President Andrzej Duda and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier commemorated the victims of the slaughter of Warsaw’s Wola district by laying wreaths at the site of the largest mass execution of the civilian inhabitants by German troops in early August 1944.

During the Warsaw Uprising, German troops committed several mass murders of the city’s civilian population. One of the greatest crimes was the so-called Wola Massacre, as a result of which, in the first days of August 1944, tens of thousands of inhabitants of this district were brutally murdered.

Presidents Duda and Steinmeier, laid wreaths at the monument in Warsaw’s Młynów district, located at the site of one of the largest mass executions in Warsaw during the uprising and the largest in Wola. Thursday’s ceremony was also attended by Polish scouts, the living witnesses and residents of Wola.

„They were led out of their homes…their houses were set on fire, and they were shot in the streets, and their bodies were burned,” Duda said, describing the German atrocities.

„Several tonnes of ashes were collected from the streets and squares of Wola to be placed in a common grave,” the President added.

President Duda said that Germany’s president’s readiness to say sorry and commemorate the victims requires respect. 

By around 12 August around 60,000 civilians had been murdered in Wola. „They were led out of their houses, tenements, their houses were set on fire and they were shot in the streets and their bodies were burned. Several tonnes of ashes were collected from the streets and squares of Wola to be deposited in a common grave,” he said.

The slaughter of the inhabitants of the capital’s Wola district was part of the actions of the German troops on direct orders from Adolf Hitler, which included the demolition of Warsaw and murder of its inhabitants. 

According to various estimates, between 50,000 and 60,000 inhabitants of the district were murdered in mass executions. The large-scale extermination ended on 7 August, but continued to a lesser extent until 12 August, only when General Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski stopped massacres to use the living civilians as slave labour force for the German economy.

Source: PAP

Photo: x/@dpawlos

Tomasz Modrzejewski