"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich (275 page)

41.
See note 38 above.

42.
Collection of such reports in Institute for Western Studies, Pozna
; the execution of
any Jew
outside of the ghetto was considered such a “normal” thing that the regular police (
Ordnungspolizei
), not the Security Police (Gestapo, criminal police) were charged with it. The reports contain neither names nor locations, nor the circumstances of the executions, but only the number of people shot (for example “3 Jews, male,” “1 Jew, female”), without any further details. Occasionally there is the appended note: “By order,” whereby the secret order of the commander of the uniformed police is meant. Example: The reports of February 16 and 22, 1943, by the
Gendarmeriezug,
Warsaw, to the
Gendarmerie-Hauptmannschaft,
Warsaw (commander of the gendarmerie), announcing the liquidation of a total of 24 “Jews, male” and “Jews, female.”

43.
More details in Bartoszewski,
Der Todesring um Warschau,
158 ff., 195 ff.

44.
For Kraków, see Zaborowski and Posna
ski,
Sonderaktion Krakau
(1964), 49 ff.

45.
Following a suggestion by the head of the Justice Department at the office of the governor general, a schedule should be appended to the Decree on Violent Criminality transferring the “immediate” execution of “elements with a heavy record” to the police (draft of March 20, 1940) (ZS, Poland 342, 908 ff.). He brought up the subject again in a discussion with the governor general, whose answer was evasive, stating that an arrangement still needed to be found (“Diensttagebuch,” April 18, 1940, vol. 2/I, Bl. 314, BA R 52 II/176).

46.
Not only actual resistance, but “any
possible
or
conceivable
resistance, as long as there are groups that offer resistance to the German administration,” was defined as a “hostile element” or a “resistance movement” (
Brigadeführer
Streckenbach at the police meeting of May 10, 1940, “Diensttagebuch,” 1940, II, Nuremberg doc. PS-2233, 440 ff.; excerpts in
Doc. Occ.
6:496 ff.).

47.
“Diensttagebuch,” May 16, 1940 (ibid.), from which it emerges that the security situation was in no way “extremely serious.”

48.
See the minutes of the police meeting of May 30, 1940 (ibid.), at which the governor general stated:

We don’t have to drag these elements first to the concentration camps of the Reich, because that would only cause trouble and unnecessary correspondence with the families, so rather we liquidate the business in this country. Gentlemen, we are not murderers…. Any police and SS leader who has the difficult duty of carrying out these executions must be one hundred per cent certain that what is happening is in accord with the judgment of the German nation. For these cases … too, the … police court-martial proceedings will be maintained so that no impression of arbitrary action or a similar action can possibly arise. The Pardons Commission introduced under my auspices has nothing to do with these matters.

Regarding the AB operation, see Broszat,
Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik
, 162 f.

49.
Police meeting of May 30, 1940 (“Diensttagebuch,” 1940, II, Nuremberg doc. PS-2233, 440 ff.; excerpts in
Doc. Occ.
6:496 ff.).

50.
Police meeting of May 30, 1940 (ibid.): “If a judiciary office were crazy enough to subject the actions of any police agency in connection with an important political operation to judicial proceedings and possibly press a charge … of dereliction of duty, such an action could be construed as a severe violation of the community interest.”

51.
Discussion between Wille and Frank, July 12, 1940 (“Diensttagebuch,” 1940, III; excerpts in
Doc. Occ.
6:502 f.).

52.
Ibid.

53.
See the instruction dated December 17, 1942, by the head of the Gestapo, SS-
Gruppenführer
Müller, to the subordinate Stapo offices, “approx. 35,000 prisoners … to be sent immediately to the concentration camps” (Nuremberg doc. NO-1523), if possible young people, and above all “only people fit for work, as otherwise we would defeat the purpose and overload the concentration camp” (Nuremberg doc. NO-2131).

54.
Information from the adviser on protective custody at the Reich Security Main Office, Dr. Bernstorff, dated November 4, 1943 (Nuremberg doc. NO-1967). The best-known example is the major raid undertaken in Warsaw and other large cities between January 15 and 22, 1943, for “asocial elements suspected of resistance activities”; according to November 1942 reports by the Reich Security Main Office on heightened activity of Polish resistance groups, the operation was based on an order by Himmler, “to bring a large number of Poles involved in such riots to the concentration camps immediately” (Nuremberg doc. NO-3206).

55.
Circulars of October 29, 1940, and March 12, 1941, by the head of the Central Department of Justice (not received; their content is, however, reproduced in the circular of July 10, 1941) (Archives of the Main Commission Warsaw, Regierung des GG/Hauptabteilung Justiz V/6).

56.
See, for example, the communication of April 11, 1942, “Deutsches Gericht,” Warsaw, to the commander of the Security Police, Warsaw (ZS, Film Polen 62, 187).

57.
ZS, Polen 342, 881; sec. 154a, par. 3, Code of Criminal Procedure, stated: “It is possible to refrain from bringing a public accusation if the suspect is banished from the Reich territory.” Sec. 456a, par. 1, Code of Criminal Procedure, stated: “The execution authority can … refrain from the execution if the convicted person is extradited to a foreign government on account of another act or is banished from the Reich territory.”

58.
Letter of October 7, 1942, from the Central Department of Justice to the Polish Appellate Court (ZS, Polen 342, 998).

59.
Governor General Frank to the president of the Central Department of Justice in a discussion on May 31, 1944; he was in favor of appearances and “a certain independence of the judiciary from the general government” (“Diensttagebuch,” 1944, III, 607 ff., BA R 52 II/217).

60.
Discussion with the president of the Central Department of Justice, Wille, on May 31, 1944 (ibid.), and June 6, 1944 (ibid., IV, June 6, 1944); see also note 31 above.

