Wola massacre

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Civilians murdered by SS troops in the Wola district of Warsaw in August 1944.

As Wola Massacre ( Polish Rzeź Woli ) is that of the German occupying forces committed mass murder of Polish civilians of Warsaw city part Wola during the Second World War called.

Shortly after the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944, Heinrich Himmler ordered the "Kampfgruppe Reinefarth", consisting essentially of SS units and divisions of the Ordnungspolizei , to attack Wola, which was occupied by the Polish Home Army . In the course of the fighting - especially between August 5th and 7th - there were brutal attacks and mass executions of the population. The number of Polish civilians murdered in those three days is estimated at around 30,000. According to estimates, up to 50,000 inhabitants of Volas lost their lives by August 12, 1944. The action determined by Adolf Hitler was intended to break the will of the Polish troops to fight , deprive them of the support of the population and thus spare the German units the expected losses in house-to-house warfare. This goal was not achieved. In terms of the number of victims, the Wola massacre was the largest war crime on European soil in World War II.

Warsaw Uprising

On August 1, 1944, the Warsaw Uprising broke out in occupied Warsaw . Contrary to the proposal of the Chief of Staff, Heinz Guderian, Hitler did not commission the Wehrmacht , but the SS to put down this uprising, which initially seemed to him and Himmler to be a favorable pretext for destroying the city of Warsaw and creating a deterrent to other occupied territories.

Areas in Warsaw captured by the Home Army on August 4, 1944. The occupied part of the Wola city district is located in the western part of the central area.
Entry of soldiers of the Waffen SS, presumably on Chłodna Street ; probably near the Mirów halls and therefore after August 8, 1944.
SS group leader Heinz Reinefarth, the "butcher of Wola", with Cossack auxiliaries
An informant shows Reinefarth and his staff positions in the Home Army in Wola.

Involved German units and management personnel

On August 3, the Reichsführer SS Himmler in Posen first appointed the Higher SS and Police Leader of the Reichsgau Wartheland , Heinz Reinefarth , to be responsible for the crackdown. Its chief of staff was Colonel Kurt Fischer. SS-Hauptsturmführer and Kriminalrat Alfred Spilker was also one of Reinefarth's subordinates; he was as head of the task force of the Security Police and Security Service (to the task force of the Security Police 7a when belonged 9th Army and the assumed security police station of Pawiak wide responsibility -Gefängnisses) of the massacre in Wola be. On August 3, Reinefarth, later referred to as the "executioner of Warsaw", reported in the evening at the command post of the 9th Army stationed near Warsaw, to which he was initially subordinate. During the next day he familiarized himself with the situation in Warsaw. On August 5, 1944, he reported the first day's deployment of his group to the Commander-in-Chief of the 9th Army, General of the Panzer Troop Nikolaus von Vormann .

On August 5, 1944, SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski received an order from Hitler to put down the uprising. He was directly subordinate to Himmler and he was given the supreme command of all German troops in Warsaw (corps group "Von dem Bach") . The later SS-Hauptsturmführer Kurt Krull became his Ia . The corps initially consisted of "battle group Reinefarth" and formed on August 2, 1944 by Major General Günther pipe out "battle group Pipe" (next to disposal of the Bach-Zalewski numerous, smaller Wehrmacht units -. Mostly in department or battery strength This belonged to artillery, infantry, Sturmpionier and Panzergrenadier troops). A field replacement battalion of the parachute tank division "Hermann Göring" was ready to provide support. From September 1944, von dem Bach-Zelewski was also assigned to the 19th Panzer Division under Lieutenant General Hans Källner .

The "battle group pipe" were under the Warsaw police units (this included various departments of the work and train protection) under SS and Police Chief Paul Otto Geibel and consisting only of two battalions and 1,700 men strong, on August 4 from Częstochowa approach guided SS -Division "RONA" under Bronislaw Kaminski and his regimental commander Major Juri Frolow. He also had some Wehrmacht units.

