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ANDREW KURAS, a/k/a Andrej Kuras, a/k/a Andrij Kuras, a/k/a Andrey Kuras, a/k/a Andreas Kuras, a/k/a Andrzej Kuras, a/k/a Andre Kuras

Excerpt:

Defendant’s Background

1. Defendant Andrew (a/k/a Andrej, Andrij, Andrey, Andreas, Andrzej, Andre) Kuras (“Kuras”) was born on April 14, 1922, in what was then Herbutow, Poland

(today, Naraivka, Ukraine).

II. Operation Reinhard and Trawniki Training Camp

2. The key figure in setting Nazi racial policy – after Hitler himself – was Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer SS (Reich Leader of the SS [Schutzstaffel, literally “Protection Squad”]). In 1936, Hitler appointed Himmler Chief of the German Police. The SS and police played a central role in what would be termed “the Final Solution.”

3. Poland had the largest Jewish population in Europe, numbering over three million in 1939. When Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and the Soviet Union invaded from the east on September 17, the two occupying powers divided Poland between themselves. Germany annexed the western portions of its new acquisition and administered the remaining area in central Poland as an occupied territory called the Government General. The Government General was comprised of five provinces or “districts”: Warsaw, Radom, Cracow, Lublin and Galicia, each of which had an “SS and Police Leader” (SSPF). In November 1939 Himmler appointed as SS and Police Leader for Lublin District SS-Brigadeführer (Brigadier General) Odilo Globocnik, who commanded all SS and police units stationed in Lublin District.

4. Jews were expelled from the annexed western regions into the Government General, where they were forcibly concentrated within special closed residential areas, or ghettos, in the cities and towns.

5. The systematic murder of the Jews began with the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. With the “final solution of the European Jewish question,” the Nazis sought to purge the continent of Jews. To that end, the first killing center began operation in December 1941 at Kulmhof (Polish: Che»mno) in German-annexed western Poland, and the killing centers at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka followed in the spring and summer of 1942. At least 1,500,000 Jews, most of them pulled from the ghettos of the Government General, were killed at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka in 1942 and 1943.

6. “Operation Reinhard” was the name given to the implementation of the Final Solution in the Government General, and Globocnik was charged by Himmler with executing it. According to Globocnik, Operation Reinhard had four elements:
(1) the “evacuation” (i.e., the killing itself);
(2) the “exploitation of manpower” at forced labor camps under Globocnik’s control;
(3) the “exploitation of materials,” i.e., the victims’ personal belongings; and
(4) the “acquisition of hidden assets and real estate.”

7. Trawniki Training Camp, jointly run by the SS and police and located in Lublin District, was established to train and supply a force of foreign auxiliaries to provide the manpower to carry out Operation Reinhard. The foreign auxiliaries who were recruited for service and who trained at the camp participated directly in the implementation of virtually every aspect of Operation Reinhard, including guarding the forced labor camps in Lublin District.

8. Globocnik appointed SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Streibel to command Trawniki Training Camp. Although Streibel initially recruited prisoners of war for training as police auxiliaries, in the fall and early winter of 1942, he shifted his recruitment drive to civilians, focusing upon the southeastern portions of the Government General, including Galicia District, which had a large Ukrainian population. The men trained at Trawniki were referred to in official German documents as “guards” (Wachmänner), but they were also known more colloquially, among other names, as “Trawniki men.” After the war, perpetrators and victims often referred to them as “Ukrainians,” even though the guard units consisted of men of other nationalities as well.

9. Shortly after the recruits arrived at Trawniki, they were issued permanent identification numbers.

These numbers were generally assigned chronologically, with lower numbers assigned to men who entered service at 10.

German officials also filled out personnel sheets (Personalbogen) on each newly arrived Trawniki recruit. These personnel sheets, which prominently bore the Trawniki recruit’s identification number, recorded the recruit’s name, other identifying information such as date and place of birth, and the date of his entry into service at Trawniki. A photograph of the new Trawniki man which included his identification number was also affixed to the personnel sheet.

Kuras’s Entry into German Service and Training at Trawniki 11. Kuras admitted to serving as a Trawniki-trained guard.

12. Kuras stated that he volunteered for German service in order to receive medical treatment for his hernias.

13. In December 1942, approximately 101 Ukrainians entered service at Trawniki from villages in the Galicia District, most from the administrative district of Brzeóany, which included Kuras’s hometown of Herbutów. The men who entered service on December 11, 1942 were assigned identification numbers in the range of 2933 to 2962.

14. Kuras’s identification number was 2958.

15. The Soviet Ministry of State Security (MGB) took information from captured Trawniki personnel sheets and included it in circulars called “Information on Wanted Persons,” from 1948 to roughly 1954. These circulars contain information about individual Trawniki men, including their date of entry into service at Trawniki, and sometimes even their Trawniki personnel photo with identification number. Information on former Trawniki guards in these circulars corresponds to the types of information on the personnel sheets, including their service entry date, dates and locations of assignments, and identifying information such as date and place of birth and parents’ names.

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