, location = Palmiry Forest and similar locations in occupied Poland , date = Spring–summer 1940 , incident_type =

Mass murder Mass murder is the act of murdering a number of people, typically simultaneously or over a relatively short period of time and in close geographic proximity. The United States Congress defines mass killings as the killings of three or more pe ...

with automatic weapons , perpetrators =

Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the '' Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previo ...

, ''

Einsatzgruppen (, ; also ' task forces') were (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe. The had an integral role in the im ...

'' , participants = , organizations =

Waffen-SS The (, "Armed SS") was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts, volunteers and conscripts from both occup ...

, ''

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 ...

'', Order Police battalions, ''

Sicherheitsdienst ' (, ''Security Service''), full title ' (Security Service of the '' Reichsführer-SS''), or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Established in 1931, the SD was the first Nazi intelligence organization ...

'' , victims = 7,000 intellectuals and leaders of the

Second Polish Republic The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 1918 and 1939. The state was established on 6 November 1918, before the end of the First World ...

, survivors = , witnesses = , documentation =

Pawiak Pawiak () was a prison built in 1835 in Warsaw, Congress Poland. During the January 1863 Uprising, it served as a transfer camp for Poles sentenced by Imperial Russia to deportation to Siberia. During the World War II German occupation o ...

and

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...

, memorials = Murder site and deportation points , notes = Lethal phase of the

invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week af ...

The ''AB-Aktion'' (german: Außerordentliche Befriedungsaktion, ), was a second stage of the

Nazi German Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

campaign of violence during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

aimed to eliminate the intellectuals and the upper classes of the

across the territories slated for eventual annexation. Most of the killings were arranged in a form of

forced disappearance An enforced disappearance (or forced disappearance) is the secret abduction or imprisonment of a person by a state or political organization, or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organi ...

s from multiple cities and towns upon the German arrival. In the spring and summer of 1940, more than 30,000 Polish citizens were arrested by the Nazi authorities in German-occupied central Poland, the so-called

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 be ...

. About 7,000 of them including community leaders, professors, teachers and priests (labeled as suspected of criminal activities) were subsequently massacred secretly at various locations including at the Palmiry forest complex near Palmiry. AB-Aktion
Shoah Resource Center, The International School for Holocaust Studies. The others were sent to

Nazi concentration camps From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as con ...

History

The mass murder of Polish leaders, politicians, artists, aristocrats, the

intelligentsia The intelligentsia is a status class composed of the university-educated people of a society who engage in the complex mental labours by which they critique, shape, and lead in the politics, policies, and culture of their society; as such, the i ...

, and people suspected of potential anti-Nazi activity began in the fall of 1939, and was seen by Nazi Germany 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. The anti-Polish ''AB-Aktion'' was prepared by

Hans Frank Hans Michael Frank (23 May 1900 – 16 October 1946) was a German politician and lawyer who served as head of the General Government in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Second World War. Frank was an early member of the German Workers' Par ...

, the commander of the

. It was also discussed with Soviet officials during a series of secretive Gestapo–NKVD Conferences. The first killings of Polish intelligentsia took place soon after the German invasion, lasting from autumn 1939 until spring 1940. It was called Operation ''

Intelligenzaktion The ''Intelligenzaktion'' (), or the Intelligentsia mass shootings, was a series of mass murders which was committed against the Polish intelligentsia (teachers, priests, physicians, and other prominent members of Polish society) early in the ...

'', a plan to eliminate Poland's intelligentsia and leadership in the western part of the country, realized by ''

'' and '' Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz''. As the result of this operation 60,000 Polish nobles, teachers, entrepreneurs, social workers, priests, judges and political activists were killed in 10 regional actions.Maria Wardzyńska, ''Był rok 1939. Operacja niemieckiej policji bezpieczeństwa w Polsce. Intelligenzaktion''. IPN Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2009 The ''Intelligenzaktion'' was continued by the German ''AB-Aktion'' Operation in occupied territories of central Poland. Both murder operations were conducted in part according to an "enemies of the Reich list" prepared before the war by members of the

German minority in Poland The registered German minority in Poland at the 2011 national census consisted of 148,000 people, of whom 64,000 declared both German and Polish ethnicities and 45,000 solely German ethnicity.Przynależność narodowo-etniczna ludności – wyni ...

and printed ahead of time by the German Intelligence as the '' Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen'' (Special Prosecution Book-Poland). Prior to ''AB-Aktion'', 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

and had their names registered. Frank finally accepted and approved the ''Ausserordentliche Befriedungsaktion'' on May 16, 1940. In the following weeks, the German police, Gestapo, SD (''

'') and units of the ''

'' arrested roughly 30,000 Poles in major Polish cities, including

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officiall ...

Łódź Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of ca ...

Lublin Lublin is the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the center of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin is the largest Polish city east of ...

and

Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula, Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland un ...