In Wola, the "Kampfgruppe Reinefarth" was deployed under its commander Reinefarth. It comprised some battle-tested units of the SS that had already been noticed in the past due to their brutal actions and consisted of around 6,000 men. The core of the group was the notorious SS special unit "Dirlewanger" of the convicted SS-Standartenführer Oskar Dirlewanger , which consisted of two battalions and had been requested from Lyck . Initially, Dirlewanger, brought in via the suburb of Sochaczew , only had 16 officers and 865 men. On August 4, 1944, his unit was filled with around 1900 inmates from the Danzig-Matzkau SS penal institution and its name was changed to "Storm Brigade". In the days that followed, Dirlewanger received another 600 men. Dirlewanger was assigned a third battalion - the II. Azerbaijani Battalion "Bergmann" .

The second unit of the Reinefarth group were units of the Ordnungspolizei that had been withdrawn from Posen. This troop , also known as the "Poznan Group" , originally consisted of 16 gendarmerie companies from Poznan, Gniezno , Rawitsch , Pabianitz and other cities. Due to losses it had to be reduced to two police regiments with a total of 12 companies. The Poznan troops also included a company from the SS Junker School Braunschweig from Poznan-Treskau. The almost 3,000-strong units were inadequately equipped with heavy weapons.

Finally, the group was assigned the security regiment 608 of the 203rd security division with its three battalions - consisting of 20 officers and around 600 men and non-commissioned officers - under Colonel Willi Schmidt. The soldiers of this unit had been postponed from the front because of their age and were also only partially suitable for the following house-to-house fighting.

The von dem Bach-Zelewskis units included various, smaller " alien units" in which Russians, Cossacks , Turkmen (these were five Cossack detachments, two Russian cavalry detachments and two East Muslim SS companies ) and other Azerbaijanis ( Azerbaijani infantry -Bataillon I / 111 under Captain Werner Scharrenberg with a manpower of 200) served. In total, about 11,000 men were available from Bach-Zelewski in the first two weeks of August. Since some units of the Russian Kaminski Division were to operate in addition to their main area of ​​operation in Ochota in the Wola district, around half of the soldiers deployed in the German troops in Wola did not speak German.

course

Following Hitler's wish, Himmler had given instructions not to show mercy towards combatants and civilians. The use of terrorist tactics was intended to break the will of the insurgents. During the later Nuremberg trials , von dem Bach-Zelewski described his first meeting with Reinefarth in Warsaw, who was responsible up until then:

“Then Reinefarth drew my attention to Himmler's clear order. The first thing he told me was that no prisoners should be taken and that every inhabitant of Warsaw should be killed. I asked: women and children too? To which he replied: Yes, women and children too. "

Bach-Zelewski, previously assigned to supervise fortifications on the Vistula near Sopot , reached the city on August 5th at 5 p.m. after flying from Gdansk to Wroclaw and driving from there to Warsaw. He first brought his staff to Sochaczew. At the time, German units had been fighting and murdering in Wola for several hours.

Deported civilians pass a German Marder II on Ulica Wolska.
Jewish prisoners in the Gęsiówka camp after their liberation by Polish Home Army units on August 5, 1944

August 5, 1944

Reinefarth set up his command post at the railway viaduct on the Wolska. On the morning of August 5, 1944, later referred to as "Black Saturday" (Czarna Sobota) , around 5000 soldiers were available to him to eliminate the troops of the rebels in Wola and the lieutenant general and city commander Rainer Stahel and his staff, which was enclosed by the Home Army as well as the Warsaw governor Ludwig Fischer in the Brühl-Palast . He held back some of his units (especially police officers) as reserves for this first counterattack by German troops after the start of the uprising.

