SS Einsatzgruppen Leader Bruno Streckenbach
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Bruno Streckenbach was born on the 7 February 1902 in Hamburg, the son of a customs official. He joined the Hamburg Police in 1933 and when the Nazis came to power, he was head of the Gestapo in Hamburg.
He then served in Poland as head of Einsatzgruppe 1 which was located in the Neutitschen, Bielsko and Rzeszow areas. After November 1939 personnel from this Einsatzgruppe were assigned to the SS and SD units in Krakow.
In Krakow Streckenbach was one of the leading architects of the mass arrests of the professors in Krakow University and Polish intelligentsia during May 1940, the infamous ‘Aktion AB,’ which in German stood for Ausserordentliche Befriedungsaktion, which resulted in the death of 3,500 intellectuals, for which he was promoted in January 1941.
The Reich’s Military Planning committee planned the A-B Aktion during February and March 1940, and Hans Frank ordered the aktion to commence on the 16 May 1940, within a week of the start of Hitler’s western European campaign.
ce were “very interested” in the Jewish question.
The Germans arrested about 3,500 Poles in the Generalgouvernment whom they considered underground leaders and 3,000 suspected of criminal activities, and these were murdered in the Palmiry Forest, near Warsaw and at other sites.
Among those Polish intellectuals murdered were Maciej Rataj, Stefan Bryla, Tadeusz Tanski, Mieczyslaw Niedzialkowski and Janusz Kusocinski.
The A-B aktion was planned to end by the middle of 1940, but lasted well into the autumn of the same year, with executions in a number of locations, but whilst it depleted the ranks of the Polish underground, it did not succeed in eliminating Polish resistance, as envisaged.
On the 31 October 1939 Streckenbach informed Hans Frank about Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler intentions to deport Jews who lived in the areas of Poland now incorporated into the Reich, and replace them with Poles who could be considered racially suitable for Germanisation.
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Under the decree dated the 28 November 1939, in the Generalgouvernement, the Judenrat was placed under the control of the civilian authorities. Two days later at a meeting in Krakow, with Hans Frank, F-Wilhem Kruger, Gustav Wachter and others Streckenbach, the commander of the Security Police and Security Services in the Generalgouvernment, informed the meeting that the Security Police and Security Services in the Generalgouvernment, informed the meeting that the Security Police were “very interested” in the Jewish question.
On October 31, 1939, he informed Hans Frank, General Governor for the East, about Himmler’s intention to organize the deportation of all Jews coming from regions that were now part of the Reich while about one million Poles “of good origin” would be “imported” into the Reich in order to be “dePolonized”.
Streckenbach wanted full control over the Judenrat, “as sooner or later all questions pertaining to Jewish matters would have to be referred to the Security Police especially if the contemplated action required “executive enforcement,” but Hans Frank was strongly against this and protested, however it was later agreed that the civilian authorities would co-operate with the Security Forces.
As the first BdS, which stood for Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, in Krakow, Streckenbach was also involved in the Generalplan Ost which was the Nazi plan for the expulsion of more than 50 million non-Germanised Slavs of Eastern Europe through forced migration, beyond the Ural Mountains and into Siberia. In their place up to 8-10 million Germans would be settled in an expanded living space, ‘lebensraum.’
Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/einsatz/streckenbach.html
The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
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Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2010
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