Around six million Polish citizensProject in Posterum Retrieved 20 September 2013.Holocaust: Five Million Forgotten: Non-Jewish Victims of the Shoah. Remember.org.AFP/Expatica, '', Expatica.com, 30 August 2009
Tomasz Szarota
Tomasz Marceli Szarota (born 2 January 1940 in Warsaw) is a Polish historian and publicist. As a historian, his areas of expertise relate to history of World War II, and everyday life in occupied Poland, in particular, in occupied Warsaw and oth ...
& Wojciech Materski, ''Polska 1939–1945. Straty osobowe i ofiary represji pod dwiema okupacjami'' (Poland, 1939–1945: Human Losses and Victims of Repression under Two Occupations),
Warsaw
Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...
,
Institute of National Remembrance
The Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation ( pl, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej – Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, abbreviated IPN) is a Polish state resea ...
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. Most were civilians killed by the actions of
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
, the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
, the
Lithuanian Security Police
The Lithuanian Security Police (LSP), also known as Saugumas ( lt, Saugumo policija), was a local police force that operated in German-occupied Lithuania from 1941 to 1944, in collaboration with the occupational authorities. Collaborating with th ...
, as well as the
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists
The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists ( uk, Організація українських націоналістів, Orhanizatsiya ukrayins'kykh natsionalistiv, abbreviated OUN) was a Ukrainian ultranationalist political organization estab ...
and its offshoots (the
Ukrainian Insurgent Army
The Ukrainian Insurgent Army ( uk, Українська повстанська армія, УПА, translit=Ukrayins'ka povstans'ka armiia, abbreviated UPA) was a Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary and later partisan formation. During World ...
, the
Self-defense Kushch Units
Self-defense Kushch Units (SKU) — Ukrainian self-defense units formed to protect Ukrainian villages, as well as to create a rear for the UPA. They operated in 1942–1946 and were inspected by the district leaders of the separate formation of ...
and the
Ukrainian People's Revolutionary Army
Ukrainian People's Revolutionary Army ( uk, Українська народно-революційна армія), also known as the Polissian Sich ( uk, Поліська Січ) or the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, was a paramilitary formation of Uk ...
).
At the
International Military Tribunal
International is an adjective (also used as a noun) meaning "between nations".
International may also refer to:
Music Albums
* ''International'' (Kevin Michael album), 2011
* ''International'' (New Order album), 2002
* ''International'' (The T ...
held in
Nuremberg
Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...
, Germany, in 1945–46, three categories of wartime criminality were juridically established: waging a
war of aggression
A war of aggression, sometimes also war of conquest, is a military conflict waged without the justification of self-defense, usually for territorial gain and subjugation.
Wars without international legality (i.e. not out of self-defense nor sanc ...
crimes against humanity
Crimes against humanity are widespread or systemic acts committed by or on behalf of a ''de facto'' authority, usually a state, that grossly violate human rights. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity do not have to take place within the ...
. For the first time in history, these three categories of crimes were defined after the end of the war in
international law
International law (also known as public international law and the law of nations) is the set of rules, norms, and standards generally recognized as binding between states. It establishes normative guidelines and a common conceptual framework for ...
as violations of fundamental human values and norms, regardless of internal (local) law or the obligation to follow
superior orders
Superior orders, also known as the Nuremberg defense or just following orders, is a plea in a court of law that a person, whether a member of the military, law enforcement, a firefighting force, or the civilian population, should not be considere ...
. In the subsequent years, the crime of
genocide
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin ...
was elevated to a distinct, fourth category.
These crimes were committed in
occupied Poland
' (Norwegian: ') is a Norwegian political thriller TV series that premiered on TV2 on 5 October 2015. Based on an original idea by Jo Nesbø, the series is co-created with Karianne Lund and Erik Skjoldbjærg. Season 2 premiered on 10 October 2 ...
on a tremendous scale, unparalleled elsewhere in Europe.
German-Soviet partitioning of Poland and cooperation (September 1939 – June 1941)
Following 1 September 1939 invasion of Poland from the west by Germany, the
Soviets
Soviet people ( rus, сове́тский наро́д, r=sovyétsky naród), or citizens of the USSR ( rus, гра́ждане СССР, grázhdanye SSSR), was an umbrella demonym for the population of the Soviet Union.
Nationality policy in th ...
attacked from the east on 17 September in accordance with the terms of the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact
, long_name = Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
, image = Bundesarchiv Bild 183-H27337, Moskau, Stalin und Ribbentrop im Kreml.jpg
, image_width = 200
, caption = Stalin and Ribbentrop shaking ...
, a secret non-aggression agreement signed in August.Zaloga, S. J. (2003) ''Poland 1939'' Osprey 1 September – This Day in History. Within a month, Poland had been divided between two occupational forces, and their joint victory parade was held in Brest-Litovsk. Germany annexed 91,902 square kilometres with 10 million citizens and controlled the newly created
General Government
The General Government (german: Generalgouvernement, pl, Generalne Gubernatorstwo, uk, Генеральна губернія), also referred to as the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (german: Generalgouvernement für die be ...
, which consisted of a further 95,742 kilometres with 12 million citizens. In total, Germany's zone of occupation consisted of 187,644 square kilometres with 22 million citizens. The Soviet Union occupied 202,069 square kilometres with over 13 million citizens.Ministry of Foreign Affairs ''Nazi German Camps on Polish Soil During World War II.'' /ref> In 1939, the invading forces consisted of 1.5 million Germans and nearly half a million Soviets.
Poland's territory was divided between Nazi Germany and the USSR, and was governed directly by the occupying countries, without establishing any form of Polish collaborating puppet authorities. The occupying powers' actions eclipsed the sovereign Polish state, whose government went into exile, and inflicted massive damage to the country's cultural heritage. Other war crimes against Poland included
deportation
Deportation is the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. The term ''expulsion'' is often used as a synonym for deportation, though expulsion is more often used in the context of international law, while deportation ...
s aimed at
ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, and religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal, extermination, deportation or population transfer ...
, imposition of
forced labor
Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence including death, or other forms of ex ...
,
pacification
Pacification may refer to:
The restoration of peace through a declaration or peace treaty:
*Pacification of Ghent, an alliance of several provinces of the Netherlands signed on November 8, 1576
*Treaty of Berwick (1639), or ''Pacification of Berwi ...
s, and
genocidal
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin ...
acts. There were many similarities between the two zones of occupations marked by systematic oppression. Both invaders executed Polish civilians and prisoners of war in parallel campaigns of ethnic cleansing, coordinating some of these actions through Gestapo–NKVD conferences. "The scale and extent of the brutality practised in occupied Poland far exceeded anything experienced in other occupied countries."Radzilowski, John (2007) ''A Traveller's History of Poland'' Chastleton Travel, . pp. 193–198. (Google Books preview)
In the summer and autumn of 1941 the lands annexed in the east by the Soviets, containing large
Ukrainian
Ukrainian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Ukraine
* Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe
* Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine
* So ...
and Belarusian populations, were overrun by Nazi Germany in the initially successful
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named after ...
against the Soviet Union.
Nazi German crimes against the Polish nation
The invasion of Poland (September 1939)
From 1 September 1939, the war against Poland was intended as a fulfilment of the plan described by
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
in his book ''
Mein Kampf
(; ''My Struggle'' or ''My Battle'') is a 1925 autobiographical manifesto by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler. The work describes the process by which Hitler became antisemitic and outlines his political ideology and future plans for Germ ...
''. The main goal of the plan was to make all of
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russ ...
into the ''
Lebensraum
(, ''living space'') is a German concept of settler colonialism, the philosophy and policies of which were common to German politics from the 1890s to the 1940s. First popularized around 1901, '' lso in:' became a geopolitical goal of Imperi ...
'' (living space) of
Greater Germany
Pan-Germanism (german: Pangermanismus or '), also occasionally known as Pan-Germanicism, is a pan-nationalist political idea. Pan-Germanists originally sought to unify all the German-speaking people – and possibly also Germanic-speaking ...
. German historian
Jochen Böhler
Jochen Böhler (born 1969 in Rheinfelden) is a German historian, specializing in the history of Eastern Europe in the 19th and 20th century, especially the World Wars, the Holocaust, nationality and borderland studies. He is the recipient of sev ...
observed that the war of annihilation did not begin with the
Final Solution
The Final Solution (german: die Endlösung, ) or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (german: Endlösung der Judenfrage, ) was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to th ...
, but immediately after the attack on Poland. In order to inspire rage against the Poles and trigger broad public acceptance for total war (that is, war with no legal or moral limitations), the
Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels (; 29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German Nazi politician who was the ''Gauleiter'' (district leader) of Berlin, chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, and then Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 19 ...
propaganda
Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded ...
machine soon published and distributed throughout Germany two books based on falsified information: ''Dokumente polnischer Grausamkeit'' (Documents of Polish Brutality) and the ''Polnische Blutschuld'' (Polish Blood Guilt). The ISBN printed in the document (978–93–7629–481–0) is bad, causing a checksum error. A
false flag
A false flag operation is an act committed with the intent of disguising the actual source of responsibility and pinning blame on another party. The term "false flag" originated in the 16th century as an expression meaning an intentional misr ...
operation, the
Gleiwitz incident
The Gleiwitz incident (german: Überfall auf den Sender Gleiwitz; ) was a false flag attack on the radio station ''Sender Gleiwitz'' in Gleiwitz (then Germany and now Gliwice, Poland) staged by Nazi Germany on the night of 31 August 1939. Along ...
, was organised by the German agents to serve as the ''
casus belli
A (; ) is an act or an event that either provokes or is used to justify a war. A ''casus belli'' involves direct offenses or threats against the nation declaring the war, whereas a ' involves offenses or threats against its ally—usually one b ...
''. ''
Wehrmacht
The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previous ...
'' (the German armed forces) was sent out without a formal
declaration of war
A declaration of war is a formal act by which one state (polity), state announces existing or impending war activity against another. The declaration is a performative speech act (or the signing of a document) by an authorized party of a nationa ...
"to kill without mercy and reprieve all men, women and children of the Polish race", as ordered by Adolf Hitler in his speech to military commanders on 22 August 1939. This could be seen as an attempt to destroy the entire nation. The invading Germans believed that the
Poles
Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, who share a common history, culture, the Polish language and are identified with the country of Poland in Ce ...
were racially inferior to them.
Indiscriminate executions by firing squad
From the very beginning of war against Poland, German forces carried out massacres and executions of civilians. Many of these atrocities were not properly researched after the war due to the political divide between Eastern and Western Europe during the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
, wrote Böhler. Polish eyewitness accounts do not identify the German units involved; that information is traceable only through German records. Therefore, the crimes committed by the ''Heer'' (the regular German army) were often wrongly attributed to ''SS'' operational groups in Polish historiography. It is estimated that there were two hundred executions every day in September 1939.
Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich ( ; ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust.
He was chief of the Reich Security Main Office (inclu ...
, head of the
Reich Security Main Office
The Reich Security Main Office (german: Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA) was an organization under Heinrich Himmler in his dual capacity as ''Chef der Deutschen Polizei'' (Chief of German Police) and ''Reichsführer-SS'', the head of the Nazi ...
, complained that the rate was too slow. Typically, the mass executions were conducted in public spaces such as the town square in order to inflict terror.
Records show that during the German advance across Poland five hundred thirty-one towns and villages were burned. By the end of September 1939 the names of settlements, dates and numbers of civilians executed by the ''Wehrmacht'' included: Starogard (2 September), 190 Poles, 40 of them Jews; Świekatowo (3 September), 26 Poles;
Wieruszów
Wieruszów (; german: Weruschau) is a town in south-central Poland with 8,446 inhabitants (2020). Situated in the southwestern part of Łódź Voivodeship, it is the seat of the Gmina Wieruszów and Wieruszów County. The town is situated along ...
(3 September), 20 Poles all Jews. On 4 September 1939 the 42nd Infantry Regiment committed the
Częstochowa massacre
The Częstochowa massacre, also known as the Bloody Monday, was committed by the German ''Wehrmacht'' forces beginning on the 4th day of World War II in the Polish city of Częstochowa, between 4 and 6 September 1939. The shootings, beatings an ...
with 1,140 citizens or more, 150 of them Jews, murdered in wild shooting actions in several city locations, leading to a final bloodbath according to Polish reports, involving frightened and inexperienced troops opening machine gun fire at a crowd of 10,000 civilians rounded up as hostages in the Main Square. The official Wehrmacht tally listed only 96 male and 3 female victims of the so-called "anti-partisan" action in the city.
In
Imielin
Imielin (german: Immenau O.S.) is a town in Silesia in southern Poland, near Katowice. Borders on the Upper Silesian Metropolitan Union – metropolis with the population of 2 million. It is located in the Silesian Highlands. The population of ...
(4–5 September), 28 Poles were killed; in Kajetanowice (5 September), 72 civilians were massacred in revenge for two German horses killed by German friendly fire;
Trzebinia
Trzebinia (; yi, טשעבין ''Tchebin'') is a town in Chrzanów County, Lesser Poland, Poland with an Orlen oil refinery and a major rail junction of the Kraków - Katowice line, with connections to Oświęcim and Spytkowice. The town became p ...
(5 September), 97 Polish citizens; Piotrków (5 September), Jewish section of the city was set on fire;
Będzin
Będzin (; also ''Bendzin'' in English; german: Bendzin; yi, בענדין, Bendin) is a city in the Dąbrowa Basin, in southern Poland. It lies in the Silesian Highlands, on the Czarna Przemsza River (a tributary of the Vistula). Even though par ...
(8 September), two hundred civilians burned to death;
Kłecko
Kłecko (; German: ''Kletzko'', 1940-45 ''Klötzen'') is a town in Gniezno County, Greater Poland Voivodeship, Poland, with 2,712 inhabitants (2004).
History
A Lechitic stronghold was founded in the 9th century, located in the Greater Poland reg ...
Gmina Besko
__NOTOC__
Gmina Besko is a rural gmina (administrative district) in Sanok County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship, in south-eastern Poland. Its seat is the village of Besko, which lies approximately west of Sanok and south of the regional capital Rze ...
(11 September), 21 Poles; Kowalewice (11 September), 23 Poles; Pilica (12 September); 36 Poles, 32 of them Jewish; Olszewo (13 September), 13 people (half of the village) from Olszewo and 10 from nearby Pietkowo including women and children stabbed by bayonets, shot, blown up by grenades, and burned alive in a barn;
Mielec
Mielec ( yi, מעליץ-Melitz) is the largest city and seat of Mielec County. Mielec is located in south-eastern Poland (Lesser Poland), in the Subcarpathian Voivodeship (Województwo Podkarpackie). The population of Mielec in December 2021 wa ...
