Death in Poland: The Fate of the Ethnic Germans

[Zyklop]

Death in Poland: The Fate of the Ethnic Germans

by Edwin Erich Dwinger


The deportation and expulsion and the mass murder of the ethnic Germans before and at the beginning of the war in Poland was by no means confined to the "Bloody Sunday of Bromberg", which is only too often downplayed or even denied outright today. In this book the reader experiences almost first-hand the terrible fate of tens of thousands of ethnic Germans in Poland at the outbreak of the war in 1939. This English translation, published here for the first time in 2004, commemorates the 65th anniversary of these events that are an eternal stain on the family bibles of all subsequent Polish generations!

A Word in Advance
Preamble
Chapter 1: The Beginning - September 3, 1939
Chapter 2: The Fate of a Bromberg Family - the Schmiedes
Chapter 3: The Fate of a Bromberg Family - the Radlers
Chapter 4: Bromberg Highlights
Chapter 5: The Danse Macabre of Bromberg Spreads
Chapter 6: Murder on Jesuit Lake
Chapter 7: The Massacre of Slonsk
Chapter 8: The Fate of Factory Owner Mathes and his Sons
Chapter 9: The Death March of Bromberg (Part 1)
Chapter 10: The Death March of Thorn (Part 1)
Chapter 11: The Death March of Bromberg (Part 2)
Chapter 12: The Death March of Thorn (Part 2)
Chapter 13: The Death March of Bromberg
Joins With One from Pommerellen
Chapter 14: Towards Warsaw: The Death March of Thorn
Chapter 15: The Death March of Bromberg: Finally, Freedom in Lowitsch
Chapter 16: The Death March of Thorn:
Through the Hell of Warsaw - to Freedom
Postscript by The Scriptorium: 65 Years Later

[bocian]

Claims of Polish atrocities against Germans

Most controversial is case of Bydgoszcz events in September the 3rd. Polish witnesses testified that early that day Polish army withdrawing via Bydgoszcz was attacked by diversants; someone was shooting at soldiers and civilians from roofs and church towers. The fact of shooting is confirmed by some German witnesses.

Polish soldiers claimed that German diversants were shooting at them and started to search houses. In the next hours a disputed number of Germans were executed, most of them probably innocent of subversive involvement. The scale of the event is controversial. De Zayas estimates it for 2000. Hugo Rasmus compared Bydgoszcz address books and data for population for 1939 with Nazi lists of supposed victims and found 358 persons known from name who died that day in Bydgoszcz. Most of them are female and children. Jastrzebski, Polish historian, initially doubting in the scale of event, now is backing the Hugo Rasmus' number, thinking that Polish official government was unable to control the mob and sanctioned later what was in fact lynch. However, Jastrzebski has bad opinion among Polish historians, because he used to support communists propaganda.

Initially, Nazis claimed that 5000 Germans died in Poland in September 1939. Later, they inflated that number in 1940 to 58,000, and Hitler personally raised that number to over 60,000. De Zayas now estimates "conservatively" that number to be 5,000. Although many of those killed were victims of the war conditions (many Germans were drafted to Polish army for example, cities were bombed by Luftwaffe and artillery, civilians on the roads were strafed), it's without doubt that some Germans were victims of local acts of violence, of which Bydgoszcz was the most known example.

As the act of revenge, imidiately 3000 of Poles were victims of street executions.


Reasoning

A common argument for the lack of provocation by Germans of Polish soldiers, is the contention that no Germans in Poland had been allowed to possess weapons for years. It would not be realistic to believe that all weapons had been removed, surely some had hidden their guns, rather than turning them in, if only for economic reasons. It is also believed that German sabotageurs acting in other cities were provided weapons from outside and so also for those in Bydgoszcz. While there are German documents confirming actions by saboteurs in other cities, no such documents are preserved in case of Bydgoszcz; one may assume, that it would be unlikely that German secret services would omit Bydgoszcz specifically from its actions.

There are also Polish claims of German atrocities against Poles in Bydgoszcz, cited in the evidence given to the War Crimes Tribunals. A document produced by the Polish authorities claims that:
"On 3 September 1939, at 1015 in the morning, German Fifth Columnists attacked Polish troop units retreating from Bromberg. During the fighting 238 Polish soldiers and 223 German Fifth Columnists were killed. As a consequence of the events after the entrance of the German troops into the town of Bromberg, they began mass executions, arrests, and deportations of Polish citizens to concentration camps, which were performed by the German authorities, the SS, and the Gestapo. There were 10,500 murdered, and 13,000 exterminated in the camps.

However, the updated version of Polish claims should by confirmed by IPN.

Source: Nuremberg Trial Proceedings. Vol. 9, day 88, Friday, 22 March 1946

Literature: Dywersja czy masakra? Wlodzimierz Jastrzebski, Gdansk 1988.


Other German claims

After invasion against Poland by German forces a number of ethnic Germans were collected by the Polish authorities from of a number of cities and towns and sent on a march, herded from town to town. Some German sources claim that many of them were murdered including many pastors, precisely because they were now the 'official link' remaining to the ethnic Germans. It's hard to say how many Germans died during such marches; a few German historians claim the number as high as 1700 and attributes it mainly to Polish atrocities, but Polish side points that since Germans were marching during war, most of losses should be attributed to war conditions, especially since many German witnesses confirm, that columns were sometimes attacked by Luftwaffe (which strafed all civilians on the roads) and artillery.

----------------------------------------------------------------------


The National Remembrance Institute (IPN) intends to explain the circumstances behind one of the tragic episodes of World War II-the events that took place Sept. 3, 1939 in Bydgoszcz and went down in history as "Bloody Sunday." They included an attack by German saboteurs on the withdrawing Polish troops. The attack was fought off; in an act of revenge, having seized Bydgoszcz, the Germans committed mass murders of Poles.

