Bloody Wednesday of Olkusz

His wife and daughter still lived in Olkusz in their villa in the Parcze neighborhood, and in early July their house was subjected to a failed burglary attempt.

[3][4]: 18–19 [7] Shortly after, Germans arrested a number of Polish citizens of the city (Teofil Jurczyk, Wawrzyniec Kulawik, Stanisław Luboń, Jerzy Stroński and Józef Strzelecki).

[4]: 19–21  Prisoners were told to lie down flat, face down, on the ground for many hours, until about 3:00 p.m., while the Germans verified their documents, and in the meantime were subject to abuse and beatings.

Jewish inhabitants were often singled out for extreme abuse, stripped naked, stomped upon, forced to recite Christian prayers, and even to stone one another.

[5]: 95–96  The exact number of fatalities of the Bloody Wednesday is not known, but identities of three individuals who died during or shortly after the incident from wounds suffered have been confirmed.

[14] Days after Olkusz was abandoned by the retreating Germans in January 1945, local inhabitants raised a number of crosses and a metal plaque in remembrance of the victims of 1940 events.

Incorrect descriptions of the event, with the victims described as "Polish Jews" or just "Jews", were perpetuated by sources such as the Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, publications of the Yad Vashem, Simon Wiesenthal Center and Ghetto Fighters' House, and in a permanent exhibition at the House of the Wannsee Conference.

[9]: 280–281 [16] Efforts by Polish historians such as Adam Cyra of Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and Feliks Tych of the Jewish Historical Institute have led to the correction of the inaccurate descriptions of the events in Olkusz in a number of works in the early 21st century.

This was reported as successful in the Polish media, which cited a reply to the Olkusz government and Tych by the director of the Yad Vashem Photography Archive, Daniel Uziel, who promised that the errors would be swiftly corrected.

[18][19] However, as of 2021, the descriptions of the event characterizing all victims as only "Jews" still persisted, among others, in the online edition of the Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos (2012)[16][20] and again on the Yad Vashem webpage.

[2][16] In August 2021 the Coalition of Polish Americans highlighted this error, described as "the appropriation of the massacre as a “Jewish” tragedy", as one of several "historical inaccuracies and ethnocentric lapses contained in the USHMM historiography" with regards to history of Poland during World War II, and noted that Adam Cyra explicitly contrasted USHMM and Yad Vashem treatments of this to the Wikipedia article on the "Bloody Wednesday of Olkusz", calling the latter the "correct account".

The Bloody Wednesday in Olkusz, German-occupied Poland, 31 July 1940. Polish and Jewish hostages at the forefront, lying face down on the ground. In the background photo shows the table where German police officers are verifying the identity documents. The hostages were forced to remain prone on the ground for several hours, and many were subject to beatings and other abuse.
Memorial plaque with the names of the 20 Poles executed on July 16
The Bloody Wednesday Olkusz 1940. German soldier guarding prone men of Olkusz on July 31. The picture has been described as "known to everyone in Olkusz". [ 9 ] : 212
Rabbi Moshe Hagerman the Dayan – Jewish municipal chief judge, dressed in his Talit and Teffilin and being abused by German soldiers, who are forcing him to pray, for their amusement. This image was later identified by people who survived the war and the incident, as an image from the "Bloody Wednesday of Olkusz", taken on July 31, 1940. The photograph has been described as one of the best known photographs of the Holocaust. [ 10 ]
Bloody Wednesday commemorative plaque at Market Square in Olkusz