On Thursday, 9 November 1939, the Germans began arresting representatives of Lublin’s intelligentsia in the occupied Lublin region including professors of the Catholic University of Lublin, presidents of courts, priests and local bishops. In total, around 250 people were detained in November 1939 as part of this operation known as Sonderaktion Lublin.

The Germans decided to exterminate the Polish intelligentsia after attacking Poland on 1 September 1939. Such orders were issued by the leader of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler, during a meeting in Jełowa in Silesia, speaking of the “mass annihilation of the Polish intelligentsia”. His words marked the beginning of a brutal action against the Polish intellectuals, which was also carried out in the Lublin region. As part of it, mass arrests began in November 1939, which targeted teachers, lawyers, civil officers, and clergy. This action, known as Sonderaktion Lublin, began on 9 November 1939. Three days earlier, the Germans had carried out a similar operation in Krakow.

In Lublin, the Germans arrested the rector of the Catholic University of Lublin (KUL), Father Professor Antoni Szymański, court presidents, and teachers of Lublin schools. On 11 November, 14 members of the academic staff of the Catholic University of Lublin (KUL) were detained, and less than a week later the university was closed. Priests were also arrested; on 17 November 1939, the occupying forces raided the premises of the Lublin curia and placed in custody two bishops, Marian Fulman and Władysław Goral, as well as other clergy present in the buildings. They were tried by a German summary court and sentenced to death. Only the intervention of the Vatican resulted in replacing of those sentences to life imprisonment. According to historians’ research, it is assumed that about 250 people throughout the Lublin region were arrested in November 1939. On 23 December 1939 10 of the detainees were executed near the old cemetery in Lublin on Sienna Street.

The responsible person for the entire operation was SS-Brigadeführer Odillo Globocnik, who had been Chief of Police and SS in the Lublin District of the General Government since 9 November 1939.