ATROCITIES IN POLAND

( Polish Revenge )
Unable to stem the onrush of German forces during the invasion of their country, Polish soldiers and civilians started fleeing eastwards. It was during this flight to the east that the ethnic German civilians, resident in Poland for many years, received the full impact of the spite and hate stored up in the hearts of the fleeing Polish soldiers and their civilian followers. German houses were entered and the occupants arrested and then murdered. Not all were shot, many were brutally put to death by all sorts of tools and their bodies severely mutilated. As the soldiers left to search for more German houses, their civilian helpers were left behind to plunder and steal and in most cases, to set the house on fire. Many of the German women were raped before being shot. During this retreat from the west, the Polish soldiers, together with the civilian irregulars, were responsible for the deaths of around 6,000 German residents. At a later investigation, the testimonies of 593 witnesses established the fact that at least 3,841 named ethnic Germans were murdered by the Poles prior to the full German occupation. In September, 1939 these Volksdeutsche formed themselves into Self-protection units known as Selbschutz and came under the control of the SS and  later under the Ordungspolizei (Order Police). The infamous reputation that it earned caused it to be disbanded on 30th of November, 1939.

Pacification

After the German take-over of Poland in 1939, so called 'pacification' raids on towns and villages were started. The SS method of 'pacifying' a district and subdue the local population was to shoot a few hundred of its inhabitants. Picked at random, they were marched to the place of execution and forced to undress and to lie face down in previously dug pits. They were then shot and their corpses covered with a layer of quicklime. A second batch of victims were then ordered to lie down on top and after they were killed another layer of quick lime was thrown on top. This procedure was repeated till the pit was full. It was then trampled down until the surface was level and on which trees or grass was planted. Executions such as this were committed daily by the Nazi death squads as they marched victoriously through Poland, and later the Soviet Union. In the village of Szalas , all male inhabitants over the age of fifteen, 300 in all, were rounded up and many machined-gunned to death, the others were locked in the local school which was then set on fire. An order issued by Hitler stated that 'no German soldier could be brought to trial for any act committed against Polish or Russian citizens'.

Between 1939 and 1945, Poland suffered 6,028,000 non-military deaths. Around three million were Jews and about 300,000 were Gypsies. The fate of the Gypsies is often neglected in by most authors in their writings, yet they were subjected to the same mode of extermination as were the Jews.

BYDOGSZCZ MASSACRES
In the area around  Bydogszcz (Bromberg) about 10,000 non-Jewish Polish civilians were murdered in the first four months of the Nazi occupation. This, the largest town in Pomerania had a population of around 140,000. Its priests, lawyers, teachers and industry leaders were arrested and executed in the town's square by machine-gun fire. About 100 twelve to sixteen year old boy scouts were rounded up and machine-gunned to death on the steps of the Jesuit Church. For every German soldier shot, a group of between 50 and 100 Polish civilians were randomly selected and executed. Participating in the shooting of hostages on September 10th, 1939 were members of the Police Battalion 6 (Berlin). Head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, had said 'All Poles will disappear from the world'. In the provinces of Lodz and Warsaw, the SS conducted a total of 714 executions which took the lives of 16,376 Polish civilians, mostly the leading intelligentsia and aristocracy, civil and political leaders. In mental hospitals around Bromberg around 3,700 mental patients were shot. The most victimised class of Polish society was the clergy. In Pomerania, only 20 of its 650 priests were allowed to remain, the rest were either shot or sent to concentration camps. In Wroclaw, 49% of its priests were killed. In Chelmno, 48%, Lodz, 37% and Poznan, 31%. In Warsaw 212 priests died at the hands of the invaders. The last transport of Jews from Bydogszcz arrived at the Warsaw Ghetto on March 10, 1941. In September, 1939, Poland had a Jewish population of 3,351,000. Only 369,000 were alive at the war's end. In the post-war period the city of Bromberg was surrounded by a network of Soviet concentration camps the inmates of which were ethnic German nationals and residents of the region arrested between 1944 and 1950

MASSACRE AT JÓZEFÓW
On June 20, 1942, Police Battalion 101 from Hamburg, consisting of eleven officers, five administrators and 486 men set out by truck for Poland. A few days later they arrived at the town of Bilgoraj, south of Lublin. Here for the first time they were told the purpose of their mission: to drive the Jews out of the nearby town of Józefów. Next morning, each man was issued with an ox-hide whip to be used to drive the victims out of their homes. Anyone who resisted was to be shot on the spot. The first 'action' was the rounding up of Jews from the ghetto of Jósefów . This was done with the utmost brutality, Jewish corpses lay strewn throughout the ghetto. All Jews, lying sick in the hospitals were simply shot where they lay, wounded Russian soldiers were completely ignored. Those alive were assembled in the town's market place and then marched in groups to the woods on the town's outskirts. Divided into killing squads of eight to ten men, each man from Battalion 101 would select a victim, a man, a woman or child and then walk in parallel single file to the killing site. There the victims were ordered to lie, face down, in a row on the ground to await the inevitable bullet in the back of the head. This procedure was repeated over and over again throughout the day at the end of which, the uniforms of the killers were splattered with blood, brain matter and bone splinters. The thirty men of Lieutenant Kurt Drucker's platoon of Second Company, shot between two and three hundred Jews within a four hour period. That day, over 1,200 Jews were disposed of, the bodies left for Jósefów's Polish mayor to arrange burial. Not all members of Police Battalion 101 approved of the task they were asked to perform, and after the first few killings, asked to be excused. Surprisingly, many such requests were granted as there were always enough volunteers to take their place. At the war crimes trials after the war, 21 members of Police Battalion 101 were convicted, 14 were sentenced to death by hanging.

