Police Battalion 101 in Poland | holocaustresearchproject's Blog

Police Battalion 101 in Poland

 When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939 Police Battalion 101 based in Hamburg was one of the initial battalions attached to a German army group and sent to Poland.

Crossing the border from Oppeln in Silesia, the battalion passed through Czestochowa to the Polish city of Kielce.

There it was involved in rounding up Polish soldiers and military equipment behind the front lines and guarding a prisoner of war camp.

On 17 December 1939 the battalion returned to Hamburg, where about a hundred of its career policemen were transferred to form additional units. They were replaced by middle-aged reservists drafted in autumn 1939.

In May 1940 after a period of training, the battalion was dispatched from Hamburg to the Warthegau, one of the four regions in western Poland annexed to the Third Reich as the incorporated territories.

Stationed first in Poznan (Posen) until late June and then Lodz – renamed Litzmannstadt by the Germans. The Police Battalion carried out “resettlement actions” for a period of five months, this was part of the Germans plan to “germanise” these newly annexed regions, with racially pure Germans, and to expel Jews and Gypsies into the General Gouvernement   

In all the battalion evacuated 36,972 people out of the targeted 58,628. About 22,000 people escaped the evacuations by fleeing. Following its five month resettlement campaign, the battalion carried out pacification actions combing villages and woods and they caught 750 Poles who had evaded earlier evacuations.

On 28 November 1940 the battalion took up guard duty around the Lodz ghetto, which had been sealed seven months earlier, at the end of April 1940, when 160,000 Jews of Lodz were cut off from the rest of the city, by a barbed wire fence.

Guarding the ghetto now became the major duty of Police Battalion 101, which had a standing order to shoot “without further ado” any Jew who ignored the posted warnings and came too close to the fence. This order was obeyed.

 In May 1941 the battalion returned to Hamburg and was practically dissolved.

During the next year from May 1941 to June 1942, the battalion was reformed and underwent extensive training and the most notable event was the deportation of Hamburg Jews that the battalion took part in.

From mid-October 1941 to late February 1942 – 59 transports carried more than 53,000 Jews and 5,000 Gypsies from the Third Reich to the east.

East being Lodz, Riga, Kovno and Minsk, all of the transports to Kovno and the first transport to Riga were massacred on their arrival.

In June 1942, Reserve Battalion 101 was assigned another tour of duty in Poland.

The battalion was divided into three companies each of approximately 140 men when at full strength. Two companies were commanded by police captains, the third by the senior reserve lieutenant in the battalion.

Each company was divided into three platoons, two of them commanded by reserve lieutenants and the third by the platoon’s senior sergeant.

Each platoon was divided into four squads, commanded by a sergeant or corporal. The men were equipped with carbines, the non –commissioned officers with sub-machine guns.

Each company also had a heavy-machine gun detachment. Apart from the three companies, there was the personnel of the battalion staff, which included, in addition to the five administrative officials, a doctor and his aide, as well as various drivers, clerks, and communication specialists.

The battalion was commanded by fifty-three year old Major Wilhelm Trapp, a World War One veteran and recipient of the Iron Cross First Class.

After the war he became a career policeman, and rose through the ranks. Two captains, both young SS men in their late twenties also played a significant role in the murder actions in Poland, Wolfgang Hoffmann, born in 1914 and Julius Wohlauf born in 1913, who even took his pregnant wife to witness the brutal expulsion of the Jews of Miedzyrzec in late August 1942.

Other notable officers serving in Police Batallion 101 were Hartwig Gnade, Paul Brand, Heinz Buchmann, Oscar Peters, Walter Hoppner, Hans Scheer, and Kurt Drucker.

On 20 June 1942 the battalion received orders for a “special action” in Poland and left for Poland from the Sternschanze station, and the battalion arrived in the Polish town of Zamosc, and five days later the battalion headquarters was moved to Bilgoraj.

The battalion was reassembled in Bilgoraj on 12 July 1942 where Trapp informed the First and Second Company commanders Captain Wohlauf and Lieutenant Gnade of the next days task.

The truck convoy departed from Bilgoraj around 0200 hours on the 13 July 1942 arriving in Jozefow just as the sky was beginning to lighten.

The village was surrounded and the Jews were rounded up and taken to the marketplace, those too frail to walk to the marketplace, as well as infants were shot on the spot.

Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/einsatz/polbat101.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

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Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009