German atrocities committed against Polish prisoners of war
In addition, plans formulated by the German General Staff, prior to the invasion, authorized the SS to carry out security tasks on behalf of the army that included the imprisonment or execution of Polish citizens, whether Jewish or gentile.
In fact, this instruction led to mass executions of members belonging to Polish paramilitary formations and ad-hoc citizens watches (Straże Obywatelskie).
These individuals were routinely labeled as "partisans" and summarily executed, even though they openly carried weapons and wore identifying marks or armbands as required by the Hague Convention.
[2]: 30 Timothy Snyder, an American historian wrote that over 3,000 Polish POWs were killed in at least 63 separate shooting actions in which they were often forced to take their uniforms off.
"[2]: 33 Already on the first day of invasion (1 September 1939), Polish POWs were murdered by the Wehrmacht at: Pilchowice, Czuchów, Gierałtowice, Bojków, Lubliniec, Kochcice, Zawiść, Ornontowice and Wyry.
[7]: 121 On 14 September 1939, troops of the 206th Infantry Division perpetrated a massacre of 30 Polish POWs and 23 civilians in Olszewo, in revenge for the losses suffered in the battle against the Suwalska Cavalry Brigade.
[1][17] In transit camps for the Polish prisoners of war (German transit camps for prisoners of war [de], Durchgangslagers or Dulags) as well as in Stalags where privates and non-commissioned officers were held, the German military authorities established "inner ghettos" where Jewish POWs, were segregated from non-Jewish soldiers of the Polish Armed Forces.
In February 1940, as the Judenrat in Lublin refused to accommodate them, the Germans forced the POWs to undertake a march on foot, enduring freezing temperatures, to the city of Biała Podlaska, located 130 kilometers away.
[18] Between December 1940 and February 1941, a minimum of 2,120 Jewish POWs, who had previously lived in Polish territories that were annexed by the Soviet Union, were permanently imprisoned at the Lipowa Street camp.
[22][14]: 35 [2]: 38–40 Within several months, almost all non-officer prisoners of war (estimates range at 300,000-480,000) were stripped of their POW status and forced to work in Nazi Germany.
In accordance with the Hague Convention, the insurgents openly carried weapons and wore identifying white and red Home Army armbands.
[26] Among the victims were predominantly severely wounded soldiers who had been left behind after the evacuation of Home Army forces through the city's sewers to Śródmieście.
[27] Executions of POWs and massacres in military hospitals also took place during the battles in other districts of Warsaw, including Wola, Ochota, Mokotów, Powiśle, Solec.
[25][28] In the case of the latter, after the district was ultimately captured by German forces on 23 September 1944, some victims, including five nurses and military chaplain Fr Józef Stanek, were hanged by SS members.
On 27 September 1944, following the fall of Mokotów, approximately 140 AK soldiers who had become disoriented in the sewers and mistakenly surfaced near the German barracks were executed by members of the Ordnungspolizei at Dworkowa Street.
[35] During the Battle of Bautzen in April 1945, Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS units committed numerous war crimes against POWs and wounded soldiers from the Polish Second Army.
Much of the wartime documentation written by the Polish Red Cross was lost during the war, and the prisoner-of-war massacres from 1939 were often overshadowed by the subsequent crimes committed on civilian population.
[1][37][38][39] Tomasz Sudoł, writing in 2011, noted that the topic of German atrocities committed against Polish prisoners of war is still an understudied field with a number of questions waiting to be properly researched.
