AB-Aktion (Ger. Ausserordentliche Befriedungsaktion) – Nazi extermination campaign aimed to eliminate the Polish intelligentsia in the General Government (GG), carried out between May and July 1940 in order to liquidate the potential leaders of Polish underground resistance movement; it was part of the German policy of exterminating Polish elites (clergymen, teachers, politicians, artists, and writers), preceded by similar campaigns implemented in Pomerania (Intelligenzaktion), Greater Poland and Silesia, and in Kraków (Sonderaktion Krakau); headed by the commander of the police and security services (Sipo and the SD) in the General Government – G.B. Streckenbach; it resulted in the arrests of ca. 10,000 people, 3,500 of whom were murdered (e.g. in Palmiry, among others M. Rataj, M. Niedziałkowski); similar campaigns were carried out by the Soviet NKVD bodies in Polish territories occupied by the USSR (Soviet occupation of Polish territories 1939–1941).

The entry was written on the basis of source materials of the PWN printing house.