Wola massacre

The Wola massacre (Polish: Rze Woli, Wola slaughter) was the systematic killing of between 40,000 and
50,000 people in the Wola district of Polands capital
city Warsaw by Nazi German troops and collaborationist
forces during the early phase of the Warsaw Uprising.
From 5 to 12 August 1944, tens of thousands of Polish civilians along with captured Home Army resistance
ghters were brutally and systematically murdered by
the Germans in organised mass executions throughout
Wola. The Germans anticipated that these atrocities
would crush the insurgents will to ght and put the uprising to a swift end.[1] However, the ruthless pacication of
Wola only stiened Polish resistance, and it took another
two months of heavy ghting for the Germans to regain Polish civilians murdered during the Wola massacre in Warsaw,
control of the city.
August 1944

Massacre

Windrow described Dirlewangers unit as a terrifying

rabble of cut-throats, [foreign] renegades, sadistic morons, and cashiered rejects from other units.[4]

The Warsaw Uprising broke out on 1 August 1944 and

during the rst few days the Polish resistance managed
to liberate most of Warsaw on the left bank of the river
Vistula (an uprising also broke out in the small suburb
of Praga on the right bank but was quickly suppressed
by the Germans). Two days after the start of the ghting, SS General Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski was placed
in command of all German forces in Warsaw. Following direct orders from SS-Reichfuhrer Heinrich Himmler to suppress the uprising without mercy, his strategy
was to include the use of terror tactics against the inhabitants of Warsaw.[1] No distinction would be made between insurgents and civilians.
Himmler's orders explicitly stated that Warsaw was to be
completely destroyed and that the civilian population was
to be exterminated.[lower-alpha 1][lower-alpha 2]
Professor Timothy Snyder, of Yale University, wrote that
the massacres in Wola had nothing in common with
combat as the ratio of civilian to military dead was more
than a thousand to one, even if military casualties on both
sides are counted.[2]

On 5 August, three German battle groups started their

advance towards the city centre from the western outskirts of the Wola district, along Wolska Street and
Grczewska Street. The German forces consisted of units
from the Wehrmacht and the SS Police Battalions, as well
as the mostly Russian SS-Sturmbrigade RONA and the SSSturmbrigade Dirlewanger, an infamous Waen SS penal A column of Polish women with children being led by German
unit led by Oskar Dirlewanger.[3] British historian Martin troops along Wolska Street in early August 1944
1

2 AFTERMATH

Shortly after their advance towards the centre of Warsaw

began, the two lead battle groups Kampfgruppe Rohr
(led by Generalmajor Gnter Rohr) and Kampfgruppe
Reinefarth (led by Heinz Reinefarth) were halted by
heavy re from Polish resistance ghters. Unable to proceed forward, some of the German troops began to go
from house to house carrying out their orders to shoot
all inhabitants. Many civilians were shot on the spot but
some were killed after torture and sexual assault.[5] Estimates vary, but Reinefarth himself has estimated that up
to 10,000 civilians were killed in the Wola district on 5
August alone, the rst day of the operation.[6] Most of the
victims were the elderly, women and children.[7]
The majority of these atrocities were committed by
troops under the command of SS-Oberfhrer Oskar
Dirlewanger and SS-Brigadefhrer Bronislav Kaminski.[8] Research historian Martin Gilbert, from the
University of Oxford, wrote:
More than fteen thousand Polish civilians had been murdered by German troops in
Warsaw. At 5:30 that evening [August 5], General Erich von dem Bach gave the order for
the execution of women and children to stop.
But the killing continued of all Polish men who
were captured, without anyone bothering to
nd out whether they were insurgents or not.
Nor did either the Cossacks or the criminals
in the Kaminsky and Dirlewanger brigades pay
any attention to von dem Bach Zelewskis order: by rape, murder, torture and re, they
made their way through the suburbs of Wola
and Ochota, killing in three days of slaughter a further thirty thousand civilians, including
hundreds of patients in each of the hospitals in
their path.[9]

Ashes of 4000 Wola massacre victims murdered at the Franaszek

factory buried in a hole in the ground and commemorated by
provisional cross

some of the patients still inside. Hundreds of other patients and personnel were killed by indiscriminate gunre and grenade attacks, or selected and led away for
executions.[11] The greatest number of killings took place
at the railway embankment on Grczewska Street and two
large factories on Wolska Street - the Ursus Factory at
Wolska 55 and the Franaszka Factory at Wolska 41/45 as well as the Pfeier Factory at 57/59 Okopowa Street.
At each of these four locations, thousands of people were
systematically executed in mass shootings, having been
On 5 August, the Zoka battalion of the Home Army had
previously rounded up in other places and taken there in
managed to liberate the Gsiwka concentration camp
groups.
and to take control of the strategically important surrounding area of the former Warsaw Ghetto with the aid Between 8 and 23 August the SS formed groups
of two captured Panther tanks belonging to a unit com- of men from the Wola district into the so-called
manded by Wacaw Micuta. Over the next few days of Verbrennungskommando (burning detachment), who
ghting this area became one of the main communica- were forced to hide evidence of the massacre by burntion links between Wola and Warsaws Old Town district, ing the victims bodies and homes.[12] Most of the men
allowing insurgents and civilians alike to gradually with- put to work in such groups were also later executed.
draw from Wola ahead of the overwhelmingly superior On 12 August, the order was given to stop the indiscrimGerman forces that had been deployed against them.
inate killing of Polish civilians in Wola. Erich von dem
On 7 August, the German ground forces were strengthened further. To enhance their eectiveness, the Germans began to use civilians as human shields when
approaching positions held by the Polish resistance.[10]
These tactics combined with their superior numbers and
repower helped them to ght their way to Bankowy
Square in the northern part of Warsaws city centre and
cut the Wola district in half.

