"...This is not a day of mourning. This is a day of commemorating the wonderful people who passed away. It is thanks to them that the Jagiellonian University has survived through all the hardships of history."

Karol Musioł, the Rector of the JU, November 7 2011

On November 6 and 7, 2011 the academic community of the Jagiellonian University marked the 72th anniversary of Sonderaktion Krakau, the Nazi German operation during which many eminent members of the JU academic staff, along with a number of other academics and scholars were arrested by the Gestapo.

The ceremonies started on November 6 with a holy mass in St. Anne's Collegiate Church. In the morning of November 7 the delegations of the Jagiellonian University laid flowers and wreaths on the graves of the eminent JU scholars in Rakowicki and Salwatorski Cemeteries and at the memorial plaque in the military barracks at ul. Wrocławska 82, where the arrested JU professors were held before being taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

The main part of the ceremony was held in the room LXVI of Collegium Novum, in which the JU professors were assembled before being arrested, under the pretext of listening to a speech on the "German point of view on academia and higher education." The commemorative meeting was opened by the Rector of the JU Prof. Karol Musioł, after whom Prof. Peter-Christian Mueller-Graff from the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, the fraternal University of the JU, delivered his speech. Prof. Mueller-Graff especially strongly stressed the academics' duty to teach young generations to respect human dignity and pointed to the cooperation between the two universities as an example of mutual striving towards greater empathy and sympathy. 

A special lecture was given by Prof. Jan Wiktor Tkaczyński from the JU, the president of the Committee on Taking Care of the JU Professors' Graves. Then the roll of honour was read by the member of the Student Government Lech Dubiński and flowers were laid at the memorial plaques in Collegium Novum and under the Freedom Oak by the JU Rector and the members of local authorities. The ceremony was graced by the presence of the soldiers from the 2nd Mechanized Corps in Krakow.