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:
“And death i think is no parenthesis”
—E.E. (Edward Estlin)
“In the attempt to defeat death man has been inevitably obliged to defeat life, for the two are inextricably related. Life moves on to death, and to deny one is to deny the other.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)