The Dąbrówka Nowa Massacre occurred on 22 January 1945 in Dąbrówka Nowa in Poland, when a unit of the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army ( Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, afte ...

advancing from Nakło to Bydgoszcz killed over 100 unarmed members of the

15th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Latvian) The 15th ''Waffen'' Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Latvian) (german: 15. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (lettische Nr. 1)), lv, 15. SS grenadieru divīzija (latviešu Nr. 1)) was an Infantry Division of the ''Waffen-SS'' during World War I ...

Events

On 22 January 1945, soldiers of the 5th Battalion of the 1st Construction Regiment of the

were marching in the direction of Sępólno Krajeńskie after a rest in Dąbrówka Nowa. Along the way, they encountered a column of Soviet troops who mistook the Latvians for a unit holding combatant status. The Red Army troops immediately opened fire. Those who attempted to surrender were killed on the spot. About sixty of the Latvian soldiers fled to Dąbrówka Nowa, where they barricaded themselves in the schoolhouse. The building was surrounded and levelled by three tanks of the Soviet 9th Tank Corps. The remains of the SS troops lay for over a week in the snow, until at the request of the villagers they were buried at the boundary of the cemetery. In July 2010, fifty-three bodies were exhumed from that place and re-buried at the cemetery in Stare Czarnowo in north-western Poland, fifty-one Latvian soldiers, and two Germans.

References

{{coord missing, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship Massacres in Poland Massacres in 1945 World War II prisoner of war massacres by the Soviet Union Soviet World War II crimes in Poland 1945 murders in Poland Bydgoszcz County