. The interned were held in a number of prisons, including the infamous

where they were subject to brutal interrogations by Nazi officials. After time spent in the prisons of Warsaw, Kraków, Radom,

Kielce Kielce (, yi, קעלץ, Keltz) is a city in southern Poland, and the capital of the Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship. In 2021, it had 192,468 inhabitants. The city is in the middle of the Świętokrzyskie Mountains (Holy Cross Mountains), on the ban ...

Nowy Sącz Nowy Sącz (; hu, Újszandec; yi, Tzanz, צאַנז; sk, Nový Sonč; german: Neu-Sandez) is a city in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship of southern Poland. It is the district capital of Nowy Sącz County as a separate administrative unit. It has ...

Tarnów Tarnów () is a city in southeastern Poland with 105,922 inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of 269,000 inhabitants. The city is situated in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship since 1999. From 1975 to 1998, it was the capital of the Tarn� ...

, Lublin or

Wiśnicz Wiśnicz is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Małogoszcz, within Jędrzejów County, Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, in south-central Poland. It lies approximately west of Małogoszcz, north-west of Jędrzejów, and west of t ...

, the arrested Poles were transferred to

, most notably to the newly created camp of

Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed int ...

, as well as

Sachsenhausen Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoners ...

and

Mauthausen Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen, Upper Austria, Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with List of subcamps of Mauthausen, nearly 100 further ...

. Approximately 3,500 members of the Polish intelligentsia were executed at the mass murder sites in Palmiry near Warsaw, Firlej, Wincentynów near Radom, and in the Bliżyn forest near Skarżysko-Kamienna. Palmiry kusocinski

Among those killed were Maciej Rataj,

Stefan Bryła Stefan Władysław Bryła (Polish pronunciation: ; born 17 August 1886 in Kraków – died 3 December 1943 in Warsaw, Poland) was a Polish construction engineer and welding pioneer. He designed and built the first welded road bridge in the world ...

Tadeusz Tański Tadeusz Tański (11 March 1892 – 23 March 1941) was a Polish automobile engineer and the designer of, among others, the first Polish serially-built automobile, the CWS T-1. He was born in Janów Podlaski to Czesław Tański, one of pioneers of ...

, Mieczysław Niedziałkowski, Janusz Kusociński and Stefan Kopec. Actions were started on a similar scale in other Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany. According to many historians, including

Norman Davies Ivor Norman Richard Davies (born 8 June 1939) is a Welsh-Polish historian, known for his publications on the history of Europe, Poland and the United Kingdom. He has a special interest in Central and Eastern Europe and is UNESCO Professor a ...

, the action against Polish leaders was coordinated with the authorities of the

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 nationa ...

, who at the same time perpetrated 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 July 1941, 25 Polish academics from the city of Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine) along with the 25 of their family members were killed by Nazi German occupation forces. By targeting prominent citizens and intellectuals for elimination, the Nazis ho ...

, in which approximately 45 professors of the university in

Lwów Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in Western Ukraine, western Ukraine, and the List of cities in Ukraine, seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is o ...

were murdered together with their families and guests. Among those killed in the massacre were

Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński Tadeusz Kamil Marcjan Żeleński (better known by his pen name, Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński or simply as Boy; 21 December 1874 – 4 July 1941) was a Polish stage writer, poet, critic and, above all, the translator of over 100 French literary classics ...

, former Polish prime minister

Kazimierz Bartel Kazimierz Władysław Bartel (; en, Casimir Bartel; 3 March 1882 – 26 July 1941) was a Polish mathematician, freemason, scholar, diplomat and politician who served as 15th, 17th and 19th Prime Minister of Poland three times between 192 ...

, Włodzimierz Stożek, and Stanisław Ruziewicz. Thousands more perished in the

Ponary massacre , location = Paneriai (Ponary), Vilnius (Wilno), Reichskommissariat Ostland , coordinates = , date = July 1941 – August 1944 , incident_type = Shootings by automatic and semi-automatic weapons, genocide , perpetrators ...

, in German concentration camps, and in ghettos.

Aftermath

The total number of victims and the specific dates of executions of members of the Polish intelligentsia can only be approximated due to their multitude.Peter Longerich acknowledged some 6500 victims (3500 member of the intelligentsia and political functionaries and about 3000 people labeled criminals by the Germans), in After the war, many Germans responsible for organizing the AB Action were tried before the

Nuremberg Military Tribunals The subsequent Nuremberg trials were a series of 12 military tribunals for war crimes against members of the leadership of Nazi Germany between December 1946 and April 1949. They followed the first and best-known Nuremberg trial before the In ...

. However, the majority of responsible commanders vanished during and after the war, before being held legally accountable for their crimes.

References

External links

The Destruction of the Polish Elite. Operation AB – Katyn
, the exhibition organized by the Institute of National Remembrance (2009).
Collection of testimonies concerning terror against the Polish elites in 'Chronicles of Terror' testimony database
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ausserordentliche Befriedungsaktion 1940 in Poland Massacres in Poland Nazi war crimes in Poland Persecution by Nazi Germany Persecution of Poles Persecution of Jews Persecution of intellectuals

History

Aftermath

See also

References

External links