EXTREMISTS from Poland

Top 4

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Polish Extremists of all time. This list of famous Polish Extremists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. Karl Denke (1860 - 1924)

With an HPI of 61.79, Karl Denke is the most famous Polish Extremist.  His biography has been translated into 20 different languages on wikipedia.

Karl Denke (11 February 1860 – 22 December 1924) was a German serial killer and cannibal who killed and cannibalized dozens of homeless vagrants and travellers from 1903 to 1924. He has been nicknamed the Cannibal of Münsterberg and the Forgotten Cannibal.

2. Horst Mahler (b. 1936)

With an HPI of 57.00, Horst Mahler is the 2nd most famous Polish Extremist.  His biography has been translated into 26 different languages.

Horst Mahler (born 23 January 1936) is a German former lawyer and political activist. He once was a far-left militant and a founding member of the Red Army Faction who later became a Maoist, before switching to neo-Nazism. Between 2000 and 2003, he was a member of the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany. Since 2003, he has repeatedly been convicted of Volksverhetzung ("incitement of popular hatred") and Holocaust denial, and he served much of a twelve-year prison sentence. In April 2017, Mahler was ordered back to prison for a further three and a half years. On 18 April 2017, he fled the Federal Republic of Germany, hoping to avoid execution of the sentence. His attempt to receive political asylum in Hungary was rejected, and he was deported back to Germany, where he was arrested and put back in jail to finish serving his sentence.

3. Joachim Kroll (1933 - 1991)

With an HPI of 56.34, Joachim Kroll is the 3rd most famous Polish Extremist.  His biography has been translated into 18 different languages.

Joachim Georg Kroll (17 April 1933 – 1 July 1991) was a German serial killer, child molester, necrophile and cannibal who murdered a minimum of eight women and young girls in the Ruhr metropolitan region from 1955 until his arrest on 3 July 1976. He was convicted of eight murders and one attempted murder but confessed to a total of 14. He was sentenced to life imprisonment on 8 April 1982.

4. Elisabeth Becker (1923 - 1946)

With an HPI of 55.61, Elisabeth Becker is the 4th most famous Polish Extremist.  Her biography has been translated into 17 different languages.

Elisabeth Becker (20 July 1923 – 4 July 1946) was a Nazi concentration camp overseer in World War II. She was convicted at the Stutthof trials of crimes against humanity and executed.