Operation Sonderaktion Krakau

Sonderaktion Krakau
Main entrance to Collegium Novum of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Location of the Sonderaktion Krakau
Location	Kraków, occupied Poland
Date	November 6, 1939
Target	184 academics including 105 professors and 33 lecturers from UJ, 34 professors and doctors from AGH, 4 from AE, 4 from Lublin and Wilno universities, and others
Attack type	deportations to Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps
Perpetrators	Nazi Germany, SS-Obersturmbannführer Bruno Müller
Motive	part of Intelligenzaktion

Sonderaktion Krakau was the codename for a Nazi German operation against professors and academics of the Jagiellonian University and other universities in German occupied Kraków, Poland, at the beginning of World War II. It was carried out as part of the much broader action plan, the Intelligenzaktion, to eradicate the Polish intellectual elite especially in those centres (such as Kraków) that were slated by the Germans to become culturally German.

A little over two months after the German Invasion of Poland, the Gestapo chief in Kraków SS-Obersturmbannführer Bruno Müller, commanded Jagiellonian University rector Professor Tadeusz Lehr-Spławiński to require all professors to attend his lecture about German plans for Polish education. The rector agreed and sent an invitation throughout the university for a meeting scheduled at the administrative centre building in the Collegium Novum (entrance pictured). On November 6, 1939 at the lecture room no. 56 (or 66, sources vary) at noon, all academics and their guests gathered; among them, 105 professors and 33 lecturers from Jagiellonian University (UJ), 34 professors and doctors from University of Technology (AGH) some of whom attended a meeting in a different room, 4 from University of Economics (AE) and 4 from Lublin and Wilno.

The academics filled the hall but no Vortrag (lecture) on education was conducted. Instead, they were told by Müller that the university did not have permission to start a new academic year (which it did), and that Poles are hostile toward German science, and act in bad faith. They were arrested on the spot by armed police, frisked and escorted out. Some senior professors were kicked, slapped in the face (Stanisław Estreicher) and hit with rifle butts. Additional 13–15 university employees and students who were onsite were also arrested, as well as the President of Kraków, Dr Stanisław Klimecki who was apprehended at home that afternoon.