Szczucin 1939

[Marcus Wendel]

I received the below email about a massacre at Szczucin in 1939, Peter K has mentioned it before but he did not identify the unit involved and as far as I can tell neither does the source mentioned in the email. Does anyone have any additional information and sources on this event?

I suggest you kindly add to the 1939 Polish Campaign record that the 8th division perpetrated of the first Wehrmacht’s WWII war crimes in Szczucin where its soldiers and officers have organized a mass killings of some 40 Polish POW and over 20 Jewish civilians.
Regards,
Tom
http://www.holocaust-history.org/wehrma ... ty-2.shtml

6. Polish POWs in Szczucin were massacred with use of hand grenades and machine guns on 12.09.1939 (40 of them died in the process as well as 30 civilian refugees). 25 Jews were forced to bury them and after that murdered as well. This happened in revenge for the fact that one Lt. (POW) during investigation pulled out a pistol from the holster of Gefreiter (and Kompaniechef) Golla who was investigating him and killed him, commiting suicide after that.

/Marcus

[wm]

The war had come to Szczucin quickly. The local bridge was blown up by Polish sappers as they saw no possibilty to stop the Nazi Army there.
The German Army penetrated into the Lesser Poland territory speedily, but they knew that the rebuilding of the bridge was required to ensure continuous supply for the divisions overrunning the Subcarpathia region.
General Ulex's Bau Kompanie 123 was assigned to this task. Germans sappers collected Polish war prisoners and refugees from the Posen region in the Szczucin elementary school building. Jan Kosicki was the headmaster there.
According to the eyewitnesses, on September 12 Polish officers were demanding food and medical care for the wounded. The squabble between a Polish officer and the German soldiers commander ended up in a shootout. In an outburst of anger caused by the German refusal he violently snatched the German's weapon, shot him to death first and then committed suicide himself.

The Germans retaliated by torching the school building with the war prisoners and civilians inside and by killing the headmaster. Everyone trying to leave the building was executed on the spot. The passersby were captured as well.
The executed were buried by 25 hastily collected local Jews, they were executed too. The massacre survived two Polish prisoners or war, the school janitor, and local family hiding in the school basement. The family was let go by a German soldier.

from the Szczucin Elementary School site

[wm]

According to the Polish Wikipedia the soldiers were from the 8. Infanteriedivision and the attribution above is a mistake.
A German eyewitness testimony is in Hannes Heer, Vom Verschwinden der Täter. Der Vernichtungskrieg fand statt, aber keiner war dabei.

[wm]

"To the heroes of the Polish Army burned alive by the invaders of the Nazi horde in 12 September 1939"

[history1]

[...] According to the eyewitnesses,on September 12 Polish officers were demanding food and medical care for the wounded. [...]

Read "According to the eyewitnesses on September 12th, polish officers [...]

[Marcus Wendel]

According to the Polish Wikipedia the soldiers were from the 8. Infanteriedivision and the attribution above is a mistake.
A German eyewitness testimony is in Hannes Heer, Vom Verschwinden der Täter. Der Vernichtungskrieg fand statt, aber keiner war dabei.

Thanks but does Wikipedia give any sources for listing that division as the responsible one?

/Marcus

[history1]

According to the Polish Wikipedia the soldiers were from the 8. Infanteriedivision and the attribution above is a mistake.[...]

Thanks but does Wikipedia give any sources for listing that division as the responsible one?
/Marcus

The source is:

Szymon Datner recalling Polish witnesses stating incorrectly that the perpetrators belonged to the X Corps Detachment of General Ulexa.

Most likely in his book
"War crimes of the Wehrmacht on POW in WW II; Warsaw, MON Publisher 1961"
in polish original:
"Zbrodnie Wehrmachtu na jeńcach wojennych w II wojnie światowej. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo MON, 1961."
Source: http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zbrodnia_w ... ite_note-6

About the author and historian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szymon_Datner

[Marcus Wendel]

Thanks.

/Marcus

[wm]

To be precise, Szymon Datner using Polish eye-witnesses' testimonies placed the blame on the soldiers from the X Corps commanded by General Wilhelm Ulex in his 1961 book.
The 8th Infantry Division is resposible according to the much newer Jochen Böhler: Zbrodnie Wehrmachtu w Polsce (2009), and the German witness' testimony from Vom Verschwinden der Täter (2004).

[Marcus Wendel]

Thanks again.

/Marcus

[michael mills]

It might be questioned whether all of the events described in this thread constituted a war crime, or whether some of them were a legitimate act of self-defence by German troops.

According to the account given, a number of Polish soldiers and civilians had been captured by German forces and were being held as prisoners. One of the Polish prisoners, having surrendered and accepted the status of Prisoner of War, chose to resume combat and killed one of the German soldiers guarding them. The German soldiers responded by opening fire on the Polish prisoners, killing a number of them.

It could be argued that the action of the German soldiers in opening fire on the Polish prisoners was a legitimate act of self-defence, since they had been suddenly attacked by one of the prisoners, as a result of which one of their number had been killed. The German soldiers were justified in concluding that their lives might be in danger from the Polish prisoners, who might follow the example of that one Polish prisoner and attack them, and in opening fire to save their own lives.

Of course, the execution of the Jews who were conscripted to bury the dead Polish prisoners was unjustified and was a criminal act.

[wm]

It was a war crime because the massacre took place several hours after the accident and the prisoners were unarmed, although there is a possibility that it was an action without proper authorization from above.
It seems that the Germans soldiers were volunteers from different units. The German witness was recruited by a Bavarian NCO named Kern, who promised him an Iron Cross for the participation. Latter Kern himself killed at least one of the Jews with the butt of his rifle.

[David Thompson]

A flame-bait post from Michael Mills, along with a now-unnecessary response from wm, were removed by this moderator pursuant to the forum rules - DT.