(13 September), 55 Jews burned to death;
Piątek
Piątek or Piontek (Polish pronunciation: ) is a surname meaning "Friday" in Polish language, Polish. Pronounced differnetly, both forms occur in Poland but the standard spelling, Piątek, is about ten times as common. In other countries, Piontek m ...
(13 September), 50 Poles, seven of them Jews. On 14–15 September about 900 Polish Jews, mostly intelligentsia, were targeted in parallel shooting actions in
Przemyśl
Przemyśl (; yi, פשעמישל, Pshemishl; uk, Перемишль, Peremyshl; german: Premissel) is a city in southeastern Poland with 58,721 inhabitants, as of December 2021. In 1999, it became part of the Subcarpathian Voivodeship; it was pr ...
and in
Medyka
Medyka (; uk, Медика, Medyka) is a village in Przemyśl County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship, in south-eastern Poland, on the border with Ukraine. It is the seat of the municipality (gmina) called Gmina Medyka. It lies approximately east of Pr ...
; this was a foreshadowing of the Holocaust to come. Roughly at the same time, in Solec (14 September), 44 Poles killed; soon thereafter in Chojnice, 40 Polish citizens;
Gmina Kłecko
__NOTOC__
Gmina Kłecko is an urban-rural gmina (administrative district) in Gniezno County, Greater Poland Voivodeship, in west-central Poland. Its seat is the town of Kłecko, which lies approximately north-west of Gniezno and north-east of th ...
Dynów
Dynów () ( uk, Динів, lat, Dinoum, yi, דינאוו) is a small town in Rzeszów County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship, Poland, with a population of 6,058 (02.06.2009).
History
Dynów was first mentioned in written sources in 1423. At that ...
, two hundred Polish Jews. Public executions continued well beyond September, including in municipalities such as
Wieruszów County
__NOTOC__
Wieruszów County ( pl, powiat wieruszowski) is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Łódź Voivodeship, central Poland. It came into being on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish local government ...
, Gmina Besko,
Gmina Gidle
__NOTOC__
Gmina Gidle is a rural gmina (administrative district) in Radomsko County, Łódź Voivodeship, in central Poland. Its seat is the village of Gidle, which lies approximately south of Radomsko and south of the regional capital Łódź.
...
, Gmina Kłecko, Gmina Ryczywół, and Gmina Siennica, among others.
Along with civilians, captured Polish Army soldiers were also massacred. On the very first day of invasion (1 September 1939), Polish
prisoners of war
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held Captivity, captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Belligerents hold priso ...
(POWs) were murdered by the ''Wehrmacht'' at Pilchowice, Czuchów, Gierałtowice, Bojków,
Lubliniec
Lubliniec (german: Lublinitz) is a town in southern Poland with 23,784 inhabitants (2019). It is the capital of Lubliniec County, part of Silesian Voivodeship (since 1999); previously it was in Częstochowa Voivodeship (1975–1998).
Geography ...
, Kochcice, Zawiść, Ornontowice and
Wyry
Wyry (german: Wyrow) is a village in Mikołów County, Silesian Voivodeship, in southern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Wyry. It lies approximately south of Mikołów and south-west of the regional ...
. The German army did not consider captured servicemen to be
combatant
Combatant is the legal status of an individual who has the right to engage in hostilities during an armed conflict. The legal definition of "combatant" is found at article 43(2) of Additional Protocol I (AP1) to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. It ...
s because they fought differently from them, often avoiding direct confrontation in favor of guerrilla tactics in the face of overwhelming force. Historian Tadeusz Piotrowski estimated over 1,000 POWs executed by the ''Heer'' on the first day, while
Timothy Snyder
Timothy David Snyder (born August 18, 1969) is an American historian specializing in the modern history of Central and Eastern Europe. He is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute f ...
, an American historian wrote that over 3,000 POWs were killed in 63 separate shooting actions in which they were often forced to take their uniforms off. On top of executions by regular troops, more mass killings were conducted in remote areas by the newly formed ''
Einsatzgruppen
(, ; also ' task forces') were (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe. The had an integral role in the im ...
'' totalling 3,000 men aided by the ''Selbstschutz'' volunteer executioners, bringing the total number of killing operations to 16,000 before the end of September 1939. Before the end of the year, over 45,000 Poles had been murdered in occupied territories.
Bombing campaigns
The invading German force was equipped with 2000 modern war planes, which were deployed on 1 September 1939 at dawn in Operation Wasserkante, thus opening the
September Campaign
The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week after ...
against Poland; there was no declaration of war. The ''
Luftwaffe
The ''Luftwaffe'' () was the aerial-warfare branch of the German ''Wehrmacht'' before and during World War II. Germany's military air arms during World War I, the ''Luftstreitkräfte'' of the Imperial Army and the '' Marine-Fliegerabtei ...
's'' first sorties of the war targeted Polish cities with no military targets of any kind; for example, the city of Wieluń was destroyed almost completely by 70 tonnes of munitions dropped within several hours in spite of the fact that it had no strategic importance to the Germans, and the city of Warsaw was bombed as well.
The ''Luftwaffe'' took part in the
mass killing
Mass killing is a concept which has been proposed by genocide scholars who wish to define incidents of non-combat killing which are perpetrated by a government or a state. A mass killing is commonly defined as the killing of group members withou ...
by strafing refugees on the road. The number of civilians wounded or killed by aerial bombing is put at over 100,000. The ''Luftwaffe'' dropped thousands of bombs on urban centres inhabited only by civilian populations. Amongst the Polish cities and towns bombed at the beginning of war were Brodnica,
Bydgoszcz
Bydgoszcz ( , , ; german: Bromberg) is a city in northern Poland, straddling the meeting of the River Vistula with its left-bank tributary, the Brda. With a city population of 339,053 as of December 2021 and an urban agglomeration with more ...
, Chełm, Ciechanów, Kraków, Częstochowa, Grodno, Grudziądz, Gdynia, Janów, Jasło, Katowice, Kielce, Kowel, Kutno, Lublin, Lwów, Olkusz, Piotrków, Płock, Płońsk, Poznań, Puck, Radom, Radomsko, Sulejów, Warsaw, Wieluń, Wilno, and Zamość. Over 156 towns and villages were attacked by the ''Luftwaffe''. Warsaw suffered particularly severely with a combination of aerial bombardment and artillery fire reducing large parts of its historic city centre to rubble. The Soviet Union assisted the Germans by allowing them to use a radio beacon from Minsk to guide their planes.
During the German
invasion of Poland
The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week aft ...
, the ''
Einsatzgruppen
(, ; also ' task forces') were (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe. The had an integral role in the im ...
'' (special action squads of SS and police)Jozef Garlinski ''Poland in the Second World War'', p. 27. were deployed in the rear and arrested or murdered civilians who were caught offering resistance against the Germans or who were considered to be capable of doing so, as determined by their position and social status.
Extermination of Polish intelligentsia
''Unternehmen Tannenberg''
Immediately after invasion, the Germans employed the earlier prepared
Special Prosecution Book-Poland
''Special Prosecution Book-Poland'' (german: Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen, pl, Specjalna księga Polaków ściganych listem gończym) was the proscription list prepared by the Germans immediately before the onset of war, that identified more than 61, ...
to launch the
Operation Tannenberg
Operation Tannenberg (german: Unternehmen Tannenberg) was a codename for one of the anti-Polish extermination actions by Nazi Germany that were directed at the Poles during the opening stages of World War II in Europe, as part of the ''Generalplan ...
campaign of mass murders and concentration camps incarcerations. German army units and paramilitary ''
Selbstschutz
''Selbstschutz'' (German for "self-protection") is the name given to different iterations of ethnic-German self-protection units formed both after the First World War and in the lead-up to the Second World War.
The first incarnation of the ''Selb ...
'' ("self-defense") forces composed of ''
Volksdeutsche
In Nazi German terminology, ''Volksdeutsche'' () were "people whose language and culture had German origins but who did not hold German citizenship". The term is the nominalised plural of '' volksdeutsch'', with ''Volksdeutsche'' denoting a sin ...
'' also participated in executions of civilians. The ''Selbstschutz'', along with ''SS'' units, took an active part in the
mass murders in Piaśnica
Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementar ...
, in which between 12,000 and 16,000 Polish civilians were murdered. In the city of Bydgoszcz, the ''
Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz
The ''Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz'' was an ethnic German self-protection militia, a paramilitary organization consisting of ethnic German (''Volksdeutsche'') mobilized from among the German minority in Poland. The ''Volksdeutscher Selbstschut ...
'' (German Fifth Column) attempted to aid the invading German forces by shooting at the
Polish Army
The Land Forces () are the land forces of the Polish Armed Forces. They currently contain some 62,000 active personnel and form many components of the European Union and NATO deployments around the world. Poland's recorded military history stret ...
.Garliński, Józef, ''Poland in the Second World War'', . p. 14.Tuszynski, Chester (2006) The Beginning of World War II; 1 September 1939. Retrieved 5 January 2013. A number of saboteurs were executed by the Poles for treason, including for possession of military weapons. The Nazi German government in its own communiqués dubbed the Bydgoszcz incident
Bloody Sunday
Bloody Sunday may refer to:
Historical events Canada
* Bloody Sunday (1923), a day of police violence during a steelworkers' strike for union recognition in Sydney, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia
* Bloody Sunday (1938), police violence aga ...
, and claimed the wholesale slaughter of Germans in the city, which was not true.Polish Ministry of Information (1940), The German Fifth Column in Poland ', Hutchinson, pp. 50–76. When Bydgoszcz was taken over by the Wehrmacht in October, designated killing squads began murdering civilian Poles in revenge at the
Valley of Death (Bydgoszcz)
Valley of Death ( pl, Dolina Śmierci) in Fordon, Bydgoszcz, northern Poland, is a site of Nazi German mass murder committed at the beginning of World War II and a mass grave of 1,200–1,400 Poles and Jews murdered in October and November 1 ...
; 136 Polish school boys including 12-year-olds with about 6000 others by end of 1939; some 20,000 were murdered in all. Other murder sites included
Gniezno
Gniezno (; german: Gnesen; la, Gnesna) is a city in central-western Poland, about east of Poznań. Its population in 2021 was 66,769, making it the sixth-largest city in the Greater Poland Voivodeship. One of the Piast dynasty's chief cities, ...
, 15 Polish townsmen including Father Zabłocki;
Szamotuły
Szamotuły (german: Samter) is a town in western Poland, in Greater Poland Voivodeship, about northwest of the centre of Poznań. It is the seat of Szamotuły County and of the smaller administrative district Gmina Szamotuły. The population was ...
(20 October), five Poles in a crowded spectacle at the city centre; Otorowo (7 November), 68 Polish intelligentsia including parish priest and a count;
Kościan
Kościan (german: Kosten) is a town on the Obra canal in west-central Poland, with a population of 23 952 inhabitants as of June 2014. Situated in the Greater Poland Voivodeship (since 1999), previously in Leszno Voivodeship (1975–1998), it i ...
Leszno
Leszno (german: Lissa, 1800–1918 ''Lissa in Posen'') is a historic city in western Poland, within the Greater Poland Voivodeship. It is the seventh-largest city in the province with an estimated population of 62,200, as of 2021. Previously, it ...
, 250 Poles;
Śrem
Śrem (german: Schrimm) is a town on the Warta river in central Poland. It has been in the Greater Poland Voivodeship since 1999. From 1975 to 1998 it was part of the Poznań Voivodeship. As of 1995, the population of Śrem was 29,800.
Śrem i ...
, 118 Poles;
Wolsztyn
Wolsztyn (german: Wollstein) is a town in western Poland, on the western edge of Greater Poland Voivodeship. It is the seat of Wolsztyn County, and of the smaller administrative district of Gmina Wolsztyn.
Geography
The town is situated within ...
, a group of Poles;
Kórnik
Kórnik (german: Kurnik, 1939-45 Burgstadt) is a town with about 7,600 inhabitants (2018), located in western Poland, about south-east of the city of Poznań. It is one of the major tourist attractions of the Wielkopolska region and the Greater ...
, 16 Polish citizens;
Trzemeszno
Trzemeszno (german: Tremessen) is a town in Gniezno County, west-central Poland belonging to the group of the oldest settlements in the region. The town's name derives from an Old Polish word “Trzemcha” meaning the flower of the "Bird’s C ...
, 30 Polish citizens;
Mogilno
Mogilno (; ) is a town in central Poland, situated in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship (since 1999), previously in Bydgoszcz Voivodeship (1975–1998).
History
Mogilno is one of the oldest settlements along the border of the Greater Poland an ...
, 30/39 Poles and a Polish Jew; Antoninek, 20 Polish citizens shot. Other execution sites included
Rawicz
Rawicz (; german: Rawitsch) is a town in west-central Poland with 21,398 inhabitants as of 2004. It is situated in the Greater Poland Voivodeship (since 1999); previously it was in Leszno Voivodeship (1975–1998). It is the capital of Rawicz C ...
,
Grodzisk Wielkopolski
Grodzisk Wielkopolski (german: Grätz) is a town in western Poland, in Greater Poland Voivodeship (Wielkopolskie), with a population of 13,703 (2006). It is south-west of Poznań, the voivodeship capital. It is the seat of Grodzisk Wielkopolski ...
,
Nowy Tomyśl
Nowy Tomyśl (german: Neutomischel) is a town in western Poland, in Greater Poland Voivodeship. It is the capital of Nowy Tomyśl County. The population is 15,627 (2004).
The town has a long tradition of wickerwork. In the main town square st ...
,
Międzychód
Międzychód (, german: Birnbaum) is a town in Greater Poland Voivodeship, Poland, the administrative seat of Międzychód County. It is located on the southern shore of the Warta river, about west of Poznań. Population is 10,915 (2009).
His ...
,
Żnin
Żnin (german: Znin, 1941-45: Dietfurt) is a town in north-central Poland with a population of 14,181 (June 2014). It is in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship (previously Bydgoszcz Voivodeship) and is the capital of Żnin County. The historical t ...
,
Września
Września (german: Wreschen) is a town in west-central Poland with 28,600 inhabitants (1995). It is situated in the Września County, Greater Poland Voivodeship (since 1999), previously in Poznań Voivodeship (1975–1998), on the Wrześnica Riv ...
,
Chełmno
Chełmno (; older en, Culm; formerly ) is a town in northern Poland near the Vistula river with 18,915 inhabitants as of December 2021. It is the seat of the Chełmno County in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship.
