Wola Massacre - Massacre

Massacre

Two days after the start of the fighting on 2 August, SS General Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski was placed in command of all German forces in Warsaw. By then several parts of the city were now held by units from the Polish Home Army. Following direct orders from SS-Reichfuhrer Heinrich Himmler to show no mercy, his strategy was to use terror tactics against all inhabitants of Warsaw to decisively end the uprising and crush the fighting spirit of the Poles. No distinction would be made between Polish insurgents and civilians. Prof. Timothy Snyder, from Yale University, wrote "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".

On 5 August, three battle groups started their advance westward along Wolska and Górczewska streets toward Aleje Jerozolimskie, the principal East-West road through the city center. The German forces comprised units from the Wehrmacht and SS Police Battalions, as well as the S.S. Sturmbrigade R.O.N.A. and the SS-Dirlewanger Brigade, an infamous Waffen SS penal unit led by Oskar Dirlewanger. British historian Martin Windrow described them as a "terrifying rabble" of "cut-throats, renegades, sadistic morons, and cashiered rejects from other units".

Shortly after the advance had started towards the centre of Warsaw, the two lead battle groups of Kampfgruppe "Rohr" (led by Generalmajor Günter Rohr) and "Reinefarth" were halted by heavy fire from Polish resistance fighters. 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. Estimates vary, but it is believed that up to 10,000 civilians were killed in the Wola district on August 5 alone, the first day of the operation to crush the uprising in Warsaw. Most of the victims were the elderly, women and children.

Most of these atrocities were committed by troops under the command of SS-Oberführer Oskar Dirlewanger and SS-Brigadeführer Bronislav Kaminski. Research historian Martin Gilbert, from the University of Oxford, wrote:

"More than fifteen thousand Polish civilians had been murdered by German troops in Warsaw. At 5:30 that evening, 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 find 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 Zelewski's order: by rape, murder, torture and fire, 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."

The next day, the Polish resistance, comprising Batalion Zośka and two captured Panther tanks belonging to a unit commanded by Wacław Micuta, managed to capture the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Warsaw concentration camp. The area became one of the main communication links between the Polish fighters holding Wola and those defending the Warsaw Old Town. On 7 August 1944, the German ground forces were strengthened with tanks. To enhance their effectiveness, the Nazis forced civilian women onto the armoured vehicles as human shields. Within two days, these tactics had helped the Germans fight their way to the Plac Bankowy and cut the Wola district in half.

Nazi units also burned down two local hospitals with some of the patients still inside. Hundreds of other patients and personnel were killed indiscriminate gunfire and grenades, or selected and led away for executions. A large share of killings took place at the railway enbankment in the area of Górczewska Street as well as in the two factories along Wolska Street (a filia of Ursus Factory at Wolska 55 and Franaszka Factory at Wolska 41/45) and in the Pfeiffer Factory at Okopowa 57/59. At each of these four locations, thousands of people were systematically executed in mass shootings, having been previously rounded-up in other places and taken there in groups.

On August 12, the order was given to stop all indiscriminate killing of Polish civilians. SS general von dem Bach-Zelewski issued a new directive that stated captured civilians were to be sent to concentration camps or to Arbeitslager. Some Polish civilians were formed into Verbrennungskommando ("burning detachment") by the SS and forced to hide evidence of the massacre by burning victims' bodies and their homes. The men put to work in such groups were later executed.