85th anniversary of Sonderaktion Krakau. Krakow's academic community celebrated the memory of professors

On Wednesday, the 85th anniversary of Sonderaktion Krakau was celebrated by the Krakow academic community with the laying of wreaths in front of memorial plaques, prayer at graves, an appeal of remembrance and commemorative speeches.

On 6 November 1939, as a consequence of the sneaky action of the Gestapo 183 Kraków professors and academic teachers, including 155 employees of the Jagiellonian University, were arrested and deported to concentration camps in Sachsenhausen and Dachau, where respective of them lost their lives.

As all year, the main commemorative event, the Academic Memorial Day, was held at the Collegium Novum UJ. Here the Rector of this university Prof. Piotr Jedek asked in a commemorative speech a question about the meaning of meetings commemorating victims of historical cataclysms present – in a time of global tensions, armed conflicts.

"Memory of Beasthood +Aktion gegen Universitats-Professoren+, conducted equally 85 years ago in this building – in area 56, in which the trick of Kraków scientists arrived in a preposterous fact + reading+ SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Brunon Muller about ratio III Reichs for higher education and education – it is an instrument to defend historical fact from its incarnation, distortion or blurry," said the Rector of the Jagiellonian University.

During the ceremony in Collegium Novum, representatives of Kraków universities laid wreaths in front of the memorial plaque in area 56 – the place where Kraków professors were arrested in 1939, but besides at the oak of freedom increasing close the college buildings. There was besides a memorial appeal and a performance on the program.

Earlier, university delegations visited Rakowicki and Salwatorski cemeteries, where they laid flowers at the graves of deceased professors. Wieniec was besides placed at the memorial board in the barracks of the 16th Airborne Battalion named after Brig. Gen. M. Zdrzelka.

Among the events accompanying the Wednesday celebration is the unveiling of 6 memorial plaque dedicated to prof. Francis Walter, erstwhile Rector of the Jagiellonian University, doctor, arrested at the time of Sonderaktion Krakau. In the evening there will be a Mass in St Anne's college in the intention of the deceased during the war and of all the deceased in the last academic year of professors, employees and students of Cracow universities.

In 1939, for 6 November, the business authorities instructed the then rector of the Jagiellonian University prof. Tadeusz Lehr-Spławski to convene a gathering of lecturers to hear about the German point of view on matters of discipline and higher education. During the meeting, however, those at Collegium Novum heard from action commander Bruno Müller that the academic year had begun without the approval of the Germans, and that academics would be arrested and deported to the concentration camp. 183 professors of Cracow universities went to Sachsenhausen and Dachau. respective scholars died in the camps.

As a consequence of the global stir, the Germans released any prisoners from the Sachsenhausen camp – as historians point out, it was the only specified case in the past of German concentration camps.

On 8 February 1940, the camp left 102 prisoners who had turned 40. Before their release, they had to quit in writing their future occupations. The another Nazi professors moved to another camps, including Dachau (4 March 1940), and later partially slowed down.

Source: PAP