Trawnikis

Trawnikimänner
Inspection of Trawnikimänner (some of them, still wearing Soviet Budionovkas) by SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Streibel (smiling) at the SS Trawniki training division. As Hiwis, they were tasked with the liquidation of the Jewish Nazi-era ghettos in occupied Poland
Active	Founded in 1941
Country	Occupied Poland
Allegiance	Nazi Germany, the SS
Branch	Totenkopfverbände
Type	Paramilitary police reserve
Role	Logistical support for Orpo battalions and the SS during Operation Reinhard; shooting actions, deportations to death camps
Size	Over 5,000 Hiwis

Trawniki men (German: Trawnikimänner) were the Eastern European collaborators recruited from the POW camps set up by Nazi Germany for the Red Army soldiers who were captured during Operation Barbarossa in the border regions. Thousands of these volunteers served in the General Government territory of occupied Poland until the end of World War II. Trawnikis belonged to a category of "Hiwis" (German abbreviation for 'Hilfswilliger', lit. "those willing to help"), the Nazi auxiliary forces recruited from the native subjects.

Already between September 1941 and September 1942, the German SS and police trained 2,500 Trawniki men known as Hiwi Wachmänner (guards) at a special Trawniki training camp; for the total of 5,082 men on active duty before the end of 1944.Trawnikimänner were organized by Streibel into two SS Sonderdienst battalions. Some 1,000 Hiwis are known to have run away during field operations. Although the majority of Trawniki men or Hiwis came from among the prisoners of war, there were also Volksdeutsche from Eastern Europe among them, valued because of their ability to speak Ukrainian, Russian, Polish and other languages of the occupied territories. All the officers at Trawniki camp were Reichsdeutsche, and most of the squad commanders were Volksdeutsche. The conscripted civilians and former Soviet POWs included Ukrainians, Russians, Belarusians, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Tatars, Georgians, Armenians and Azerbaijanis. The Trawnikis took major part in Operation Reinhard, the Nazi plan to exterminate Jews. They also served at extermination camps and played an important role in the annihilation of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (see the Stroop Report) among others.