61.
Circular of February 12, 1943, from the head of the Central Department of Justice (Archives of the Main Commission Warsaw, Regierung des GG/Hauptabteilung Justiz, V/6), with reference to a decree dated December 30, 1942, that had not been received.

62.
Regarding the execution of sentences in the General Government, see the directives of the Central Department of Justice (ZS, Poland 342, Bl. 976 ff.); letter of October 26, 1940, from the Internal Administration Department to the Justice Department at the office of the governor general (Poland 257, Bl. 6). Decree of January 25, 1941, from the Central Department of Justice to the Justice Department of the Radom district on the fundamental application of the penal execution regulations of the Reich in the General Government (Main Commission Warsaw, Regierung des GG/Hauptabteilung Justiz, V/128, Bl. 9). See also full details in the
Bericht über den Aufbau im General-gouvernement
1 (1940): 49 (BA R 52 II/247);
Krakauer Zeitung
no. 79 of April 5, 1940; Wille, “Aufbau der Sondergerichte” (1942), 5 ff. (13); regarding the clearing of the prisons and the transfer of the prisoners to the Reich at the end of the war, see the note dated August 20, 1943, by the Reich Chancellery (BA R 43 II/1341 a); decree of August 12, 1944, from the Reich Ministry of Justice to the chief public prosecutor, Posen (Main Commission Warsaw V/68, Bl. 25); regarding the clearing of the police prisons and liquidation of prisoners in the event of “unexpected development of the situation,” see the letter of July 21, 1944, from the commander of the Security Police, Radom, to the outside office, Tomaschow (Tomaszów Mazowiecki) (ZS, Versch. 10, Bl. 603, reproduced in
Doc. Occ.
6:519). For the liquidation of 812 prisoners at the Warsaw remand prison (Rakowiecka Street) under horrible circumstances at the order of the commandant of Warsaw as a consequence of the Warsaw insurrection (after the building had been formally handed over to the SS, so that “the institution would no longer be involved”), see the reports by the deputy head of the prison,
Justizinspektor
Kirchner, and the head (
Regierungsrat
Langenbartels), both of August 20, 1944, to the Central Department of Justice (Main Commission Warsaw, Regierung des GG/Hauptabteilung Justiz, V/68, Bl. 27/1–8, 12–14), who forwarded them to the Reich minister of justice (letter of August 25, 1944, ibid., Bl. 27/15).

63.
Main Commission Warsaw, Regierung des GG/Hauptabteilung Justiz, V/6 (also in ZS, Poland 342, Bl. 843).

64.
This instruction is quoted in the letter of March 20, 1943, from the Warsaw district governor, Department of Justice, to the Polish Appellate Court in Kraków (ZS, Poland 342, Bl. 1002).

65.
Circular of March 15, 1941 (Main Commission Warsaw, Regierung des GG/Hauptabteilung Justiz, V/68; also ZS, Poland 342, Bl. 973 f.).

66.
Ibid.

67.
Circular of May 22, 1941, ibid.

68.
Circular instruction of February 28, 1944, from the Central Department of Justice (ZS, Poland 342, 843 ff.).

69.
See note 63 above.

70.
See note 61 above.

71.
Circular instruction of February 28, 1944, from the Central Department of Justice (ZS, Poland 342, 843 ff.).

72.
Letter of July 8, 1943, to the head of the Party Chancellery (Nuremberg doc. NO-2718).

Part Two. Section 3. C. Civil Law

1.
Details in Wengler, “Das deutsche Privatrecht im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren und im Generalgouvernement Polen” (1940).

2.
See the collection of Civil Code regulations enacted by way of decrees of the governor general in Weh,
Übersicht über das Recht des Generalgouvernements
(1943), C 205 ff.

3.
Sec. 19, pars. 1 and 3, of the Decree on German Jurisdiction in the General Government, February 19, 1940 (
VBl.GG
1940 I, 57).

4.
Sec. 19, par. 1, nos. 1–3, ibid.

5.
See the Decree of March 16, 1940, on Civil Status Affairs in the General Government (
VBl.GG
1940, I, 104).

6.
Secs. 22–24 of the Decree on German Jurisdiction in the General Government, February 19, 1940 (
VBl.GG
1940 I, 57), in the version of the amending decree of December 14, 1940 (
VBl.GG
1940 I, 364).

7.
Secs. 19, 20, 30, 2 of the decree of February 19, 1940 (
VBl.GG
1940 I, 57); regarding the establishment of German trading companies in the General Government, see the decree of November 15, 1939 (
VBl.GG
1939, 38).

8.
Sec. 31 of the decree of February 19, 1940 (
VBl.GG
1940 I, 57).

9.
Sec. 1, par. 1, of the Decree on Polish Jurisdiction in the General Government of February 19, 1940 (
VBl.GG
1940 I, 64), in conjunction with sec. 19 of the Decree on German Jurisdiction in the General Government of February 19, 1940 (
VBl.GG
1940 I, 57).

10.
A rare example of a special arrangement is a decree enacted in 1942 by the governor general whereby in those cases in which under the disunified Polish law (Austrian law was partly still valid in the south, Prussian law partly in the region that until 1918 belonged to the Prussian province Posen, and the old Russian law partly valid in the other regions occupied by Russia), the “jurisdiction practiced in the capital” was to be applied, not the Warsaw but the Kraków law (containing Austrian-German elements) should obtain. This regulation was intended to have a disunifying effect on the nationality and emphasize the primacy of the German-Austrian law.

11.
Secs. 26, 31 of the Decree of February 19, 1940, on German Jurisdiction (
VBl.GG
1940 I, 57).