Friedrich-Wilhelm Kruger Signed Letter - Auschwitz

Friedrich-Wilhelm Kruger Signed Letter - Auschwitz
Letter from the Higher SS and Police Leader East to the locationelders of Auschwitz on the behavior of the Waffen SS in the command area ofthe Auschwitz concentration camp in public. It is signed bySS-Obergruppenfuhrer and General of Police Friedrich-Wilhelm Kruger he wasthe brother of Waffen-SS general Walter Kruger ( Das Reich ).The document reads :The higher SS and Police Leader EastKrakau on 12.August 1942Government buildingTo the site elders of Auschwitz concentration campAuschwitz / O.S.Enclosed I am sending the Ordinance Sheet of the Waffen SS v.1.8.42 forinformation and implementation with instructions on how to behave in publicwhen going on vacation and business trips. Furthermore, the attached policeordinance of the local police administration in Auschwitz will be announcedfor the most exact observance. All members of the Waffen-SS that are in thecommand area of the Auschwitz Concentration camp must instruct Auschwitz indetail. Heil Hitler Kruger SS-Obergruppenfuhrer and General of the PoliceFriedrich-Wilhelm Krüger (8 May 1894 – 10 May 1945) was a German Nazi warcriminal, acting as a paramilitary commander, while being high-rankingmember of the SA and the SS. Between 1939 and 1943 he was the Higher SS andPolice Leader in the General Government, giving him command of all policeand security forces in German-occupied Poland. In this capacity, heorganized and supervised numerous acts of crimes against humanity and had amajor responsibility for the German genocide on the Polish nation, resultingin the extermination of 6 million Poles (3 million of them were Polish Jews)and massive destruction, deterioration and impoverishment of the Polishstate. At the end of the war, he committed suicide.Krüger was born into a military family in Strassburg, Alsace-Lorraine, Germany (nowadays in France) in 1894; he left school before graduating tobegin a military career as a cadet in military schools in Karlsruhe andGross-Lichterfelde. In June 1914, Krüger was commissioned a secondlieutenant in the German Army when World War I broke out. During the courseof the war, he was wounded three times and awarded the 1st and 2nd classIron Crosses. In August 1919, he joined the Freikorps von Lützow, which heleft in March 1920. Afterwards he returned to civilian employment and gotmarried.Activities in SA and SSWhile working at a refuse company, he probably met Kurt Daluege, who was anengineer at the company at that time. He later on became SS commander inBerlin and leader of the Ordnungspolizei ("order police") or Orpo. The twomen soon formed a friendship. In November 1929, Krüger joined the Nazi Party(NSDAP) as member 171,199. In February 1931, he also joined the SS (6,123), which he left in April to transfer to the SA. With the help of Daluege, Krüger instantly acquired the SA rank and the power necessary to conductreforms of the SA Formation East. He was promoted to SA-Gruppenführer in1932 and joined Ernst Röhm's personal staff.In June 1933, Krüger was promoted to SA-Obergruppenführer and appointedchief of the Ausbildungswesen ("training", AW). Cooperating closely with theReichswehr, he used his new position to school the SA's recruits (anestimated 250,000) to become unit leaders. Krüger was not caught in theNight of the Long Knives, in which Röhm and many other high-ranking SAmembers were killed, and it has been speculated that his switch from the SSto the SA was only for pragmatic reasons, especially in the light of Krügertransferring the SA armouries of which he was in charge to the Reichswehr assoon as the purge began. Afterwards, Krüger re-entered the SS while stillkeeping his SA rank. In February 1936, he was appointed inspector of borderguard units as well as Adolf Hitler's personal representative at a varietyof formal and informal NSDAP events.On 4 October 1939, Heinrich Himmler, appointed him to act as Higher SS andPolice Leader (HSSPF East) (Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer) in the part ofGerman-occupied Poland called the General Government. Krüger thus held oneof the highest posts in occupied Poland.During the first months of the war in Poland, he was one of the coordinatorsof Action AB - the mass murder by shooting of Polish intelligentsia, whichwas performed by Orpo or ethnic Germans (Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz). Thevictims were mainly University lecturers, retired military officers, high-rank policemen, managing staff of the Polish State Railways, journalists, businessmen, landowners, notable Catholic priests, internationally-known sportsmen (vide Janusz Kusociński), judges, teachers, social workers, senior administrative officials or other members of Polishintellectual elite.Already in November 1939, Krüger has fulfilled Hitler's personal order, and184 professors of Jagiellonian University were arrested and deported on acattle train