Częstochowa massacre

The city of Częstochowa (population 117,000 in 1931) was overrun by the German Army on 3 September 1939 without a fight, during the German invasion of Poland, as the Polish Army "Kraków" units of the 7th Infantry Division, stationing there, had withdrawn the previous day. Many able-bodied men left the city along with the Polish soldiers. The 42 Infantry Regiment "Bayreuth" of the Wehrmacht's 10th Army entered the city early in the afternoon. On that day, their guns were not loaded, as the Wehrmacht command was more concerned with the risk of "friendly fire" caused by inexperience and nervousness on the part of the troops, than of possible threat from the Polish rear guard. Notably, the German wild shootings caused by fear had broken out elsewhere, often leading to massacres of civilians as in Kajetanowice. Archived diaries of the German soldiers, as well as the official army reports, reveal that the remaining civilian population of the city acted peacefully and did not obstruct the German army in any way. The evening of 3 September passed without any incidents. Searches of houses and business premises turned up no concealed weapons. ==Massacre==

entering the suburbs of Czestochowa The Regimental headquarters, located 20 km south of the city, received a report on the evening of 4 September from the German units of the 42nd Regiment (46th Infantry Division (Wehrmacht)), However, subsequent reports and testimonies of soldiers inform that none of the German witnesses were able to describe the supposed attackers. German soldiers who then used the imagined or invented "Polish partisans" as an excuse for their rash actions and the massacre that followed. This collection of photos was acquired by an American soldier from a captured German machine gunner near the end of the war. including 194 men, 25 women, and 8 children; 22 victims were identified as Jewish. The bodies were exhumed in several locations including at Krakowska Street (54), at Garncarska (40), by the city hall (48), and at Piotrkowska Street (4). (more than 40,000 Jews were later murdered after the liquidation of the Częstochowa Ghetto). ==Similar incidents==

One of the regiments that carried out the massacres in Częstochowa was two days later involved in a very similar incident in the Polish village of Kajetanowice, although on a smaller scale. Once again, unknown shots were fired at the regiment (again most likely due to friendly fire) which caused nervous soldiers to begin shooting wildly. "They blindly shot up the houses", according to eyewitnesses, and then ordered all men of the village to gather in an open field. There, those that complied with the order were executed. In all 72 victims of the Kajetanowice massacre were identified (one-third of the village's inhabitants), including an infant, five little children, fourteen teenagers, twelve women and six elderly persons. One of the soldiers involved in the action told eyewitness Wiktoria Czech that he knew the villagers were innocent but that the regiment had received orders to kill all civilians. Another soldier commented that "Poles should be murdered when they're still in the crib". Subsequently, the entire village was burned to the ground. The "losses" of the German units of the 42nd regiment in Kajetanowice consisted of two dead horses, both most likely shot by friendly fire. The official report of the unit stated that the massacre and burning of the village was carried out as revenge for the shooting of two German horses. ==Postwar investigations==

An investigation of the massacre was carried out in Bayreuth, Germany, in 1985, regarding former soldiers of the 42nd Infantry Regiment. Most of them still claimed to have been shot at from nearby houses prior to the massacre but none could describe the supposed attackers. One former soldier even admitted that he had no idea if the supposed attackers were "soldiers, partisans or civilians". Several former soldiers admitted that a general panic had broken out among German troops, with everyone running to get their weapons, stumbling over each other and shooting wildly. One of the officers of the regiment recalled that he had been furious at his soldiers for their complete lack of discipline. Former soldiers of the unit also admitted that in the search that followed they did not find any weapons, or for that matter, able-bodied men, only a few women with children and some elderly persons. Former soldier Hans M. stated "I never saw any partisans in Częstochowa with my own eyes". Also in 2009, the diaries of Bolesław Kurkowski were discovered. Kurkowski witnessed the massacres and later took part in the 1940 exhumation of some of the bodies, as a forced laborer (the existence of the diaries had been known beforehand from several available fragments). On the 70th anniversary of the German invasion of Poland, September 2009, the German public broadcaster Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg was planning to shoot a documentary film on the subject of the massacre in Częstochowa, since the war atrocities of the Wehrmacht were not widely known in Germany (in contrast to war atrocities of the SS and those committed after Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union). ==See also==