Due to its regional importan ...
,
Chojnice
Chojnice (; , or ''Chòjnice''; german: Konitz or ''Conitz'') is a town in northern Poland with 39,423 inhabitants as of December 2021, near the Tuchola Forest. It is the capital of the Chojnice County in the Pomeranian Voivodeship.
History
Pias ...
,
Kalisz
(The oldest city of Poland)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = ''Top:'' Town Hall, Former "Calisia" Piano Factory''Middle:'' Courthouse, "Gołębnik" tenement''Bottom:'' Aerial view of the Kalisz Old Town
, image_flag = POL Kalisz flag.svg ...
and
Włocławek
Włocławek (Polish pronunciation: ; german: Leslau) is a city located in central Poland along the Vistula (Wisła) River and is bordered by the Gostynin-Włocławek Landscape Park. As of December 2021, the population of the city is 106,928. Loc ...
. More than 16,000 members of the intelligentsia were murdered in
Operation Tannenberg
Operation Tannenberg (german: Unternehmen Tannenberg) was a codename for one of the anti-Polish extermination actions by Nazi Germany that were directed at the Poles during the opening stages of World War II in Europe, as part of the ''Generalplan ...
alone.
''Intelligenzaktion'', including ''Intelligenzaktion Pommern'' and ''Sonderaktion Krakau''
Tens of thousands of government officials, landowners, clergy, and members of the
intelligentsia
The intelligentsia is a status class composed of the university-educated people of a society who engage in the complex mental labours by which they critique, shape, and lead in the politics, policies, and culture of their society; as such, the in ...
–teachers, doctors, journalists, and others (both Poles and Jews)were either murdered in mass executions or sent to prisons and
concentration camp
Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...
s in the
Intelligenzaktion
The ''Intelligenzaktion'' (), or the Intelligentsia mass shootings, was a series of mass murders which was committed against the Polish intelligentsia (teachers, priests, physicians, and other prominent members of Polish society) early in the ...
(including the
Intelligenzaktion Pommern
The ''Intelligenzaktion Pommern''Stefan Sutkowski (2001), ''The history of music in Poland: The Contemporary Era. 1939–1974''. Vol. 7, page 37 "...some 183 professors of the Jagiellonian University and the Academy of Mining and Foundry in Craco ...
).Poles, Victims of the Nazi Era. Holocaust Teacher Resource Center. One of the best-known examples was the deportation to concentration camps in November 1939 of 180 professors from the university of Cracow in the
Sonderaktion Krakau
''Sonderaktion Krakau'' was a German operation against professors and academics of the Jagiellonian University and other universities in German-occupied Kraków, Poland, at the beginning of World War II. It was carried out as part of the much bro ...
.
''AB-Aktion''
The German occupiers subsequently launched
AB-Aktion
, location = Palmiry Forest and similar locations in occupied Poland
, date = Spring–summer 1940
, incident_type = Mass murder with automatic weapons
, perpetrators = Wehrmacht, ''Einsatzgruppen''
, participants =
, o ...
in May 1940—a further plan to eliminate the Polish intelligentsia and leadership class,USHMM Polish Victims. Holocaust Museum. culminating in the
Palmiry massacre
The Palmiry massacre was a series of mass executions carried out by Nazi German forces, during World War II, near the village of Palmiry in the Kampinos Forest northwest of Warsaw.
Massacres
Between December 1939 and July 1941 more than 1700 ...
(December 1940 – July 1941), in which two thousand Poles perished.
Massacres following the German invasion of Polish territories annexed by the Soviet Union
The direct continuation of the AB Action was a German campaign in the east started after the
German invasion of the USSR
Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named after ...
. Among the most notable mass executions of Polish professors was the
massacre of Lwów professors
In July 1941, 25 Polish academics from the city of Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine) along with the 25 of their family members were killed by Nazi German occupation forces. By targeting prominent citizens and intellectuals for elimination, the Nazis hop ...
, in which approximately 45 professors of the university in
Lwów
Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in western Ukraine, and the seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is one of the main cultural centres of Ukraine ...
were murdered together with their families and guests. Among those killed in the massacre were
Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński
Tadeusz Kamil Marcjan Żeleński (better known by his pen name, Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński or simply as Boy; 21 December 1874 – 4 July 1941) was a Polish stage writer, poet, critic and, above all, the translator of over 100 French literature , Frenc ...
, former Polish prime minister
Kazimierz Bartel
Kazimierz Władysław Bartel (; en, Casimir Bartel; 3 March 1882 – 26 July 1941) was a Polish mathematician, freemason, scholar, diplomat and politician who served as 15th, 17th and 19th Prime Minister of Poland three times between 1926 ...
,
Włodzimierz Stożek
Włodzimierz Stożek (23 July 1883 – 3 or 4 July 1941) was a Polish mathematician of the Lwów School of Mathematics.
Head of the Mathematics Faculty on the Lwów University of Technology. He was arrested and murdered together with his two son ...
, and
Stanisław Ruziewicz
Stanisław Ruziewicz (29 August 1889 – 12 July 1941) was a Polish mathematician and one of the founders of the Lwów School of Mathematics.
He was a former student of Wacław Sierpiński, earning his doctorate in 1913 from the University of Lw ...
. Thousands more perished in the
Ponary massacre
, location = Paneriai (Ponary), Vilnius (Wilno), Reichskommissariat Ostland
, coordinates =
, date = July 1941 – August 1944
, incident_type = Shootings by automatic and semi-automatic weapons,
genocide
, perpetrators ...
, the Czarny Las massacre, in the German concentration camps, and in ghettos. AB-Aktion Shoah Resource Center, The International School for Holocaust Studies.
"War on the clergy"
The
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
was suppressed more harshly than elsewhere in ''
Wartheland
The ''Reichsgau Wartheland'' (initially ''Reichsgau Posen'', also: ''Warthegau'') was a Nazi German ''Reichsgau'' formed from parts of Polish territory annexed in 1939 during World War II. It comprised the region of Greater Poland and adjacent ...
'', a province created by Nazi Germany after the invasion.''Persecution of the Catholic Church in German-Occupied Poland'', Burns Oates 1941Churches were systematically closed and most
priest
A priest is a religious leader authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particu ...
s were either murdered, imprisoned, or deported to the General Government. In the General Government,
Hans Frank
Hans Michael Frank (23 May 1900 – 16 October 1946) was a German politician and lawyer who served as head of the General Government in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Second World War.
Frank was an early member of the German Workers' Party ...
's diary shows he planned a "war on the clergy". The Germans also closed
seminaries
A seminary, school of theology, theological seminary, or divinity school is an educational institution for educating students (sometimes called ''seminarians'') in scripture, theology, generally to prepare them for ordination to serve as clergy, ...
and
convent
A convent is a community of monks, nuns, religious brothers or, sisters or priests. Alternatively, ''convent'' means the building used by the community. The word is particularly used in the Catholic Church, Lutheran churches, and the Anglican ...
s and persecuted
monk
A monk (, from el, μοναχός, ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a person who practices religious asceticism by monastic living, either alone or with any number of other monks. A monk may be a person who decides to dedica ...
s and
nun
A nun is a woman who vows to dedicate her life to religious service, typically living under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the enclosure of a monastery or convent.''The Oxford English Dictionary'', vol. X, page 599. The term is o ...
s. Between 1939 and 1945, an estimated 2801 members of the Polish clergy were murdered (in all of Poland); of these, 1926 died in concentration camps (798 of them at Dachau). 108 of them are regarded as blessed
martyr
A martyr (, ''mártys'', "witness", or , ''marturia'', stem , ''martyr-'') is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as demanded by an externa ...
s, with
Maximilian Kolbe
Maximilian Maria Kolbe (born Raymund Kolbe; pl, Maksymilian Maria Kolbe; 1894–1941) was a Polish Catholic priest and Conventual Franciscan friar who volunteered to die in place of a man named Franciszek Gajowniczek in the German death camp ...
being regarded as a
saint
In religious belief, a saint is a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of Q-D-Š, holiness, likeness, or closeness to God. However, the use of the term ''saint'' depends on the context and Christian denomination, denominat ...
.Richard Lucas''Forgotten Holocaust'', Hippocrene
German pacification and reprisal massacres
The large-scale pacification operations, sometimes called " anti-partisan actions", constituted the core policy of the Nazi regime against Poland and resulted in the death of approximately 20,000 people in less than two years following the invasion. They were mainly conducted in the areas of General Government,
Pomerelia
Pomerelia,, la, Pomerellia, Pomerania, pl, Pomerelia (rarely used) also known as Eastern Pomerania,, csb, Pòrénkòwô Pòmòrskô Vistula Pomerania, prior to World War II also known as Polish Pomerania, is a historical sub-region of Pome ...
, in the vicinity of
Wielkopolska
Greater Poland, often known by its Polish name Wielkopolska (; german: Großpolen, sv, Storpolen, la, Polonia Maior), is a historical region of west-central Poland. Its chief and largest city is Poznań followed by Kalisz, the oldest city ...
, and in the later created
Bialystok District
Bialystok District ( German: ''Bezirk Bialystok'') was an administrative unit of Nazi Germany created during the World War II invasion of the Soviet Union. It was to the south-east of East Prussia, in present-day northeastern Poland as well as in ...
.
On 10 September 1939 the policy of collective punishment was introduced, resulting in destruction of villages and towns in the path of Polish defence lines. In Bogusze and in Lipówka in
Suwałki County
__NOTOC__
Suwałki County ( pl, powiat suwalski) is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Podlaskie Voivodeship, north-eastern Poland, on the Lithuanian border. It came into being on January 1, 1999, as a result of ...
residents were massacred by the ''Wehrmacht'' as soon as the Poles retreated. Some 30 other settlements in the vicinity were burned down in the counties of Bielsk,
Wysokie Mazowieckie
Wysokie Mazowieckie is a town in north-eastern Poland, in Podlaskie Voivodeship. It is the capital of Wysokie Mazowieckie County. Population is 10,034 .
In town there is one of the biggest dairy companies in this part of Europe - " Mlekovita ...
, Suwałki and
Łomża
Łomża (), in English known as Lomza, is a city in north-eastern Poland, approximately 150 kilometers (90 miles) to the north-east of Warsaw and west of Białystok. It is situated alongside the Narew river as part of the Podlaskie Voivodeship si ...
, even though there were not used by the retreating Polish forces. Around
Białystok
Białystok is the largest city in northeastern Poland and the capital of the Podlaskie Voivodeship. It is the tenth-largest city in Poland, second in terms of population density, and thirteenth in area.
Białystok is located in the Białystok Up ...
19 villages were completely destroyed. In
Pietraszki
Pietraszki is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Brańsk, within Bielsk County, Podlaskie Voivodeship, in north-eastern Poland. It lies approximately north-west of Brańsk
Brańsk ( be, Бранск, lt, Branskas) is a town ...
elderly people and children were fired at from an army tank, while in the villages of
Wyliny-Ruś
Wyliny-Ruś is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Szepietowo, within Wysokie Mazowieckie County, Podlaskie Voivodeship, in north-eastern Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe ...
, Drogoszewo and Rutki all civilians were summarily executed, including the elderly.
Terror killings committed by uniformed troops across Poland continued and between 2 October7 November 1939, over 8,866 Poles were murdered (53 of them Jews). Among the victims were in Otorowo (20 October), five or 19 Poles shot because a swastika flag was removed by someone;
Warsaw
Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...
(22 November), announcement of the first anti-Jewish legislation: 53 Jews executed in public as punishment for one ''einheimischen Polizisten'' (local policeman) assaulted on the street;
Wawer
Wawer is one of the districts of Warsaw, located in the south-eastern part of the city. The Vistula river runs along its western border. Wawer became a district of Warsaw on 27 October 2002 (previously it was a part of Praga Południe district, a ...
(27 December), 106/107 murdered;
By 1943, it was common for the public to be subject to mass murder.
Warsaw Uprising massacres
Polish and German historians estimate that during the 1944
Warsaw Uprising
The Warsaw Uprising ( pl, powstanie warszawskie; german: Warschauer Aufstand) was a major World War II operation by the Polish resistance movement in World War II, Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. It occ ...
up to 200,000 civilians perished. Already in 1944 ''SS-Gruppenführer''
Heinz Reinefarth
Heinz Reinefarth (26 December 1903 – 7 May 1979) was a German SS commander during World War II and government official in West Germany after the war. During the Warsaw Uprising of August 1944 his troops committed numerous atrocities. After t ...
claimed 250,000 dead, which is now considered exaggerated by him for propaganda purposes. Historian Hans von Krannhals claims that at least 10 percent of the victims were killed in mass executions committed by regular German troops, including by Hermann Göring Divisions such as the 1st Infantry Division across
Praga
Praga is a district of Warsaw, Poland. It is on the east bank of the river Vistula. First mentioned in 1432, until 1791 it formed a separate town with its own city charter.
History
The historical Praga was a small settlement located at ...
Czerniaków
Czerniaków is a neighbourhood of the city of Warsaw, located within the borough of Mokotów, between the escarpment of the Vistula river and the river itself.
Called ''Czerniakowo'' since the Middle Ages, it was then merely a small village loca ...
, the
25th Panzergrenadier Division
The 25th Infantry Division was a military unit of the German Wehrmacht. It was later reclassified to 25th Infantry Division (mot.), and in June 1943 to the 25th Panzer Grenadier Division.
The 25th Panzergrenadier Division fought in the central s ...
in
Marymont
Marymont (from French ''Mont de Marie'' - Mary's Hill) is one of the northern neighbourhoods of Warsaw, Poland, administratively a part of the boroughs of Żoliborz (Marymont-Potok) and Bielany (Marymont-Kaskada and Marymont-Ruda). Named after the ...
Żoliborz
Żoliborz () is one of the northern districts of the city of Warsaw. It is located directly to the north of the City Centre, on the left bank of the Vistula river. It has approximately 50,000 inhabitants and is one of the smallest boroughs of W ...
districts. The most severe of them took place in the Wola district, where at the beginning of August 1944 tens of thousands of civilians (men, women, and children). The Warsaw Rising Museum. were methodically rounded-up and executed by ''
Einsatzkommando
During World War II, the Nazi German ' were a sub-group of the ' (mobile killing squads) – up to 3,000 men total – usually composed of 500–1,000 functionaries of the SS and Gestapo, whose mission was to exterminate Jews, Polish intellectu ...
s'' of ''
Sicherheitspolizei
The ''Sicherheitspolizei'' ( en, Security Police), often abbreviated as SiPo, was a term used in Germany for security police. In the Nazi era, it referred to the state political and criminal investigation security agencies. It was made up by the ...
