Born Josef Stroop in 1895, Jürgen Stroop was a German SS commander, also serving as a Police Leader in occupied Poland, leading the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. He is the author of the "Stroop Report", a detailed record of the operation against the Ghetto Uprising.
The suppression led by Stroop led to the deaths of over 57 000 and Stroop ordered the Ghetto to be burned to the ground - block by block.
Stroop's own report stated that:
"his soldiers had captured or killed over 56,000 Jews and located 631 bunkers. According to Stroop’s report, 36,000 people were deported to labour camps in the Lublin province, the rest were killed on the spot or in the gas chambers of Treblinka. The data provided in the report are most likely exaggerated, yet there is no other data to refer to. Simultaneously, the Germans continued a painstaking search for Jews in hiding on the ‘Aryan side’, offering financial rewards for assistance in capturing them." (From the POLIN Museum section on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.)
Once the suppression was complete, Stroop ordered the destruction of Warsaw's Great Synagogue on May 16, 1943 and personally detonated the Synagogue.
"On 16.05.1943, following the bloody suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the German butcher J. Stroop ordered the demolition of the Great Synagogue":
After the war, Stroop was prosecuted during the Dachau Trials. He was subsequently extradited to Poland, again tried and convicted, and finally executed for crimes against humanity.
In an interview with the Polish Press Agency (PAP), Ewa Wójcicka, Archivist at the IPN (Institute of National Remembrance) described Stroop's report as a "noose prepared by the criminals for their own necks":
"80 years ago the Stroop Report was drawn up. It is a shocking testimony to the annihilation of the Jewish population and at the same time a cold document, devoid of emotion, one prepared by the German criminal machine - whose crimes against humanity were carried out in front of the camera's lens."
Sources: PAP, Twitter
pt
