Bidspirit auction | Friedrich-Wilhelm Kruger Signed Letter -

Friedrich-Wilhelm Kruger Signed Letter - Auschwitz - Letter from the Higher SS and Police Leader East to the locationelders of Auschwitz on the behavior of the Waffen SS in the command area ofthe Auschwitz concentration camp in public. It is signed bySS-Obergruppenfuhrer and General of Police Friedrich-Wilhelm Kruger he wasthe brother of Waffen-SS general Walter Kruger ( Das Reich ).The document reads :The higher SS and Police Leader EastKrakau on 12.August 1942Government buildingTo the site elders of Auschwitz concentration campAuschwitz / O.S.Enclosed I am sending the Ordinance Sheet of the Waffen SS v.1.8.42 forinformation and implementation with instructions on how to behave in publicwhen going on vacation and business trips. Furthermore, the attached policeordinance of the local police administration in Auschwitz will be announcedfor the most exact observance. All members of the Waffen-SS that are in thecommand area of the Auschwitz Concentration camp must instruct Auschwitz indetail. Heil Hitler Kruger SS-Obergruppenfuhrer and General of the PoliceFriedrich-Wilhelm Krüger (8 May 1894 – 10 May 1945) was a German Nazi warcriminal, acting as a paramilitary commander, while being high-rankingmember of the SA and the SS. Between 1939 and 1943 he was the Higher SS andPolice Leader in the General Government, giving him command of all policeand security forces in German-occupied Poland. In this capacity, heorganized and supervised numerous acts of crimes against humanity and had amajor responsibility for the German genocide on the Polish nation, resultingin the extermination of 6 million Poles (3 million of them were Polish Jews)and massive destruction, deterioration and impoverishment of the Polishstate. At the end of the war, he committed suicide.Krüger was born into a military family in Strassburg, Alsace-Lorraine, Germany (nowadays in France) in 1894; he left school before graduating tobegin a military career as a cadet in military schools in Karlsruhe andGross-Lichterfelde. In June 1914, Krüger was commissioned a secondlieutenant in the German Army when World War I broke out. During the courseof the war, he was wounded three times and awarded the 1st and 2nd classIron Crosses. In August 1919, he joined the Freikorps von Lützow, which heleft in March 1920. Afterwards he returned to civilian employment and gotmarried.Activities in SA and SSWhile working at a refuse company, he probably met Kurt Daluege, who was anengineer at the company at that time. He later on became SS commander inBerlin and leader of the Ordnungspolizei (”order police”) or Orpo. The twomen soon formed a friendship. In November 1929, Krüger joined the Nazi Party(NSDAP) as member 171,199. In February 1931, he also joined the SS (6,123), which he left in April to transfer to the SA. With the help of Daluege, Krüger instantly acquired the SA rank and the power necessary to conductreforms of the SA Formation East. He was promoted to SA-Gruppenführer in1932 and joined Ernst Röhm's personal staff.In June 1933, Krüger was promoted to SA-Obergruppenführer and appointedchief of the Ausbildungswesen (”training”, AW). Cooperating closely with theReichswehr, he used his new position to school the SA's recruits (anestimated 250,000) to become unit leaders. Krüger was not caught in theNight of the Long Knives, in which Röhm and many other high-ranking SAmembers were killed, and it has been speculated that his switch from the SSto the SA was only for pragmatic reasons, especially in the light of Krügertransferring the SA armouries of which he was in charge to the Reichswehr assoon as the purge began. Afterwards, Krüger re-entered the SS while stillkeeping his SA rank. In February 1936, he was appointed inspector of borderguard units as well as Adolf Hitler's personal representative at a varietyof formal and informal NSDAP events.On 4 October 1939, Heinrich Himmler, appointed him to act as Higher SS andPolice Leader (HSSPF East) (Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer) in the part ofGerman-occupied Poland called the General Government. Krüger thus held oneof the highest posts in occupied Poland.During the first months of the war in Poland, he was one of the coordinatorsof Action AB - the mass murder by shooting of Polish intelligentsia, whichwas performed by Orpo or ethnic Germans (Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz). Thevictims were mainly University lecturers, retired military officers, high-rank policemen, managing staff of the Polish State Railways, journalists, businessmen, landowners, notable Catholic priests, internationally-known sportsmen (vide Janusz Kusociński), judges, teachers, social workers, senior administrative officials or other members of Polishintellectual elite.Already in November 1939, Krüger has fulfilled Hitler's personal order, and184 professors of Jagiellonian University were arrested and deported on acattle train to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Less than 50 of themsurvived the war.On 11 November 1939, on the orders of Krüger,