The massacres in Piaśnica were a set of

mass execution Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...

s carried out by

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 ...

during

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 opposing ...

, between the fall of 1939 and spring of 1940 in

Piaśnica Wielka The Piaśnica is a river in northern Poland, in Puck County near Gdańsk, in Pomeranian Voivodeship. It begins inside the Puszcza Darżlubska Wilderness, located in the northernmost part of the geographical region of Pobrzeże Kaszubskie. Darżlu ...

(Groß Piasnitz) in the Darzlubska Wilderness near

Wejherowo Wejherowo ( csb, Wejrowò; german: Neustadt in Westpreußen, formerly Weyhersfrey) is a city in Gdańsk Pomerania, northern Poland, with 48,735 inhabitants (2021). It has been the capital of Wejherowo County in Pomeranian Voivodeship since 19 ...

. The exact number of people murdered is unknown, but estimates range between 12,000 and 14,000 victims. Most of them were

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...

intellectuals from Gdańsk

Pomerania Pomerania ( pl, Pomorze; german: Pommern; Kashubian: ''Pòmòrskô''; sv, Pommern) is a historical region on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea in Central Europe, split between Poland and Germany. The western part of Pomerania belongs to ...

, but Poles,

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

Czechs The Czechs ( cs, Češi, ; singular Czech, masculine: ''Čech'' , singular feminine: ''Češka'' ), or the Czech people (), are a West Slavic ethnic group and a nation native to the Czech Republic in Central Europe, who share a common ancestry, ...

and German inmates from mental hospitals from the General Government and 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 ...

were also murdered. After the

Stutthof concentration camp 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 German- ...

, Piaśnica was the largest site of killings of Polish civilians in Pomerania by the Germans, and for this reason, is sometimes referred to as the "second" or "Pomeranian" Katyn.Grzegorz Popławski
"Piaśnica – pomorski "Katyń" " (Piaśnica – Pomeranian Katyn)
Dziennik Baltycki (The Baltic Daily) It was the first large-scale Nazi atrocity in occupied Poland.

Background: Intelligenzaktion Pommern

After 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 afte ...

, the Polish and Kashubian population of

Gdańsk Pomerania Gdańsk Pomerania ( pl, Pomorze Gdańskie), csb, Gduńsczim Pòmòrzã, german: Danziger Pommern) is a geographical region within Pomerelia in northern and northwestern Poland, covering the bulk of Pomeranian Voivodeship. It forms a part and ...

was immediately subjected to brutal terror.Jerzy Lukowski, Hubert Zawadzki
A concise history of Poland
''Cambridge concise histories, Concise Histories Series'', Cambridge University Press, 2001, pg. 228. Prisoners of war,Johen Bohler, "Zbrodnie Wehrmachtu w Polsce" (Warcrimes of Wehrmacht in Poland), Wydawnictwo Znak, Kraków, 2009, pg 183–192 as well as many Polish intellectuals and community leaders, were murdered. Many of the crimes were carried out, with official approval, by the so-called "

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 ...

", or paramilitary organizations of ethnic Germans with previously Polish citizenship. They, in turn, were encouraged to participate in the violence and pogroms by the

Gauleiter A ''Gauleiter'' () was a regional leader of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) who served as the head of a '' Gau'' or '' Reichsgau''. ''Gauleiter'' was the third-highest rank in the Nazi political leadership, subordinate only to '' Reichsleiter'' and to ...

of Danzig-West Prussia, Albert Forster, who in a speech at the Prusinski Hotel in

agitated ethnic Germans to attack Poles by saying "We have to eliminate the lice-ridden Poles, starting with those in the cradle… in your hands I give the fate of the Poles, you can do with them what you want". The crowd gathered before the hotel chanted "Kill the Polish dogs!" and "Death to the Poles".Elżbieta Grot
Biblioteka Publiczna Gminy Wejherowo im. Aleksandra Labudy w Bolszewie "Ludobójstwo w Piaśnicy z uwzględnieniem losów mieszkańców powiatu wejherowskiego." ("Genocide in Piaśnica with a discussion of the fate of the inhabitants of Wejherow county")
, Public Library of Wejherowo. The Selbstschutz participated in the early massacres at Piaśnica, and many of their members later joined police and SS formations which continued the massacres until the Fall of 1940. Organized action aimed at exterminating the Polish population of the region, however, began only after the end of the September campaign, with the Intelligenzaktion in Pomerania (Intelligence Action Pomerania), a part of an overall

