Jürgen Strop is an SS gruppenführer, an active participant in the suppression of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto and operations against Soviet partisans. He was executed in the Polish capital in 1952. There is little information from the biography of Jürgen Strop . Today, much less would have been known about him if it had not been for a cellmate of an SS officer who miraculously managed to escape the death penalty.
early years
A photo of Jürgen Strop can be seen in this article. This is one of the few surviving photographs. Strop was born on September 26, 1895 in the city of Detmold , in the family of the chief of police. He attended a local school, graduated from high school. Before the outbreak of World War I, Jürgen Strop held an insignificant position in the cadastral office. In 1923 he married, had three children.
The beginning of a military career
Strop joined the NSDAP in 1932. Heinrich Himmler drew attention to an assiduous party member during the election campaign. Rapid career growth has begun. In 1933, Strop took the post of chief of auxiliary police.
The Second World War
After the attack on Poland, Jürgen Strop was appointed head of the SS department in Gniezno . By the way, at the birth of the hero of today's article, they called him Joseph. He changed his name in May 1941 for ideological reasons . Later, the trail was transferred to Warsaw, where he led the suppression of the ghetto uprising on behalf of Himmler himself. In 1944 he received the rank of lieutenant general of the SS troops.
The increase followed after a successful operation. It is known that after the suppression of the uprising, Jürgen Strop sent a telegram to his immediate superior, in which he said: "The Jewish district in Warsaw no longer exists. "
Arrest
After the war ended, German Lieutenant General Jürgen Strop was sentenced to death by an American tribunal. He was accused of shooting hostages in Greece, where his boss sent him in 1943. However, the sentence was not carried out then . The sling was handed over to the Polish authorities. He spent several months on death row.
Before the execution, Shtrop did not repent at all. He told his rivals a lot about his Nazi activities in Warsaw. And it seemed he was proud of participating in a number of terrible crimes against the Jewish population.
In the cell, he spent some time with Kazimierz Mocharsky , an activist of the Home Army. This man was sentenced to life imprisonment, but was later amnestied. In freedom, Mocharsky published the book " Conversations with the Executioner " , in which he outlined the memoirs of Jürgen Strop . It should be told about the event of 1943, in which the hero of today's story was a participant.
Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto
In the Polish capital, before the outbreak of World War I, almost a fifth was occupied by the Jewish quarter. In 1939, the occupation authorities confiscated all the cash from its inhabitants . Offensive posters were posted everywhere in Warsaw. Then the ghetto was organized, which the Germans declared a quarantine zone. It is worth saying that the creation of the Jewish ghetto was encouraged by many indigenous inhabitants of Warsaw of Polish descent.
Life in the quarantine zone has become unbearable over time. In addition, information appeared that soon all the Jews would be sent to concentration camps, and there they would be destroyed. The operation to destroy the ghetto began on the day of Passover . Supervised the operation of Strop , attended by over two thousand people. However, the residents of the ghetto offered unexpectedly fierce resistance for the SS men, to which they were helped by members of underground organizations. The fighting lasted about a month, but the uprising was crushed. Killed about six thousand people. Many of the surviving Jews were sent to Treblinka .
Almost all the leaders of the uprising died. One of the few survivors - Marek Edelman - died in 2009 at the age of 87 in Warsaw.
The operation was completed on May 16, 1943. According to Strop's report , 16 German officers were killed and over 90 were injured. However, these data are evaluated differently. In the underground Warsaw newspapers it was said about a thousand dead SS men. However , during the investigation , Shtrop claimed that in his reports there was no deliberate concealment of data on losses.
The image of Strop in the cinema
In 1973, the premiere of the German-Italian film " You are Free, Dr. Korczak . " In the film, we are talking about a great teacher and writer who could have avoided death, but preferred to go to the gas chamber with his children. The role of Strop was played by the German actor Heinz Lieven. In the American film " Uprising " in 2001, a German officer was played by John Voight.