The mass murder on Dzika street was a war crime committed by German troops against Polish civilians during World War II, amidst the Warsaw Uprising on August 21, 1944. The execution took place in the yard of a housing block on Dzika 17 street. Around 200 civilians were killed. [1] [2] While nowhere near as large as the wholesale massacre in Wola, it was one of the largest mass murder carried out by the Nazis during the battle of Warsaw Old Town. [2]
On August 20, the Polish insurgents repulsed a German attack on the Muranów neighborhood. The insurgents took heavy casualties, were looking at the increasingly indefensible positions, and were pressured by some civilians to stop the hostilities. On the morning of August 21, 1944, soldiers of the Polish Home Army, under command of Franciszek Rataj, left the neighborhood. This area was immediately seized by the advancing German troops.[ citation needed ]
Civilians who did not escape along with the soldiers of Home Army were captured. First, German soldiers separated the men from women and children. Then around 500 men were flocked to a warehouse on Stawki street. [1] In the warehouse soldiers conducted a "selection" from the crowd all men who possessed elements of a military uniform (shoes, pants, caps, etc.), as well as items that may have come from German military warehouses (e.g. canned goods). [1] They also brought elderly people from a nearby retirement home at Przebieg street as well as several women. Afterward, a group of around 200 "selected" men were taken to the yard of a housing block on Dzika 17 street and shot. Their corpses were burned. [2] It was only until after the war that their fate (and their mass grave) were discovered.
The Warsaw Uprising, sometimes referred to as the August Uprising, was a major World War II operation by the Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. It occurred in the summer of 1944, and it was led by the Polish resistance Home Army. The uprising was timed to coincide with the retreat of the German forces from Poland ahead of the Soviet advance. While approaching the eastern suburbs of the city, the Red Army halted combat operations, enabling the Germans to regroup and defeat the Polish resistance and to destroy the city in retaliation. The Uprising was fought for 63 days with little outside support. It was the single largest military effort taken by any European resistance movement during World War II. The defeat of the uprising and suppression of the Home Army enabled the pro-Soviet Polish administration, instead of the Polish government-in-exile based in London, to take control of Poland afterwards. Poland would remain as part of the Soviet-aligned Eastern Bloc throughout the Cold War until 1989.
The Warsaw Uprising began with simultaneous coordinated attacks at 17:00 hours on August 1, 1944 (W-hour). The uprising was intended to last a few days until Soviet forces arrived; however, this never happened, and the Polish forces had to fight almost without any outside assistance. Initially the battle raged throughout most of Warsaw, but after a short time it became confined to districts in the West of the town. The key factor in the battle was the massive imbalance of weapons between the two sides. The German side was extremely well equipped whilst the Polish side had, initially, barely enough ammunition for a few days. The policy of one bullet, one German allowed the Polish fighters to sustain the uprising for many weeks at the cost of their own lives. Some areas fought for a full 63 days before an agreed capitulation took place. The losses on the Polish side amounted to 18,000 soldiers killed, 25,000 wounded and over 250,000 civilians killed; those on the German side amounted to over 17,000 soldiers killed and 9,000 wounded.
Wola is a district in western Warsaw, Poland. An industrial area with traditions reaching back to the early 19th century, it underwent a transformation into a major financial district, featuring various landmarks and some of the tallest office buildings in the city.
Mokotów Prison is a prison in Warsaw's borough of Mokotów, Poland, located at 37 Rakowiecka Street. It was built by the Russians in the final years of the foreign Partitions of Poland. During the Nazi German occupation and later, under the communist rule, it was a place of detention, torture and execution of the Polish political opposition and underground fighters. The prison continues to function, holding prisoners awaiting trial or sentencing, or those being held for less than one year.
The Dirlewanger Brigade, also known as the SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger (1944), or the 36th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, or The Black Hunters, was a unit of the Waffen-SS during World War II. The unit, named after its commander Oskar Dirlewanger, consisted of convicted criminals. Originally formed from convicted poachers in 1940 and first deployed for counter-insurgency duties against the Polish resistance movement, the brigade saw service in German-occupied Eastern Europe, with an especially active role in the anti-partisan operations in Belarus. The unit is regarded as the most brutal and notorious Waffen-SS unit, with its soldiers described as the "ideal genocidal killers who neither gave nor expected quarter". The unit is regarded as the most infamous Waffen-SS unit in Poland and Belarus, and arguably the worst military unit in modern European history based off its criminality and cruelty.
