Wola District Massacre during Warsaw Rising 1944

Between 5 and 7 August 1944, within THREE DAYS, German units executed 50,000 civilians of the Wola district during Warsaw Rising which erupted in Warsaw, capital of Poland, occupied by Germans since October 1939.

Key names to remember as for mass slaughtering, mass rapes, mass looting as well as mass executions are: Oskar Dirlewanger, Heinrich Heinz Reinefarth, Alfred Spilker and Bronisław Kamiński.

When the Warsaw Rising started, Himmler on behalf of Adolf Hitler ordered that:

1. Captured insurgents are to be executed no matter whether they follow the stipulations of the Hague Conventions or not.
2. Civilians, who are not taking part in the battle, women, children, are to be executed anyway.
3. The whole city of Warsaw is to be levelled to the ground, i.e. houses, streets, offices – anything which constitutes the city.

German troops (mainly composed of SS, renegades, criminals and former Soviet citizens) were asked to make a passage from the western part of the city towards the Vistula River in order to allow German transports reach the Eastern Front. When the Rising burst out, Hitler got furious as Warsaw was a very important transportation hub and not a single transport could have reached the other side of the Vistula River.

The number of executed was so huge that the piles of corpses reached the 2nd floor and it turned out that German units do not have enough ammunition to kill all the detainees…

Heinz Reinefarth reported to General von Vormann: „I have too many prisoners of war and not enough amunition”. His commanders had no doubts as for the dilemma. Why? Let us think just of one of the ‘events’ from those horrifying days.

One of the most notorious examples is when one of the Dirlewanger units entered an orphanage where about 300 orphans were placed. One of the soldiers, Matthias Schenk said that he heard Dirlewanger shout: „Don’t waste ammunition, kill all of them with the butts!”. Schenk still can’t erase from his memory the sight of high steps with blood flushing down (…)”.

Another terrifying story is what happened to Wanda Lurie. She was a mother of 3, the oldest was 11 years old. She was expelled from her home with kids who got executed in front of her eyes. The bullet that was destined to kill her, went through her neck and she was neither killed nor she lost consciousness. She fell on the heap of corpses and she remained in such a position for 2 days. On the third day she decided to organise an escape. Why? She felt movements of her baby as she was 9 months pregnant. She managed to escape and gave birth to her baby son on 20 August. The only child who survived the war. Mr Mścisław Lurie resides now in Warsaw and tries to do his best to keep in memory all what happened to his family and his beloved city shattered with all those turmoils of war.

Image: Wanda Lurie with her son

In total 50,000 persons are reported to have been killed within 3 days. The slaughtering continued till 11 August 1944.

At some point Erich von dem Bach, SS Obergruppenfuerher, the Commander of all German troops during Warsaw Rising, realised it is more effective to send the detained to labour camps rather than execute them on the spot not having any profits of them at all.

Warsaw Rising Museum identified 57,189 names of the Varsovians and Poles who lost their lives just because they found themselves in Warsaw in summer 1944. (1)

Heinz Reinefarth was a respected citizen in post–war Germany holding  a position of a mayor of a seaside resort of Westerland in Schleswig-Holstein. He was a lawyer and it was ‘impossible’ to bring him to justice due to the lack of evidence (sic!).

Image: H. Reinefarth

Oskar Dirlewanger was hanged in French controlled area of Germany in 1945 because most supposedly someone recognised him and decided to finally put his existence to an end.

Image: O. Dirlewanger

Read more:

• ·         Richie, A., Warsaw 1944, published in 2013
• ·         Davies, N., Rising ’44. The Battle for Warsaw. 2004

• ·         https://www.historyanswers.co.uk/history-of-war/oskar-dirlewanger-the-ss-butcher-of-warsaw/ accessed on 10 March 2018
• ·         https://ahtribune.com/history/1124-wola-massacre.html accessed on 10 March 2018
• Gurstyn, P. Rzeź Woli, 2014

Images source: Internet

Source: Youtube.com, 

a clip from "Miasto 44" motion picture (Eng. "City 44").

Source: Youtube.com,

Mathias Schenk story.

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