Bach issued a new directive stating that captured civilians were to be evacuated from the city and deported to
concentration camps or to Arbeitslager labour camps.

2 Aftermath

No one belonging to the German forces who took part

German units also burned down two local hospitals with in the atrocities committed during the Warsaw Uprising

3
by the Warsaw Uprising Museum.[17]

3 See also
Warsaw Uprising
Verbrennungskommando Warschau
Monument to Victims of the Wola Massacre
Wola Massacre Memorial on Grczewska Street
Tchorek plaques#Wola
The Monument to Victims of the Wola Massacre, displaying a
list of execution sites across Wola and estimates of the number of
victims at each site

Gsiwka
Ochota massacre
Warsaw Uprising Museum
Military history of the Warsaw Uprising
Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles

4 Notes
[1] "[...] The Fhrer is not interested in the further existence
of Warsaw [...] the whole population shall be executed
and all buildings blown up. Madajczyk 1972, p. 390.

A closeup of a fragment of the Monument to Victims of the Wola

Massacre listing some of the Wolska Street execution sites

was ever prosecuted for them after the end of the Second
World War. The main perpetrators of the Wola massacre
and similar massacres in the nearby Ochota district were
Heinz Reinefarth and Oskar Dirlewanger. Dirlewanger,
who presided over and personally participated in many of
the worst acts of violence, was arrested on 1 June 1945
by French occupation troops while hiding under a false
name near the town of Altshausen in Upper Swabia. He
died on 7 June 1945 in a French prison camp at Altshausen, probably as a result of ill-treatment by his Polish guards.[13][14][15] In 1945, Reinefarth was taken into
custody by the British and American authorities but was
never prosecuted for his actions in Warsaw, despite Polish
requests for his extradition. After a West German court
released him citing a lack of evidence, Reinefarth enjoyed a successful post-war career as a lawyer, becoming
the mayor of Westerland, and a member of the Landtag
parliament of Schleswig-Holstein. The West German
government also gave the former SS-Obergruppenfhrer
a generals pension[16] before he died in 1979.
In May 2008, a list of several former SS Dirlewanger
members who were still alive was compiled and published

[2] According to evidence given by Erich von dem Bach at the

Nrnberg trial, Himmlers order (issued on the strength of
an order from Adolf Hitler), read as follows: 1. Captured
insurgents shall be killed whether or not they ght in accordance with the Hague Convention. 2. The non-ghting part
of the population, women, children, shall also be killed. 3.
The whole city shall be razed to the ground, i.e. its buildings, streets, facilities, and everything within its borders.
Wroniszewski 1970, pp. 128129.

5 References
[1] THE SLAUGHTER IN WOLA Archived 21 August 2009
at the Wayback Machine. at Warsaw Uprising Museum
[2] Snyder, Timothy (2010). Bloodlands: Europe Between
Hitler and Stalin. Bodley Head. p. 304. ISBN
0224081411.
[3] Lukas, Richard C. (2012). The Forgotten Holocaust: The
Poles under German Occupation, 1939-1944. Hippocrene
Books. p. 197. ISBN 978-0-7818-1302-0.
[4] Windrow, Martin & Francis K. Mason (2000). The
Worlds Greatest Military Leaders. Gramercy. p. 117.
ISBN 0517161613.
[5] Zaloga, Steven J. & Richard Hook (1982). The Polish
Army 193945. Osprey Publishing. p. 25. ISBN 085045-417-4.

[6] The Rape of Warsaw. Stosstruppen39-45.tripod.com.

Retrieved 3 February 2009.
[7] Lukas, Richard (1997). Forgotten Holocaust. The
Poles under German Occupation 19391944. Hippocrene
Books, New York. ISBN 0-7818-0901-0.
[8] Warsaw Uprising of 1944: PART 5 THEY ARE
BURNING WARSAW"". Poloniatoday.com. 5 August
1944. Archived from the original on 28 January 2008.
Retrieved 3 February 2009.
[9] Gilbert, Martin (2004). The Second World War: A Complete History. Owl Books. p. 565. ISBN 0-8050-7623-9.
[10] 1944: Uprising to free Warsaw begins. BBC News. 1
August 2002.
[11] (Polish) Suba sanitarna w Powstaniu Warszawskim:
Wola, SPPW1944
[12] Timeline. Warsaw Uprising. Retrieved 3 February
2009.
[13] Walter Laqueur, Judith Tydor Baumel (2001).
Dirlewanger, Oskar.
The Holocaust Encyclopedia
(Yale University Press). p. 150. ISBN 0300084323.
Retrieved 24 June 2012.
[14] Wistrich, Robert S. (2001). Whos Who of Nazi Germany:
Dirlewanger, Oskar. Routledge, p. 44. ISBN 0-41526038-8.
[15] Walter Stanoski Winter, Walter Winter, Struan Robertson. Winter Time: Memoirs of a German Sinto who Survived Auschwitz. 2004. Page 139. ISBN 1-902806-38-7.
[16] Syn warszawskiej Niobe. polskatimes.pl. 31 July 2009.
Retrieved 6 December 2012.
[17] Odkryta kartoteka zbrodniarzy, Rzeczpospolita, 17 May
2008.

External links
Witness testimony on German massacre of Polish
hospital patients
Witness testimony on German massacre of Polish
civilians in Wola
(German) Nacht ber Wola, Der Spiegel 1962

Coordinates: 5214N 2058E / 52.23N 20.96E

EXTERNAL LINKS

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