Death
Heinrich Himmler used the misconduct of the Warsaw group as a pretext for having Kaminski and his leadership executed after trial by court martial in Litzmannstadt (Łódź). They were tried for stealing the property of the Reich, as the stolen property was to have been delivered to Himmler, but Kaminski and his men had attempted to keep it for themselves. Also executed with Kaminski was brigade chief-of-staff Waffen-Obersturmbannführer Ilya Shavykin.
The men of RONA were given a false explanation: that Kaminski had been killed by Polish partisans. When Kaminski's men rejected this explanation, the Gestapo took Kaminski's car, pushed it into a ditch, shot it up with a machine gun, and smeared goose blood all over it — offering that as evidence. The demoralized unit was soon moved out of town and stationed to the north of it, far from any partisan activity.
The death of Kaminski and the unreliability of his troops as a combat unit brought the plans to expand the Kaminski Brigade to a division to an end. After Kaminski's death his unit was placed under the command of SS-Brigadeführer and Generalmajor der Polizei Christoph Diehm.
Read more about this topic: Bronislav Kaminski
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“The death of Satan was a tragedy
For the imagination.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“War. Fighting. Men ... every man in the whole realm is in the army.... Every man in uniform ... An economy entirely geared to war ... but there is not much war ... hardly any fighting ... yet every man a soldier from birth till death ... Men ... all men for fighting ... but no war, no wars to fight ... what is it, what does it mean?””
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“‘Lay me a green sod under my head,
And another at my feet;
And lay my bent bow at my side,
Which was my music sweet;
And make my grave of gravel and green,
Which is most right and meet.”
—Unknown. Robin Hood’s Death (l. 65–70)