THE BIALYSTOK SLAUGHTER
One of the first major slaughter of Jews took place in the Polish city of Bialystok. The city had been captured without a fight as had many others in eastern Poland. On June 27, 1941, German Police Battalion 309, commanded by Major Ernst Weis, entered the city and began a roundup of all male Jews. Shooting blindly into windows and doors, the anti-Semitic hordes forced their way into houses and dragged the Jewish inhabitants out on to the streets where they were made to do an impromptu jig before their leering captors. If the dance was not brisk enough their beards were set on fire or completely cut off. In the hospitals, all Jewish patients were shot as they lay in their beds. The captured Jews were then herded into the city's main synagogue, the largest in Poland at that time. Around 700 people were packed into the Jewish house of worship. Sensing that something untoward was about to happen, the victims started chanting and praying loudly. The chanting and praying soon turned to screams of agony as petrol was poured in and the building set alight. Surrounding the synagogue were over 100 men of the Police Battalion, posted there to prevent any escapes. At least six escapees were shot as they ran outside with their clothes aflame. That day in Bialystok, between 2,000 and 2,200 Jewish men, women and children were wantonly killed. The members of Police Battalions 309 and 101 were ordinary Germans, not fanatical SS, SD or Gestapo, but ordinary lower middle class citizens who had opted for police duties (Ordnungspolizei) as a means of avoiding military service. The average age of this cross section of the population was 36.5 years, 153 of whom were older than 40 and 179 were members of the Nazi Party. Only four were SS members. They were given a uniform, a few weeks training and then sent to the eastern  front where they were given a free rein to vent their pent-up hatred on innocent defenceless Jews.

THE GRISCHINO MASSACRE
( Feb 18, 1943 )
The area of Grischino lies to the north-west of Stalino (now Donets) an important industrial region in the Ukraine. Occupied by German forces, it was recaptured by a Soviet armoured division and again recaptured by the German 7th Armoured Division during a counteroffensive in February, 1943. What they found was the bodies of 406 German soldiers (POWs), 58 members of the Todt Organisation, 89 Italian soldiers, 9 Romanian soldiers, 4 Hungarian soldiers and some civilian workers, Ukrainian volunteers and German nurses. A total of 596 souls had been killed. Most were shot after being dragged from their hiding places in cellars. Many of the bodies were horribly mutilated, ears and noses cut off and genital organs amputated and stuffed into their mouths. Breasts of some of the nurses were cut off, the women being brutally raped. In the cellar of the main train station around 120 Germans were herded into a large storage room and then mowed down with machine guns. It was realised that the 'Russians had killed every single German they had found there'. As with most massacres, there were survivors and in this case, civilian witnesses.

WARSAW GHETTO MASSACRE
( April 19th to May 16th, 1943 )
During these four weeks, SS and Gestapo units killed a total of 56,065 Jews during the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. The operation was commanded by SS Brigadier-General Stroop, who, in his report to Hitler, wrote "The Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw no longer exists". On March 22, 1947, Stroop was sentenced to death by an American court at Dachau and on September 8, 1951, he was hanged at the scene of his crime in Warsaw. The Warsaw Ghetto was enclosed by a 10-foot high wall inside of which were herded between 400,000-410,000 Jews. Guards in German uniform and Jewish policemen maintained a rigid check on everyone entering or leaving. Many Jews turned against their own people and worked for the Nazis only to stay alive. The majority of Jews in the Ghetto hated these collaborators more than they hated the Nazis. Every Jewish child was taught, and this saved the lives of some of them "if you enter a square from which there are three exits, one guarded by a German SS man, one by an Ukrainian and one by a Jewish policeman, then you should first try to pass the German, then maybe the Ukrainian, but never the Jew".