'' operating within the Reinefarth's group of forces under the command of Erich von dem Bach-Zalewski. Executions in the Wola district, referred to as the
Wola massacre
The Wola massacre ( pl, Rzeź Woli, lit=Wola slaughter) was the systematic killing of between 40,000 and 50,000 Poles in the Wola neighbourhood of the Polish capital city, Warsaw, by the German Wehrmacht and fellow Axis collaborators in the ...
, also included the killings of both the patients and staff of local hospitals. The victims' bodies were collected and burned under pain of death by the members of the ''
Verbrennungskommando
''Verbrennungskommando Warschau'' (german: Warsaw burning detachment) was a slave labour unit formed by the '' SS'' following the Wola massacre of around 40,000 to 50,000 Polish civilians by the Germans in the early days of the Warsaw Uprising ...
'' made up of captured Polish men. The carnage was so bad that even the German high command were stunned.Adam Zamoyski ''The Polish Way'' John Murray, 1989 p. 365.
Massacres took place in the areas of '' Śródmieście'' (City Centre), Old Town, Marymont, and Ochota districts. In Ochota, civilian killings, rapes, and looting were conducted by the members of Russian '' SS Sturmbrigade RONA'' under the command of
Bronislav Kaminski
Bronislav Vladislavovich Stroganof Kaminski (russian: Бронисла́в Владисла́вович Ками́нский, 16 June 1899 – 28 August 1944) was a Russian Nazi collaborator and the commander of the Kaminski Brigade, an anti-par ...
Oskar Dirlewanger
Oskar Paul Dirlewanger (26 September 1895 – ) was a German military officer ('' SS-Oberführer'') who served as the founder and commander of the Nazi SS penal unit "Dirlewanger" during World War II. Serving in Poland and in Belarus, his nam ...
. Until the end of September 1944, Polish resistance fighters were not considered by the Germans as combatants and were summarily executed when captured. After the fall of the Old Town, during the beginning of September, the remaining 7000 seriously wounded hospital patients were executed or burned alive often with the medical staff who cared for them. Similar atrocities took place later across Czerniaków. Captured insurgents were hanged or otherwise executed after the fall of Powiśle and Mokotów districts as well.
More than 200,000 Poles were killed in the uprising. Out of 450,000 surviving civilians, 150,000 were sent to labour camps in Germany,IPN, . Institute of National Remembrance.MPW, . Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego useum of the Warsaw Rising and 50,000 to 60,000 were shipped to death and concentration camps.
Leveling of Warsaw following the fall of the Uprising
The atrocities preceded the
planned destruction of Warsaw
The destruction of Warsaw was Nazi Germany's substantially effected razing of the city in late 1944, after the 1944 Warsaw Uprising of the Polish resistance. The uprising infuriated German leaders, who decided to destroy the city as retaliation. ...
by Hitler who threatened to "turn it into a lake".Davies, Norman (2004), ''Rising '44'', Pan Books. p. 267. After the rising had ended, the Germans continued to systematically destroy the city. The city was left in ruins.MPW, . Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego useum of the Warsaw Rising Neither von dem Bach-Zalewski nor Heinz Reinefarth faced a trial for their actions in the Warsaw Uprising.MPW, . Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego.MPW, . Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego.
Extermination of psychiatric patients
In July 1939, a Nazi secret program called
T-4 Euthanasia Program
(German, ) was a campaign of mass murder by involuntary euthanasia in Nazi Germany. The term was first used in post-war trials against doctors who had been involved in the killings. The name T4 is an abbreviation of 4, a street address of t ...
was developed in Germany with the intention of murdering physically or mentally disabled people. The program was put into practice in the occupied territories during the invasion of Poland. Initially, it was implemented according to the following plan: a German director took control over the
psychiatric hospital
Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental health hospitals, behavioral health hospitals, are hospitals or wards specializing in the treatment of severe mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, dissociative ...
; under the threat of execution no patient could be released; all were counted and transported from the hospital by trucks to an unknown destination. Each truck was accompanied by soldiers from special '' SS'' detachments who returned without the patients after a few hours. The patients were said to be transferred to another hospital, but evidence showed otherwise. The first action of this type took place on 22 September 1939 in Kocborowo at a large psychiatric hospital in the
Gdańsk
Gdańsk ( , also ; ; csb, Gduńsk;Stefan Ramułt, ''Słownik języka pomorskiego, czyli kaszubskiego'', Kraków 1893, Gdańsk 2003, ISBN 83-87408-64-6. , Johann Georg Theodor Grässe, ''Orbis latinus oder Verzeichniss der lateinischen Benen ...
region. A firing squad murdered six hospital employees, including a deputy director, along with their patients. By December, some 1800 patients from Kocborowo had been murdered and buried in the Szpegawski forest. In total, 7000 victims were buried there. Another extermination action took place in October 1939 at a hospital in Owińska near
Poznań
Poznań () is a city on the River Warta in west-central Poland, within the Greater Poland region. The city is an important cultural and business centre, and one of Poland's most populous regions with many regional customs such as Saint John ...
where 1000 patients (children and adults) were murdered, with 200 more executed a year later.
In addition to executions by firing squad, other methods of mass murder were implemented for the first time at the hospital in Owińska. Some 400 patients, along with medical staff, were transported to a military fortress in Poznań where, in
Fort VII
Fort VII, officially ''Konzentrationslager Posen'' (renamed later), was a Nazi German death camp set up in Poznań in German-occupied Poland during World War II, located in one of the 19th-century forts circling the city. According to different e ...
bunker
A bunker is a defensive military fortification designed to protect people and valued materials from falling bombs, artillery, or other attacks. Bunkers are almost always underground, in contrast to blockhouses which are mostly above ground. ...
s, they were gassed with
carbon monoxide
Carbon monoxide (chemical formula CO) is a colorless, poisonous, odorless, tasteless, flammable gas that is slightly less dense than air. Carbon monoxide consists of one carbon atom and one oxygen atom connected by a triple bond. It is the simple ...
delivered in metal tanks. Other Owińska hospital patients were gassed in sealed trucks by exhaust fumes. The same method was performed in Kochanówek Hospital near Łódź, where 2200 persons were killed between March–August 1940. This was the first successful test of mass murder using
gas van
A gas van or gas wagon (russian: душегубка, ''dushegubka'', literally "soul killer"; german: Gaswagen) was a truck reequipped as a mobile gas chamber. During the World War II Holocaust, Nazi Germany developed and used gas vans on a large ...
poisoning and this technique was later used and perfected on many other psychiatric patients in occupied Poland and Germany. Starting in 1941, gas vans were used on inmates of the
extermination camps
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...
. The total number of psychiatric patients murdered by the Nazis in occupied Poland between 1939 and 1945 is estimated to be more than 16,000, with an additional 10,000 patients dying of
malnutrition
Malnutrition occurs when an organism gets too few or too many nutrients, resulting in health problems. Specifically, it is "a deficiency, excess, or imbalance of energy, protein and other nutrients" which adversely affects the body's tissues a ...
and hunger. Additionally, approximately 100 out of 243 members of the Polish Psychiatric Association met the same fate as their patients.
Cultural genocide
As part of the concerted effort to destroy Polish cultural heritage, the Germans closed universities, schools, museums, public libraries, and dismantled scientific laboratories.Jozef Garlinski ''Poland in the Second World War'', p. 28. They tore down monuments to national heroes. Leading Polish academic institutions were reestablished as German. By the end of 1942 over 90 percent of the world-class art previously in Poland – as estimated by the German officials – was put into their own possession. The Polish language had been banned in ''Wartheland''; children were forced to learn the basics of German under harsh physical punishment. To prevent the emergence of a next generation of educated Poles, German officials decreed that the schooling of Polish youth would end at the elementary level.Jozef Garlinski ''Poland in the Second World War'', . p. 31.
In his capacity as Reich Commissioner,
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
oversaw the kidnapping of Polish children to be
Germanised
Germanisation, or Germanization, is the spread of the German language, people and culture. It was a central idea of German conservative thought in the 19th and the 20th centuries, when conservatism and ethnic nationalism went hand in hand. In ling ...
. Historians estimate that between 50,000 and up to 200,000 Polish children were taken from their families during the war. They were sent to farms and families in the Reich never to return. Many of the children remained in Germany after the war unaware of their true origin.
Ethnic cleansing, expulsions, exploitation, segregation and discrimination of Poles
At the end of October 1939, the Germans introduced the death penalty for active disobedience to the German occupation. Plans for mass expulsions and the system of
slave labour
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
camps for up to 20 million Poles were made. Himmler thought of moving all Poles to Siberia. In May 1940 he wrote a
memorandum
A memorandum ( : memoranda; abbr: memo; from the Latin ''memorandum'', "(that) which is to be remembered") is a written message that is typically used in a professional setting. Commonly abbreviated "memo," these messages are usually brief and ...
; in it, he promised to eventually deport all Poles to the east. Most of them were intended to die during the cultivation of the swamps.
The Germans planned to change ownership of all property in the land incorporated directly into the
Third Reich
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
. In a speech to German
colonist
A settler is a person who has migrated to an area and established a permanent residence there, often to colonize the area.
A settler who migrates to an area previously uninhabited or sparsely inhabited may be described as a pioneer.
Settle ...
s,
Arthur Greiser
Arthur Karl Greiser (22 January 1897 – 21 July 1946) was a Nazi German politician, SS-''Obergruppenführer'', ''Gauleiter'' and ''Reichsstatthalter'' (Reich Governor) of the German-occupied territory of ''Wartheland''. He was one of the perso ...
said: "In ten years there will not even be a peasant
smallholding
A smallholding or smallholder is a small farm operating under a small-scale agriculture model. Definitions vary widely for what constitutes a smallholder or small-scale farm, including factors such as size, food production technique or technology ...
which will not be in German hands". In the ''Wartheland'', the Nazi goal was complete Germanization. The formerly Polish territories were to become politically, culturally, socially, and economically German. The Nazis closed elementary schools where Polish was the language taught. Streets and cities were renamed (
Łódź
Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of canti ...
became ''Litzmannstadt'', etc.). Tens of thousands of Polish enterprises from large industrial firms to small shops, were seized without payment to the owners. Signs posted in public places warned: "Entrance forbidden for Poles, Jews, and dogs." The forced resettlement affected two million Poles. In the severe winter of 1939–40 families were made to leave behind almost everything without any recompense. As part of Operation Tannenberg alone, 750,000 Polish peasants were forced out of their homes which were levelled, and the land given to German colonists and servicemen. A further 330,000 were murdered.Adam Zamoyski ''The Polish Way'' John Murray, 1989 p. 358.
Roundups of Poles for forced/slave labour or for keeping as hostages
All Polish males were required to perform
forced labour
Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence including death, or other forms of ex ...
. Between 1939 and 1945, at least one and a half million Polish citizens were detained and transported to the Reich for forced labour against their will. One estimate has one million (including POWs) from annexed lands and 1.28 million from the General Government. The
Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (''Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych'', MSZ) is the Polish government department tasked with maintaining Poland's international relations and coordinating its participation in international and regional supra-natio ...
believes the figure was more than two and half million during the war. The
Gentile
Gentile () is a word that usually means "someone who is not a Jew". Other groups that claim Israelite heritage, notably Mormons, sometimes use the term ''gentile'' to describe outsiders. More rarely, the term is generally used as a synonym for ...
population of Polish metropolitan cities was targeted for enslavement in the ''
łapanka
''Łapanka'' () was the Polish name for a World War II practice in German-occupied Poland, whereby the German SS, Wehrmacht and Gestapo rounded up civilians on the streets of Polish cities. The civilians to be arrested were in most cases chosen ...
'' actions, in which the detachments of ''SS'', ''Wehrmacht'' and police rounded up civilians after cordoning off streets. Between 1942 and 1944 in Warsaw, approximately 400 Poles were captured in ''łapankas'' every day. Many were teenage boys and girls. Although Germany also used forced labourers from
Western Europe
Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's countries and territories vary depending on context.
The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the ancient Mediterranean ...
, Poles, along with other Eastern Europeans viewed as inferior, were subject to especially harsh
discriminatory
Discrimination is the act of making unjustified distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong. People may be discriminated on the basis of race, gender, age, rel ...
measures. They were forced to wear identifying purple Ps sewn to their clothing, subjected to a
curfew
A curfew is a government order specifying a time during which certain regulations apply. Typically, curfews order all people affected by them to ''not'' be in public places or on roads within a certain time frame, typically in the evening and ...
, and banned from
public transport
Public transport (also known as public transportation, public transit, mass transit, or simply transit) is a system of transport for passengers by group travel systems available for use by the general public unlike private transport, typical ...
. While the treatment of factory workers or farm hands often varied depending on the individual employer, Polish labourers as a rule were compelled to work longer hours for lower wages than Western Europeans, and in many cities, they were forced to live in segregated
barracks
Barracks are usually a group of long buildings built to house military personnel or laborers. The English word originates from the 17th century via French and Italian from an old Spanish word "barraca" ("soldier's tent"), but today barracks are u ...
behind
barbed wire
A close-up view of a barbed wire
Roll of modern agricultural barbed wire
Barbed wire, also known as barb wire, is a type of steel fencing wire constructed with sharp edges or points arranged at intervals along the strands. Its primary use is t ...
. Social relations with Germans outside work were forbidden and sexual relations with them were considered " racial defilement", punishable by death. During the war, hundreds of Polish men were executed for their relations with German women.
Forced labour camps
The camp system where Poles were detained, imprisoned and forced to labour, was one of fundamental structures of the Nazi regime, and with the invasion of Poland became the backbone of German war economy and the state organized terror. It is estimated that some five million Polish citizens went through them.
The incomplete list of camp locations with at least one hundred slave labourers, included in alphabetical order: Andrychy, Antoniew-Sikawa,
Augustów
Augustów (; lt, Augustavas, formerly known in English as ''Augustovo'' or ''Augustowo'')" is a city in north-eastern Poland with 29,729 inhabitants as of December 2021. It lies on the Netta River and the Augustów Canal. It is situated in the ...
,
Będzin
Będzin (; also ''Bendzin'' in English; german: Bendzin; yi, בענדין, Bendin) is a city in the Dąbrowa Basin, in southern Poland. It lies in the Silesian Highlands, on the Czarna Przemsza River (a tributary of the Vistula). Even though par ...
,
Białośliwie
Białośliwie is a village in Piła County, Greater Poland Voivodeship, in west-central Poland. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Białośliwie. It lies approximately east of Piła and north of the regional capi ...