The Wola massacre 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 Waffen-SS and fellow Axis collaborators in the Azerbaijani Legion, as well as the predominantly-Russian RONA forces, which took place from 5 to 12 August 1944. The massacre was ordered by Heinrich Himmler, who directed to kill "anything that moves" to stop the Warsaw Uprising soon after it began.
Szubin is a town in Nakło County, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland, located southwest of Bydgoszcz. It has a population of around 9,333. It is located on the Gąsawka River in the ethnocultural region of Pałuki.
Rainer Joseph Karl August Stahel was a German military officer and war criminal. He is best known for his retreat from Vilna and the command of the garrison of Warsaw during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Arrested by the NKVD in Romania, he spent the rest of his life in Soviet captivity.
The Ochota massacre was a wave of German-orchestrated mass murder, looting, arson, torture and rape, which swept through the Warsaw district of Ochota from 4–25 August 1944, during the Warsaw Uprising. The principal perpetrators of these war crimes were the Nazi collaborationist S.S. Sturmbrigade R.O.N.A., the so-called "Russian National Liberation Army", commanded by Bronislav Kaminski.
Radosław Group was the codename of a group of Kedyw, a Polish World War II Armia Krajowa organization, units during World War II created shortly before the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising.
Verbrennungskommando Warschau 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 of 1944.
The Wola Massacre Memorial on Górczewska Street is a war memorial located at 32 Górczewska Street in the Wola district of Warsaw, Poland.
The massacre in the Jesuit monastery on Rakowiecka Street in Warsaw was a Nazi German war crime perpetrated by members of the Waffen-SS on the second day of the Warsaw Uprising, during the Second World War. On 2 August 1944 about 40 Poles were murdered and their bodies burnt in the basement of the Jesuit monastery at 61 Rakowiecka Street in Warsaw. Among the victims were 16 priests and religious brothers of the Society of Jesus.
The barricade on Jerusalem Avenue was a defense structure built and manned by soldiers of the Bełt and Kilinski Battalions of the Home Army to protect a narrow passage between North Downtown to South Downtown during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. It was located between 23 and 27 Jerusalem Avenue in Warsaw.
The execution at Powązkowska Street - a mass murder of 22 Warsaw residents of Powązki by the Germans on 1 August 1944. This execution, which claimed the lives of men living in a house at 41 Powązkowska Street, was one of the first German crimes committed during the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising.
Massacre on Bracka Street - a series of murders, arson and other serious violations of the wartime law committed by soldiers of the German Wehrmacht during attempts to unblock the section of Jerozolimskie Avenue held by the insurgents in Warsaw.
The massacre at 111 Marszałkowska Street - a crime against the civilian population of Warsaw committed by the Germans during the Warsaw Uprising. On August 3, 1944, next to the "Pod Światełkami" tavern, the crew of a German armoured car shot about 30-44 Polish civilians - residents of tenement houses on Marszałkowska Street No. 109, 111, 113.
Stauferkaserne prison was a provisional prison, and at the same time a gathering point for expelled Warsaw residents, established by the Germans during the first days of the Warsaw Uprising on the grounds of the SS-Stauferkaserne barracks at 4 Rakowiecka Street. In August and September 1944 over a thousand residents of the district passed through the SS barracks in Mokotów. They were detained there in harsh conditions and were subjected to extremely brutal treatment. During the Warsaw Uprising, the Stauferkaserne area was the scene of numerous executions, the victims of which were at least 100 people.
The Suppression of Mokotów was a wave of mass murders, looting, arson and rapes that swept through the Warsaw district of Mokotów during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. Crimes against prisoners of war and civilians of the district were committed by the Germans until the capitulation of Mokotów on September 27, 1944, although they intensified in the first days of the uprising.
The Massacre in the Mokotów prison was a mass murder of residents of the Mokotów Prison in Warsaw by the Germans on the second day of the Warsaw Uprising. On August 2, 1944, soldiers of the Waffen-SS - SS-Pz. Gren. Ausb.-und Ers. Btl. 3 shot about 600 Poles on the premises of the prison at 37 Rakowiecka Street. It was one of the biggest crimes committed by the Germans in Mokotów during the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising. During the massacre, some prisoners actively resisted the Nazis, which allowed several hundred people to escape to the area controlled by the insurgents.