Special Prosecution Book-Poland

Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen. Symbols

Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen. Page with names under the letter "G" with abbreviations. EK stands for Einsatzkommando death squad and EG stands for Einsatzgruppen authorities.

Special Prosecution Book-Poland (German: Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen, Polish: Specjalna księga Polaków ściganych listem gończym) was the proscription list prepared by the Germans immediately before the onset of war, that identified more than 61,000 members of Polish elites: activists, intelligentsia, scholars, actors, former officers, and prominent others, who were to be interned or shot on the spot upon their identification following the invasion.

Nearly two years before the invasion of the Second Polish Republic, 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") with help from some members of the German minority living in pre-war Poland.

The Central Unit IIP-Poland was created by Reinhard Heydrich in order to coordinate 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.

Formally, the Intelligenzaktion was a second phase of Operation Tannenberg (Unternehmen Tannenberg) conducted by Heydrich's Sonderreferat. It lasted until January 1940 as the first part of the Generalplan Ost. In Pomerania alone 36,000–42,000 Poles including children were killed already before the end of 1939.