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Kraków District
Kraków District ''( German: Distrikt Krakau, Polish: Dystrykt krakowski)'' was one of the original four administrative districts set up by Nazi Germany after the German occupation of Poland during the years of 1939–1945. Dean, Martin. “KRAKÓW REGION (DISTRIKT KRAKAU).” The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ''Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945. Ghettos in German-Occupied Eastern Europe'', A ed., vol. 2, Indiana University Press, 2012, p. 476. This district, along with the other three districts, formed the General Government. It was established on October 12, 1939 by Adolf Hitler, with the capital in occupied Kraków – the historic residence of Polish royalty. The Nazi ''Gauleiter'' Hans Frank became the Governor-General of the entire territory of the General Government. He made his residence in Kraków at the heavily guarded Wawel castle. Frank was the former legal counsel to the Nazi Party. Administration The Kraków District was divided up into 12 Kr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
General Government
The General Government (german: Generalgouvernement, pl, Generalne Gubernatorstwo, uk, Генеральна губернія), also referred to as the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (german: Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete), was a German zone of occupation established after the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, Slovakia and the Soviet Union in 1939 at the onset of World War II. The newly occupied Second Polish Republic was split into three zones: the General Government in its centre, Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany in the west, and Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union in the east. The territory was expanded substantially in 1941, after the German Invasion of the Soviet Union, to include the new District of Galicia. The area of the ''Generalgouvernement'' roughly corresponded with the Austrian part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth after the Third Partition of Poland in 1795. The basis for the formation of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miechów
Miechów is a town in Poland, in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, about north of Kraków. It is the capital of Miechów County. Population is 11,852 (2004). Miechów lies on the Miechówka river, along European route E77. The area of the town is , and it has a rail station, located on the main railroad which connects Kraków with Warsaw. History In the early years of the Polish state, the area of Miechów belonged to the medieval tribe of the Vistulans. In the late 10th century, the region was taken over by the Polans. The beginning of Miechów dates back to the year 1163, when a Polish Duke of Pomerania Jaksa of the House of Griffins, who owned the village, invited monks of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre. Apart from Miechów, prince Jaksa handed two other villages to the order. The new church with a monastery was blessed by the Bishop of Kraków Gędka in 1170. Miechów took advantage of the presence of the order. The settlement expanded together with the abbey, and in 1290 pri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Julian Scherner
Julian Scherner (September 23, 1895 – April 28, 1945) was a Nazi Party official and a high-ranking member in the SS of Nazi Germany. During World War II, he served as the SS and Police Leader of Kraków, Germany-occupied Poland. Early life Julian Scherner was born on September 23, 1895 in the town of Bagamoyo in German East Africa, where he lived until the age of two. Scherner attended the cadet schools, ''Kadettenanstalt'', Karlsruhe between October 1, 1905 and 1911 and Berlin-Lichterfield between 1911 and 1914. Scherner was enlisted in the ''infantrie'' rgt. 114 between March 15, 1912 and August 10, 1914. During this time, Scherner earned the rank of ''Fähnrich'' in April 1914 and received officer rank on August 5, 1914.Emmett, Stuart (May 30, 2017). Strafvollzugslager der SS und Polizei: Himmler's Wartime Institutions for the Detention of Waffen-SS and Polizei Criminals. Fronthill Media. p. 11928. . In 1914, he joined the ''Reichsheer'' or Imperial army. Scherner serve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hans Schwedler
Otto Hugo Hans Schwedler (17 October 1878 – 2 May 1945) was a German Nazi SS-''Brigadeführer'' and ''Generalmajor'' of the Waffen-SS who served as the SS and Police Leader in the Kraków District during the establishment of the Kraków Ghetto. He also was involved in the administration of the Nazi concentration camp system, and committed suicide close to the end of the Second World War in Europe. Early life Schwedler was born in Berlin, the son of a businessman. After completing his education, he sought a professional military career by joining the Imperial German Army and was commissioned a ''Leutnant'' in 1898. He served in the First World War as a company and battalion commander. He earned the Iron Cross, 1st and 2nd class, and the Wound Badge, in black. In February 1919 he was discharged from the army with the rank of ''Major''. In 1920 he joined ''Der Stahlhelm'', the German military veterans organization. Peacetime SS career Schwedler joined the Nazi Party in Februa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oberführer
