levies, deportations from ghettos, or destruction of partisan groups. In October
1942, command of the Special Service was transferred to the authorities
of the Order Police.⁸
Jews in the General Government
In October 1939, there were about 1.5 million Jews in the General Government.
Not all were indigenous to the area, many had fled from the western areas
during the September 1939 Polish-German war, and others were resettled by
force.⁹ One of the objectives of the Nazi population policy was to rid the territories
directly annexed to the Third Reich of as many Jews and Poles as possible.
From the first days of the war until October, their unrestrained resettlement to
central Poland took place, its scope estimated at 30,000 people. On 30 October
1939, Heinrich Himmler, the Reich commissioner for the strengthening of
German values (Reichskommissar für die Festigung deutschen Volkstums), issued
an order for resettlement of all Jews from the lands that had belonged to the
Reich before World War I and all Poles from the District of West Prussia, and
from the former Congress Kingdom, the Poznań voivodship, and East Prussia,
considered “the particularly hostile Polish population.”
The first wave of resettlement to the GG took place in December 1939,
the next in February and March 1940, and another one in January and March
1941. According to German data, by 16 March 1941, 364,665 people were resettled, most from the Wartheland. It is estimated that 80,000 to 90,000 Jews
were among them.¹⁰ The second large territory from which the Jews were
8 C. Madajczyk, Polityka III Rzeszy..., vol. 2, pp. 254–255; Jacek Andrzej Młynarczyk, "Akcja Reinhard” w gettach prowincjonalnych dystryktu warszawskiego 1942–1943, in: Prowincja noc. Życie i zagłada Żydów w dystrykcie warszawskim, ed. Barbara Engelking, Jacek Leociak, Dariusz Libionka (Warszawa, 2007), pp. 40–45.
9 Czesław Łuczak, Polityka ludnościowa i ekonomiczna hitlerowskich Niemiec w okupowanej Polsce (Poznań, 1979), pp. 122–128; Wysiedlenia, wypędzenia i ucieczki 1939–1945. Atlas ziem Polski, ed. Witold Sienkiewicz, Grzegorz Hryciuk (Warszawa, 2008), p. 110.
10 Figures cited from Maria Rutowska, Wysiedlenia ludności polskiej z Kraju Warty do Generalnego Gubernatorstwa 1939–1941 (Poznań, 2003), p. 37. Estimated percentage of Jews cited from Wysiedlenia, wypędzenia i ucieczki..., pp. 62–65; C. Łuczak, Polityka ludnościowa..., pp. 117–132.