,
Bielsk Podlaski
Bielsk Podlaski ( be, Бельск Падляскі, , yi, ביעלסק, Bielsk) is a town in eastern Poland, within Bielsk County in the Podlaskie Voivodeship. As of December 2021, the town has a population of 24,883.
Geography
Bielsk Podla ...
,
Bliżyn
Bliżyn is a village in Skarżysko County, Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, in south-central Poland. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Bliżyn. It lies on the Kamienna river and Bliżyn Reservoir, approximately wes ...
Brusy
Brusy ( Kashubian: ''Brusë''; formerly german: Bruß) is a town in northern Poland, located in the Pomeranian Voivodeship. As of December 2021, the town has a population of 5,201.
History
Brusy was a royal village of the Polish Crown, adminis ...
Chorzów
Chorzów ( ; ; german: link=no, Königshütte ; szl, Chorzōw) is a city in the Silesia region of southern Poland, near Katowice. Chorzów is one of the central cities of the Upper Silesian Metropolitan Union – a metropolis with a population ...
, Dyle,
Gidle
Gidle is a village in Radomsko County, Łódź Voivodeship, in south-central Poland. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Gidle. It lies approximately south of Radomsko and south of the regional capital Łódź. ...
,
Grajewo
Grajewo (, yi, גראיעווע, translit=Grayavah) is a town in north-eastern Poland with 21,499 inhabitants (2016). It is situated in the Podlaskie Voivodeship (since 1999); previously, it was in Łomża Voivodeship (1975–1998). It is the ...
Inowrocław
Inowrocław (; german: Hohensalza; before 1904: Inowrazlaw; archaic: Jungleslau) is a city in central Poland with a total population of 70,713 in December 2021. It is situated in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship since 1999, previously in the By ...
,
Janów Lubelski
Janów Lubelski is a town in southeastern Poland. It has 11,938 inhabitants (2006). Situated in the Lublin Voivodship (since 1999), Janów Lubelski belongs to Lesser Poland, and is located in southeastern corner of this historic Polish province. ...
Katowice
Katowice ( , , ; szl, Katowicy; german: Kattowitz, yi, קאַטעוויץ, Kattevitz) is the capital city of the Silesian Voivodeship in southern Poland and the central city of the Upper Silesian metropolitan area. It is the 11th most popul ...
,
Kazimierza Wielka
Kazimierza Wielka () is a town in Poland, in Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, about northeast of Kraków. It is the administrative seat of Kazimierza County (''powiat kazimierski''). With a population of 5,848 (2005), it is the smallest county seat ...
,
Kazimierz Dolny
Kazimierz Dolny () is a small historic town in eastern Poland, on the right (eastern) bank of the Vistula river in Puławy County, Lublin Voivodeship. Historically it belongs to Lesser Poland, and in the past it was one of the most important citi ...
, Klimontów,
Koronowo
Koronowo (Polish pronunciation: ; , archaic ''Polnisch Krone'') is a town on the Brda River in Poland, located in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, 25 km from Bydgoszcz, with 11,029 inhabitants (2010). It is located in the historic regi ...
Mysłowice
Mysłowice ( szl, Myslowicy; german: Myslowitz) is a city in Silesia in southern Poland, near Katowice. The population of the city is 74,085.
It is located in the south district of the Upper Silesian Metropolitan Union in the Silesian Highlan ...
Nowy Sącz
Nowy Sącz (; hu, Újszandec; yi, Tzanz, צאַנז; sk, Nový Sonč; german: Neu-Sandez) is a city in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship of southern Poland. It is the district capital of Nowy Sącz County as a separate administrative unit. It has ...
,
Potulice
Potulice (german: Potulitz) (previously also ''Kantów'') is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Nakło nad Notecią, within Nakło County, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, in north-central Poland. It lies approximately south-east ...
,
Rachanie
Rachanie is a village in Tomaszów Lubelski County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Rachanie. It lies approximately north-east of Tomaszów Lubelski
Tomaszów Lubelski ...
,
Słupia
Słupia () is a river in north-western Poland, a tributary of the Baltic Sea, with a length of 138 kilometres and the basin area of 1,623 km².
Towns:
* Słupsk
* Ustka
See also: Rivers of Poland, List of rivers of Europe
This articl ...
,
Sokółka
Sokółka (; lt, Sokulka, Sakalinė, be, Саку́лка, yi, סאקאלקע, Sokolke) is a town in northeastern Poland, seat of the Sokółka County in Podlaskie Voivodeship. It is a busy rail junction located on the international Warsaw–B ...
Tarnogród
Tarnogród (; yi, טאַרנעגראָד, Tarnegrod; uk, Терногород, Ternohorod, or , ''Tarnohorod'') is a town in Biłgoraj County, Lublin Voivodeship, Poland. It has a population of 3,399 (2006).
Tarnogród is the southernmost to ...
Włoszczowa
Włoszczowa is a town in southern Poland, in Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, about west of Kielce. It is the capital of Włoszczowa County. Population is 10,756 (2004). Włoszczowa lies in historic Lesser Poland, and from its foundation until 179 ...
Citizens of Poland, but especially ethnic Poles and Polish Jews, were imprisoned in nearly every camp of the extensive concentration camp system in German-occupied Poland and in the Reich. A major
labour camp
A labor camp (or labour camp, see spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (especi ...
complex at
Stutthof
Stutthof was a Nazi concentration camp established by Nazi Germany in a secluded, marshy, and wooded area near the village of Stutthof (now Sztutowo) 34 km (21 mi) east of the city of Danzig ( Gdańsk) in the territory of the Germ ...
, east of Gdańsk/Danzig was begun as an internment camp in September 1939.Stutthof. Holocaust Memorial Museum. An estimated 20,000 Poles died there as a result of hard labour, executions, disease and starvation. Some 100,000 Poles were deported to
Majdanek concentration camp
Majdanek (or Lublin) was a Nazi concentration and extermination camp built and operated by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It had seven gas chambers, two wooden gallows, a ...
with subcamps in Budzyn, Trawniki,
Poniatowa
Poniatowa is a town in southeastern Poland, in Opole Lubelskie County, in Lublin Voivodship, with 10,500 inhabitants (2006). It belongs to the historic province of Lesser Poland. During the existence of the 17th-century Polish–Lithuanian Common ...
, Kraśnik, Puławy, as well as the "Airstrip", and Lipowa added in 1943. Tens of thousands of prisoners died there. An estimated 20,000 Poles died at
Sachsenhausen
Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoners ...
outside Poland, 20,000 at
Gross-Rosen
Gross-Rosen was a network of Nazi concentration camps built and operated by Nazi Germany during World War II. The main camp was located in the German village of Gross-Rosen, now the modern-day Rogoźnica, Lower Silesian Voivodeship, Rogoźnica in ...
, 30,000 at
Mauthausen
Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town
A market town is a settlement most common in Europe that obtained by custom or royal charter, in the Middle Ages, a market right, which allowed it to host a regu ...
, 17,000 at
Neuengamme
Neuengamme was a network of Nazi concentration camps in Northern Germany that consisted of the main camp, Neuengamme, and more than 85 satellite camps. Established in 1938 near the village of Neuengamme in the Bergedorf district of Hamburg, th ...
, 10,000 at Dachau, and 17,000 at Ravensbrück. In addition, tens of thousands of Polish people were executed or died in their thousands at other camps, including special children's camps such as in Łódź and its subcamp at Dzierżązna, in prisons and other places of detention inside and outside Poland.
The Auschwitz I concentration camp went into operation on 14 June 1940. The first transport of 728 Polish prisoners consisted mostly of schoolchildren, students and soldiers from the overcrowded prison at
Tarnów
Tarnów () is a city in southeastern Poland with 105,922 inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of 269,000 inhabitants. The city is situated in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship since 1999. From 1975 to 1998, it was the capital of the Tarnów ...
. Within a week another 313 arrived. There were 1666 major transports in August and 1705 in September. This Polish phase of Auschwitz lasted until the middle of 1942.Sybille Steinacher. ''Auschwitz A History'', Penguin 2004 pp. 29–30. By March 1941, 10,900 prisoners were registered at the camp, most of them Poles.The Auschwitz Album /ref>
The most notorious concentration camps in occupied Poland as well as along Nazi German borders included: Gross-Rosen in Silesia, now part of Poland, Janowska, Kraków-Płaszów, Poniatowa (reassigned from forced labour camp),
Skarżysko-Kamienna
Skarżysko-Kamienna is a city in northern Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship in south-central Poland by Kamienna river, to the north of Świętokrzyskie Mountains; one of the voivodship's major cities. Prior to 1928, it bore the name of ''Kamienna''; i ...
Trawniki
Trawniki is a village in Świdnik County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the present-day gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Trawniki. It lies approximately south-east of Świdnik and south-east of the regio ...
.
The Final Solution and the Holocaust in German-occupied Poland
Treatment of Polish Jews under German occupation prior to the Holocaust
While ethnic Poles were usually subject to selective persecution in an effort to discourage them from resisting the Germans, all ethnic Jews were targeted from the outset. During the first 55 days of the occupation approximately 5,000 Polish Jews were murdered. As of 12 November 1939, all Jews over the age of 12, or 14, were forced to wear the
Star of David
The Star of David (). is a generally recognized symbol of both Jewish identity and Judaism. Its shape is that of a hexagram: the compound of two equilateral triangles.
A derivation of the ''seal of Solomon'', which was used for decorative ...
. They were legally banned from working in key industries and in government institutions; to bake bread, or to earn more than 500 zlotys a month. Initially, the Jews were murdered at a lower rate than ethnic Poles.
Jewish ghettos
At the beginning of the occupation, Jews were treated differently as they were gathered together into ghettos in the cities. Himmler ordered all Jews in the annexed lands to be deported to central Poland. In winter 1939–40, about 100,000 Jews were deported.Jozef Garlinski ''Poland in the Second World War'', p. 29. Inside occupied Poland, the Germans created hundreds of ghettos in which they forced Jews to live. These World War II ghettos were part of the German official policy of removing Jews from public life. The combination of excess numbers of inmates, unsanitary conditions and lack of food resulted in a high death rate among them. The first ghetto was established in October 1939 at Piotrków. Initially the ghettos were open but on 1 May the Łódź ghetto was closed by Germans sealing the Jews inside.Adam Zamoyski ''The Polish Way'' John Murray, 1989 p. 359.Editor Alan Adelson ''łódź ghetto'' Penguin Books, 1989 p. 53. The
Warsaw Ghetto
The Warsaw Ghetto (german: Warschauer Ghetto, officially , "Jewish Residential District in Warsaw"; pl, getto warszawskie) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the G ...
was closed in November 1940. The Germans started a reservation for Jews near Lublin.
The Germans tried to divide the Poles from the Jews using several laws. One law was that Poles were forbidden from buying from Jewish shops; if they did so, they were subject to execution. Maria Brodacka was the first Pole to be murdered by the Germans for helping a Jew. The Germans used the incident to murder 100 Jews being held as hostages. At the start of the war 1335 Poles were murdered for sheltering Jews.
From 1940 to 1944, it is estimated that starvation and disease caused the death of 43,000 Jews imprisoned in the Holocaust ghettos. In the
Józefów
Józefów () is a town in east-central Poland, located in Masovian Voivodeship, in Otwock County. It lies about southeast of Warsaw city centre and is a part of that city's metropolitan area. Located on a picturesque confluence of Vistula and ...
Massacre, 1500 Jewish men, women, children and elderly, were killed. Most Polish Jews subsequently perished in the German death camps. Towards the end of 1942, the mass extermination of Polish Jews had started with deportations from urban centres to death camps including Jews from outside Poland.Aubrey Newman ''The Holocaust'' Caxton, 2002 p. 48.
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of the Jewish
ghetto
A ghetto, often called ''the'' ghetto, is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially as a result of political, social, legal, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished t ...
s located in the territory of General Government during World War II,"Ghettos" ''Holocaust Encyclopedia'', United States Holocaust Memorial Museum established by Nazi Germany in Warsaw, the pre-war capital of Poland. Between 1941 and 1943, starvation, disease and mass
deportation
Deportation is the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. The term ''expulsion'' is often used as a synonym for deportation, though expulsion is more often used in the context of international law, while deportation ...
s to concentration camps and
extermination camp
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...
s (mainly the
Treblinka extermination camp
Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp ...
) during the Gross-aktion Warschau, reduced the population of the ghetto from an estimated 445,000"The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising" AISH. Retrieved 5 January 2013. to approximately 71,000. In 1943 the Warsaw Ghetto was the scene of the
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; pl, powstanie w getcie warszawskim; german: link=no, Aufstand im Warschauer Ghetto was the 1943 act of Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland during World War II to oppose Nazi Germany's ...
.Warsaw Ghetto Uprising /ref> The ghetto was reduced to rubble.Adam Zamoyski ''The Polish Way'' John Murray, 1989 p. 362.
Extermination camps
Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibor, and Treblinka
The first German murder camp in occupied Poland was established in late 1941 at
Chełmno
Chełmno (; older en, Culm; formerly ) is a town in northern Poland near the Vistula river with 18,915 inhabitants as of December 2021. It is the seat of the Chełmno County in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship.
Due to its regional importan ...
(renamed ''Kulmhof'') in annexed lands. The new killing method originated from the earlier practise of gassing thousands of unsuspecting hospital patients at
Hadamar
Hadamar is a small town in Limburg-Weilburg district in Hesse, Germany.
Hadamar is known for its Clinic for Forensic Psychiatry/Centre for Social Psychiatry, lying at the edge of town, in whose outlying buildings is also found the Hadamar Memo ...
, Sonnenstein and other euthanasia centres in the Third Reich, known as
Action T4
(German, ) was a campaign of mass murder by involuntary euthanasia in Nazi Germany. The term was first used in post-war trials against doctors who had been involved in the killings. The name T4 is an abbreviation of 4, a street address of ...
. In Chełmno
extermination camp
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...
, the ''SS Totenkopfverbände'' used mobile
gas van
A gas van or gas wagon (russian: душегубка, ''dushegubka'', literally "soul killer"; german: Gaswagen) was a truck reequipped as a mobile gas chamber. During the World War II Holocaust, Nazi Germany developed and used gas vans on a large ...
s to murder mostly Polish Jews imprisoned at the
Łódź Ghetto
The Łódź Ghetto or Litzmannstadt Ghetto (after the Nazi German name for Łódź) was a Nazi ghetto established by the German authorities for Polish Jews and Roma following the Invasion of Poland. It was the second-largest ghetto in all of Ge ...
