U.S. Consulate General Warsaw on Sept. 1, 1939. [15] About 26,000 manuscripts, 2,500 incunables, 80,000 early printed books, 100,000 drawings and printmakings, 50,000 note and theater manuscripts as well as a large collection of maps and atlases were lost. Additionally, approximately 100 out of 243 members of the Polish Psychiatric Association met the same fate as their patients. Notable dates in the history of destruction of Warsaw: Alfred Mensebach, one German architect and a number of camera teams documented the destruction. Third Reich planners drafted precise drawings outlining a historic "Germanic" core where a select few landmarks would be saved such as the Royal Castle which would serve as Hitler's state residence. Unlike earlier Nazi book burnings where specific books were deliberately targeted, the burning of those libraries was part of the general burning of a large part of the city of Warsaw. to which he replied, 'Yes, women and children, too'" In the wake of this unprecedented planned destruction and ethnic cleansing, by 1944 800,000 civilians were killed, or 60% of the population. 16 Jesuits, Kidnapping of Polish children by Nazi Germany, Polish culture during World War II German occupation, Ethnic cleansing of Zamojszczyzna by Nazi Germany, German ethnic cleansing of western Poland, Forced prostitution in German armed forces, Forced labour under German rule during World War II, German camps in occupied Poland during World War II, List of Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland, hundreds of ghettos in which they forced Jews to live, 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician), Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, PolishLithuanian relations during World War II, Soviet repressions of Polish citizens (19391946), Polish prisoners-of-war in the Soviet Union after 1939, List of Soviet Union prison sites that detained Poles, Soviet annexation of Eastern Galicia and Volhynia, Kharkiv The Red October and the Soviet period, Starobilsk The Prison for Polish POWs Officers, Piatykhatky, Kharkiv Oblast Burials and memorial complex in Lisopark, Administrative division of Polish territories during World War II, Territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union, List of World War II prisoner-of-war camps in the Soviet Union, Outside support during the Warsaw Uprising Soviet participation: Berling landings on Powile, Eastern Catholic victims of Soviet persecutions. [191] Home Army units which fought against the Germans in support of the Soviet advance had their officers and men arrested. [213], With the return of the Soviets, the killings and deportations started again. In his capacity as Reich Commissioner, Heinrich Himmler oversaw the kidnapping of Polish children to be Germanised. The Nazis divided Warsaw into a Jewish sector, a Polish sector and a German sector. Himmler thought of moving all Poles to Siberia. [15] During the Uprising, on September 5, 1944, the library's warehouses were shelled by German artillery and burned almost completely. Records show that 61 death sentences were carried out plus 37 in October 1944 alone. [76] The most severe of them took place in the Wola district,[77] where at the beginning of August 1944 tens of thousands of civilians (men, women, and children)[78] were methodically rounded-up and executed by Einsatzkommandos of Sicherheitspolizei operating within the Reinefarth's group of forces under the command of Erich von dem Bach-Zalewski. In the course of the Warsaw Uprising and its suppression, the Germans deported approximately 550,000 of the citys residents and approximately 100,000 civilians from its outskirts, sending them to Durchgangslager 121 (Dulag 121). Stroop added the following caption to the . [142], Following the Wannsee Conference of 1942, as part of highly secretive Operation Reinhard in occupied Poland, the German government built three regular killing centres with stationary gas chambers in the General Government. [200] Some Polish citizens of various ethnic backgrounds (i.e. [61] More than 16,000 members of the intelligentsia were murdered in Operation Tannenberg alone. CHAPTER FOUR: WARSAW: THE HERITAGE OF WAR (online excerpt). [113], The camp system where Poles were detained, imprisoned and forced to labour, was one of fundamental structures of the Nazi regime, and with the invasion of Poland became the backbone of German war economy and the state organized terror. The security police and the SS segregated the deportees and decided their fate. In the city of Bydgoszcz, the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz (German Fifth Column) attempted to aid the invading German forces by shooting at the Polish Army. The destruction of the Jews of Poland. Between July 22 and October 3, 1942 the ghetto was "evacuated." According to estimates by contemporary historians, the number of victims in the territories previously annexed to Soviet Ukraine (eastern Galicia, western Polesia, and western Volhynia) was probably between 10,000 and 40,000. There were many similarities between the two zones of occupations marked by systematic oppression. He joined the Schutz Staffel , SS . [73] Some 30 other settlements in the vicinity were burned down in the counties of Bielsk, Wysokie Mazowieckie, Suwaki and oma, even though there were not used by the retreating Polish forces. The atrocities preceded the planned destruction of Warsaw by Hitler who threatened to "turn it into a lake". On June 20, 1939 while Adolf Hitler was visiting an architectural bureau in Wrzburg am Main, his attention was captured by a project of a future German town Neue deutsche Stadt Warschau. Wola St. Lazarus Hospital about 1000 patients and personnel murdered. 03-06-2018. The plan was put into full motion after the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. These World War II ghettos were part of the German official policy of removing Jews from public life. Collections from Tarnopol, Stanisaww and Sokal were transported to Russian archives. Some 400 patients, along with medical staff,[95] were transported to a military fortress in Pozna where, in Fort VII bunkers, they were gassed with carbon monoxide delivered in metal tanks. