Salomon Morel

Who was Salomon Morel?

Salomon Morel was a Holocaust survivor, Jewish partisan, Stalinist official and an accused war criminal. Immediately after the end of World War II, he became commander of the Zgoda labour camp in Świętochłowice. During the rise of the Polish United Workers' Party, Morel acquired the rank of colonel in the political police, or MBP, and commanded a prison in Katowice.

In 1994, soon after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Morel was indicted by Poland's Institute of National Remembrance for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the "revenge killings" of 1,500 ethnic prisoners from Upper Silesia. After his case was publicized by the Polish, German, British, and American media, Morel fled to Israel and was granted citizenship under the Law of Return. Poland twice requested his extradition, but Israel refused to comply and rejected the more serious charges as being false, potentially part of an antisemitic conspiracy, and again rejected extradition on the grounds that the statute of limitations against Morel had run out, and that Morel was in poor health.