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 ...

by Germany aimed at liquidating the Polish elite. Its main targets were the Polish intelligentsia, which was blamed by the Nazis for pro-Polish policies in the

Polish corridor The Polish Corridor (german: Polnischer Korridor; pl, Pomorze, Polski Korytarz), also known as the Danzig Corridor, Corridor to the Sea or Gdańsk Corridor, was a territory located in the region of Pomerelia (Pomeranian Voivodeship, easter ...

during the interwar period. Educated Poles were also perceived by the Nazis as the main obstacle to the planned complete

Germanization 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 ...

of the region. As a result, even before the Nazi invasion of Poland, German police and

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...

prepared special lists of Poles which they regarded as representative of Polish culture and life in the region, who were to be executed. According to official criteria, the Polish "intelligentsia" included anyone with a middle school or higher education, priests,

teachers A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. wh ...

, doctors,

dentists A dentist, also known as a dental surgeon, is a health care professional who specializes in dentistry (the diagnosis, prevention, management, and treatment of diseases and conditions of the oral cavity and other aspects of the craniofacial comp ...

veterinarians A veterinarian (vet), also known as a veterinary surgeon or veterinary physician, is a medical professional who practices veterinary medicine. They manage a wide range of health conditions and injuries in non-human animals. Along with this, vet ...

military officers An officer is a person who holds a position of authority as a member of an armed force or uniformed service. Broadly speaking, "officer" means a commissioned officer, a non-commissioned officer, or a warrant officer. However, absent context ...

bureaucrats A bureaucrat is a member of a bureaucracy and can compose the administration of any organization of any size, although the term usually connotes someone within an institution of government. The term ''bureaucrat'' derives from "bureaucracy", w ...

, medium and large businessmen and merchants, medium and large

landowners In common law systems, land tenure, from the French verb "tenir" means "to hold", is the legal regime in which land owned by an individual is possessed by someone else who is said to "hold" the land, based on an agreement between both individual ...

, writers, journalists and

newspaper editors Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, photographic, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, orga ...

. Furthermore, all persons who during the interwar period had belonged to Polish cultural and patriotic organizations such as (Polish Union of the West) and

Maritime and Colonial League The Maritime and Colonial League (Polish: ''Liga Morska i Kolonialna'') was a mass Polish social organization, created in 1930 out of the Maritime and River League (Liga Morska i Rzeczna). In the late 1930s it was directed by general Mariusz Zarus ...

. As a result, between the fall of 1939 and the spring of 1940, in 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 ...

and other actions, Germans killed around 65,000 Polish intellectuals and others. The main site of these murders were the forests around Wielka Piaśnica.

The executions

is a small Kashubian village located around 10 km from Wejherowo. The forests around it were chosen by the Germans as the site of the mass murders because it was easily accessible by bus and truck, it had a nearby rail line, and at the same time, it was located far enough from other villages and centers of population. The most commonly accepted timeline for the beginnings of the executions is late October 1939. However, the date of the first execution is uncertain and disputed among historians. According to Zygmunt Milczewski, this happened on 21 October. Prof. Andrzej Gąsiorowski states that the first person to be killed was the priest, Father Ignacy Błażejewski, on 24 October. Prof.

Barbara Bojarska Barbara Bojarska is a Polish historian, prize-winning author,
GWE24.pl 36th SS Regiment Wachsturmbann "Eimann", named after its commander , involved in the massacres was capable of killing around 150 people daily.Elżbieta Maria Grot
"Ludobójstwo w Piaśnicy jesienią 1939 r. ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem losu mieszkańców Gdyni" ("Genocide in Piaśnica in the fall of 1939, with a discussion of fates of inhabitants of Gdynia
")], Państwowe Muzeum Stutthof, oddział w Sopocie (National Museum of Stutthof, Sopot Division) Witnesses report that on numerous occasions, prior to the executions, the victims were tortured and children, in particular, were treated with utmost cruelty, and often killed by having their heads smashed against trees by German SS soldiers.Tadeusz Piotrowski
"Poland's holocaust: ethnic strife, collaboration with occupying forces and genocide in the Second Republic, 1918–1947"
McFarland, 1998, pg. 25. The most detailed accounts of one of the executions come from witness accounts regarding 11 November, (

Polish Independence Day National Independence Day ( pl, Narodowe Święto Niepodległości) is a national day in Poland celebrated on 11 November to commemorate the anniversary of the restoration of Poland's sovereignty as the Second Polish Republic in 1918 from the ...

