For nearly two years before the invasion of
Poland, between 1937 and 1939, the
Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen was being secretly prepared in
Germany. It was compiled by the "Zentralstelle IIP Polen" (Central Unit IIP-Poland) unit of the
Geheime Staatspolizei or
Gestapo ("Secret State Police") from
clandestine human intelligence supplied by members of the
German minority in Poland involved in the
Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz who acted as
fifth column. by
SS-Einsatzgruppe, 20 October 1939. Image from German Federal Archive The Central Unit IIP-Poland was created by
Reinhard Heydrich to co-ordinate the ethnic cleansing of all Poles in "
Operation Tannenberg" and the
Intelligenzaktion, two codenames for the extermination actions directed at the
Polish people during the opening stages of
World War II. 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 the
Berlin Olympics in 1936. People in the Special Prosecution Book were either murdered outright by the
Einsatzgruppen or the
Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz or sent to concentration camps and murdered there. The German death squads, including
Einsatzkommando 16 and EK-
Einmann, fell under direct command of SS-
Sturmbannführer Rudolf Tröger, with overall command by
Reinhard Heydrich. after the end of
AB-Aktion (in German
Ausserordentliche Befriedungsaktion). Later lists were published under the name of
Fahndungsnachweis. Only a small number of people on both lists managed to survive the German occupation. ==See also==