Jurgen Stroop

Jurgen Stroop was born in Germany in 1885. He joined the Schutz Staffeinel (SS) and was police leader in Warsaw during the Second World War.

On 19th April 1943 the Waffen SS entered the Warsaw Ghetto. Although though only had two machine-guns, fifteen rifles and 500 pistols, the Jews opened fire on the soldiers. They also attacked them with grenades and petrol bombs. The Germans took heavy casualties and Brigadier-General Stroop ordered his men to retreat. He then gave instructions for all the buildings in the ghetto to be set on fire. .

As people fled from the fires they were rounded up and deported to the extermination camp at Treblinka. The ghetto fighters continued the battle from the cellars and attics of Warsaw. On 8th May the Germans began using poison gas on the insurgents in the last fortified bunker. About a hundred men and women escaped into the sewers but the rest were killed by the gas. It is believed that only 100 Jews survived the 1943 ghetto rising. .

Later in 1943 Stroop was appointed SS and political leader of Greece. After the war Stroop was arrested and charged with war crimes and was found guilty by an American Tribunal at Dachau. Jurgen Stroop was executed at Warsaw on 8th September, 1951.




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