Pencil sketch of a Nazi by Dr K Prabhakar Rao

FERDINAND VON SAMMERN FRANKENEGG. NAZI, WW II

Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg (March 17, 1897 – September 20, 1944) was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era. He served as SS and Police Leader of the Warsaw area in German occupied Poland from 1941 until 1943 during World War II.Sammern-Frankenegg was in charge of the Großaktion Warschau, the single most deadly operation against the Jews in the course of the Holocaust in occupied Poland, which entailed sending about 254,000 – 265,000 men, women and children, aboard overcrowded Holocaust trains to the extermination camp in Treblinka.The liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto between July 23 and September 21, 1942 was disguised as a "resettlement action" in order to trick the victims into cooperating. It was a major part of the murderous campaign codenamed Operation Reinhard in the Final Solution.Von Sammern-Frankenegg remained in Warsaw until his first offensive operation in the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on April 19, 1943, but he was unsuccessful.After the failed offensive, von Sammern-Frankenegg was replaced by Jürgen Stroop,and court-martialed by Heinrich Himmler on April 24, 1943 for his alleged ineptitude; which, for the SS, meant only one thing: guilty of "defending Jews".He was subsequently transferred to Croatia where in September 1944 he was killed in a Yugoslav partisan ambush near the town of Klašnić.