). On that day, Germans murdered around 314 Polish and Jewish hostages in Piaśnica. According to the testimony of former Gestapo and later,

Smersh SMERSH (russian: СМЕРШ) was an umbrella organization for three independent counter-intelligence agencies in the Red Army formed in late 1942 or even earlier, but officially announced only on 14 April 1943. The name SMERSH was coined by Josep ...

agent, Hans Kassner (alias '), made in 1952, the executions on that day lasted from early morning until three in the afternoon. Men and women were led in fives to the previously dug graves and shot. Some of the victims were buried alive. One of those killed was Sister

Alicja Kotowska Alicja Jadwiga Kotowska (, Warsaw – 11 November 1939, near Wielka Piaśnica) was a Polish religious sister who was head of the Resurrectionist convent in Wejherowo between 1934 and 1939. She was arrested by the Gestapo on 24 October 1939 duri ...

, the head of the convent in Wejherowo. Witnesses report that as she was being transported from the prison to the execution site, Kotowska huddled and comforted Jewish children who were also being taken to be executed at Piaśnica. During the post-war exhumation, Alicja's corpse was not identified but a grave was found containing a rosary of the kind worn by sisters of her order. The grave where the rosary was found is now the site of a memorial. In 1999 Alicja Kotowska was

beatified Beatification (from Latin ''beatus'', "blessed" and ''facere'', "to make”) is a recognition accorded by the Catholic Church of a deceased person's entrance into Heaven and capacity to intercede on behalf of individuals who pray in their nam ...

Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II ( la, Ioannes Paulus II; it, Giovanni Paolo II; pl, Jan Paweł II; born Karol Józef Wojtyła ; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his ...

along with 107 other

martyrs 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 external ...

. The area around the forests where the massacres were taking place was surrounded with police and paramilitary groups in order both to prevent any victims from escaping and also to preclude access to any potential witnesses from the outside. Despite these arrangements, the local Polish and Kashubian populace was able to observe the numerous transports going to the forests and could hear the sounds of gunfire. The last transports to the site were seen in the spring of 1940 and contained mostly patients from mental hospital from within the Third Reich, in particular from Stettin (Szczecin) and

Lauenburg Lauenburg (), or Lauenburg an der Elbe ( en, Lauenberg on the Elbe), is a town in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It is situated on the northern bank of the river Elbe, east of Hamburg. It is the southernmost town of Schleswig-Holstein ...

(Lębork). The total number of victims, killed in an area around Piaśnica of about 250 square kilometers is estimated at between twelve and sixteen thousand, including women, children and infants.

The victims

Due to the fact that in 1944, the Germans exhumed and burned many of the corpses in an attempt to hide the crime, the exact number of victims is not known, nor are many of their names and national origins. From investigations carried out after the war, three different groups of victims can be identified: * The first group of about 2,000 persons, mostly Poles and Kashubians from Gdańsk Pomerania, arrested in September and October 1939 and subsequently held in prisons in Wejherow, Puck, Gdańsk,

Kartuzy Kartuzy () ( Kashubian ''Kartuzë'', ''Kartëzë'', or ''Kartuzé''; formerly german: Karthaus) is a town in northern Poland, located in the historic Eastern Pomerania ( Pomerelia) region. It is the capital of Kartuzy County in Pomeranian Voivode ...

, and

Kościerzyna Kościerzyna ( Kashubian and Pomeranian: ''Kòscérzëna''; formerly german: Berent, ) is a town in Kashubia in Gdańsk Pomerania region, northern Poland, with some 24,000 inhabitants. It has been the capital of Kościerzyna County in Pomerania ...

. * The second group, the largest, of 10,000 to 12,000 people, consisted of Polish, Czech and German families who had been transported from other areas of General Government and the Third Reich. This group also included many Polish workers who had migrated to Germany for economic reasons in the interwar period. The estimated number is based on the mass graves that had been found and on eyewitness reports by railroad men who observed the arriving transports. * The third group included about 1,200 (some sources give 2,000) mentally ill patients, transported from hospitals in Stralsund,

Ueckermünde Ueckermünde () is a seaport town in northeast Germany, located in the district of Vorpommern-Greifswald, Western Pomerania, near Germany's border with Poland's Police County. Ueckermünde has a long and varied history, going back to its foundi ...

