80 years ago, on November 6th 1939, Germans deceptively lured Kraków scholars to the Collegium Novum, arrested them and deported to concentration camps. Sonderaktion Krakau was one of the most dramatic actions against Polish intellectuals.

The then rector of the Jagiellonian University, Tadeusz Lehr-Spławiński, on demand of SS-Obersturmbannführer Bruno Müller, invited professors at noon to Nicolaus Copernicus room No. 66 in Collegium Novum (today Józef Szujski room No. 56). Scholars were supposed to hear the SS commander’s lecture about the Third Reich and National Socialism approach to the issues of science and higher education.

Instead of the announced lecture, in the Collegium Novum scientists were informed by Bruno Müller, who carried out this action, that the University of Kraków had always been a centre of anti-German sentiments, and for these reasons it would be closed and professors sent to camps.

In total, the Germans arrested 183 professors and lecturers of Kraków universities, 155 from the Jagiellonian University, 22 from the Mining Academy and three from the Academy of Economics.

Those arrested were first detained in jail at Montelupich, then in the barracks of the 20th Infantry Regiment at Mazowiecka, and later they were transported to prison in Wrocław. In the meantime, as a result of the Polish Red Cross action, more than a dozen arrestees were released, including lawyer Fryderyk Zoll and Ukrainian professors. On November 27, the prisoners were transported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin.

As a result of the international upheaval, the Germans released some of the prisoners from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp – as historians point out, it was the only such situation in the history of German concentration camps.

On February 8, 1940, 102 prisoners who have completed 40 years of age left the camp. Before release they had to forgo the exercise of their profession in the future in writing. Germans transported the other professors to other camps, including Dachau (on March 4, 1940), and later released some of them.

Source: PAP – Nauka w Polsce/NB