Hans Krüger and the Murder of the Jews in the Region of Stanislawow Galicia
The author attempts to answer the oft-repeated question: What was the role of the occupying framework and the individual perpetrator in the implementation of the “Final Solution”? Pohl examines with painstaking care each stage in the process of isolation, categorization and annihilation of some 70,000 Jews in the Stanislawów area, and the dispatch of a further 12,000 to extermination camps. The operation was carried out during a 16-month period by the Stanislawów border police under Hans Krüger, with a staff of SS men and policemen assisted by Ukrainian auxiliaries. Krüger’s devotion to his task is evident from the fact that at the beginning of August 1941, while Stanislawów was still under Hungarian rule, he carried out the first mass killing there. When preparations for the “Final Solution” in the Galicia district were complete, Krüger was the first to implement mass shootings of Jews. According to Pohl, Krüger was a typical member of the Sipo staff posted in the occupied areas of Poland and the Soviet Union, who took an active part in organizing mass murders and their implementation.
