Between September and December 1939, Nazi German occupiers in Poland instigated a series of mass executions against the civilian population of Bydgoszcz, targeting those of Polish and Jewish origin.

The ad hoc reprisals later turned into an organized extermination campaign, aimed at the liquidation of the Polish political and intellectual elite in Bydgoszcz, with the main executor being the paramilitary Selbstschutz.

Goebbels' propaganda made great efforts to portray the events in Bydgoszcz in a stirring manner and to provide a propagandistic justification for the German policy of extermination conducted in Polish territories (especially in Pomerania).

[14] The Bydgoszcz Civic Guard only surrendered their weapons after receiving assurance from General Eccard von Gablenz (commander of the "Netze" battle group) that their rights, as due to regular troops, would be respected.

The victims were primarily workers, railway employees, small craftsmen, lower-ranking officials, and high school students – as members of the Civic Guard mainly came from these social groups.

[19][21] However, just two days later, actual power in the city was taken over by Werner Kampe – the head of the local Nazi Party cell (later, from the end of September, the Lord Mayor of Bydgoszcz).

In the city and surrounding areas, the first structures of Selbstschutz[c] – a paramilitary formation composed of representatives of the German national minority inhabiting the pre-war territory of the Second Polish Republic – began to be formed.

[22] Due to the chaos in the city and the alleged threat from "ubiquitous" Polish partisans, the command of the German 4th Army ordered Braemer (a pre-war active member of the Schutzstaffel) to conduct a more organized "cleansing operation".

Excesses must have occurred during the "cleansing operation" because Braemer felt compelled to issue an order specifying that every person found with a weapon should be brought before the Sondergericht, rather than immediately shot.

[23] It was not uncommon for local Volksdeutsche to pass among the rows of detained Poles and Jews, pointing out supposed participants of the Bydgoszcz "Bloody Sunday" to the escort.

[37][38] The directives of the military and civilian authorities of the Nazi Germany regarding Bydgoszcz were exceptionally radical, and the actions taken on-site in the first days of the occupation were brutal and arbitrary.

[20] The residents of Bydgoszcz, arrested during successive "cleansing actions", were placed in a makeshift internment camp (Internierungslager) established on the premises of the barracks of the 15th Light Artillery Regiment at 147 Gdańska Street.

Already on 5 September 1939, the head of the civilian administration board under the command of the 4th Army, SS-Oberführer Fritz Hermann, instructed his field delegates in a written directive to escort arrested Poles who are not trustworthy to internment camps.

The military authorities, by transferring the camp to police jurisdiction, also demanded its relocation from the barracks area, as they intended to use the buildings for the needs of Wehrmacht units stationed in Bydgoszcz.

The task of officially judging and "punishing" Poles suspected of involvement in the incidents of the "Bloody Sunday" was entrusted to the Special Court in Bydgoszcz (German: Sondergericht Bromberg).

[57] As a result, absurd situations arose – on one occasion, a tortured Polish man confessed to killing a Volksdeutsch who had actually survived the "Bloody Sunday" unscathed.

[m][65] Poles were thus convicted of complicity in murder if during the incidents in Bydgoszcz on 3–4 September 1939, they spoke hostilely and insultingly towards Volksdeutsche; pointed out to soldiers or policemen the places from which insurgents were firing shots; helped to bring arrested Germans to military facilities or police stations, etc.

[66] Additionally, Polish soldiers, policemen, and members of paramilitary organizations fighting against sabotage were collectively treated as looters – rather than individuals carrying out official duties on the orders of their superiors.

[70] By the end of the war, the Bydgoszcz Special Court in cases related to the "Bloody Sunday" events sentenced 243 people to death (including one of German nationality).

In early October 1939, even before the start of mass executions, a unit of the German Arbeitsdienst (Labour Service) arrived there and began digging long, 2.5-meter deep trenches.

In practice, there were so many abuses that the German prosecutor's office became interested, and Gauleiter Forster was forced to remove Kampe from the position of mayor of Bydgoszcz and transfer him to Gdańsk (February 1941).

On 11 September 1939, owners of shops, restaurants, and craft workshops were prohibited from displaying Polish-language signs in public view (violation of the ban carried a fine of 1,000 RM).

[101] For instance, on September 26, Germans removed the monument of Henryk Sienkiewicz from Jan Kochanowski Park, as well as the tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the Greater Poland Uprising [pl] from Bernardyńska Street.

[8] The number of Bydgoszcz residents of Polish origin who died as a result of the indirect and direct extermination carried out by the German occupiers during the 5 years of war is estimated at 5,300.

An inscription on one of its plaques reads: The Monument of Struggle and Martyrdom commemorates the memory of Polish citizens from Kuyavia, Pomerania, and Chełmno Land who died and were murdered during World War II in the years 1939–1945.

[117] After Pope John Paul II's visit to Bydgoszcz in 1999 and his appeal for the commemoration of the martyrs of our time, the idea of building the "Way of the Cross – Golgotha of the 20th Century" station in the "Valley of Death" emerged.

Albert Forster, the Nazi Party Gauleiter and Reich Governor in the Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia district, was sentenced to death by the National Tribunal in Gdańsk in 1948 for crimes committed in Pomerania between 1939 and 1945.

[121] In 1965, the Munich prosecutor's office applied to discontinue the prosecution of former district Nazi Party leader and lord mayor of Bydgoszcz, Werner Kampe, allowing him to continue his business activities as a representative of an insurance company.

[122] Dr. Rudolf Oebsger-Röder from the Bydgoszcz Sicherheitsdienst served after the war as the head of the Federal Intelligence Service in Jakarta and worked as a spokesman for the house and court of Indonesian dictator Suharto.

The indictment accused them of causing the deaths of 349 people, including 74 teachers, 3 doctors, and the mayor of the city, Leon Barciszewski [pl], in Bydgoszcz's extermination actions in a deceitful and low-minded manner.