POLAND IN THE SFXOND WORLD WAR 331(State Police) and its dependent the Sipo (Security Police) fought over their vic-
tims with the Kripo (Criminal Police). The fate of individuals was settled by a
palmful of jewellery, and, increasingly, by a bullet. In this situation, few self-
respecting or intelligent German officials would seek employment in Poland,
which quickly deteriorated into a hunting-ground for desperadoes and sadists.
In these first years of German Occupation, the death-toll did not compare
with that of the folio wing period. The concentration camps at Auschwitz
(Os'wiecim) and Maidaneck (Majdanek) were still being built, and had not yet
assumed the character of extermination centres. It is true that Himmler and
Frank agreed at an early date that the Jews of Poland must 'disappear'; but the
technical facilities and the political will did not yet exist. It was not until the
beginning of 1942 that SS Hauptsturm fuhrer Karl Fritzsch from the camp of
Auschwitz proved the superior killing potential of Cyclon B gas cylinders over
the cruder experiments with carbon monoxide and 'Gas Vans' used earlier at
Kulm (Cheimno-nad-Nerem).^13 For the time being, the only two actions which
hinted at the Holocaust to come were the so-called Ausserordentlicbe
Befriedungsaktion (Extraordinary Pacification Campaign) of May-August 1940
and the Euthanasia Campaign of 1939-40. The former consigned up to ten thou-
sand Polish intellectuals — professors, teachers, civil servants, and priests — to
Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen, and in the Palmiry Forest near
Warsaw led to the mass execution of 2,500 political or municipal leaders.^14 The
latter eliminated all cripples and imbeciles from the country's hospitals. Apart
from that, the violence was confined to localized reprisals, and to the sporadic
war in the countryside against the partisans. The worst incidents occurred at
Bydgoszcz (Bromberg) and elsewhere in Pomerania in October 1939 where some
20,000 Poles were killed in reprisal for the fighting between the Polish Army and
the local German 'fifth column' in the town in September.^15
In many ways, the work of the Soviet NKVD in eastern Poland proved far
more destructive than that of the Gestapo at this stage. Having longer experi-
ence in political terror than their German counterparts, the Soviets had no need
for wasteful experimentation. Their expertise had been refined, and their per-
sonnel thoroughly trained and replenished in the recent Purges; and they went
into action with speed. As in the German Zone, the population was screened,
classified, and segregated. But, in this case, all unfavourable elements were phys-
ically removed from the scene as soon as they were identified. An NKVD decree,
issued in Wilno (Vilnius) in 1940 lists the categories of people subject to depor-
tation:
- Members of Russian pre-revolutionary parties - Mensheviks, followers of Trotsky,
and anarchists;
z. Members of contemporary (national) political parties, including students belonging
to student organizations; - Members of the state police, gendarmerie, and prison staffs;
- Officers of the former Tsarist Army, and of other anti-Bolshevik armies of the period
1918-21;