__NOTOC__ ''Oberführer'' (short: ''Oberf'', , ) was an early paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) dating back to 1921. An ''Oberführer'' was typically a NSDAP member in charge of a group of paramilitary units in a particular geographical region. From 1921 to 1925, the phrase ''Oberführer'' was used as a title in the ''Sturmabteilung'' (SA), but became an actual SA rank after 1926. ''Oberführer'' was also a rank of the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS, at that time a branch of the SA), established in 1925 as ''Gauführer'', a rank for SS officers in charge of SS personnel in the several ''Gaue'' throughout Germany; in 1928 the rank was renamed ''Oberführer'', and used of the commanders of the three regional ''SS-Oberführerbereiche''. In 1930, the SS was reorganized into ''SS-Gruppen'' and ''Brigaden'', at which time ''Oberführer'' became subordinate to the higher rank of ''Brigadeführer''. By 1932, ''Oberführer'' was an established rank of the SA, SS and NSKK. ''Oberführ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karl Zech
Karl Zech (6 February 1892 – 1 April 1944) was a German SS-''Gruppenführer'' and Police President of Essen who served as the first SS and Police Leader of Krakau (today, Kraków) during the Second World War. Convicted of corruption and dismissed from the SS, he committed suicide in 1944. Early life Zech was born in Swinemünde (today, Świnoujście) and after graduating from the ''realgymnasium'' there, joined Infantry Regiment 62 (3rd Upper Silesian) of the Imperial German Army in 1910. Promoted to ''Leutnant'' in 1911, he was a company commander in the First World War with that regiment, and later became a staff officer and brigade adjutant. During the war, he earned the Iron Cross, 1st and 2nd class and the Wound Badge in black. After the end of the war in 1918, he was a member from December 1918 to June 1919 of the ''Landesschützenkorps'', a ''Freikorps'' unit that was involved in the suppression of the Spartacist uprising. From June to October 1919 he worked on the sta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gruppenführer
__NOTOC__ ''Gruppenführer'' (, ) was an early paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party (NSDAP), first created in 1925 as a senior rank of the SA. Since then, the term ''Gruppenführer'' is also used for leaders of groups/teams of the police, fire departments, military and several other organizations. History In 1930, ''Gruppenführer'' became an SS rank and was originally bestowed upon those officers who commanded '' SS-Gruppen'' and also upon senior officers of the SS command staff. In 1932, the SS was reorganized and the ''SS-Gruppen'' were reformed into '' SS-Abschnitte''. A ''Gruppenführer'' commanded an ''SS-Abschnitt'' while a new rank, that of ''Obergruppenführer'', oversaw the '' SS-Oberabschnitte'' which were the largest SS units in Germany. Initially in the SA, NSKK, and SS, the rank of ''Gruppenführer'' was considered equivalent to a full general, but became regarded as equivalent to ''Generalleutnant'' after 1934. During the Second World War, when the Waffen-SS b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Wendler
Richard Wendler (22 January 1898 – 24 August 1972) was a high-ranking Nazi official during World War II. During the occupation of Poland, he was the Governor of new District Lublin in the General Government, in charge of Lublin concentration camp and the creation of the Częstochowa Ghetto, among others. Before his deployment to Poland, he was the mayor of the city Hof between 1933 and 1941 and became an SS-'' Gruppenführer'' in 1942 during the murderous Operation Reinhard. Wendler's sister was married to a brother of ''Reichsführer-SS'' Heinrich Himmler Biography Wendler was born the son of a border official, in southeast Bavaria, near the border with Austria. He attended elementary school in Bad Reichenhall and the humanist Ludwigs gymnasium in Munich. Wendler was a soldier during the First World War, reaching the rank of ''Unteroffizier''. From the spring of 1919, he was a member of the ''Freikorps'' and participated in the fight against the Bavarian Soviet Republic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Otto Wächter
Baron Otto Gustav von Wächter (8 July 1901 – 14 July 1949) was an Austrian lawyer, Nazi politician and a high-ranking member of the SS, a paramilitary organisation of the Nazi Party. During the occupation of Poland in World War II, he was the governor of the district of Kraków in the General Government and then of the District of Galicia (now mainly in Ukraine). Later, in 1944, he was appointed as head of the German Military Administration in the puppet state of the Republic of Salò in Italy. During the last two months of the war, he was responsible for the non-German forces at the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) in Berlin. In 1940, 68,000 Polish Jews were expelled from Kraków and in 1941 the Kraków Ghetto was created for the remaining 15,000 Jews by his decrees. After the war, wanted by the Polish People's Republic, von Wächter managed to evade the Allied authorities for four years. In 1949, he was given refuge by anti-communist Austrian bishop Alois Hudal in the Va ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Schutzstaffel
The ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS; also stylized as ''ᛋᛋ'' with Armanen runes; ; "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II. It began with a small guard unit known as the ''Saal-Schutz'' ("Hall Security") made up of party volunteers to provide security for party meetings in Munich. In 1925, Heinrich Himmler joined the unit, which had by then been reformed and given its final name. Under his direction (1929–1945) it grew from a small paramilitary formation during the Weimar Republic to one of the most powerful organizations in Nazi Germany. From the time of the Nazi Party's rise to power until the regime's collapse in 1945, the SS was the foremost agency of security, surveillance, and terror within Germany and German-occupied Europe. The two main constituent groups were the '' Allgemeine SS'' (General SS) and ''Waffen-SS'' (Armed SS). The ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national republics; in practice, both its government and its economy were highly centralized until its final years. It was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with the city of Moscow serving as its capital as well as that of its largest and most populous republic: the Russian SFSR. Other major cities included Leningrad (Russian SFSR), Kiev (Ukrainian SSR), Minsk ( Byelorussian SSR), Tashkent (Uzbek SSR), Alma-Ata (Kazakh SSR), and Novosibirsk (Russian SFSR). It was the largest country in the world, covering over and spanning eleven time zones. The country's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
