Defendant Juergen Stroop, the former SS general responsible for suppressing the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, in the witness box during his trial.
Overview
- Caption
- Defendant Juergen Stroop, the former SS general responsible for suppressing the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, in the witness box during his trial.
- Date
-
1951 July 18 - 1951 July 23
- Locale
- Warsaw, Poland
- Variant Locale
- Warszawa
Varshava
Warschau - Photo Credit
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Leopold Page Photographic Collection
Rights & Restrictions
- Photo Source
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumProvenance: Leopold Page Photographic Collection
Keywords & Subjects
Administrative Notes
- Biography
- Juergen (Josef) Stroop was born September 26, 1895 in Detmold, Germany and executed by hanging in Warsaw on March 6th, 1952. He quickly scaled the SS ranks to become an SS-Brigadefuehrer and police Colonel by the start of World War II. In the first years of the war, his 'pacification' successes and 'struggle against banditry' in the occupied territories of Greece, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Russia earned him a favorable reputation among Reich military leaders. When the first clashes of the Warsaw ghetto uprising reverberated through the city his reputation for exacting brutality had preceded him, and (now SS-Gruppenfuehrer) Stroop was called from his activities in Lvov to suppress the rebellion and liquidate the fifty-six thousand remaining Jews. After twenty days of bloodshed, three hundred SS and Wehrmacht soldiers had died and another thousand had been injured. Only twenty-five thousand Jews remained alive, the ghetto was in ruins, and the uprising had been crushed. The surviving Jews were sent to their deaths at Treblinka, Majdanek, Poniatowa, and Trawnika; Stroop received an Iron Cross (First Class) in recognition of his service, and was promoted to a Higher SS and Police Leader and transferred to Greece. He compiled an account of the operation in what would become known as the Stroop Report (Stroop Bericht).
Originally tried and sentenced to death by a U.S. military tribunal in Dachau on March 27, 1947 for his role in the execution of captured Allied pilots in Greece, former SS Major General Juergen Stroop was extradited to Warsaw later that year to stand trial for various crimes committed during the war. The trial eventually opened on July 18th, 1951 and Stroop was charged with membership in the SS, declared a criminal organization at Nuremberg; with ordering and leading the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto, including the murder of over fifty-six thousand people; ordering the execution of one hundred Polish resistance fighters on July 16th, 1943; and with participating in the mass murder and persecution of Poles in the Wartheland. Following a brief five-day trial, Stroop was found guilty and condemned to death on July 23rd, 1951. He was hanged the following year on March 6, 1952 in Warsaw, Poland.
[Source: Zentner, Christian; The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, New York, Macmillan, 1991.]
[Source: Wistrich, Robert, S; Who's Who in Nazi Germany, New York, Routledge, 1995.]
- Record last modified:
- 2008-04-10 00:00:00
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa31475
