 Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen. symbols | |
 Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen. Page with names under the letter "G" with abbreviations. EKstands forEinsatzkommando and EG represents an escaped prisoner. |
Special Prosecution Book – Poland (German:Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen,Polish:Specjalna księga Polaków ściganych listem gończym) was a list prepared byNazi Germany immediately before theinvasion of Poland containing more than 61,000 members of Polish elites:activists,intelligentsia, scholars, actors, former officers, and prominent others. Upon identification, they were to be arrested and turned over to Nazi authorities following the invasion.
For nearly two years before the invasion ofPoland, between 1937 and 1939, theSonderfahndungsbuch Polen was being secretly prepared inGermany.[1] It was compiled by the "Zentralstelle IIP Polen" (Central Unit IIP-Poland) unit of theGeheime Staatspolizei orGestapo ("Secret State Police") fromclandestine human intelligence supplied by members of theGerman minority in Poland involved in theVolksdeutscher Selbstschutz who acted asfifth column.[2]
The Central Unit IIP-Poland was created byReinhard Heydrich to co-ordinate the ethnic cleansing of all Poles in "Operation Tannenberg" and theIntelligenzaktion, two codenames for the extermination actions directed at thePolish people during the opening stages ofWorld War II.[3]
Formally, theIntelligenzaktion was a second phase of Operation Tannenberg (Unternehmen Tannenberg), conducted by Heydrich'sSonderreferat. It lasted until January 1940 as the first part of theGeneralplan Ost. InPomerania alone, 36,000–42,000 Poles, including children, had been murdered by the end of 1939.[3]
The list identified more than 61,000 members of Polish elite:activists,intelligentsia, scholars, actors, former officers,Polish nobility, Catholic priests, university professors, teachers, doctors, lawyers and even a prominent sportsman who had represented Poland in theBerlin Olympics in 1936. People in the Special Prosecution Book were either murdered outright by theEinsatzgruppen or theVolksdeutscher Selbstschutz or sent to concentration camps and murdered there. The German death squads, includingEinsatzkommando 16 and EK-Einmann, fell under direct command of SS-Sturmbannführer Rudolf Tröger, with overall command byReinhard Heydrich.[3]
The second and last edition ofSonderfahndungsbuch Polen was published in German and Polish in 1940 in occupiedKraków[4] after the end ofAB-Aktion (in GermanAusserordentliche Befriedungsaktion).[5] Later lists were published under the name ofFahndungsnachweis. Only a small number of people on both lists managed to survive the German occupation.