In retaliation that same night, Piwnik's partisans attacked the express train Kraków-Warsaw in the area of Podłazie, Skarżysko County, killing or injuring at least a dozen Germans.

In total, at least 204 people,[3][4] including men (mostly burned alive),[5] 54 women and 48 children,[6][7] as many as ten of them were less than 10 years old,[8] were victims of the massacres in Michniów.

[10] During World War II and the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany (1939–1945), Poles were subjected to terror and mass German repression.

Due to the fact that the land there was not conducive to cultivation, many residents of Michniów were employed outside agriculture – felling forests or in the nearby factories of the Central Industrial Region (Poland).

[18] After the renaming of ZWZ into the Home Army (Armia Krajowa – AK), a secretive platoon formed under the code name "Forge" in Michniów.

[19] The inhabitants of Michniów also supported partisans from the People's Guard unit of the Kielce region (commander: Ignacy Robb aka "Narbutt").

Meanwhile, in November 1942, the Home Army command transferred three Cichociemni ("Silent Unseen") to Kielce, entrusting them with the task of strengthening local diversion structures.

Other residents of Michniów also actively cooperated with the patrol of Kedyw, among them Władysław Malinowski (served as a liaison) and the Daniłłowski family displaced from Greater Poland (real name Fagasińscy).

In mid-May 1943 another Cichociemni was moved to the Kielce District of the Home Army, lieutenant Jan Piwnik, pseudonym "Ponury" (in English: "Grim" or "Gloomy").

A number of crimes against the population of the Kielce region were committed in particular by the 62nd motorized gendarmerie platoon, commanded by German lieutenant Albert Schuster.

[36] Longin Kaczanowski, without diminishing the significance of the betrayal of "Motor," pointed out that it is unlikely that German action would be caused by the denunciations of only one informer - in addition, visiting the village relatively sporadically.

In turn, the outposts forming the outer ring were located on the edge of the forests (surrounding the village from three sides), as well as on the hill west of Michniów.

[52] The day after the pacification, the commander of the Sicherheitsdienst and security police unit in Kielce, SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Essig, sent a telegraphy to Radom with a brief description of the action.

The lieutenant Jan Piwnik immediately picked up his unit to the rescue, but the German criminal expedition left Michniów before the arrival of the partisans.

Later that evening, Home Army soldiers captured the nearby block post Podłazie and occupied the local section of the Warsaw-Kraków railway line.

From the Polish railwaymen detained at the station, "Grim", he received information that a German holiday train was going to Kraków in this direction, carrying soldiers returning from the Eastern Front.

When the train approached the station, the guerrillas stopped it using a semaphore, then stormed the wagons of "Nur für Deutsche" (in English: "For Germans only").

[65][66] Some women and children gave up escaping because it was expected that, as on the first day of pacification, repression would be targeted primarily at men suspected of cooperating with the resistance[67] Meanwhile, after reaching the village, the Germans began a systematic massacre.

[72] On July 15, 1943, the inhabitants of neighboring villages buried the remains of the murdered Michałów residents in a common grave excavated on a plot near the school.

[73][74] A few days after the pacification of Michniów, scouts from the Gray Ranks erected two boards with German inscriptions at the Warsaw-Kraków railway tracks.

The first table had the inscription Deutsche Katyń (English: "German Katyn"), and the second: Waffen SS haben hier in Dorf Michniów 200 Männen, Frauen und Kinder ermordet uns dises Dorf verbant (in English: "Waffen SS murdered in Michniów village 200 men, women and children, and the village burnt down").

In turn, on August 17, 1943, a German patrol shot Stefania Materek, trying with her husband and son to collect crops from one of the fields in Michałów (for fear of Germany, the local priest did not allow the victims to be buried at the Bodzentyn parish cemetery).

However, the life of the family was saved by an officer of the Polish blue police, who not only persuaded the stay of execution to be done in Germany, but even managed to obtain the release of the victims.

It is also possible that among those murdered on July 12–13, 1943, there were unrecognized people who were not permanent residents of Michniów - i.e. exiles settled there from the Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, or who accidentally found themselves in the pacification village.

According to some sources, SS-Hauptsturmführer Adolf Feucht, an officer of the German security police, was responsible for a number of repressive actions in the Radom district.

Witnesses recognized Mayer as an officer who on July 12, 1943, was present at the execution of 17 men near the school in Michałów, and also supervised the burning of victims in barns.

[96] The Michnów massacre case was relatively widely discussed during the post-war trial of the SS and Police Commander in the Radom District, SS-Brigadeführer Herbert Böttcher.

This group included, among others Leo Metz (liquidated by the Polish resistance movement at the end of 1944), as well as SS-Hauptsturmführer Adolf Feucht and SS-Hauptscharführer Otto vel Josef Göhring (they died in 1945).

[107][108] Shortly after the end of the occupation, a red sandstone monument was erected on a mass grave covering the remains of the victims of pacification.

In 1981, a joint appeal of the Kielce districts of the Fighters for Freedom and Democracy Association and the Polish Tourist and Sightseeing Society appeared in this matter.