(''Litzmannstadt'' in German). At least 152,000 people were gassed at Chełmno according to postwar verdict by West Germany, although up to 340,000 victims were estimated by the Polish Main Commission for Investigation of German Crimes in Poland (GKBZNwP), a predecessor of the
Institute of National Remembrance
The Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation ( pl, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej – Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, abbreviated IPN) is a Polish state resea ...
Operation Reinhard
or ''Einsatz Reinhard''
, location = Occupied Poland
, date = October 1941 – November 1943
, incident_type = Mass deportations to extermination camps
, perpetrators = Odilo Globočnik, Hermann Höfle, Richard Thomalla, Erwin L ...
in occupied Poland, the German government built three regular killing centres with stationary gas chambers in the
General Government
The General Government (german: Generalgouvernement, pl, Generalne Gubernatorstwo, uk, Генеральна губернія), also referred to as the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (german: Generalgouvernement für die be ...
. It was the most deadly phase of the
Final Solution
The Final Solution (german: die Endlösung, ) or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (german: Endlösung der Judenfrage, ) was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to th ...
, based on implementing semi-industrial means of murdering and
incinerating
Incineration is a waste treatment process that involves the combustion of substances contained in waste materials. Industrial plants for waste incineration are commonly referred to as waste-to-energy facilities. Incineration and other high ...
people. The new facilities included
Treblinka extermination camp
Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp ...
Sobibor extermination camp
Sobibor (, Polish: ) was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland.
As ...
(ready in May 1942). Parallel killing facilities were built at
Auschwitz-Birkenau
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...
along the already existing Auschwitz I in March 1942, at Majdanek later that year.
Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek
The first Polish political prisoners began to arrive at Auschwitz I in May 1940. By March 1941, 10,900 were imprisoned there. In September 1941, some 200 ill prisoners, most of them Poles, along with 600 Soviet POWs,The Treatment of Soviet POWs: Starvation, Disease, and Shootings, June 1941– January 1942 /ref> were murdered in the first gassing experiments at Auschwitz. Beginning in 1942, Auschwitz's prisoner population became much more diverse, as Jews and other "undesirables" from all over German-occupied Europe were deported to the camp.
About 960,000 Jews were murdered at Auschwitz amongst its 1.1 million victims, including 438,000 Jews from Hungary and 300,000 Polish Jews, 69,000 French Jews, 60,000 Dutch Jews, and 55,000 Greek Jews.Sybille Steinacher. ''Auschwitz a History'', Penguin 2004 p. 134.Franciszek Piper. ''Auschwitz How Many Perished Jews, Poles, Gypsies ...'', p. 48. The Polish scholar
Franciszek Piper
Franciszek Piper (born 1941) is a Polish scholar, historian and author. Most of his work concerns the Holocaust, especially the history of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Dr. Piper is credited as one of the historians who helped establish a mo ...
, the chief historian of Auschwitz, estimates that 140,000 to 150,000 Poles were brought to that camp between 1940 and 1945, and that 70,000 to 75,000 died there as victims of executions, of medical experiments, and of starvation and disease. There were also hundreds of thousands of victims murdered at concentration camps in Majdanek, Treblinka, and Warsaw.
Ukrainian nationalist massacres in occupied Poland
For many years during the Soviet domination over
Communist Poland
The Polish People's Republic ( pl, Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa, PRL) was a country in Central Europe that existed from 1947 to 1989 as the predecessor of the modern Republic of Poland. With a population of approximately 37.9 million nea ...
, the knowledge of Ukrainian
massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia
The massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia ( pl, rzeź wołyńska, lit=Volhynian slaughter; uk, Волинська трагедія, lit=Volyn tragedy, translit=Volynska trahediia), were carried out in German-occupied Poland by the ...
perpetrated against ethnic Poles and Jews, by Ukrainian nationalists and peasants was suppressed for political propaganda reasons. Among the first to suffer mass killings were the units of Polish Army fleeing the German advance in 1939. On top of uniformed men being ambushed, there are records of civilians being murdered along with them, and women raped.Mikolaj Terles ''Ethnic cleansing of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia 1942–1946'' Toronto, 1993 pp. 11–12.
Following the German attack against the USSR, many ethnic Ukrainians viewed
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
as their liberator, in the hopes of establishing an independent Ukraine.Norman Davies (2006), ''Europe at War'' Pan Books . p. 64. The ethnically motivated killings intensified after the Soviet occupation zone was overrun across the regions of
Kresy
Eastern Borderlands ( pl, Kresy Wschodnie) or simply Borderlands ( pl, Kresy, ) was a term coined for the eastern part of the Second Polish Republic during the interwar period (1918–1939). Largely agricultural and extensively multi-ethnic, it ...
. Some 200 Polish refugees were murdered at Nawóz.Mikolaj Terles ''Ethnic cleansing of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia 1942–1946'' Toronto, 1993 p. 13. Ethnic Ukrainians were also among the supporters of the rounding up and murdering of Jews.Daniel Jonah Goldhagen ''Hitler's Willing Executioners'' Abacus, 2006 p. 409.
Numerous sources state that as soon as the Germans advanced toward Lviv, Ukrainian countrymen began to murder Jews in territories with predominantly Ukrainian populations.Martin Gilbert (1990), ''The Holocaust'' Fontana, . p. 163. It is estimated that, in this wave of
pogrom
A pogrom () is a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews. The term entered the English language from Russian to describe 19th- and 20th-century attacks on Jews in the Russia ...
s across 54 cities, some 24,000 Jews were killed.Editor Michael Berenbaum ''A Mosaic of Victims'' I. B. Tauris 1990, . p. 110. With many Jews already executed or fleeing, the organized groups of Ukrainian nationalists under
Mykola Lebed
Mykola Lebed ( uk, Микола Кирилович Лебідь or ; January 11, 1909 – July 18, 1998), also known as Maksym Ruban, Marko or Yevhen Skyrba, was a Ukrainian political activist, Ukrainian nationalist, guerrilla fighter, and war ...
began to target ethnic Poles, including pregnant women and children.
During the subsequent campaign of ethnic cleansing by Ukrainian nationalists gathered into paramilitary groups under the command of the
Ukrainian Insurgent Army
The Ukrainian Insurgent Army ( uk, Українська повстанська армія, УПА, translit=Ukrayins'ka povstans'ka armiia, abbreviated UPA) was a Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary and later partisan formation. During World ...
(OUN-UPA) and the
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists
The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists ( uk, Організація українських націоналістів, Orhanizatsiya ukrayins'kykh natsionalistiv, abbreviated OUN) was a Ukrainian ultranationalist political organization estab ...
(OUN-B) partisan groups, some 80,000–100,000 Polish citizens were murdered.
Grzegorz Motyka
Grzegorz Motyka (born 1967) is a Polish historian and author specializing in the history of Poland–Ukraine relations. Since 1992 he served at the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences and at the Institute of National ...
''Zapomnijcie o Giedroyciu: Polacy, Ukraińcy, IPN'' Gazeta Wyborcza. Locations, dates and numbers of victims include (in chronological order): Koszyszcze (15 March 1942), 145 Poles plus 19 Ukrainian collaborators, seven Jews and nine Russians, massacred in the presence of the German police; Antonówska (April), nine Poles; Aleksandrówka (September), six Poles; Rozyszcze (November), four Poles; Zalesie (December), nine Poles; Jezierce (16 December), 280 Poles; Borszczówka (3 March 1943), 130 Poles including 42 children killed by Ukrainians with the Germans; Pienki, Pendyki Duze & Pendyki Male, three locations (18 March), 180 Poles; Melnytsa (18 March), about 80 Poles, murdered by Ukrainian police with the Germans; Lipniki (25 March), 170 Poles; Huta Majdanska (13 April), 175 Poles; Zabara (22–23 April), 750 Poles; Huta Antonowiecka (24 April), around 600 Poles; Klepachiv (5 May), 42 Poles; Katerburg (7–8 May), 28 Poles, ten Polish Jews and two mixed Polish-Ukrainian "collaborator" families; Stsryki (29 May), at least 90 Poles; Hurby (2 June), about 250 Poles; Górna Kolonia (22 June), 76 Poles; Rudnia (11 July), about 100 Poles; Gucin (11 July), around 140, or 146 Poles; Kalusiv (11 July), 107 Poles; Wolczak (11 July), around 490 Poles; Orzesyn (11 July), 306 Poles; Khryniv (11 July), around 200 Poles; Zablocce (11 July), 76 Poles; Mikolajpol (11 July), more than 50 Poles; Jeziorany Szlachecki (11 July), 43 Poles; Krymno (11 July), Poles gathered for church mass murdered; Dymitrivka (22 July), 43 Poles; Ternopil (August), 43 Poles; Andrzejówka (1 August), 'scores' of Poles murdered; Kisielówka (14 August), 87 Poles; Budy Ossowski (30 August), 205 Poles including 80 children; Czmykos (30 August), 240 Poles; Ternopol (September), 61 Poles; Beheta (13 September), 20 Poles; Ternopil (October), 93 Poles; Lusze (16 October), two Polish families; Ternopil (November), 127 Poles, a large number of nearby settlements destroyed; Stezarzyce (6 December), 23 Poles; Ternopil (December), 409 Poles; Ternopil (January 1944), 446 Poles.Mikolaj Terles. ''Ethnic cleansing of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia 1942–1946'' Toronto 1993, , pp. 40–45.F.Ozarowski ''Wolyn Aflame'' WICI, 1997 . p. 9.
It is estimated that anywhere between 200,000Mikolaj Terles ''Ethnic cleansing of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia 1942–1946'' Toronto, 1993 p. 61. and 500,000 civilians of all ethnic backgrounds died during the OUN-UPA ethnic cleansing operations in eastern Poland. Some Ukrainians also collaborated as Trawniki guards at the concentration and extermination camps, most notably at
Treblinka
Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp ...
.Martin Gilbert (1990), ''The Holocaust'' Fontana, . pp. 150–151.
Some Poles have also murdered ethnic Ukrainians in retaliation, such as in the case of
Pawłokoma
Pawłokoma ( uk, Павлокома, ''Pavlokoma'', ) is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Dynów, within Rzeszów County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship, in south-eastern Poland. It lies approximately south-east of Dynów and sout ...
.Analysis: Ukraine, Poland Seek Reconciliation Over Grisly History Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty 2011.
Lithuanian collaboration and atrocities during World War II
Lithuanian authorities had been aiding Germans in their actions against Poles since the very beginning of German occupation in 1941, which resulted in the deaths of thousands of Poles.Piotrowski, 1998 p.163 /ref> Thousands of Poles were killed by Lithuanian collaborators working with Nazis (like the German subordinated
Lithuanian Security Police
The Lithuanian Security Police (LSP), also known as Saugumas ( lt, Saugumo policija), was a local police force that operated in German-occupied Lithuania from 1941 to 1944, in collaboration with the occupational authorities. Collaborating with th ...
Gazeta Wyborcza
''Gazeta Wyborcza'' (; ''The Electoral Gazette'' in English) is a Polish daily newspaper based in Warsaw, Poland. It is the first Polish daily newspaper after the era of "real socialism" and one of Poland's newspapers of record, covering the g ...
Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force The Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force or LTDF ( lt, Lietuvos vietinė rinktinė, LVR, german: Litauische Sonderverbände) was a short-lived, Lithuanian, volunteer armed force created and disbanded in 1944 during the German occupation of Lithuani ...
under the command of general
Povilas Plechavičius
Povilas Plechavičius (1 February 1890 – 19 December 1973) was an Imperial Russian and then Lithuanian military officer and statesman. In the service of Lithuania he rose to the rank of General of the army in the interwar period. He is best kn ...
,
Gazeta Wyborcza
''Gazeta Wyborcza'' (; ''The Electoral Gazette'' in English) is a Polish daily newspaper based in Warsaw, Poland. It is the first Polish daily newspaper after the era of "real socialism" and one of Poland's newspapers of record, covering the g ...
slave labour
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
.Piotrowski p.168 p.169 /ref>) Tadeusz Piotrowski notes that thousands of Poles died at the hand of Lithuanian collaborators, and tens of thousands were deported.
In autumn 1943 Armia Krajowa started operations against the Lithuanian collaborative organization, the
Lithuanian Security Police
The Lithuanian Security Police (LSP), also known as Saugumas ( lt, Saugumo policija), was a local police force that operated in German-occupied Lithuania from 1941 to 1944, in collaboration with the occupational authorities. Collaborating with th ...
, which had been aiding Germans in their operation since its very creation.Snyder p.84 /ref> Polish political and military underground cells were created all over Lithuania, Polish partisan attacks were usually not only in Vilnius Region but across the former demarcation line as well. Soon a significant proportion of AK operations became directed against
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
allied Lithuanian Police and local Lithuanian administration. During the first half of 1944 AK killed hundreds of Lithuanians serving in Nazi auxiliary units or organizations: policemen, members of village self-defence units, servants of local administration, soldiers of the Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force and other Nazi collaborators. Civilians on both sides increasingly numbered among the casualties.Piotrowski, 1998 p.168 /ref> Arūnas Bubnys. ''Armijos Krajovos ištakos ir ideologija Lietuvoje'' (Beginnings and ideology of Armia Krajowa in Lithuania). Armija Krajova Lietuvoje, pp. 6-13. A. Bubnys, K. Garšva, E. Gečiauskas, J. Lebionka, J. Saudargienė, R. Zizas (editors). Vilnius – Kaunas, 1995.
In response, Lithuanian police, who had murdered hundreds of Polish civilians since 1941, increased its operations against the Poles, executing many Polish civilians; this further increased the
vicious circle
A vicious circle (or cycle) is a complex chain of events that reinforces itself through a feedback loop, with detrimental results. It is a system with no tendency toward equilibrium (social, economic, ecological, etc.), at least in the short r ...
and the previously simmering Polish–Lithuanian conflict over the Vilnius Region deteriorated into a low-level
civil war
A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country).
The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...
under German occupation.
Timothy Snyder
Timothy David Snyder (born August 18, 1969) is an American historian specializing in the modern history of Central and Eastern Europe. He is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute f ...
, Yale University Press, 2003, , ''The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999'' The scale of disruption grew over time; Lithuanian historian noted, for example, that AK was able to paralyze the activities of many Lithuanian educational institutions in 1943. Stanislovas Buchaveckas. ''Rytų Lietuvos Mokyklos ir Armija Krajova 1941-1944 m.'' (Schools in Eastern Lithuania and Armia Krajowa in 1941-1944). Armija Krajova Lietuvoje, pp. 40-56. A. Bubnys, K. Garšva, E. Gečiauskas, J. Lebionka, J. Saudargienė, R. Zizas (editors). Vilnius – Kaunas, 1995.
