Wehrmacht War Crime at Polish Village of Odhporzecz (April 1944)

[wm]

After midnight, hooded and armed men burst into one of our shelters. They seized all sanitary supplies and abducted our medic. At dawn, we heard the echoes of rapid gunfire. A small convoy of Wehrmacht motor vehicles had been attacked. The Germans were trapped in a narrow mountain gorge. They fought back with machine guns and hand grenades. They put the partisans to flight. One Wehrmacht officer had been mortally wounded. Other injured soldiers were hurriedly carried away on stretchers.

An immediate alarm was sounded by German and Hungarian army units. We were rushed out of bivouacs for a hasty roll call. All men were accounted for as no one had taken part in the ambush. The villagers were rounded up and grilled at length to disclose the identity of the attackers. Women and children were horsewhipped and their menfolk were bludgeoned with rifle butts. The culprits were not found. The Wehrmacht decided to exact immediate retribution.

Peasants were chosen at random and strung upside down on tree limbs. They were dangling and swinging to and fro on the tree branches whilst the soldiers were belabouring their heads with their hobnailed boots. The truth about the attackers had to be obtained by any means. The villagers could not help the Wehrmacht, they simply did not know the identity of the partisans who must have been from other villages.

The Germans would not be assuaged, nor did they relent. Their commanding officer, a young lieutenant was convinced of collusion by the peasants. He gave them one more opportunity to confess or they would regret their silence. They cried out in agony that they would cooperate if they only knew of the offenders. The officer did not believe them. He lost his patience and barked an order to his men to unsheathe their bayonets. He would show this rabble the dire consequences of their conspiracy with the partisans.

With their bayonets the soldiers proceeded to peel off flesh from the fingers of their victims. The German officer laughed hysterically, "We'll sharpen your fingers until the bones will look like pencils unless you'll spit out the truth. Out with the truth, you stinking animals." The peasants squirmed and writhed in their death throws. Their blood coloured the ground. They moaned in pain and then fainted. The officer snarled like a rabid dog.

The remainder of the habitants were herded together and with whips cracking on their backs were driven out of their village. Their huts were set afire, their cattle was loaded onto a Wehrmacht truck and the conquering army moved out of the hamlet braying the words of one of their favourite songs, Wir werden weitermarschieren, wenn alles in Scherben zerfallt, denn heute gehort uns Deutschland and morgen die ganze Welt. (We will march on whether everything breaks into shards, for today ours is Germany, and tomorrow the whole world.)
War and Hope A World War II Memoir by Ludwig Matyas

[Futurist]

Source, please?

[wm]

I could only offer better reading glasses.

[Futurist]

I could only offer better reading glasses.

I meant the page number(s).

[wm]

It's from a Kindle book, no page numbers there.
Page numbers are so last century anyway, the proper way to do it is to search for relevant keywords.

[Futurist]

It's from a Kindle book, no page numbers there.
Page numbers are so last century anyway, the proper way to do it is to search for relevant keywords.

But what if the relevant keywords are all over the book?

[GregSingh]

Well, perhaps name of the village was Porzecze? Do we know in which pre-WWII Polish county?

[ROLAND1369]

The whole thing sound more like an excerpt from a Sven Hassel novel. Particularly the bit about sharpening their fingers with bayonets, as well as singing the song on departure. this as well as the very doubtful language used by the officer makes this sound at best a propaganda story.

[wm]

I see no indication he invented the story.
He wasn't some random hater, actually, he was friendly with everyone including Germans, especially German women. He judged people individually if someone was a pos he was a pos but not the group or his nation.
I've never seen a wartime memoir with so little hate towards the other side. He was born in Vienna and he loved Vienna - pre-war and post-war. And he called Hungary his homeland.

Even more, he didn't even like those peasants. He describes them as sly, sh.tty people - and really he probably was right.
It was the only atrocity he ever witnessed.

Singing was popular and was frequently required because the army believed in the beneficial effect of marching choirs as he wrote.

[wm]

Well, perhaps name of the village was Porzecze? Do we know in which pre-WWII Polish county?

Unfortunately, it seems unlikely we could dismiss the "Odh" so lightly, even considering Hungarian is one of the strangest and hardest to learn languages in this galaxy.

This is all we have:

In early April, 1944, during a premature thaw in the weather, we received our army pay in Zlotys, the Polish currency. We shouldered our gears, marched out of Hukliva, crossed the mountain pass [Вере́цький перевал, Verecke Pass?], and arrived in our first Polish stopover, the village of Odhporzecz.

Hukliva is Гукливий today.

[history1]

The whole thing sound more like an excerpt from a Sven Hassel novel. Particularly the bit about sharpening their fingers with bayonets, as well as singing the song on departure. this as well as the very doubtful language used by the officer makes this sound at best a propaganda story.

Exactly! The language the autor is using is everything but a witnesses testimony. Eg, : "officer barked orders" "The officer snarled like a rabid dog. ".
And interesting that wm again talks about an alleged war crime by the Wehrmacht but ignores the assault of unlawful belligerents on lawful belligerents/combatants what is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

[...] Under Geneva Convention III, lawful belligerents comprise members of the armed forces as well as the members of militias, voluntary corps, and organized resistance groups who are commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates, have a distinctive sign, carry arms openly, and conduct operations lawfully. [...]

Sources:
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/ihl/COM/375-590007
https://www.britannica.com/topic/belligerency

[GregSingh]

Quite possibly it's Oporzec.
Only 5km NE from Hukliva, but getting there over Verecke Pass seems like the longest possible route.

[history1]

[...] Their huts were set afire, their cattle was loaded onto a Wehrmacht truck and the conquering army moved out of the hamlet braying the words of one of their favourite songs, Wir werden weitermarschieren, wenn alles in Scherben zerfallt, denn heute gehort uns Deutschland and morgen die ganze Welt. [...][/size]

The song title is "Es zittern die morschen Knochen" but how could the author know this when he even doesn´t know simple military ranks?
A screenshot from the book "War and Hope A World War II Memoir" by Ludwig Matyas:
"Comparative rooster of US and German Military Ranks World War II"

So according Matyas the Wehrmacht had only one enlisted men rank and one NCO- rank? He also missed to mention several SS-ranks! What an illiterate.

[wm]

You are right, he - the offspring of working-class parents from Vienna wasn't especially literate in anything. After all, he called the Baltic Sea an Ocean.

It's not a police report, he wasn't a historian - he was a young worker from Vienna clumsily writing about something he saw.

[wm]

Quite possibly it's Oporzec.
Only 5km NE from Hukliva, but getting there over Verecke Pass seems like the longest possible route.

Wow, you're a one-man shock research brigade.
But actually google maps recommends even a longer route (Verecke Pass is near Klymets):