The case of Bloody Sunday has recently become the topic of heated historical debate. According to some accounts, the events did not involve German sabotage at all, but only an outbreak of panic resulting in uncontrolled shooting in the city streets. Later, lynching laws were carried out on the German residents of Bydgoszcz who were accused of shooting soldiers. According to the IPN, these historical controversies need to be clarified.

A several-thousand-member German minority, influenced by Nazi ideology, resided in Bydgoszcz before 1939. After the attack on Poland, the Third Reich needed a propaganda trump card in the form of a German "uprising." Groups of saboteurs dressed in Polish military, police and railway personnel uniforms were transported to Bydgoszcz. On the morning of Sept. 3, the saboteurs began shooting at crowds of refugees simultaneously in 50 spots around the city.

After a momentary shock, the commanders of the Polish army counteracted. Military patrols supported by civilians suppressed the sabotage. About 200 Germans and 300 Poles died in the fighting. All detainees were released. Having seized Bydgoszcz, the Germans arrested several thousand Poles and sent them to concentration camps. A total of 1,500 Poles were executed.

Recently, Prof. Wlodzimierz Jastrzebski from the Bydgoszcz Academy stated that no sabotage had taken place, only "panic and psychosis of a defeat which lead to pogroms of the German population."

[Zyklop]

Originally Posted by bocian

Source: Nuremberg Trial Proceedings.

Enough said.

[bocian]

Originally Posted by Zyklop

Enough said.

Sure, everything is a lie. Believe what you want to believe.

There are two sides to every story.

"Krwawa Niedziela" w Bydgoszczy

[Zyklop]

Originally Posted by bocian

There are two sides to every story.

True. That of those who won the war and write the history books and that of those who lost.

[bocian]

Originally Posted by Zyklop

True. That of those who won the war and write the history books and that of those who lost.

The same old excuses.

[Zyklop]

Originally Posted by bocian

The same old excuses.

No need for excuses. As a nationalist I stick by my people first. I don´t mind when Poles do the same.
At least more honest than this utopian Pan-Europeanism.

[bocian]

Originally Posted by Zyklop

No need for excuses. As a nationalist I stick by my people first. I don´t mind when Poles do the same.

Great, we're making some progress.

To be honest, a hardcore nationalist is something I can't claim to be, maybe just a patriot.

[Theobald]

What a shame !

I hope Eastern-Germans areas, like Silesia, Dantzig or Pomerania, will be given back to Great Germany... These areas don't belong to Poland, but are Germanic for centuries and centuries...
And if Poles don't agree, they can recover their areas in the East at the expense of Bielorussians and Ruskies

[Vojvoda]

Should Elsass-Lothringen be given back to Great Germany as well?

[Biggles]

Originally Posted by Zyklop

No need for excuses. As a nationalist I stick by my people first. I don´t mind when Poles do the same.
At least more honest than this utopian Pan-Europeanism.

So then you understand my defending of Churchill.

[Theobald]

Originally Posted by Vožd

Should Elsass-Lothringen be given back to Great Germany as well?

It isn't the same situation... German citizens were never expelled from Elsass and Lothringen... Simply because there weren't German citizens in Elsass and Lothringen in 1945...

[Zyklop]

Originally Posted by Mr Curzon Biggles

So then you understand my defending of Churchill.

No, because first of all you are no nationalist and second you are happy with the official story that was indoctrinated to you. You are not far from all those flag waving yankees.

[Spartadux]

The same Churchill realized after the war that he pursued a vetero imperlistic policy which didn't worked because he wanted to make dishes with Stalin and Tito.
He claimed underground alliance with the reds (Though he didn't stand reds in UK) and later he has been tricked because all the balkans where Brits wanted to have a basement became reds without any problem.
Later all the Biritish Empire falled under guns of decolonization and so Churchill lost the elections
The Britihs Bulldog could work in the age of Victoria but right later it was already outside of time.

PANEUROPA as was considered by Thiriart is the only way to face the actual challenges, the rest is a bullshit because we talk about flags becaming meaningless year by year.
No money for the folk, no value if not usurian value, nor streets for Europeans neither control over our economical politics and some still think to old nationalism of Pangermania, or England rules the waves or The Holy Poland of the Pope or Greater Serbia?
I think is really without meanings right now, my comrades are my nationals as first but in some sort of way i support more some who thinks similar to me in its coutry than some sort of enemy of my own passport.
With paneuropean imperial idea same nationals on a same territory are granted to be fre and expressing themselves as ethno. Differentely there is only a civl war which never ends.

[Vojvoda]

Originally Posted by Der Elsasser

It isn't the same situation... German citizens were never expelled from Elsass and Lothringen... Simply because there weren't German citizens in Elsass and Lothringen in 1945...

Sure,so what happened after WW1 doesn't count I guess.

[Biggles]

Originally Posted by Zyklop

No, because first of all you are no nationalist and second you are happy with the official story that was indoctrinated to you. You are not far from all those mindless flag waving yankees.

So you would just turn a blind eye to the demeaning of your wartime leader ?, i doubt it.

[Theobald]

Originally Posted by Vožd

Sure,so what happened after WW1 doesn't count I guess.

And what Serbian communists made against Croatian people after WW2 is an heroic nationalist act I think.

[Gesta Bellica]

Just curious, but i wonder...what makes all these super-nationalists-my nation-above-all that truth is ALWAYS by their side and that "official" history is right when it says they are the good guys, while it's a mystification when it says otherwise?
We ital