Terror and Pacification Operations
During the occupation, communities were held collectively responsible for Polish attacks against German troops and mass executions were conducted in reprisal. In the area in and around Bydgoszcz, about 10,000 non-Jewish Polish civilians were murdered in the first four months of the occupation (see Bloody Sunday). German army and paramilitary units composed of Volksdeutsche also participated in executions of civilians.
The Nazis took hostages by the thousands at the time of the invasion and all during their occupation of Poland. Hostages were selected from among the most prominent citizens of occupied cities and villages: priests, professors, doctors, lawyers, as well as leaders of economic and social organizations and the trade unions. Often, however, they were chosen at random from all segments of society and for every German killed a group of between 50 and 100 Polish civilians were executed. About 20,000 villagers, some of whom were burned alive, were killed in large-scale punitive operations targeting the rural settlements suspected of aiding the resistance or hiding Jews and other fugitives. Seventy-five villages were razed in these operations. Poland was the only country in occupied Europe where the penalty for hiding a Jew was death for everyone living in the house; other laws were similarly ruthless.
Read more about this topic: Nazi Crimes Against Ethnic Poles
Famous quotes containing the words terror and, terror and/or operations:
“Napoleon said of Massena, that he was not himself until the battle began to go against him; then, when the dead began to fall in ranks around him, awoke his powers of combination, and he put on terror and victory as a robe.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Sixty years ago they smiled
At lover, husband, first-born child.
Smiles are for youth. For old age come
Death’s terror and delirium.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)