Управление государственной тайной полиции (Гестапо) (г. Штеттин)
- Geheime Staatspolizeistelle (Gestapo) (Stettin); Office of the Secret State Police (Gestapo) (Stettin)
- Upravlenie gosudarstvennoi tainoi politsii (Gestapo) (g. Shtettin)
Extent and Medium
982 files
Biographical History
The Gestapo office in Stettin was under the command of the Berlin Gestapo office. The Stettin office conducted surveillance on all organizations active in the region, and on individual persons suspected of political unreliability; it also engaged in counterintelligence. The structure of the Gestapo office as of 31 December 1939 included three sections, which in turn were organized into departments. The first section dealt with organizational issues; the second, with domestic surveillance of "enemies" of the Nazi regime; and the third, with intelligence and counterintelligence, including surveillance of foreigners. The jurisdiction of the Stettin Gestapo office included the border commissariats of Stettin, Swinemünde, and Stralsund, the border police post in Sassnitz, and the "foreign service" of Greifswald. Primary functions of the Stettin Gestapo included surveillance of Jews and Jewish organizations, conducting regional operations to register and expel the Jewish population, and pursuing other discriminatory measures with regard to Jews. The third section in particular dealt with the expulsion from Germany of Jewish foreign nationals and enforced the ban on foreigners of Jewish origin passing through Germany. The activities of the Gestapo ceased upon the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945.
Scope and Content
The collection's contents are described in three inventories. Inventories no. 1 and 2 are systematized by structure; they catalogue documentary materials of the first section (organizational issues), the second section (domestic political surveillance), and the third section (intelligence and counterintelligence). The files catalogued in inventory no. 3 are systematized thematically: Stettin Gestapo circulars and internal documents; surveillance of the Communist Party of Germany and of anti-fascists; surveillance of persons suspected of espionage, and of companies, the mail, and the press; and surveillance of Jewish and religious organizations. The inventories include introductions and section indexes. There is a geographical index to the collection's files. The collection contains orders, edicts, circulars, reports, dispatches, correspondence, financial documents, and information regarding surveillance of the Church, Jews, Freemasons, communists, homosexuals, and national minorities, as well as "wanted" lists, investigation files, files on investigations of unreliable persons, lists, journals, newspapers, articles on the Gestapo, and other materials. The documents on Jewish affairs relate to the period before the Second World War. Documents on the surveillance of Jews and Jewish organizations, including religious ones, constitute 73 storage units. These include circulars of the Berlin Gestapo office on creating an office Central Bureau for collecting information on Jews and Freemasons and on creating a card file of Jews in Germany; orders and edicts of the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Berlin and Stettin Gestapo offices on forbidding Jewish citizens of Poland to reside in Germany, on interning Jewish citizens of the United States, and on expelling Jews from Germany; radiograms from the Gestapo main office to all police departments on taking measures against Jewish stores; copies of decrees of the Minister of Economics allowing Jews to open restaurants and cafes; edicts of the Stettin Gestapo office on procedures for issuing passports (including foreign-travel passports) to Jews; an instruction booklet for participants in the campaign to expel Jews; and questionnaires, for persons of Jewish origin, on capital and real estate in their possession. The collection contains various lists of Jews, Jewish organizations, and Jewish-owned property: a list of Jewish organizations in Pomerania, lists of Jews arrested for the purpose of deportation to Poland, records of Jews having emigrated from Germany (including to Shanghai), and a file cataloguing Jewish land holdings in Germany. There are surveillance files of Jewish organizations (sports, youth, and women's organizations); on surveillance of members of the Reich Union of Jewish War Veterans and members of the Union of Jewish Youth; and on the confiscation of the Jewish-owned journal Die Grüne Post; investigative files on Jews being stripped of German citizenship; files on establishing trusteeship of the property of arrested Jews; dispatches by Stettin police agents on anti-Jewish pogroms and the boycott of Jewish shops; and reports by the Gestapo of Stralsund, Koslin, and Swinemunde on German individuals' contacts with Jewish firms and on Jews working in German firms.
Finding Aids
Nazi-Looted Jewish Archives in Moscow. A guide to Jewish Historical and Cultural Collections in the Russian State Military Archive, ed. by D. E. Fishman, M. Kupovetsky, V. Kuzelenkov, Scranton - London 2010.
Existence and Location of Copies
Microfilms are held by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives.
Archivist Note
Entry selected by Krzysztof Tyszka from the book “Nazi-Looted Jewish Archives in Moscow. A guide to Jewish Historical and Cultural Collections in the Russian State Military Archive”, ed. by D. E. Fishman, M. Kupovetsky, V. Kuzelenkov
Rules and Conventions
EHRI Guidelines for Description v.1.0