Wilhelm Trapp


Wilhelm Trapp, nicknamed Papa Trapp by his subordinates was a career policeman who commanded the Reserve Police Battalion 101 formation of Nazi Germany uniformed police force known as Order Police.
A World War I veteran and recipient of the Iron Cross First Class, an "old Party fighter", who joined the NSDAP in December 1932, Trapp served in occupied Poland during World War II, subsequently leading his battalion of nearly 500 middle-aged men from Hamburg on genocidal missions against the Polish Jews.
He was captured after the war by the Allies and handed over to the British authorities. After investigation by the Polish Military Mission he was extradited to Poland in 1946, and charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. Trapp was found guilty and sentenced to death by the Siedlce District Court on 6 July 1948, and executed on 18 December 1948.

Excerpts

The killing of 1,500 of the 1,800 Jews from Józefów located twenty miles southeast of Biłgoraj in Distrikt Lublin on 13 July 1942 was performed by German policemen: the 1. Company, and, mostly, by the three platoons of the 2. Company. Trapp gave his commanders their respective assignments before the operation.
, southeast of Biłgoraj commemorating the Jewish victims of the 1942 massacre committed by the Reserve Police Battalion 101. The inscription omits the name of the German policemen and Luxembourgish police trainees.
The bodies of the dead carpeting the forest floor at the Winiarczykowa Góra hill were left unburied. Watches, jewelry and money were taken.
The Reserve Police Battalion 101. left for Biłgoraj at 9 pm. Trapp later remarked to his driver: "If this Jewish business is ever avenged on earth, then have mercy on us Germans... But orders are orders", he said.