Paterek 1939

Paterek

Paterek

Crime in Paterek – a series of collective executions conducted by the German Selbstschutz in the area of the former gravel pit in the town of Paterek near Nakło. In the autumn of 1939 over 200 people were murdered there. They were mainly  representatives of the Polish intelligentsia and the clergy. Paterek was the next biggest execution place, besides the neighbourhood of Łobżenica of the Polish population in the Wyrzysk district.
In October 1939 Selbstschutz started the extermination of “the Polish leadership layer" in the area of the Wyrzysk district. Germans chose a valley in the former gravel pit by a dirt road in Paterek, 5 kilometres from Nakło to be the place of mass executions. The choice of site was determined by its convenience for the executioners: there were excavations, holes left after the digged out sand where it was easy to bury the bodies of the killed. Murders in Paterek started on the 4th of October and lasted till the 24th of November. Death sentences were approved by a self-appointed commission of Nakło Selbstschutz members - Rudolf Öhlmann (manager of the sugar factory), Otto Lahmann (master carpenter), brothers Johann and Kurt Fritz  (merchant and  entrepreneur), carpenter Finke and clerk Prahl. Convicts with hands tied at the back were brought by cars to the place of execution and next they were shot  by a firing squad (mostly at night). This way over 200 Poles and Jews died in Paterek. They were buried in 13 mass graves. The biggest numbers of victims were killed in the executions of 28th and 31st of October and 1st and 11th of November (in the last execution Germans killed the majority of over a 100 people arrested the previous night during a large "cleansing action" in Nakło). Paterek appears to be the biggest place ( beside the area of Łobżenica) of torment of the Polish population in the Wyrzysk district.
The most information  preserved was about the execution of clergymen of Górka Klasztorna. The execution took place at night of 11th to 12th of November 1939. 48 priests and monks were murdered (including two nuns from the Order of Sisters Servants).  The wounded were brutally put to death, e.g. with blows of a shovel. After the completed execution the executioners were ordered to go home one by one, so that the locals did not notice that some return from an action took place. The execution was personally conducted by Harry Schulz.
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