Special Prosecution Book-Poland

Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen (Polish: Specjalna księga Polaków ściganych listem gończym; "Special Prosecution Book-Poland") was the proscription list prepared by Germans, before the war, that identified more than 61,000 members of Polish elites: activists, intelligentsia, scholars, actors, former officers, and others, who were to be interned or shot.

History
Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen was prepared before the Invasion of Poland, between 1937 and 1939, by the “Zentralstelle IIP Polen” (Central Unit IIP-Poland) unit of the German political police, “Gestapo” with help from the German minority living in pre-war Poland. Central was created under Reinhard Heydrich to coordinate the ethnic cleansing of all Poles in “Operation Tannenberg" and Intelligenzaktion, the codenames for the extermination actions directed at the Polish people during World War II, part of the Generalplan Ost.

The list identified more than 61,000 members of Polish elite: activists, intelligentsia, scholars, actors, former officers, Polish nobility, Catholic priests, university professors, teachers, doctors, lawyers and even a prominent sportsman who represented Poland on the Berlin Olympics in 1936. People from Special Prosecution Book were killed outright by Einsatzgruppen and Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz or sent to concentration camps to die.

The second edition of Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen in German and Polish language was published in 1940 in occupied Kraków after ending AB-Aktion (in German Ausserordentliche Befriedungsaktion). action elimination of Polish intelligentsia. It was the last edition under this name and later lists was published under the name of Fahndungsnachweis.