he was a high-ranking member of the SA and the SS . Between 1939 and 1943 he was the Higher SS and Police Leader in the General Government , giving him command of all police and security forces in German-occupied Poland. In this capacity, he organized and supervised numerous crimes against humanity and had major responsibility for

14478-645: Was an engineer at the company at that time and who later became SS commander in Berlin and leader of the Ordnungspolizei (order police) or Orpo. The two men soon formed a friendship. On 15 November 1929, Krüger joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) as member 171,199. On 1 February 1931, he also joined the SS (member number 6,123), which he left in April to transfer to the SA. With the help of Daluege, Krüger began

14605-485: Was appointed chancellor in January 1933 in a backroom deal supported by right-wing politicians. Within months, all other political parties were banned, the regime seized control of the media, tens of thousands of political opponents—especially communists—were arrested, and a system of camps for extrajudicial imprisonment was set up. The Nazi regime cracked down on crime and social outsiders—such as Roma and Sinti , homosexual men , and those perceived as workshy—through

14732-915: Was commander of a combat unit of the Orpo at Army Group South (known as Army Group Ostmark after 1 May 1945). At the end of the war Krüger committed suicide in Upper Austria . The Holocaust The Holocaust ( / ˈ h ɑː l ə k ɔː ˈ s t / , HAW -lə-kawst ) was the genocide of European Jews during World War II . Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe , around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out primarily through mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps , chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau , Treblinka , Belzec , Sobibor , and Chełmno in occupied Poland . Separate Nazi persecutions killed

14859-411: Was common . Germany and its allies Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Italy invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. Although the war was launched more for strategic than ideological reasons, what Hitler saw as an apocalyptic battle against the forces of Jewish Bolshevism was to be carried out as a war of extermination with complete disregard for the laws and customs of war . A quick victory

14986-553: Was established to hold those members of the Polish intelligentsia not killed in the purges. Around 400,000 Poles were expelled from the Wartheland in western Poland to the General Governorate occupation zone from 1939 to 1941, and the area was resettled by ethnic Germans from eastern Europe . The rest of Poland was occupied by the Soviet Union , which invaded Poland from the east on 17 September pursuant to

15113-403: Was expected and was planned to be followed by a massive demographic engineering project to remove 31 million people and replace them with German settlers . To increase the speed of conquest the Germans planned to feed their army by looting, exporting additional food to Germany, and to terrorize the local inhabitants with preventative killings. The Germans foresaw that the invasion would cause

15240-460: Was extremely difficult and often unsuccessful. The support, or at least absence of active opposition, of the local population was essential but often lacking in Eastern Europe. Those in hiding depended on the assistance of non-Jews. Having money, social connections with non-Jews, a non-Jewish appearance, perfect command of the local language, determination, and luck played a major role in determining survival. Jews in hiding were hunted down with

15367-459: Was first displayed by the chief U.S. prosecutor Robert H. Jackson for the judges during his opening address. The assistant prosecutor dealing with the persecution of the Jews referred to it as "the finest example of ornate German craftsmanship, leather bound, profusely illustrated, typed on heavy bond paper ... the almost unbelievable recital of the proud accomplishment by Major General of Police Stroop". Both copies were also used in Nuremberg in

15494-558: Was in the ghettos, where the mortality was much higher than among "free" Poles. Farmers in GG were obliged to deliver draconian amount of grain, meat, milk and potatoes, which were sent straight to Germany. No pay was given to the victims. Just in the year 1942–1943 around 633,000 tons of the grain were confiscated from Polish villages. In the Autumn period of 1944 nearly 388,000 tons of potatoes were stolen. The contingents were taken by force and in

15621-535: Was killed on arrival, but at Auschwitz around 20–25 percent were separated out for labor, although many of these prisoners died later on through starvation, mass shooting, torture, and medical experiments. Belzec, Sobibor , and Treblinka reported a combined revenue of RM 178.7 million from belongings stolen from their victims, far exceeding costs. Combined, the camps required the labor of less than 3,000 Jewish prisoners, 1,000 Trawniki men (largely Ukrainian auxiliaries), and very few German guards. About half of

15748-529: Was named Inspector of SS Mounted Units. Throughout these years, Krüger also pursued a political career within the Nazi Party. At the July 1932 election, he won a seat in the Reichstag from electoral constituency 5 ( Frankfurt an der Oder ) and, on 10 July 1933, he was made a member of the Prussian State Council . He would hold these seats until the fall of the Nazi regime. Also he served

15875-419: Was noticeable to anyone nearby. Except in the deportations from western and central Europe, people were typically deported to the camps in overcrowded cattle cars . As many as 150 people were forced into a single boxcar . Many died en route , partly because of the low priority accorded to these transports. Shortage of rail transport sometimes led to postponement or cancellation of deportations. Upon arrival,

16002-663: Was performed by Orpo or ethnic Germans ( Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz ). The victims were mainly University lecturers, retired military officers, high-rank policemen, managing staff of the Polish State Railways, journalists, businessmen, landowners, notable Catholic priests, internationally known sportsmen (vide Janusz Kusociński ), judges, teachers, social workers, senior administrative officials or other members of Polish intellectual elite. Already in November 1939, Krüger had fulfilled Hitler's personal order, and 184 professors of Jagiellonian University were arrested in

16129-418: Was rapidly followed on 26 October by his formal appointment as HSSPF "Ost" to the part of German-occupied Poland organized into the General Government , with headquarters in Kraków . Krüger thus held the highest police and security post in occupied Poland. During the first months of the war in Poland, he was one of the coordinators of Action AB - the mass murder by shooting of Polish intelligentsia , which

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