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Memoir sheds light on WW II Krakow professor murders

PR dla Zagranicy
John Beauchamp 15.12.2011 13:51
  • New memoir sheds light on fate of Krakow professors in WW2
A newly discovered memoir sheds light on one of the most notorious Nazi wartime actions against the Polish intelligentsia.
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Jagiellonian University Photo: cc/Céline

On 6 November 1939, two months after the Nazi invasion of Poland, the German authorities in Krakow called for a meeting at the city's Jagiellonian University.

183 people, mostly professors, were arrested, and sent to the concentration camps of Dachau and Sachsenhausen.

First-hand accounts have not survived, or at least, so it was thought, until an extraordinary discovery was made this autumn.

Zygmunt Starachowicz had just completed his studies when war broke out in 1939 - 72 years later, his family discovered a 48-page memoir of the first days of his imprisonment.

Krakow correspondent Nick Hodge spoke with the author's great-granddaughter Katarzyna Starachowicz, and Dr Krzysztof Stopka, Director of the Archives at the Jagiellonian University Library. (jb)

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