Katowice massacre

On that day, German Wehrmacht soldiers aided by the Freikorps militia executed about 80 of the Polish defenders of the city.

[4][6] The most notable incidents involved the defense of the Silesian Insurgent House [pl] as well as a group of Polish Boy and Girl Scouts shooting Germans from the vantage point of the Parachute Tower Katowice.

[7][8] However, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) which investigated this incident noted that about 150 Poles were killed in Katowice on that day in fighting and subsequent executions, and that it is impossible to precisely determine the total number of fatalities, nor to separate exactly the number of fatalities that occurred as a result of fighting and those that died in later executions.

[3][5] The Einsatzgruppen units which arrived at that time or within a few days were also active in Katowice and Silesia and one of their standing orders was to summarily execute all identified former Polish insurgents.

[5] The Polish Institute of National Remembrance concluded that while it is no longer possible to identify most victims and perpetrators, the main responsibility for the massacre rests in the hands of high ranking German officials like Heinrich Himmler and Udo von Woyrsch.

A memorial for the Polish Boy Scouts who died defending Katowice in September 1939. A number of fallen scouts were victims of the executions of 4 September 1939.
Monument to the Defenders of Katowice, described on the inscription as "Silesian insurgents, Boy and Girl scouts, murdered in 1939 by the Hitlerite invaders, in forests, streets and prisons of Katowice"