In May 1944, in the
battle of Murowana Oszmianka
The Battle of Murowana Oszmianka of 13–14 May 1944 was the largest clash between the Polish resistance movement organization Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK) and the Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force (LTDF); a Lithuanian volunteer security for ...
AK dealt a significant blow to the Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force which has been terrorizing local Polish population. See als review /ref> At that time,
Aleksander Krzyżanowski
Aleksander Krzyżanowski '' nom de guerre'' "Wilk" (18 February 1895 – 29 September 1951) was an artillery colonel of the Polish Army, officer of the Service for Poland's Victory, Union of Armed Struggle, commander of the Vilnius District of ...
, AK commander of Vilnius region, commanded over 9000 armed Armia Krajowa partisans.
There are also claims of smaller scale killings of ethnic Lithuanians. On June 23, 1944, in response to an earlier massacre on June 20 of 37 Polish villagers in
Glitiškės
Glitiškės ( pl, Glinciszki) is a village in Vilnius district
Vilnius ( , ; see also other names) is the capital and largest city of Lithuania, with a population of 592,389 (according to the state register) or 625,107 (according to the muni ...
(Glinciszki) by Lithuanian Security Police rogue AK troops from the unit of the 5th Vilnian Home Army Brigade (under the command of
Zygmunt Szendzielarz
Zygmunt Szendzielarz (12 March 1910 – 8 February 1951) was the commander of the Polish 5th Wilno Brigade of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa), nom de guerre "Łupaszka". He fought against the Red Army after the end of the Second World War. Followi ...
"Łupaszko" who was not present at the events) committed a massacre of Lithuanian policemen and civilians, at
Dubingiai
Dubingiai ( pl, Dubinki) is a town in Molėtai district in Lithuania. It is situated near Lake Asveja, the longest lake in the country. The town has 208 inhabitants as of 2017.
History
The settlement was first mentioned in 1334, when Teutonic ...
(Dubinki), where 27 Lithuanians, including women and children, were murdered. These rogue units were acting against specific orders of Krzyżanowski which forbade reprisals against civilians In total, the number of victims of Polish revenge actions at the end of June 1944 in Dubingiai and neighbouring towns of
Joniškis
Joniškis (; Samogitian language, Samogitian: ''Juonėškis'') is a town in northern Lithuania with a population of about 9,900. It is located 39 kilometers north of Šiauliai and 14 kilometers south of the Lithuania–Latvia border. Joniškis i ...
, , , and
Giedraičiai
left, Bell tower of Church of St. Bartholomew
Giedraičiai is a town in Molėtai district municipality, Lithuania with about 700 residents. It is located some 45 km north of Vilnius, capital of Lithuania, on the banks of Lake Kiementas. ...
, was 70–100 Lithuanians, including many civilians. Rimantas Zizas. ''Armijos Krajovos veikla Lietuvoje 1942-1944 metais'' (Acitivies of Armia Krajowa in Lithuania in 1942-1944). Armija Krajova Lietuvoje, pp. 14-39. A. Bubnys, K. Garšva, E. Gečiauskas, J. Lebionka, J. Saudargienė, R. Zizas (editors). Vilnius – Kaunas, 1995. The Massacre at Dubingiai was the only known massacre carried out by units of AK. Further escalation by either side was cut short by the Soviet occupation of Vilnius region two weeks later.
Soviet war crimes against Poland
Soviet invasion of Poland
Amongst the first to suffer mass repressions at the hands of the Soviets were the
Border Defence Corps
The Border Protection Corps ( pl, Korpus Ochrony Pogranicza, KOP) was a military formation of the Second Polish Republic that was created in 1924 to defend the country's eastern borders against armed Soviet incursions and local bandits. Other b ...
. Many officers were murdered by the
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union.
...
secret police immediately after capture. Polish General Olszyna-Wilczyński was shot without due process at the moment of his identification. In the Wilno area all higher officers of the Polish Army died in captivity, the same as in Polesie, where 150 officers were already executed even before the remainder were taken prisoner. Uniformed men captured in Rohatyń were murdered along with their wives and children.
On the Ukrainian front 5264 officers (including ten generals), 4096 non-commissioned officers and 181,223 soldiers were taken into captivity. Polish regular troops in
Lviv
Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in western Ukraine, and the seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is one of the main cultural centres of Ukraine ...
, including police forces, voluntarily laid down their arms after agreeing to the Soviet terms for surrender, which offered them the freedom to travel to neutral Romania and Hungary. The Russian leadership broke the agreement entirely. All the Polish servicemen were arrested and sent to the Soviet POW camps, including 2,000 army officers. In the subsequent wave of repressions which lasted for twenty-one months (see:
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named after ...
) some 500,000 Poles dubbed "enemies of the people" were imprisoned without crime.
Katyn massacre of Polish military echelon by the NKVD
Following the invasion, in April and May 1940 the NKVD secret police perpetrated the single most notorious wartime atrocity against any prisoners of war held by the Soviet Union. In the
Katyn massacre
The Katyn massacre, "Katyń crime"; russian: link=yes, Катынская резня ''Katynskaya reznya'', "Katyn massacre", or russian: link=no, Катынский расстрел, ''Katynsky rasstrel'', "Katyn execution" was a series of m ...
nearly twenty-two thousand Polish nationals were murdered in mass executions simultaneously. They included army officers, political leaders, civil servants, government officials, intellectuals, policemen, landowners, and scores of ordinary soldiers.
Peter Stachura
Peter D. Stachura is a British historian, writer, lecturer and essayist. He was Professor of Modern European History at the University of Stirling and Director of its Centre for Research in Polish History. He has published extensively on the subj ...
, ''Poland, 1918–1945'', p. 133.Brian Crozier Remembering Katyn , Hoover Institution. 30 April 2000; Stanford University. Retrieved 6 January 2013. The Katyn Forest near
Smolensk
Smolensk ( rus, Смоленск, p=smɐˈlʲensk, a=smolensk_ru.ogg) is a city and the administrative center of Smolensk Oblast, Russia, located on the Dnieper River, west-southwest of Moscow. First mentioned in 863, it is one of the oldest c ...
, Russia, was the primary execution site where 4,443 officers (the entire Polish military echelon in the custody of the Soviets),Ibiblio.org Katyn massacre. Special studies. were murdered by the Soviet secret police. The name Katyn is now associated with the systematic execution of up to 21,768 Polish citizens in several locations ordered through a single document, including at the
Kozelsk
Kozelsk (russian: Козе́льск) is a town and the administrative center of Kozelsky District in Kaluga Oblast, Russia, located on the Zhizdra River (Oka's tributary), southwest of Kaluga, the administrative center of the oblast. Populatio ...
prisoner-of-war camp as well as the
Starobelsk
Starobilsk ( uk, Старобільськ, russian: Старобельск) is a city in Luhansk Oblast, Ukraine. It serves as the administrative center of Starobilsk Raion. The modern settlement was founded in 1686, and it was granted city sta ...
and
Ostashkov
Ostashkov (russian: Оста́шков) is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, town and the administrative center of Ostashkovsky District in Tver Oblast, Russia, on a peninsula at the southern shore of Lake Seliger, west of Tver, the adm ...
camps.
Among the victims of the massacre were 14 Polish generals, including
Leon Billewicz
Leon Billewicz (April 25, 1870 in Werbiczna – April 1940) was a Polish officer and a General of the Polish Army. He was murdered during the Katyń massacre.
Biography
Service
Initially serving with the Imperial Russian Army, in November 1 ...
,
Bronisław Bohatyrewicz
Bronisław Bohatyrewicz of Ostoja (1870–1940) was a Polish military commander and a general of the Polish Army. Murdered during the Katyn massacre, Bohatyrewicz was one of the Generals whose bodies were identified by forensic scientists of the ...
,
Xawery Czernicki
Rear Admiral Xawery Stanisław Czernicki (1882–1940) was a Polish engineer, military commander and one of the highest-ranking officers of the Polish Navy. Considered one of the founders of Polish Navy's logistical services, he was murdered by ...
Henryk Minkiewicz
Henryk Minkiewicz (19 January 1880 – 9 April 1940) was a Polish socialist politician and a general of the Polish Army. Former commander of the Border Defence Corps, he was among the Polish officers murdered in the Katyń massacre.; ; ; ; ; ;
L ...
,
Kazimierz Orlik-Łukoski
Kazimierz Orlik-Łukoski (13 September 1890 – 1940) was a Polish military commander and one of the Generals of the Polish Army murdered by the Soviet Union in the Katyń massacre of 1940.
Life
He was born Kazimierz Łukoski in 1890, in the vill ...
,
Konstanty Plisowski
Konstanty Plisowski of Odrowąż (8 June 1890 – 1940) was a Polish general and military commander. He was the Commander in the battle of Jazłowiec and the battle of Brześć Litewski. He was murdered on Stalin's orders in the Katyn massacre.
...
Piotr Skuratowicz
Piotr Skuratowicz (1 August 1891 – 1940) was a Polish military commander and a General of the Polish Army. A renowned cavalryman, he was arrested by the NKVD and murdered in the Katyn massacre.
Piotr Marian Skuratowicz was born 1891 in Minsk, ...
Alojzy Wir-Konas
Alojzy Wir-Konas (Maków Podhalański, 1894 – 1940) was a Polish military commander and the Colonel in the Polish Army. Serving as Divisional Commander during the Invasion of Poland, he was murdered in the Katyn massacre.
Alojzy Konas joined th ...
(promoted posthumously).
Soviet deportations as a means of ethnic cleansing
An estimated 1.2 to 1.7 million Polish nationals (entire families with children, women, men, and elderly) were loaded onto freight trains and deported to the eastern parts of the USSR, the Urals, and Siberia. The Soviets used against Poles the same process of subjugation used against their own citizens for many years beforehand, especially mass deportations. In 1940 and the first half of 1941, the Soviets removed Poles from their homes in four major waves. The first deportation action took place from 10 February 1940 on, with more than 220,000 victims, sent to northern European Russia; the second, on 13–15 April 1940, affected 300,000 to 330,000 Poles, sent primarily to Kazakhstan. The third wave, in June–July 1940, totalled 240,000–400,000 victims. The fourth wave took place in June 1941, deporting 200,000 Poles including a large number of children.Katyn: Stalin's Massacre and the Seeds of Polish Resurrection by Allen Paul Naval, Institute Press, 1996.
On top of deporting Polish citizens en masse, the Soviets forcibly drafted Polish men into the Red Army. It is estimated that 210,000 young Polish males were conscripted as newly declared Soviet subjects following the annexation of
Kresy
Eastern Borderlands ( pl, Kresy Wschodnie) or simply Borderlands ( pl, Kresy, ) was a term coined for the eastern part of the Second Polish Republic during the interwar period (1918–1939). Largely agricultural and extensively multi-ethnic, it ...
.
Cultural and economic destruction of Kresy
The invading Soviets set out to remove Polish cultural influences from the land under concocted premises of class struggle and dismantle the former Polish system of administration. All Polish nationals in occupied territories were declared to be citizens of the Soviet Union starting on 29 November 1939. Many Polish social activists and community leaders were eliminated through
judicial murder
Judicial murder is the intentional and premeditated killing of an innocent person by means of capital punishment; therefore, it is a subset of wrongful execution. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' describes it as "death inflicted by process of law ...
, the unjustified use of capital punishment. Captured Poles were transported to
where most of them were executed in the dungeons of the NKVD in
Kharkiv
Kharkiv ( uk, wikt:Харків, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city and List of hromadas of Ukraine, municipality in Ukraine.Oleksandr Zinchenko NKVD 'Katyn' in Kharkiv: Mayor Ludwik Domon ''Ukrainian Pravda'', 12 December 2010. Polish Institute in Kyiv.
Religious education was forbidden. Schools were forced to serve as tools of communist indoctrination. Monuments were destroyed (for example, in Wołczyn, the remains of King
Stanisław August Poniatowski
Stanisław II August (born Stanisław Antoni Poniatowski; 17 January 1732 – 12 February 1798), known also by his regnal Latin name Stanislaus II Augustus, was King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1764 to 1795, and the last monarch ...
were ditched), street names changed, bookshops closed, libraries burned and publishers shut down. Collections from Tarnopol, Stanisławów and Sokal were transported to Russian archives. Taxes were raised and religious institutions were forced to close. The Soviets replaced the zloty with the
rouble
The ruble (American English) or rouble (Commonwealth English) (; rus, рубль, p=rublʲ) is the currency unit of Belarus and Russia. Historically, it was the currency of the Russian Empire and of the Soviet Union.
, currencies named ''rub ...
, but gave them blatantly absurd equal value. Businesses were mandated to stay open and sell at pre-war prices, hence allowing Soviet soldiers to buy goods with roubles. Entire hospitals, schools and factories were moved to the USSR. Soviet censorship was strictly enforced. Even the ringing of church bells was banned.
Ethnic tensions
The Polish territories were split between the Ukrainian and Belorussian SSRs with Ukrainian and Belarusian declared as the official languages in local usage, respectively. Some Polish citizens of various ethnic backgrounds (i.e. Belarusians and some Jews) welcomed the Soviet invasion in the hope of gaining political concessions and actively cooperated with the Soviets. This resulted in retaliatory actions following Operation Barbarossa, including the
Jedwabne pogrom
The Jedwabne pogrom was a massacre of Polish Jews in the town of Jedwabne, German-occupied Poland, on 10 July 1941, during World War II and the early stages of the Holocaust. At least 340 men, women and children were murdered, some 300 of whom ...
(or Jedwabne massacre) of Jewish people living in and near the town of
Jedwabne
Jedwabne (; yi, יעדוואבנע, ''Yedvabna'') is a town in northeast Poland, in Łomża County of Podlaskie Voivodeship, with 1,942 inhabitants (2002). It is notable for the Jedwabne pogrom of 10 July 1941, during the World War II German oc ...
in Bezirk Bialystok, that took place in July 1941.Marek Jan Chodakiewicz "The Massacre in Jedwabne, 10 July 1941: Before, During, After". Columbia University Press and East European Monographs. The official investigation of the
Polish Institute of National Remembrance
The Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation ( pl, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej – Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, abbreviated IPN) is a Polish state resea ...
confirmed that the crime was "committed directly by Poles, but inspired by the Germans".Editor A.Polonsky ''The Neighbors Respond'' Princeton 2004 p. 412.
Soviet NKVD prisoner massacres, June–July 1941
Following the German attack on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941,
Operation Barbarrossa
Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named after ...
