Jakob Sporrenberg (16 September 1902 – 6 December 1952) was an SS-''

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 de ...

und Generalleutnant der Polizei'' in Minsk, Belarus and

Lublin, Poland 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 t ...

. After the war, Sporrenberg stood trial in Poland and was convicted in 1950 of war crimes and sentenced to death. He was executed in December 1952.

Biography

Jakob Sporrenberg was born on 16 September 1902 in Düsseldorf, Germany. Sporrenberg joined the NSDAP in 1925. In 1929 he was appointed an SA officer and one year later joined the SS, rising to the rank of SS-'' Brigadeführer'' by 1933. In January 1940, he was promoted to the rank of SS-''

'' (''Generalleutnant''). From July to August 1941, he was SS and Police Leader (SSPF) in the '' Generalbezirk Weißruthenien'', headquartered in Minsk. He then served on the staff of '' Reichskommissar''

Erich Koch Erich Koch (19 June 1896 – 12 November 1986) was a ''Gauleiter'' of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in East Prussia from 1 October 1928 until 1945. Between 1941 and 1945 he was Chief of Civil Administration (''Chef der Zivilverwaltung'') of Bezirk ...

in the '' Reichskommissariat Ukraine''. In March 1943 he was assigned to the staff of SS-'' Obergruppenführer'' Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski to combat partisans. Sporrenberg subsequently succeeded Odilo Globočnik as SSPF of Lublin, in the '' Generalgouvernement'' of occupied Poland from August 1943 to November 1944. In this capacity, Sporrenberg oversaw and implemented the mass shooting of Jews during Operation "Harvest Festival".Mark C.Yerger: Allgemeine-SS: The Commands, Units and Leaders of the General SS (Schiffer Publishing Ltd.), 1997, p. 28, In November 1944 Sporrenberg and several of his staff were redeployed to Norway. There Sporrenberg served as SS and Police Leader of ''Süd-Norwegen'' (South Norway). In May 1945, Sporrenberg and his staff were captured by British forces. Their interrogation shed much light on Globočnik's activities in Lublin. One outcome of his interrogation was the transfer of Sporrenberg from the PWIS Detachment (Norway) in Oslo to the

MI19 MI19 was a section of the British Directorate of Military Intelligence, part of the War Office. During the Second World War it was responsible for obtaining information from enemy prisoners of war. It was originally created in December 1940 as ...

interrogation centre in

Kensington Palace Gardens Kensington Palace Gardens is an exclusive street in Kensington, west of central London, near Kensington Gardens and Kensington Palace. Entered through gates at either end and guarded by sentry boxes, it was the location of the London Cage, th ...

, London, known as the "

London Cage The London Cage, also known as Connor McCracken's room, was an MI19 prisoner-of-war facility during and after the Second World War to mainly interrogate captured Germans, including SS personnel and members of the Nazi Party. The unit, which was ...

"; for further questioning by the War Crimes Interrogation Unit. This established his participation in a number of war crimes committed in Poland and the Soviet Union.

Post-war

Sporrenberg was extradited to Poland in October 1946, and sentenced to death by a Polish court in Warsaw in 1950. He was hanged on 6 December 1952. Sporrenberg is the supposed source for ''Prawda o Wunderwaffe'' (2000), a book about the alleged German occult secret weapon '' Die Glocke'' (The Bell) by Polish writer

Igor Witkowski (, "The Bell") was a purported top-secret Nazi scientific technological device, secret weapon, or . First described by Polish journalist and author Igor Witkowski in (2000), it was later popularized by military journalist and author Nick Cook, w ...

, who claimed to have gained access to transcripts of an interrogation by Polish authorities of Sporrenberg through an unnamed contact in the Polish intelligence service. The book is widely considered a hoax.

References

External links

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Porträt und Biographie
im Handbuch der Reichstagsabgeordneten {{DEFAULTSORT:Sporrenberg, Jakob 1902 births 1952 deaths Executed people from North Rhine-Westphalia General Government German Roman Catholics Holocaust perpetrators in Belarus Holocaust perpetrators in Poland Kapp Putsch participants Members of the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic Members of the Reichstag of Nazi Germany Military personnel from Düsseldorf German prisoners of war in World War II held by the United Kingdom Nazis convicted of war crimes People executed for war crimes Nazis executed by Poland by hanging Nazi Party politicians People extradited from Germany People extradited to Poland People from the Rhine Province Prisoners and detainees of the British military Recipients of the Iron Cross (1939), 1st class People of Reichskommissariat Ostland SS and Police Leaders SS-Gruppenführer Sturmabteilung officers 20th-century Freikorps personnel Executed mass murderers

Biography

Post-war

See also

References

External links