Zbylitowska Góra is a

village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to ...

in the administrative district of Gmina Tarnów, within

Tarnów County __NOTOC__ Tarnów County ( pl, powiat tarnowski) is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, southern Poland. It came into being on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish local government ...

Lesser Poland Voivodeship Lesser Poland Voivodeship or Lesser Poland Province (in pl, województwo małopolskie ), also known as Małopolska, is a voivodeship (province), in southern Poland. It has an area of , and a population of 3,404,863 (2019). It was created on 1 ...

, in southern Poland. It lies approximately south-west of

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 ...

and east of the regional capital

Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...

. It is the site of a mass grave from World War II, marked by a monument.

World War II history

During the

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 ...

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 ...

, the German army took over the area on 7 September 1939. In nearby Tarnów, some 40

synagogue A synagogue, ', 'house of assembly', or ', "house of prayer"; Yiddish: ''shul'', Ladino: or ' (from synagogue); or ', "community". sometimes referred to as shul, and interchangeably used with the word temple, is a Jewish house of worshi ...

s and Jewish prayer houses were blown up and burned down before December. In March 1941 the

Tarnów Ghetto The Tarnów Ghetto was a Jewish Ghetto located in the city of Tarnów, located approximately 70 km east from the city of Kraków. It was established for the purpose of exploitation, terror, and persecution of local Polish Jews, as well as th ...

was set up by the Nazis. Some 40,000 Jews were imprisoned there.

Buczyna woods

From June 1942 until 1943, during the Final Solution, the Nazi Germans used the Buczyna forest in Zbylitowska Góra as a remote mass execution site. Approximately 10,000 people were murdered there and buried in pits. The executions were carried out usually from 5 a.m. till 1 p.m. The largest mass shooting action took place around 11 June 1942. The massacre took the lives of 6,000 Jewish men, women and children from the

, including 800 children from the orphanage, who were killed in the pits with the hand grenades. It is reported that small children who were not killed by gunfire or initial blasts were swung by their ankles into nearby rocks to ensure there would be no survivors. On top of the Jewish victims, there were 2,000 Christian Poles murdered at Zbylitowska Góra. The Buczyna forest is the place of Jewish martyrology and the focus of ongoing archaeological research using non-invasive radar technology.

Mass graves of Zbylitowska Góra

File:Las Buczyna. Zbylitowska Góra. Miejsce pamięci narodowej (1).jpg, File:Las Buczyna. Zbylitowska Góra. Miejsce pamięci narodowej (2).jpg, File:Memorial at Mass Grave at Zbylitowska Gora.jpg, File:Mass Grave at Zbylitowska Gora.jpg, File:Las Buczyna. Zbylitowska Góra. Miejsce pamięci narodowej (7).jpg,

References

External links

Zbylitowska Góra
on Virtual Shtetl.
Zbylitowska.pl
Zbylitowska Góra - current local information.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zbylitowska Gora Villages in Tarnów County Holocaust locations in Poland