, the Soviet
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union.
...
(Secret Police) panicked and executed their prisoners en masse before retreating in what became known as the
NKVD prisoner massacres
The NKVD prisoner massacres were a series of mass executions of political prisoners carried out by the NKVD, the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs of the Soviet Union, across Eastern Europe, primarily Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic states, a ...
. The most conservative estimate puts death toll in the prisons at up to 30,000, although there may have been as many as 100,000 victims of the Soviets as they retreated. The British intelligence officer and postwar historian
George Malcher
George Charles Malcher also known as G.C. Malcher or Jerzy Karol Malcher (11 July 1914 – 21 May 2001) was a writer, historian, and political analyst educated in the field of law at the Jagiellonian University of Kraków in the Interwar Po ...
puts the total at 120,000 for those killed in NKVD prisons and during the Soviet flight. Stalin ordered the execution of those believed to have spied on the Soviet Union, which meant practically everyone for the secret police operatives.
According to the NKVD records, nearly 9,000 prisoners were murdered in the
Ukrainian SSR
The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic ( uk, Украї́нська Радя́нська Соціалісти́чна Респу́бліка, ; russian: Украи́нская Сове́тская Социалисти́ческая Респ ...
in these massacres. Due to the confusion during the rapid Soviet retreat and incomplete records, the NKVD number is most likely an undercounting. According to estimates by contemporary historians, the number of victims in the territories previously annexed to Soviet Ukraine (eastern Galicia, western
Polesia
Polesia, Polesie, or Polesye, uk, Полісся (Polissia), pl, Polesie, russian: Полесье (Polesye) is a natural and historical region that starts from the farthest edge of Central Europe and encompasses Eastern Europe, including East ...
, and western
Volhynia
Volhynia (also spelled Volynia) ( ; uk, Воли́нь, Volyn' pl, Wołyń, russian: Волы́нь, Volýnʹ, ), is a historic region in Central and Eastern Europe, between south-eastern Poland, south-western Belarus, and western Ukraine. Th ...
) was probably between 10,000 and 40,000. By ethnicity, Ukrainians comprised roughly 70 per cent of victims, with Poles at 20 per cent and the rest being Jews and other nationalities.
The Soviets left thousands of corpses piled up in prison yards, corridors, cells, basements, and NKVD torture chambers, as discovered by the advancing Germans in June–July 1941. The following is a partial list of prisons and other secret execution places, where mass murder took place; compiled by historian Tadeusz Piotrowski, and others.
In eight pre-war Polish
voivodeships
A voivodeship is the area administered by a voivode (Governor) in several countries of central and eastern Europe. Voivodeships have existed since medieval times and the area of extent of voivodeship resembles that of a duchy in western medieval ...
, the number of dead was between 32,000 and 34,000. The locations in alphabetical order included: Augustów prison: (with 30 bodies);
Berezwecz
Hlybokaye or Glubokoye ( be, Глыбокае, translit=Hłybokaje, russian: Глубокое, translit=Glubokoye, pl, Głębokie, lt, Glubokas, yi, גלובאָק, Glubok) is a town in Vitebsk Region, Belarus, the capital of Hlybokaye Raion ( ...
Lwów
Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in western Ukraine, and the seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is one of the main cultural centres of Ukraine ...
(over 12,000 murdered in 3 separate prisons); Łopatyn: (12);
Łuck
Lutsk ( uk, Луцьк, translit=Lutsk}, ; pl, Łuck ; yi, לוצק, Lutzk) is a city on the Styr River in northwestern Ukraine. It is the Capital city, administrative center of the Volyn Oblast (oblast, province) and the administrative center o ...
: (up to 4000 bodies); Mikolajów, Minsk: (over 700); Nadworna: (about 80); Oleszyce, Oszmiana: (at least 60); Otynia: (300); Pasieczna, Pińsk: ("dozens to hundreds"); Przemyślany: (up to 1000); Równe: (up to 500); Rudki: (200); Sambor: (at least 200, up to 720); Sarny: (around 90); Sądowa Wisznia: (about 70); Sieniatycze: (15); Skniłów: (200 POWs); Słonim, Stanisławów: (about 2800); Stryj: (at least 100); Szczerzec: (about 30); Tarasowski Las: (about 100); Tarnopol: (up to 1000);
Wilejka
Vileyka (Instruction on transliteration of Belarusian geographical names with letters of Latin script, officially transliterated as Viliejka, be, Віле́йка , also ''Вялейка''; russian: Вилейка; lt, Vileika; pl, Wilejka) is a ...
: (over 700); Wilno: (hundreds); Włodzimierz Wołynski, Wołkowysk: (seven); Wołożyn: (about 100); Wolozynek, Zalesiany, Zaleszczyki, Zborów: (around 8); Złoczów: (up to 750); Zółkiew: (up to 60) and Zydaczów.Victims of Stalin Repressions Honoured in Cherven :: Charter'97 :: News :: 27/06/2005
It was not only prisoners who were murdered by the NKVD as the Soviets retreated. Other Soviet crimes include Brzeżany, where Soviet soldiers threw hand grenades into homes, and Czortków, where four priests, three brothers and a
tertiary
Tertiary ( ) is a widely used but obsolete term for the geologic period from 66 million to 2.6 million years ago.
The period began with the demise of the non-avian dinosaurs in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, at the start ...
were murdered.
Deliberate halting of offensive against Germany during the Warsaw Uprising
The role of Soviets is debated by historians. Questions are asked about the Soviet political motives in halting their advance on the city during the uprising, thus allowing for the destruction to continue, and denying the use of their airfields to the
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and ...
and
United States Army Air Forces
The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...
.
The end of German rule and the return of the Soviets (January 1945)
With the return of the Soviets, the killings and deportations started again. Stalin turned his attention to the ''
Armia Krajowa
The Home Army ( pl, Armia Krajowa, abbreviated AK; ) was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Armed Resistance) esta ...
'' (Home Army) which was seen as an obstacle in Soviet goals of controlling Poland hence the NKVD set out to destroy them. The Poles were accused of having Germans spies in their ranks, trying to take control of the Polish units fighting along with the Red Army, and causing desertions. Home Army units which fought against the Germans in support of the Soviet advance had their officers and men arrested. At Wilno and Nowogrodek, the Soviets shipped to concentration camps 1500 officers and 5000 troops.
The Home Army was made illegal. As a result, it is estimated up to 40,000 Home Army partisans were persecuted and many others deported. In the Lublin area more than 50,000 Poles were arrested between July 1944 and June 1945. It is suspected that the NKVD carried out killings in the Turza Wood where 17 bodies have been found, although witnesses put the total at 600. At Baran Wood, 13 bodies have been found but witnesses again claimed hundreds. Records show that 61 death sentences were carried out plus 37 in October 1944 alone.
Sarmatian Review
The ''Sarmatian Review'' () is an English language, English-language peer review, peer-reviewed academic journal, academic tri-quarterly academic journal, journal devoted to Slavistics (the study of the history, histories, cultures, and society, so ...
. Retrieved 30 September 2013. Approximately 60,000 soldiers of the Home Army had been arrested by the NKVD. Some 50,000 of them were deported to the
gulag
The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...
s and prisons deep in the Soviet Union.Andrzej Kaczyński (02.10.04), (Great hunt: The persecutions of AK soldiers in the Polish People's Republic),
Rzeczpospolita
() is the official name of Poland and a traditional name for some of its predecessor states. It is a compound of "thing, matter" and "common", a calque of Latin ''rés pública'' ( "thing" + "public, common"), i.e. ''republic'', in Engli ...
, Nr 232, last accessed 30 September 2013. . After several months of brutal interrogation and torture,Garlinski, J.(1985) ''Poland in the Second World War'' Macmillan . p. 335. 16 leaders of the
Polish Underground State
The Polish Underground State ( pl, Polskie Państwo Podziemne, also known as the Polish Secret State) was a single political and military entity formed by the union of resistance organizations in occupied Poland that were loyal to the Gover ...
were sent to jails in the USSR after a staged trial on trumped-up charges in Moscow. The Soviet Army
Northern Group of Forces
The Northern Group of Forces (; ) was the military formation of the Soviet Army stationed in People's Republic of Poland, Poland from the end of World War II, Second World War in 1945 until 1993 when they were withdrawn in the aftermath of the fal ...
was stationed in the country until 1956. The persecution of the anti-Nazi resistance members was only a part of the reign of Stalinist terror in Poland. In the period of 1944–56, approximately 300,000 Polish people had been arrested, or up to two million, according to differing accounts. There were 6,000 political death sentences issued, the majority of them carried out. It is estimated that over 20,000 people died in communist prisons including those executed "in the majesty of the law" such as
Witold Pilecki
Witold Pilecki (13 May 190125 May 1948; ; codenames ''Roman Jezierski, Tomasz Serafiński, Druh, Witold'') was a Polish World War II cavalry officer, intelligence agent, and resistance leader.
As a youth, Pilecki joined Polish underground sc ...
or
Emil August Fieldorf
August Emil Fieldorf (''nom de guerre''; “''Nil''”; 20 March 1895 – 24 February 1953) was a Polish brigadier general who served as deputy commander-in-chief of the Home Army after the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising (August 1944 – ...
.
Estimated casualties of World War II and its aftermath
Around six million Polish citizens died between 1939 and 1945; an estimated 4,900,000 to 5,700,000 were murdered by German forces and 150,000 to one million by Soviet forces.
In August 2009 the Polish
Institute of National Remembrance
The Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation ( pl, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej – Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, abbreviated IPN) is a Polish state resea ...
(IPN) researchers estimated Poland's dead (including Polish Jews) at between 5.47 and 5.67 million (due to German actions) and 150,000 (due to Soviet), or around 5.62 and 5.82 million total.Wojciech Materski and Tomasz Szarota (eds.).''Polska 1939–1945. Straty osobowe i ofiary represji pod dwiema okupacjami.''
Institute of National Remembrance
The Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation ( pl, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej – Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, abbreviated IPN) is a Polish state resea ...
(IPN) Warszawa 2009 Introduction reproduced here )
During World War II, Jews in Poland suffered the worst percentage loss of life compared to all other national and ethnic groups. The vast majority were civilians. On average, 2800 Polish citizens died per day during its occupation. Poland's professional classes suffered higher than average casualties with doctors (45%), lawyers (57%), university professors (40%), technicians (30%), clergy (18%) and many journalists.
It was not only Polish citizens who died at the hands of the occupying powers but many others. Tadeusz Piotrowski estimates that two million people belonging to fifty different nationalities from 29 countries were exterminated by the Germans in occupied Poland. This includes one million foreign Jews transported from across Europe to die in the
Nazi extermination camps
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...
on Polish soil, along with 784,000 Soviet POWs and 22,000 Italian POWs.
See also
*
Anti-Polish sentiment
Polonophobia, also referred to as anti-Polonism, ( pl, Antypolonizm), and anti-Polish sentiment are terms for negative attitudes, prejudices, and actions against Poles as an ethnic group, Poland as their country, and their culture. These incl ...
*
Chronicles of Terror
Chronicles of Terror is a digital internet archive established by the in August 2016. Initially, it provided access to the depositions of Polish citizens who after World War II were interviewed as witnesses before the Main Commission for the Inve ...
*
Communist crimes (Polish legal concept)
Communist crimes ( pl, zbrodnie komunistyczne) is a legal definition used in the Polish Penal Code. The concept of a communist crime is also used more broadly internationally, and is employed by human rights non-governmental organizations as well ...
*
Consequences of Nazism
Nazism and the acts of Nazi Germany affected many countries, communities, and people before, during and after World War II. Nazi Germany's attempt to exterminate several groups viewed as subhuman by Nazi ideology was eventually stopped by the ...
*
Eastern Catholic victims of Soviet persecutions
Eastern Catholic victims of Soviet persecutions include bishops and others among the tens of thousands of victims of Soviet persecutions from 1918 to approximately 1980, under the state ideology of Marxist–Leninist atheism.
From 1917 to 1939
...
*
Generalplan Ost
The ''Generalplan Ost'' (; en, Master Plan for the East), abbreviated GPO, was the Nazi German government's plan for the genocide and ethnic cleansing on a vast scale, and colonization of Central and Eastern Europe by Germans. It was to be un ...
*
Historiography of the Volyn tragedy This article presents the historiography of the Volyn tragedy as presented by historians in Poland and Ukraine after World War II. The Massacres of Poles in Volhynia were part of the ethnic cleansing operation in the Polish province of Eastern Ga ...
*
Hunger Plan
The Hunger Plan (german: der Hungerplan; der Backe-Plan) was a partially implemented plan developed by Nazi bureaucrats during World War II to seize food from the Soviet Union and give it to German soldiers and civilians. The plan entailed the gen ...
*
List of Polish war cemeteries
The following is an incomplete list of national war cemeteries of Polish soldiers around the world. Unless stated otherwise, the cemeteries include the graves of the World War II veterans.
Belgium
* Lommel ( Haltstraat)
* Oostende
France
* Lan ...
*
List of war crimes
This article lists and summarizes the war crimes that have violated the laws and customs of war since the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907.
Since many war crimes are not prosecuted (due to lack of political will, lack of effective procedur ...
*
Military occupations by the Soviet Union
During World War II, the Soviet Union occupied and annexed several countries effectively handed over by Nazi Germany in the secret Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. These included the eastern regions of Poland (incorporated into two differen ...
*
Nazi crimes against the Polish nation
Crimes against the Polish nation committed by Nazi Germany and Axis collaborationist forces during the invasion of Poland, along with auxiliary battalions during the subsequent occupation of Poland in World War II, consisted of the murder of ...
*
Nuremberg trials
The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies of World War II, Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II.
Between 1939 and 1945 ...
*
Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)
The occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II (1939–1945) began with the German-Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939, and it was formally concluded with the defeat of Germany by the Allies in May ...
*
The Black Book of Communism
''The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression'' is a 1997 book by Stéphane Courtois, Andrzej Paczkowski, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Margolin, and several other European academics documenting a history of political repression by co ...
*
World War II evacuation and expulsion
Mass evacuation, forced displacement, expulsion, and deportation of millions of people took place across most countries involved in World War II. A number of these phenomena were categorised as violations of fundamental human values and norms by ...
Notes
:The ''
German Army
The German Army (, "army") is the land component of the armed forces of Germany. The present-day German Army was founded in 1955 as part of the newly formed West German ''Bundeswehr'' together with the ''Marine'' (German Navy) and the ''Luftwaf ...
'' opening of the
September Campaign
The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week after ...
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...