Is there any veterans of the Dirlewanger Brigade still alive?

“The infamous SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger, also known as the Dirlewanger Brigade, came into the spotlight in Poland last week 

The Warsaw Uprising Museum has obtained a list of members of the infamous brigade

The infamous SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger, also known as the Dirlewanger Brigade, came into the spotlight in Poland last week when media reports surfaced that its surviving soldiers could be tried for war crimes. 

The unit is known primarily for atrocities committed while suppressing the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.

Polish daily Rzeczpospolita revealed that the German Red Cross had provided the Warsaw Uprising Museum with files listing members of the SS unit. 

The list has already been forwarded to the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), whose president, Janusz Kurtyka, has hinted that an investigation of the brigade’s activities during the uprising could soon be launched. 

The Simon Wiesenthal Center has also called for the SS soldiers to be prosecuted. Efraim Zuroff, president of the center’s Jerusalem branch, has promised to provide the IPN with all necessary assistance.

The surviving Dirlewanger Brigade members on the list, whose number amounts to over 70, are now likely to be interrogated by German prosecutors. 

As most of the soldiers in question are at an advanced age, quick action will have to be taken, Dariusz Gabrel, head of the IPN’s Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation, told Rzeczpospolita.

The Oskar Dirlewanger-led SS brigade came into being in 1940 as an anti-partisan unit and saw action in Poland and Belarus. 

The formation was primarily composed of common criminals, some of whom had been convicted of assault and rape, and its activities provoked complaints even from Wehrmacht and SS commanders. 

Upon the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944, the brigade was sent into action in the capital’s Wola and Old Town areas, where it perpetrated mass executions of civilians, crimes for which Dirlewanger’s soldiers have never been held accountable.

From Warsaw Business Journal by Adam Zdrodowski”

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