Nowy Dwór railway accident

The Nowy Dwór railway accident probably never happened.

The message

On October 22, 1949, at “ Nowy Dwór ”, a place name that occurs several times in Poland , an express train traveling from Danzig to Warsaw derailed in a curve . The locomotive and some wagons overturned. 200 people were killed. That would be a rare occurrence in a railroad accident . But there was no confirmation of this at the time. The regime at that time basically tried to suppress information about such traffic, industrial or mining disasters. On the other hand, when the Cold War began , it was hardly possible to check such reports from abroad.

But even afterwards there was never any confirmation of the accident , not even after the political change . No documents or witnesses (victims, employees of rescue services and hospitals, injured persons, survivors or relatives of victims) have become known. After the fall of the Wall, documents or witnesses were found in most of the cases in which such accidents had been concealed - even if the extent of the damage was much smaller. Therefore this accident is to be classified as a false report.

Original source

The oldest known source is a report by the Associated Press , which was published in numerous American regional newspapers on October 24 and 25, 1949 and refers to "unofficial but trustworthy sources". Based on this, the information was passed on in (specialist) literature and later on the Internet . The photo that can be found on the Internet that allegedly shows the scene of the accident is actually from a collection in the Library of Congress and shows an American railway accident in the 1910s.

distribution

Internet

• HistoryOrb mentions it as a one-liner rather than a fake. Also available as a clone under Take me back .
• NN : “Katastrofy kolejowe w Polsce, w 1949 r. mogło zginąć nawet 200 osób ” . Three short sentences in: Tygodnik Zamojski from March 4, 2012.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Peter Semmens (without further indication of the source): " Catastrophes on Rails " (Transpress, 1996, translation of " Railway Disasters of the World ", 1992)
2. ↑ Feralne miejsce. 18 lat temu też czołowe zderzenie. TVN24
3. ↑ Jakie tragedie zatajono w PRL-u? Katastrofy kolejowe, o których się never mówiło. Polskatimes.pl
4. ↑ Tomasz Tokarz: Cisza w służbie cenzury. "Kultura i Historia". ISSN  1642-9826
5. ↑ Kamil Rutecki: O cenzurze w PRL-u. ( Memento of the original from August 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Pp. 7-9 
6. ↑ PRL zatajone katastrofy… ( Memento of the original from December 30, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
7. ↑ z. B. The Milwaukee Journal ( PDF ), Geneva Daily Times ( PDF ), Reading Eagle ( PDF ), The Gastonia Gazette , Long Beach Press Telegram , Reno Evening Gazette , Kingston Daily Freeman (October 24, 1949); The Kansas City Star , The Daily Capital News ( Jefferson City ) (October 25, 1949).
8. ↑ Katastrofy .

Remarks

1. ↑ "Nowy Dwór" means "New Court". After NN: Communist Poland's to Nowy Dwor Mazowiecki be meant.
2. ^ NN: Westbrook Train Wreck .