Karl Freudenthal

Karl Freudenthal (died 5 July 1944) was a German lawyer, a Nazi and an officer of the Schutzstaffel.^[1] In 1941 he was made a Kreishauptmann of powiat Garwolin in Nazi occupied Poland. He was a relative of Hans Frank, the Governor-General of the General Government.^[1]

In January 1941, as one of his first actions in his new post, he oversaw the removal of the Jewish population of the town of Garwolin and their transfer to the ghettos of Żelechów, Sobolew, Łaskarzew and Parysów. Between that date and end of 1942, acting on his order, the Gestapo and other German police forces murdered 890 people from the town of Garwolin and the surrounding area. Another 2100 individuals were sent to Nazi concentration camps and for slave labor in Nazi Germany. On February 28 he personally led units of Schutzpolizei and Sonderdienst in the "pacification" of the village Wanaty, during which 108 inhabitants were brutally murdered.

In late 1942/early 1943, the Delegatura Rządu na Kraj (Government Delegation for Poland), an underground representative of the Polish government in exile, sentenced him to death for the crimes committed against the Polish and Jewish populations of Garwolin. The sentence was carried out by two units of the Polish Home Army, numbering twenty soldiers, from Garwolin and the nearby Wola Rębkowska village, on 5 July 1944. Feudenthal's execution was part of the general action carried out by the Home Army, Operacja Główki ("Operation Heads").

References

1. (Polish) Jerzy Piesiewicz "Zamach na kata" (Assassination of an executioner). On-line reprint from "Biuletyn Informacyjny Armii Krajowej" (Information Bulletin of the Home Army), July 2000.