to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Less than 50 of themsurvived the war.On 11 November 1939, on the orders of Krüger, several hundred Jews were shotto death by German policemen at Ostrów Mazowiecka in north eastern Poland, after digging their own graves following a fire which Jews were blamed forstarting; this “action” at Ostrów Mazowiecka was one of the first systematicmass murders of Eastern European Jews during the war.From the very beginning he introduced the terror on a large scale. For everykilled German in General Government by Home Army, ten random Polishcivilians were shot. Regular arrests of Polish inhabitants of Warsaw, duringthe street Razzia (Polish: łapanka) and transporting them to the Third Reichto do slave labor for German industry (for among others: Krupp, Audi, IGFarben, Porsche (Volkswagen...)), or straight to concentration camps, wereorganized on his orders.The deportation to the concentration camp was practically equal to the deathsentence. One of the men from units subordinated to Krüger:SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain) Karl Fritzsch, nota bene the deputy(Schutzhaftlagerführer) Auschwitz commander, once said to a new transport ofPolish prisoners:You came here not on holidays in Zoppot, but to the German concentrationcamp, from which the only way out is through the chimney. If you do notaccept that, you can go straight on the wires. If Jews are in the transport, they have a right to live no longer than two weeks, Catholic priests - amonth, the rest - three months. For us, all of you are not the human beings, but a pile of dung. For such enemies of the Third Reich as you, the Germanswill have no respect and no mercy. You will forget about your wives, children and families. Here, all of you will die like a dogs...The collective responsibility was the new law introduced by SS. If someonein the family committed an act against the new rules (for example: failureto comply with the curfew), all the members of the family were sent toconcentration camp. In the case, when a serious disobedience was committedby a farmer, the whole village was under process of pacification (massexecution by burning).Due to harsh "politics" of the occupants, the shortage of the food andmedications in the cities and towns was extremal. The Poles were starving(average food allocation amounted to 2,600 calories for Germans, 700 forPoles and 400 for Jews). The worst situation was in the ghettos, where themortality was much higher than among "free" Poles. Farmers in GG wereobliged to deliver draconian amount of grain, meat, milk and potatoes, whichwere sent straight to Germany. No pay was given to the victims. Just in theyear 1942–1943 around 633,000 tons of the grain were confiscated from Polishvillages. In the Autumn period of 1944 nearly 388,000 tons of potatoes werestolen. The contingents were taken by force and in the whole processmilitary or para-military forces were used, acting on orders of local SS orpolice commander. In the case of refusal to deliver on time, a severepunishments like beatings or arrests were applied. Some of them wereresulting in sending to a concentration camps. All sorts of repressions wereintroduced, including the death penalty (without formal accusation or alawful trial).To terrorize the population - on SS commanders' orders - public executionsby shooting or hanging were conducted.The systematic process of kidnapping around 200,000 children from Polishfamilies for further Germanisation was also Krüger's domain.People disabled mentally or with Down syndrome were secretly killed by theauthorities (mainly by Sicherheitspolizei). Later on, the gas vans wereinvented by German doctor of chemistry and SS-Untersturmführer August Becker(not subordinated to Krüger), to make the whole process faster, morediscreet and taking the burden of participating in a mass shootings fromordinary soldiers.Krüger supervised the action of destroying Polish historical buildings(without military significance), cultural sites and in general Polishculture - both by stealing the art works or - if they were related to Polishhistory - burning some of them on the spot (vide: medieval synagogue). Morethan 500,000 of Polish and international (paintings by da Vinci, Raphael orRembrandt) piece of arts were stolen. Most of them never come back to Polandafter the war. Some of the goods - crucial to Polish cultural heritage likepaintings: Battle of Grunwald or Prussian Homage, were hidden in a localfarms. If they were seized by the occupants, they would be destroyed asanti-German.All Polish theatres were disbanded, likewise all universities were shut, andthe secondary schools were teaching only basics. Lessons of history, geography and the Polish literature ceased to be performed. The primaryeducation in the countryside was not allowed during the next five years, leaving - in 1945 - a couple of million teenagers, barely able to write andread. In Galicia