AB-Aktion or Außerordentliche Befriedungsaktion (German for Special Pacificational Action or Operation), was a German campaign during World War II aimed at Polish leaders and the intelligentsia. In the spring and summer of 1940 more than 30,000 Poles were arrested by the German authorities in German-occupied Poland.[1] About 3,500 leaders and 3,000 professors, teachers and priests (labeled as suspected of criminal activities) up to 7,000 victims were subsequently massacred at various locations including at the Palmiry Forest.[2] [3] The rest were sent mainly to German concentration camps.
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History
The anti-Polish campaign was planned by Hans Frank, the commander of the General Government. The mass murder of Polish leaders, politicians, artists, the intelligentsia, and people suspected of anti-Nazi activity was seen as a pre-emptive measure to keep the Polish resistance scattered and to prevent the Poles from revolting during the planned German invasion of France.[4] Prior to the action, in late 1939 and early 1940, most Polish university professors, intellectuals, writers, politicians, teachers and other members of the elite of Polish society were briefly arrested by the Gestapo and had their names registered. The Ausserordentliche Befriedungsaktion was finally accepted on May 16, 1940 by Hans Frank. In the following weeks, the German police, the Gestapo, the SS and the Wehrmacht arrested roughly 30,000 Poles in major Polish cities, including Warsaw, Łódź, Lublin and Kraków. The interned were held in a number of prisons, including the infamous Pawiak, where they were subject to brutal interrogations. After time spent in the prisons of Warsaw, Kraków, Radom, Kielce, Nowy Sącz, Tarnów, Lublin or Wiśnicz, the arrested Poles were transferred to German concentration camps, most notably to the newly-created camp of Auschwitz, as well as Sachsenhausen and Mauthausen. Approximately 3,500 members of the Polish intelligentsia were executed in the mass murder sites in Palmiry near Warsaw, Firlej, Wincentynów near Radom, and in the Bliżyn forest near Skarżysko-Kamienna.
Among those killed were Maciej Rataj, Mieczysław Niedziałkowski and Janusz Kusociński. Actions were started on a similar scale in other Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany. According to many historians, including Norman Davies, the action against Polish leaders was coordinated with the authorities of the Soviet Union, who at the same time prepared the mass murder of 22 000 Polish military officers at Katyń and other places. The active persecution of Polish intellectuals was continued until the end of the war. The direct continuation of the AB Action was a German campaign in the east started after the German invasion of the USSR. Among the most notable mass executions of Polish professors was the massacre of Lwów professors, in which approximately 45 professors of the university in Lwów were murdered together with their families and guests. Among those killed in the massacre were Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński, former Polish prime minister Kazimierz Bartel, Włodzimierz Stożek, and Stanisław Ruziewicz. Thousands more perished in the massacre in Ponary, in German concentration camps, and in ghettos.
Aftermath
After the war, many people responsible for organisation of the AB Action were tried before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals. However, most of the German commanders were never held responsible for the crimes.
References
- ^ Chapter "Hitler's Plans for Poland." Noakes and Pridham, Nazism: A History in Documents, p. 988.
- ^ AB-Aktion, Shoah Resource Center, The International School for Holocaust Studies.
- ^ "Poles: Victims of the Nazi Era" at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- ^ Noakes and Pridham, Nazism: A History in Documents, p. 965.
