Bloody Sunday was a sequence of violent events that took place in Bydgoszcz, a Polish city with a sizable German minority, between 3 and 4 September 1939, during the German invasion of Poland.
Zambrów is a town in northeastern Poland with 21,166 inhabitants (2020). It is the capital of Zambrów County. Situated in the Podlaskie Voivodeship, previously in Łomża Voivodeship (1975–1998).
Around six million Polish citizens are estimated to have perished during World War II. Most were civilians killed by the actions of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, the Lithuanian Security Police, as well as the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its offshoots.
The 3rd Light Division was raised in November 1938. In 1939 it fought in the Invasion of Poland. On 4 September 1939, soldiers from the division entered the region of Katowice where they met resistance from the local Polish population. In retribution 80 Polish prisoners of war were gathered in Kosciuszko Square by German soldiers and executed.
The 2nd Light Division was a motorized division created in 1938 during the German rearmament. It participated in the invasion of Poland. After the end of the Polish campaign the division was converted into a panzer division, forming the 7th Panzer Division.
Szymon Datner was a Polish historian, Holocaust survivor and underground operative from Białystok, best known for his studies of the Nazi war crimes and events of The Holocaust in the Białystok region. His 1946 Walka i zagłada białostockiego ghetta was one of the first studies of the Białystok Ghetto.
During World War II, the German Wehrmacht committed systematic war crimes, including massacres, mass rape, looting, the exploitation of forced labor, the murder of three million Soviet prisoners of war, and participated in the extermination of Jews. While the Nazi Party's own SS forces was the organization most responsible for the genocidal killing of the Holocaust, the regular armed forces of the Wehrmacht committed many war crimes of their own, particularly on the Eastern Front.
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, included the genocide of millions of Polish people, especially the systematic extermination of Jewish Poles. These mass killings were enacted by the Nazis with further plans that were justified by their racial theories, which regarded Poles and other Slavs, and especially Jews, as racially inferior Untermenschen.
Valley of Death 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 1939 by the local German Selbstschutz and the Gestapo. The murders were a part of Intelligenzaktion in Pomerania, a Nazi action aimed at the elimination of the Polish intelligentsia in Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia, which included the former Pomeranian Voivodeship. It was part of a larger genocidal action that took place in all German occupied Poland, code-named Operation Tannenberg.
The Ciepielów massacre that took place on 8 September 1939 was one of the largest and best documented war crimes of the Wehrmacht during its invasion of Poland. On that day, the forest near Ciepielów was the site of a mass murder of Polish prisoners of war from the Polish Upper Silesian 74th Infantry Regiment. The massacre was carried out by soldiers from the German Army's 15th Motorized Infantry Regiment, 29th Motorized Infantry Division, under the command of Colonel Walter Wessel.
Serock is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Pruszcz, within Świecie County, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, in north-central Poland. It lies approximately 9 kilometres (6 mi) west of Pruszcz, 25 km (16 mi) west of Świecie, and 28 km (17 mi) north of Bydgoszcz.
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 and plunder continued for three days in more than a dozen separate locations around the city. Approximately 1,140 Polish civilians, were murdered.
The Massacre in Zakroczym, Poland, took place on 28 September 1939 when, in spite of a cease-fire, soldiers of Panzerdivision Kempf stormed Polish positions at Zakroczym, where soldiers from the 2nd Infantry Division were getting ready to surrender. Hundreds of Polish soldiers were murdered. The rest were beaten and abused. Many civilians were killed or wounded. German troops broke into houses, robbed them, set on fire, and tossed hand grenades into the basements filled with scared civilians. Kazimierz Szczerbatko estimated, based on the testimony of the eyewitnesses, that the Germans killed around 500 soldiers and 100 civilians.
The Zambrów massacre was a war crime that took place on the night of 13–14 September 1939. It was one of the major war crimes of the Wehrmacht during the invasion of Poland. During that night, the makeshift prisoner-of-war camp in Zambrów was disturbed by a number of panicked horses, and more than 200 Polish soldiers, trying to move out of their way, were gunned down by German sentries. Some witnesses later said the horses had been purposely released into the camp by the German sentries, who used the incident as a pretext to massacre the prisoners.
During the German Invasion of Poland in September 1939, Wehrmacht, Gestapo and Einsatzkommando soldiers in Dynów on the first day of Jewish New Year mass murdered 170-200 Jewish civilians from the town. 150 Jews were mass murdered by machine guns after being taken away from the town on trucks. 50 Jews were burned alive in their prayer house.
During the German invasion of Poland, which started World War II, Nazi Germany carried out a number of atrocities involving Polish prisoners of war (POWs). During that period, the Wehrmacht is estimated to have mass murdered at least 3,000 Polish POWs, with the largest atrocities being the Ciepielów massacre of 8 September 1939 and the Zambrów massacre of 13–14 September. Most of those atrocities are classified as war crimes of the Wehrmacht. Jewish soldiers with the Polish Army were also more likely than others to be victims of various atrocities.
The Urycz massacre, which occurred on September 22, 1939, in the village of Urycz, stands as one of the most significant war crimes committed by the Wehrmacht during its invasion of Poland. On that day, between 73 and 100 Polish prisoners of war hailing from the 4th Podhale Rifles Regiment were confined to a barn and burned alive.
The Majdan Wielki massacre, which occurred on September 20, 1939, near the village of Majdan Wielki, was a war crime committed by the Wehrmacht during its invasion of Poland. On that day, 42 Polish prisoners of war were executed by German soldiers due to false reports alleging that Poles had mutilated a dead German soldier.
The Torzeniec massacre, which occurred on September 1–2, 1939, in the village of Torzeniec was a war crime committed by the Wehrmacht during its invasion of Poland. During these days, soldiers of the 10th Infantry Division killed 37 Poles, including 34 inhabitants of Torzeniec, while the village itself was partially burned.
The Wyszanów massacre, which occurred on September 2, 1939, in the village of Wyszanów was a war crime committed by the Wehrmacht during its invasion of Poland. On that day, 22 Poles, mostly elderly people, women, and children, died from bullets, flames, and grenades thrown into the basements. Men from Wyszanów who were able to carry weapons had been deported to Germany the day before, and en route, two of them were killed by guards.
