Crimes & persecution

Intelligenzaktion (AB-Aktion)

1 Oct 1939 – 31 May 1940 · Occupied western and central Poland

Between autumn 1939 and spring 1940 Germany carried out Intelligenzaktion, a campaign to eliminate Polish elites so that they could not organise resistance and to prepare western Poland for Germanisation and annexation; the murders continued under the AB-Aktion. The killings were carried out by the SiPo (Kripo and Gestapo), the SD, the SS, the Einsatzgruppen and the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz militia. The cited article gives about 61,000 victims from the Special Prosecution Book lists and notes a Polish source estimating about 100,000. The start and end dates are approximate, taken from the phrase 'autumn 1939 to spring 1940'.