Special Prosecution Book – Poland

Special Prosecution Book – Poland (German: Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen, Polish: Specjalna księga Polaków ściganych listem gończym) was a list prepared by Nazi Germany immediately before the invasion of Poland containing more than 61,000 members of Polish elites: activists, intelligentsia, scholars, actors, former officers, and prominent others.

For nearly two years before the invasion of Poland, between 1937 and 1939, the Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen was being secretly prepared in Germany.

[1] 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.

[2] 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.

[3] 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.

Execution of Poles in Kórnik by SS-Einsatzgruppe , 20 October 1939. Image from German Federal Archive