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising lasted a month, from April to May 1943 and was crushed by the Germans. [118] By March 1941, 10,900 prisoners were registered at the camp, most of them Poles. The formerly Polish territories were to become politically, culturally, socially, and economically German. Amongst the first to suffer mass repressions at the hands of the Soviets were the Border Defence Corps. [185], An estimated 1.2 to 1.7 million Polish nationals (entire families with children, women, men, and elderly) were loaded onto freight trains and deported to the eastern parts of the USSR, the Urals, and Siberia. When we crush the uprising, Warsaw will get what it deserves complete annihilation." Staff members drape a large American flag over the roof of the embassy in Warsaw in anticipation of German air attacks. Around 85% of the buildings were destroyed and it took 50 million unpaid hours of work, 91 billion zlotys, and 600 million bricks taken from demolishing houses in other cities to bring back the serviceable condition of the city. The devastation continued in 1941, when the city suffered Soviet bombings. [14] The surviving items sheltered in the neighbouring tenement house at Szczygla Street were burned in October 1944. The uprising infuriated Nazi leaders, who decided to destroy the city as retaliation. Between 1939 and 1945, an estimated 2801 members of the Polish clergy were murdered (in all of Poland);[70] of these, 1926 died in concentration camps (798 of them at Dachau). [137][138] The ghetto was reduced to rubble. The city of Warsaw was rebuilt between 1950s and 1970 without any help from outside (there was no "Marshall Plan" nor any financial or economical aid for Poland after the war as it was with Germany). [39][40]:241 On top of executions by regular troops, more mass killings were conducted in remote areas by the newly formed Einsatzgruppen totalling 3,000 men aided by the Selbstschutz volunteer executioners, bringing the total number of killing operations to 16,000 before the end of September 1939. Thousands more perished in the Ponary massacre, the Czarny Las massacre, in the German concentration camps, and in ghettos. [5] Taken on Leszno street. [125] Initially, the Jews were murdered at a lower rate than ethnic Poles. [199] Soviet censorship was strictly enforced. Tens of thousands of prisoners died there. [217], Upon the conclusion of World War II, Poland remained under Soviet military control. The remaining 30% are houses intentionally destroyed by German demolition units which carried Hitler`s mad order to eradicate Warsaw from the surface of the earth. On the 16th of May, 1943, the Germans destroyed the Great Synagogue on Tomackie street in Warsaw, in an act which proclaimed the final suppression of the ghetto uprising. Szpilman's experiences were adapted into The Pianist. The uprising started on 19 April when the ghetto refused to surrender to the police commander SS-Brigadefhrer Jrgen Stroop, who ordered the destruction of the ghetto, block by block, ending on 16 May. [6], After the remaining population had been expelled, the Germans began the destruction of the remnants of the city. Although Germany also used forced labourers from Western Europe, Poles, along with other Eastern Europeans viewed as inferior,[64] were subject to especially harsh discriminatory measures. Similar atrocities took place later across Czerniakw. [14] On September 8, 1944, the Germans set fire to both the Zamoyski Palace (Blue Palace) and the library building. [99] The Polish language had been banned in Wartheland; children were forced to learn the basics of German under harsh physical punishment. [166][168] Civilians on both sides increasingly numbered among the casualties. [51], Tens of thousands of government officials, landowners, clergy, and members of the intelligentsiateachers, doctors, journalists, and others (both Poles and Jews) were either murdered in mass executions or sent to prisons and concentration camps in the Intelligenzaktion (including the Intelligenzaktion Pommern). [2], By January 1945, between 85% and 90% of the buildings had been completely destroyed; this includes up to 10% as a result of the September 1939 campaign and following combat, up to 15% during the earlier Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 25% during the Uprising, and 40% due to systematic German demolition of city after the uprising.[7]. Many officers were murdered by the NKVD secret police immediately after capture. Until today more than half of antique and museum objects consisting of Polish heritage, stolen by Germans in 1944, have never returned to Poland (many are well-known to be kept in modern German museums, some are even put as exhibits). In the Wartheland, the Nazi goal was complete Germanization. Initially, it was implemented according to the following plan: a German director took control over the psychiatric hospital; under the threat of execution no patient could be released; all were counted and transported from the hospital by trucks to an unknown destination. [12] In October 1944 the Zauski Library, the oldest public library in Poland and one of the oldest and most important libraries in Europe (established in 1747), was burned down. I don't think that reading is necessary. In Bogusze and in Lipwka in Suwaki County residents were massacred by the Wehrmacht as soon as the Poles retreated. The Warsaw ghetto uprising was the largest and, symbolically, most important Jewish uprising during World War II. The forced resettlement affected two million Poles. Ochota Brigade SS-RONA are continuing to kill residents. Photos of the most destroyed city in world history, Polish capital Warsaw (Warszawa) after Warsaw Uprising in 1944 and 1945. The carnage was so bad that even the German high command were stunned. The sole goal of this school is to be-- [27] Typically, the mass executions were conducted in public spaces such as the town square in order to inflict terror. Stalin ordered the execution of those believed to have spied on the Soviet Union, which meant practically everyone for the secret police operatives. Polish experts lower nation's WWII death toll, "The risk of survival: rescue of the Jews by the Poles".
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