Palmiry massacre
Between December 1939 and July 1941 more than 1700 Poles and Jews – mostly inmates of Warsaw's Pawiak prison – were executed by the SS (Schutzstaffel) and Ordnungspolizei in a forest glade near Palmiry.
The best documented of these massacres took place on 20–21 June 1940, when 358 members of the Polish political, cultural, and social elite were murdered in a single operation.
After the Nazi invasion of Poland, Warsaw was reduced to a provincial city in the newly created General Government.
[a] Warsaw also headquartered the high command of the Polish Underground State and soon became a stronghold of armed and political resistance against the German occupation.
[2] On 14 December 1943 Governor-General Hans Frank noted in his diary: There is a one place in this country which is a source of all our misfortunes – it is Warsaw.
However Nazi German police authorities soon realized that they would not be able to keep executions secret if they were conducted in the very center of a large city.
[9][10] They were overseen by Gestapo officers led by the SD and Sicherheitspolizei Commander in Warsaw, SS-Standartenführer Josef Meisinger.
Sometimes, for smaller groups of convicts or for individual victims, irregularly shaped graves were prepared, similar to natural terrain landslides or to explosion craters.
[14] Later, when the truth about what was happening in Palmiry spread through Warsaw, some victims tried to throw short letters or small belongings from the trucks, in hopes that in this way they would be able to inform their families about their fate.
[13] During postwar exhumation some bodies were found with a card reading "Executed in Palmiry", written by the victims shortly before their death.
[17] After the execution was finished, the graves were filled in, covered with moss and needles, and then planted over with young pine trees.
At risk of their lives, they visited the forest glade after the executions (usually at night) in order to secretly mark out the mass graves.
However, according to Maria Wardzyńska (a Polish historian employed in the Institute of National Remembrance), at least 70 other people were secretly executed in Palmiry before the end of 1939.
[21] In January and February 1940 the Gestapo infiltrated and crushed the underground organization Polska Ludowa Akcja Niepodległościowa (PLAN) ("Polish People's Independence Action").
On 14 January, the PLAN commander, Kazimierz Andrzej Kott, escaped from the Gestapo headquarters at 25 Szucha Avenue.
Marceli Nowakowski (rector of the Church of the Holiest Saviour in Warsaw, and former member of parliament) and 36 Jews (including attorney Ludwik Dyzenhaus, dentist Franciszek Sturm and chess master Dawid Przepiórka).
[23][24] On the night of 28 March 1940, German police officers entered the house at Sosnowa Street in Warsaw where Józef Bruckner, commander of the underground organization Wilki ("The Wolves"), had his conspiratorial flat.
Jan Krawczyk (theologian, parson of Catholic parish in Wilanów), Bogumił Marzec (attorney), Stefan Napierski (literary critic, editor of monthly magazine of literature Ateneum), Bohdan Offenberg (deputy director of the Labour Fund), Zbigniew Rawicz-Twaróg (captain of the Polish Army), Jacek Szwemin (architect), and 27 women.
In the spring of 1940, the highest NSDAP and SS authorities in the General Government decided to conduct a wide-ranging police operation aimed at the extermination of the Polish political, cultural, and social elite.
The mass murder of Polish politicians, intellectuals, artists, social activists, as well as people suspected of potential anti-Nazi activity, was seen as a preemptive measure to keep the Polish resistance scattered and to prevent the Poles from revolting during the planned German invasion of France.
[39] Another mass execution was carried out on 17 September 1940 when about 200 prisoners of Pawiak, including 20 women, were murdered at the forest glade near Palmiry.
Zygmunt Sajna (parson of Catholic parish in Góra Kalwaria), Jadwiga Bogdziewicz and Jan Borski (journalists) and Władysław Szopinski.
[40] According to Regina Domańska, this massacre might be connected with the uncovering of an underground printing house at Lwowska Street in Warsaw.
[44] On 7 March 1941, actor Igo Sym, well-known Nazi collaborator and Gestapo agent, was assassinated by the soldiers of the Union of Armed Struggle.
[48][49] The last known mass execution in Palmiry was carried out on 17 July 1941 when 47 people, mostly prisoners of Pawiak, were murdered in the forest glade.
[15] After 17 July 1941, German authorities ceased using the forest glade in Palmiry as a place of mass executions.
[50] After the war, the Polish Red Cross, supported by the Chief Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, began the search and exhumation process in Palmiry.
[52] Victims of Nazi terror whose bodies were found in some other places of execution within the so-called "Warsaw Death Ring"[e] were also buried in the Palmiry cemetery.
Kazimierz Pieniążek (member of the Resurrectionist Congregation), another victim of the Palmiry massacre, has been accorded the title of Servant of God.
[59] SS-Gruppenführer Paul Moder, SS and Police Leader in Warsaw district in 1940–1941, was killed in action on the Eastern Front in February 1942.
