English source-aligned edition
Martin Fellenz
Martin Fellenz served as chief of staff to the SS and Police Leader in the Kraków District, directing the field organisation of deportations. The profile reconstructs the person’s function in Kraków, Miechow, Przemyśl, Rzeszow and Tarnów through documented office, decisions, supervision or operational conduct. It does not assign every crime committed by an institution or region to one individual.
Confirmed findings
- An indictment preserved by the IPN concerns Fellenz's personal direction of transports from the Kraków ghetto to Bełżec between 1 and 8 June 1942.
- The final judgment of Kiel Regional Court found that Fellenz was not merely an observer: he directed the field implementation of four deportation complexes and knew their purpose. Publicly available summaries do not permit those four complexes to be identified conclusively with the full list of five towns appearing in the broader prosecution material.
- The judgment rejected a defence based on alleged duress from orders, but did not find proven the individual personal killings attributed to him by some witnesses.
- On 27 January 1966 he received seven years' penal servitude; approximately five years in pretrial detention were credited, and he was released after the judgment.
Place in the chain of responsibility
Fellenz is a profile of logistical command over deportation: it connects the SS and Police Leader's staff, field delegates, on-site selection and transport to an extermination centre. The judgment makes it possible to separate responsibility for organisation from unproven allegations that he killed people with his own hands.
Key events and mechanisms
- taking office as chief of staff to the SS and Police Leader in the Kraków District
- directing the deportation from the Kraków ghetto to Bełżec in June 1942
- supervising subsequent deportation operations in the district through autumn 1942
- the first judgment in 1963, its reversal and the new judgment on 27 January 1966
The circle records authority, function and agency. Several profiles may describe different parts of the same persecution chain, so profile-level totals must not be added together.
Postwar accountability
The first four-year sentence imposed in 1963 was set aside by the Federal Court of Justice. In the retrial, Kiel Regional Court sentenced Fellenz on 27 January 1966 to seven years' penal servitude for aiding murder in four deportation complexes. Credit for approximately five years of pretrial detention and his release after the judgment meant that he did not serve the full sentence.
Limits of the evidence
The profile is based on the scope of the final second judgment. It does not retain allegations of individual shootings that the court did not find proven and does not attribute to Fellenz sole responsibility for planning the entire Holocaust in the district. The sources differ on his exact date of death, so only the year 2007 is given.
Sources
The source set combines institutional, archival, trial or scholarly material from at least two independent publishers.