MAJDANEK MASSACRE
(November 3, 1943)
Eighteen thousand men, women and children were shot in a single day in what the SS called the 'Harvest Festival'. The slaughter started at 7am in the morning when a never-ending line of naked Jews were force-marched into a huge trench dug within the Krempecki Forest near the precincts of the notorious Majdanek concentration camp in Poland. They were ordered to lie down flat, layer upon layer, to be machine-gunned to death. At six o'clock that evening, petrol was poured over the bodies and set alight. Within the next few weeks a further  34,000 perished. The camp, only four kilometres from the town centre of Lubin, was built in 1941 and consisted of 144 barrack type huts each holding 300 prisoners. Used mainly for the killing of Polish Jews, and Russian prisoners-of-war, it is estimated that around 235,000 people died here including civilian political prisoners, partisan and resistance group members. Two of the camps commandants, Karl Otto Koch and Hermann Florstedt were both executed by the SS for stealing from the camps warehouses. In the days before the arrival of the Soviet troops, 15,000 prisoners had been evacuated to other camps in the east. Today, a gigantic circular Mausoleum stands at the entrance to the camp. On the frieze of the Dome is the inscription ‘Let our fate be a warning to you’ (English translation). A huge urn, shaped like a saucer and built under the dome, contains some ashes of the victims of Majdanek.

ATROCITY AT THE MARIE CURIE INSTITUTE
At 10.30am on August 5, 1944, one hundred armed troops in German uniform barged into the Maria Curie-Sklodowska Radium Institute on Wawelska Street in Warsaw. Shouting in loud voices they began searching and looting the entire building. The majority of the soldiers were drunk and were shooting at anyone who barred their way. In the Institute were 80 staff members and about 90 patients. All were robbed of their jewellery, money and personal items. The staff members were taken to a camp at Zieleniak a few kilometres away and for four days and nights were kept in the open without food or water. During this time many of the nurses were dragged out and raped by the drunken mob. At the end of the four days they were transported to Germany for slave labour. Back at the Institute the hospital patients remained in bed while the plundering and destruction of the hospital buildings proceeded. Stores and cupboards were broken open and everything thrown about while some of the female patients were dragged from their beds, assaulted and raped. Around 15 of the seriously sick patients were shot in their beds and their mattresses set on fire. Petrol was poured over the floors of the wards and set alight. Patients still alive (about 70) were then shot, their bodies piled in a heap and doused with petrol and ignited. This atrocity at the Radium Institute took the lives of all patients being treated there. The perpetrators of this horrible crime were mostly Russian soldiers, members of the Vlassov Army. General Vlassov was taken prisoner by the Germans in 1942 and later commanded an army of Russian prisoners of war who volunteered to fight on the German side rather than starve to death in German prison camps.

STUTTHOF MASSACRE
The concentration camp of Stutthof was situated about twenty miles east of the Polish town of Danzig. Reputed to have the highest death rate from disease and hunger of any of the Nazi camps. A few weeks before liberation by the Red Army, the SS herded together the 35,000 prisoners in the camp and began a forced march towards the west. Without food, and little water, they dropped dead like flies. A large group of prisoners, estimated in their thousands, were driven to the cliffs overlooking the sea, and there mercilessly machine-gunned. In all, only a few thousand of the thirty-five thousand reached the west alive.

CZECHOSLOVAKIA

THE LIDICE MASSACRE
( June 10, 1941 )
Two Czech patriots, Jan Kubis and Joseph Gabeik, serving with the Polish forces in Britain, volunteered to be dropped by parachute near Prague. Their mission, to assassinate SS Gruppenfuher Reinhard Heydrich, the Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. The ambush took place on May 27, 1941, as Heydrich drove to his office. Severely wounded, he was rushed to Bulovka Hospital where he died eight days later. The Nazi reprisals then began. In the next few days, 3,188 Czech citizens were arrested of whom 1,357 were shot. Another 657 died while being interrogated by SS police. On June 9th armed police surrounded the small village of Lidice, some ten kilometres from Prague and gathered together the entire population in the tiny square. Boys over 15 were lined up with the men and locked up in an empty barn. Women and children were herded into the local school for the night. The houses were then ransacked the pillaging went on all night. Next morning, June 10, at 5am, the women and children were bundled into trucks and driven away. The police then fetched dozens of mattresses from the ransacked houses and propped them up against the wall of the barn to prevent ricochets. The men and boys were then brought out 10 at a time, lined up in front of the mattresses and then shot. In all, 173 souls were murdered this way. While the firing squads were busy, others set about burning the village to the ground. The bulldozers and ploughs were then brought in and in no time no recognisable feature of the village remained. Meanwhile, the 198 women and 98 children were forcibly separated and driven away, the women to the Ravensbruck Concentration Camp where 35 of the older women were then sent on to Auschwitz to be used for medical experiments. Only 143 were alive at wars end. Of the children, 17 were picked out as suitable for Germanisation and allocated to German households. These children all survived the war and were eventually reunited with their families. The rest, 81 in number, were sent to the camp at Chelmno and gassed. Reprisals were also taken in the concentration camps where thousands of Czech political prisoners were murdered. Contrary to what some history books tells us, not a single unit of the SS took part in the destruction, massacre and deportation of women and children in Lidice. The massacre was carried out by a thirty man unit of the Prague police acting under German orders.

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Source: http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/massacres.html