Anniversary of "Operation Sonderaktion Krakau"

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Nov. 6 has been commemorated as University Remembrance Day to honor the Polish professors and academics who were taken to concentration camps by the German Nazis in 1939, and also to honor all deceased members of the academic community. On Nov. 6, 1939, 144 academics from Jagiellonian University, 21 from Technology University (AGH) and three from Economic University (UE) were lured to room 56 of Collegium Novum (Latin for "New College") for an alleged lecture by Senior Storm Unit Leader SS Brunon Muller, as part of the Operation Sonderaktion Krakau. The Nazi officer said the academics were under arrest for starting the school year without permission and for their "hostile attitude towards German science." The professors were sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After international protests, including one from Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, 101 academics over the age of 40 were granted releases in February the following year. But many of them were dead already, and others died soon after they were freed. This year's Remembrance Day ceremonies started with a Mass in St. Anne's Academic Church in Krakow and the placing of flowers on the graves of the professors and at memorial plaques at Jagiellonian and at the Oak of Freedom, which grows in front of the Collegium Novum (at the corner of ul. Golebia and Planty). The main events took place in room 56. Participants included, among others, families of victims of Sonderaktion. The climax of the ceremonies was the reading aloud of the names of 182 deceased academics, done by the last detention survivor Jozef Wolski.