The evacuation of Katowice Gestapo archives on JiřiWehle’s, a prisoner of Sonderkommando Kattowitz,account

Abstract

In January 1945, just before the Red Army entered Katowice, the officers of Upper
Silesian Gestapo Headquarters evacuated from the city. Consequently, extensive
archives of their Staatspolizeileitstelle vanished, becoming, since that time, a subject
of speculations for a long time. Some light on the further allocation of the archives
can be shed with accounts of Jiři Wehle, a former prisoner of KL Auschwitz, who
in years 1944-1945 was working in Gestapo headquarters as a member of prisoners
working brigade Sonderkommando Kattowitz. According to Wehle, facing the threat
of losing Upper Silesia, part of this archive was burned after being transported to
Kopice, the rest was evacuated to Kłodzko and later on to Ölsnitz in Saxony, where
majority of the documents was destroyed, apart from a consignment which had been
earlier sent to Markt Schwaben w Bavaria. It is also highly probable, that Wehle was
able to save part of the Gestapo archives, in possession of which the Czechoslovakian
Intelligence came afterwards.