On 6 November 1939, as a part of Sonderaktion Krakau operation, the Nazis arrested professors of Cracow universities who later were executed or sent to concentration camps. Among them were four professors of the academy: Arnold Bolland, Zygmunt Sarna, Walenty Winid and Albin Żabiński, as well as many professors of other universities who were running some classes at the academy. Two buildings of the school were seized, and numerous library books and documents were lost. Classes continued surreptitiously throughout the war, until the school was able to reopen in 1945. The school was nationalized in 1950 and renamed as Higher School of Economics ("Wyższa Szkoła Ekonomiczna").