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Publication presents the short history of camp hospital which was organised in 1943 Nazi concentration camp Neu-Dachs in Jaworzno. The camp was a branch of Oświecim concentration camp. Atfer the war damage of the camp, the restoration was begun in 1945. Already in Febraury 1945, in place of German concentration camp, rises Central Work Camp. Several thousands of prisoners of war were placed there. The prisoners of war: Germans, Volksdeutches, Silesians were forced emlpoyed in nearby coal mines. Since 1947 the camp was a place of staying for several thousands Ukrainians who were displaced from eastern part of Poland in "Vistula Operation". Based on available written materials, publication is an attempt to analyse and evaluate: sanitary conditions, prison illnesses, mortality reasons among prisoners, hospital equipment, personel work conditions. The publication gives opportunity to compare conditions of prison hospital under nazi occupation and conditions in the camp which was organised in the same place under Stalin system of terror.

First concentration camps came into being as Soviet labour camps in captured by Bolsheviks Russia. The labour camps performed repressive and exterminatory functions besides they were the reservoir of oppression and relentless exploitation of man power. They were characterized by extreme death-rate of prisoners and lasting for hours exhausting work. Ones died mainly due to psychophysical weakness, contagious diseases, hypertension, heart and kidney diseases and accidents at work. A number of Soviet labour camps victims is estimated at several millions of human beings.

The existence of medical attention in Soviet labour camps was dictated not by humane reasons but by economical motives. It was just a wish to regenerate physical strength of some labour camp's slaves in order to exploit them to work out definite production as well as ideological plans. However, despite the lack of medicines, equipment, proper housing conditions and qualified staff, employed in labour camp's medical service people--doctors, hospital attendants, nurses, etc.--that were mostly recruited from amongst prisoners, showed a great deal of kindness and did their best to come to unwell and ill patients' assistance. Prisoners' lives were not uncommonly saved through exemption from work by a doctor's decision sending to hospital or transfer to another health category. In comparison with gehenna of labour camp's slave everyday life a sojourn in camp hospital seemed a paradise and a rescue from death to prisoners.

The decision to imprison Cracow's University professors on November 6, 1939 was made in connection with the establishment of the so-called General Government, as a second stage of German security police action in nazi-occupied Poland to ensure German rule also over Central and Southern Poland. By this way Sonderaktion Krakau (Special Action Cracow)--as continuation of politische Flurbereinigung (political cleaning up) started in German occupied Western Poland in September 1939--was a part of a second wave of persecution directed against the Polish societies' social classes indicated by Nazi leaders and chiefs of German security police as Poland's leadership, a wave of persecution now, since the end of October 1939, enlarged on Central and Southern Poland. The imprisonment of the Cracow Professors subsequently marked the perspective, that Poland's scientific and academic institutions as a whole would be destroyed, so that in future no Polish scientists, intellectuals and university people even would have the possibility to do scientific work and to have subsistence from doing this kind of work. As a consequence, Poland's intellectuals and university-trained people as a social class in future would disappear indefinitely, and the people of Poland, deprived of intellectual leadership, would be transformed into a mass of dependend lower-class working people, so that the Nazi leaders mournfull future-scenario for their rule in German occupied Central and Eastern Europe would become reality. By this way the imprisonment of the Cracow Professors on November 6, 1939 was the first step to realize Nazi future plans concerning Central and Eastern Europe.

The Author analyses the "Sonderaktion Krakau" from historical and cultural point of view. Striking Polish science and national intellectual elite with an insidious blow, the invader reached historical experiences. In the second part the Author reconstructs fate of imprisoned professors and quotes many personal observations from the period of his stay in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau Nazi camps.

The Author, participant and victim of the "Sonderaktion Krakau", remembers circumstances of insidious imprisonment of Krakow professors performed on November 6, 1939 by SS Operation Group under command of SS-Stumbannführer Bruno Müller. Based on archival research and relations of the participants of this action, he reconstructs fate of the imprisoned scientists and he analyses activities of political, governmental and diplomatic centers in Poland and particularly abroad towards liberation of the prisoners. A significant role in this international action was played by foreign scientific centers and universities as well as world press agencies. Due to this multinational solidarity, only 20 person out of 183 scientists imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau Nazi camps lost their lives. The article is supplemented by a list of publications on the "Sonderaktion Krakau" written by ex-prisoners.