for every book given to the German authorities, a bottle ofalcohol was the pay (one of the assumptions of the Generalplan Ost). Theplan was originating from Otto von Bismarck's operations against - amongothers - Poles, mainly in Provinz Posen (Greater Poland) in XIX century.The sole goal of this schooling is to teach them simple arithmetic, nothingabove the number 500; writing one's name; and the doctrine that it is divinelaw to obey the Germans. I do not think that reading is desirable. As the highest commander in charge he looked after the execution ofOperation Harvest Festival in district of Lublin, when during one day inNovember 1943 SS, Order Police (101st Police Battalion from Hamburgvolunteered for this operation) and the Ukrainian Sonderdienst shot to deathin mass killings more than 83,000 Jews. Krüger's men, hand-in-hand withOrder Police battalions, Einsatzgruppen and Wehrmacht were conducting duringa few years time, the genocide program of quelling guerrilla activity, so-called: "anti-partisan" fighting in the General Government. During theseoperations, which meant to be against Polish "bandits", as the Germanscalled partisans, the murders of women and children were carried out on adaily basis. For a help given to the partisans by local farmers and theirfamilies, the entire villages were burnt to the ashes with all inhabitants(so-called pacification action).Such "disciplinary" campaigns were a commonplace in Poland under Germanoccupation - more than 300 Polish villages were destroyed (within theborders after 1945). In the most of cases, before the fire was set to thevillage, all the peasants were gathered in the biggest village building andburnt alive. Earlier, several grenades were thrown into the crowd.Among other deeds committed by Krüger were: responsibility for eliminatingrebellions in the extermination camps, providing victims for the medicalexperiments typically resulting in the death or permanent disability, setting up forced labour camps, the employment of police and SS in thedeportations of Jews from ghettos in General Government to exterminationcamps.He was in charge of driving out (ethnic cleansing) of over 116,000 Polishfarmers (30 thousands of them were children) from the area around Zamość, known as Aktion Zamosc. Most of the children were sent to concentrationscamps, labour camps and blonde and enough young to the III Reich forGermanisation, or to do a slave work on German farms. Only 800 Children ofZamość were successfully reclaimed after the war.Disagreements with governor general Hans Frank led to Krüger's dismissal on9 November 1943. He was replaced by Wilhelm Koppe.Due to Krüger, Koppe and their troops and policemen, altogether more than 6million Poles (2.9 million of them were Polish Jews) were killed in gaschambers, in forced labour camps, during mass shootings, from hunger, disease, cold or because of mandatory expulsions from their houses or farms, and transportation of these empty-handed victims on the bare fields ofGeneral Government. Almost the entire population of Polish Jews wasexterminated. Travelling Roma were treated by German authority equally toJews (Romani genocide).The economical downfall of the Polish industry, the railway network, theagriculture, the forestry and total destruction of the country (theretreating Germans blew up Polish sea port in Gdynia) were not in connectionwith the military actions only. Most of the victims have perished due topolitical doctrine, classifying all the Slavic nations as subhumans, andother administrative and compulsory orders and restrictions set up by thenew government, with SS-Obergruppenführer Krüger as the most seniorcommander of SS and Police in German-occupied Poland.I have nothing against - after winning the war - the extermination of allthis Slavic mob.The Polish Secret State ordered his death, but an assassination attempt on20 April 1943 in Kraków failed when two bombs hurled at his car missed thetarget.Six months later, he wrote in a letter:"I have lost honour and reputation due to my four year struggle in the GG(General Government)(ger.: Ich habe für meinen vierjährigen Kampf im GG Ehre und Reputationverloren).From November 1943 until April 1944 Krüger served with the SS Division PrinzEugen conducting Nazi security warfare occupied Yugoslavia. While ostensiblyengaged in anti-partisan fight in Yugoslavia, this unit became notorious forcommitting atrocities against the civilian population.Later from June to August Krüger took over the command over the SS DivisionNord in northern Finland. From August 1944 until February 1945 Krüger wascommanding general of the V SS Mountain Corps. In February 1945 he wasHimmler's representative at the German southeast front and in April and May1945 he was commander of a combat unit of the Orpo at Army Group South(known as Army Group Ostmark after 1 May 1945). At the end of the war Krügercommitted suicide in Upper Austria.This Typed A4 size headed documentand