Altentreptow Altentreptow () is a town in the Mecklenburgische Seenplatte district, in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany. It is situated on the river Tollense in Western Pomerania, 15 km north of Neubrandenburg. Until 1939 the city's name was '' ...

and Lauenburg (Lębork). Investigations carried out so far have established the names of about 600 of the 12,000 to 14,000 murdered.

The perpetrators

There were three groups which were primarily involved in carrying out the massacres: * Einsatzkommando 16, under the command of the chief of the Gdańsk Gestapo SS-

Obersturmbannführer __NOTOC__ ''Obersturmbannführer'' (Senior Assault-unit Leader; ; short: ''Ostubaf'') was a paramilitary rank in the German Nazi Party (NSDAP) which was used by the SA ('' Sturmabteilung'') and the SS (''Schutzstaffel''). The rank of ''Oberstu ...

* Special units of the Wachsturmbann "Eimann" from the 36th Regiment of SS * Local ethnic Germans from Wejherowo, members of Selbstschutz, led by the German mayor of Wejherowo Gustaw Bamberger and the county director of the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...

Heinz Lorentz. The headquarters of the command in charge of carrying out the ethnic cleansing was in a villa on Krokowska St. in

Attempts at hiding the murders

After the extermination action was ended in the Spring of 1940, the organizers and perpetrators began the process of covering their deeds. Trees and bushes were planted on the site of the graves, and German police restricted access to the area in the following years. In the second half of 1944, during the Red Army's offensive, Nazi authorities anticipated the evacuation of the German military and civilian personnel. During this time, an organized action was undertaken to destroy evidence of the massacres. Thirty-six prisoners from the concentration camp KL Stutthof were chosen and brought to the forests in August 1944. Chained and bound, they were forced to dig up the graves, remove the bodies and burn them in specially prepared forest crematoria. After six weeks of this work, the prisoners were murdered by the SS troops who supervised them, and their bodies were burned as well. Local German civilians participated in further covering up any traces of the burning of the bodies. Despite the attempts by the Germans to cover up the massacre, photographs of the events survived. Two local Germans, Georg and Waldemar Engler who ran a photography studio in Wejherowo took part in the massacres as part of the paramilitary organizations. The younger Engler, Waldemar, made a photographic record of the massacre. Both of them were tried and sentenced for war crimes after the war.

Punishment and responsibility

In 1946 a National Tribunal in Gdańsk, Poland, held Albert Forster, the Gauleiter of the Gdańsk Region and the Nazi administrator of

and Western Prussia, responsible for the murders at Piaśnica, as well as for other war crimes. He was sentenced to death and the sentence was carried out on 28 February 1952, in Warsaw. A

West German West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

court in

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

in 1968 sentenced SS leader Kurt Eimann to four years in prison for his participation in the killing of the German mentally ill at Piaśnica (but not the Polish intellectuals and citizens also murdered there). Richard Hildebrandt, Higher SS and Police Leader in Pomerania, was sentenced to death by a Polish court in Bydgoszcz for his part and role in organizing the murders. A British military court in Hamburg in 1946, sentenced Max Pauly, the former commander of the Stutthof Concentration Camp and also the commander of the

Neuengamme concentration camp 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 ...

to death for war crimes. During the proceedings, Pauly did not reveal that he had also taken part in the executions at Piaśnica, Stutthof and other places in German-occupied Pomerania. The sentence was carried out at Hameln Prison in 1946, by

Albert Pierrepoint Albert Pierrepoint (; 30 March 1905 – 10 July 1992) was an English hangman who executed between 435 and 600 people in a 25-year career that ended in 1956. His father Henry and uncle Thomas were official hangmen before him. Pierrepoin ...

. The occupation mayor of Puck, F. Freimann, was also sentenced to death by a court in Gdynia.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mass Murders In Piasnica 1939 in Poland 1940 in Poland Massacres in 1939 Massacres in 1940 History of Pomerania Nazi war crimes in Poland World War II prisoner of war massacres Massacres in Poland Mass murder in 1939 Mass murder in 1940 Persecution by Nazi Germany Persecution of Poles Persecution of Jews Persecution of intellectuals