The night of Wildenhagen
The Night of Wildenhagen is a book by Włodzimierz Nowak with a collection of twelve reports on twelve German-Polish fates during the final phase of the Second World War . In 2010, Włodzimierz Nowak received the Georg Dehio Book Prize for this book .
Wildenhagen, today's Lubin in the Polish Lebus voivodeship , was a town near Frankfurt on the Oder .
In January 1945 the Red Army reached the small town of Wildenhagen. Immediately before their invasion, fear and panic arose there. A quarter of the village population committed suicide . Influenced by Nazi propaganda , mass hysteria broke out among the women of Wildenhagen and they decided to hang themselves and their children. A group of at least 15 women met in the attic of a farmhouse on January 31st to hang themselves together. All women died. Only one girl was rescued by Red Army soldiers the following day. It was hung by its mother and narrowly escaped death by delaying the requested jump with a rope around its neck. Other women in the village also killed their children: beat them to death or cut their wrists before they committed suicide. More than a quarter of the town's 300 or so residents perished.
Exact figures are not known, the suicides are hardly documented and processed.
The television documentary of the same name by Carmen Eckhardt about the events has been shown repeatedly on various German television channels.
Individual evidence
- ^ Włodzimierz Nowak: The night of Wildenhagen, Twelve German-Polish fates . German first edition, translated from Polish by Joanna Manc, ISBN 978-3-8218-5829-6
- ↑ "The Night of Wildeshagen" in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ)
- ↑ a b The night of Wildenhagen. In: kulturforum.info. April 25, 2007. Retrieved May 24, 2018 .