Bezirk Bialystok - History

History

After the start of Operation Barbarossa invading Wehrmacht soldiers mass murdered 379 people, pacified 30 villages, burned down 640 houses and 1385 industrial buildings

The first decree for the implementation of Civil Administration in these newly occupied eastern territories were issued on 17 July 1941. The borders for this area ran from the southeastern protrusion of East Prussia (the Suwalki triangle) following the Neman river up to Mosty (excluding Grodno), including Volkovysk and Pruzhany up to the Bug River to the west of Brest-Litovsk and then following the border of the General Government to East Prussia.

The establishment of the Bezirk Bialystok followed on 1 August 1941; it was simultaneously excluded from the operational zones of the German Army in the Soviet Union. From then until 1944, Gestapo and SS engaged in executions in the area, for example in Nowosiółki forests near Choroszcze alone they executed 4,000 people. Other places of execution and atrocities existed like Osuszek forest near village of Piliki.

At the same time, some small lands to the east of the 1939–1941 German-Soviet border were incorporated into the East Prussian district of Scharfenwiese. With this the city of Scharfenwiese henceforth held more hinterland to the east.

The center of administration for the eponymous Bezirk Bialystok was the city of Białystok. The East Prussian Higher President and Gauleiter Erich Koch from Königsberg (modern-day Kaliningrad) was appointed Civilian Commissioner for the area, later Chief of Civil Administration (Chef-der-Zivilverwaltung).

During first stage of Nazi repressions they concerned mostly the inhabitants of villages who were subject to collective punishment. Pacifications were enacted to crush any resistance movement, stop assistance to independence movement and escaped POWs and Jews. During pacification all or most buildings were destroyed, possessions were robbed, and the local population was either murdered or sent to labor camps or prisons.

On 1 November 1941 the city of Grodno including its surroundings was transferred from the Reichskommissariat Ostland to the Bezirk Bialystok. It was later renamed to Garten (En: "Garden") in 1942.

During the night of 15–16 August 1943, the Białystok Ghetto Uprising was an insurrection in Poland's Białystok Ghetto against Germany by several hundred Polish Jews started an armed struggle against the troops carrying out liquidation of 15,000 people still living in the Ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp. It was organized and led by Antyfaszystowska Organizacja Bojowa, a part of the Anti-Fascist Block, and was the second largest ghetto uprising, after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II.

On 20 October 1943 the southern border of the East Prussian district Sudauen (Suwałki) in the Province of East Prussia with the Bezirk Bialystok was adjusted and moved back on the northern side of the Augustów Canal.

In July and August 1944 the Bezirk Bialystok was occupied up to the Narew-Bobr line by the Red Army. The government seat for the Chief of Civil Administration was then moved to Bartenstein.

In January 1945 the Red Army re-occupied the last areas of the Bezirk Bialystok, namely the remaining parts of the districts Łomża and Grajewo, driving the Germans completely out of the territory.