Karl Schikorski – nazistowski „polakożerca” z Tychów

Abstract

The state of knowledge about the personnel of the German occupation apparatus of power, including the Nazi party, in Upper Silesia during World War II is already very advanced. This has been made possible by the availability of the existing source materials, primarily those stored in the State Archives in Katowice. They allow us not only to identify of the activities of the most important Nazi dignitaries, but also of the representatives of the local occupation elites. Mirosław Węcki’s analysis of Karl Schikorski — a Volksdeutsch and an NSDAP functionary operating during the war in Tychy, a city located in the Pszczyński district — illustrates the possibility of conducting such research based, among other sources, on the personnel files of the Nazi party. This microregional type of approach is important for the adequate understanding of life during the occupation, especially since the local supporters of the Nazi regime, derived from the pre-war German minority, left a tragic mark on the fate of the Polish inhabitants of the region.