On the Polish side, the commander-in-chief of the uprising, Antoni Chruściel (pseudonym: "Monter"), had the Radosław group in Wola (named after Lieutenant Colonel Jan Mazurkiewicz, pseudonym "Radosław"). This group consisted of several battalions, five of which consisted of combat-experienced and relatively well-equipped Kedyw units (the Kedyw organization, which operated underground during the occupation of Poland by German troops, was part of the Polish Home Army and was committed to sabotage, assassinations and the armed struggle against German units and collaborators ) had been put together. A large part of this strong troop was, however, deployed to secure the headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief of the Home Army, Tadeusz Komorowski , in the Kamler factory (furniture production, corner of Ulica Okopowa / Ulica Dzielna) on the southwest tip of the former ghetto . The Germans attacking from the west and south-west faced numerically far inferior Polish units - mostly at street barricades. Only at the cemeteries ( Powązki cemetery , Evangelical cemetery , Jewish cemetery , Islamic cemetery and Tatar cemetery ) in the north of Vola was a larger Polish association with around 1000 fighters. These units were able to hold the site until August 10, with high losses (around 50%). Individual barricades were also occupied by members of the former Armia Ludowa .

At 8 o'clock the attack began with a light fire bombardment by the Luftwaffe . Reinefarth had divided his group into four units, which were supported by some tanks provided by the AOK of the 9th Army. Reports on the positions of the Home Army from ethnic Germans living in Wola were incorporated into the preparation of the advance . The German troops began the advance on Wola, which lies in an eastward direction, about two kilometers west of Ulica Towarowa. The battalions of Security Regiment 608 of the 203rd Security Division advanced on the left (northern) flank. When they came across the Jewish cemetery on Ulica Młynarska and the strong Kedyw units lying there, they were stopped by sniper fire. 500 meters further south, the motorized police companies deployed here also got stuck after a few hundred meters advance in the area of ​​the Wola Hospital. Only Dirlewanger's troops, armed with five PaKs and leaning on the Wolska to the east, were able to reach the heights of Towarowa that day. They bypassed a barricade of the poorly equipped Polska Partia Socjalistyczna , which could be eliminated from behind. However, Dirlewanger's men avoided larger enemy contacts. On the first day of the fight, the Home Army lost only 60 soldiers (20 dead, 40 wounded). The German troops only lost six men.

The Germans took action against civilians - mainly women, children and the elderly - all the more bloody. On the now partially conquered Wolska the residents were driven out of their houses over a length of one kilometer and some were executed immediately. Others were driven westward in large groups to the grounds of the Ursus works in the Ursus district and shot there. According to a list of the Polish main commission to investigate Nazi crimes in Poland, at least 10,000 civilians were executed by shot in the neck or by machine gun sheaves along the Wolska alone on August 5, 1944 :

  • Wolska 26: over 100
  • Wolska 43, Pranaszek factory site: approx. 1000
  • Wolska 55, Ursus factory site: a few thousand
  • Wolska 60: approx. 500
  • Wolska 76, St. Adalbert's Church
    (Kościół św. Wojciecha): approx. 400
  • Wolska 78: approx. 3000
  • Wolska 101: a few hundred
  • Wolska 102: a few hundred
  • Wolska 105-108: approx. 2000
  • Wolska 122: approx. 700
  • Wolska, Sowiński Park: approx. 1000
  • Wolska 140, Johannes Klimakos Church
    (Cerkiew Św. Jana Klimaka): approx. 60
  • Wolska 140a, Church of St. Lawrence
    (Kościół św. Wawrzyńca): several hundred
  • Wolska 151: approx. 50

In addition, Dirlewanger's men broke into two hospitals located in Wola (the Wola Hospital on Ulica Płocka and the St. Lazarus Hospital on Ulica Leszno) and murdered around 1,100 patients and their nursing staff here as well. Jan Napiórkowski, a surviving member of the Lazarus Hospital staff later reported:

“The situation was getting worse. The Germans now began calling out men in rows in groups of 10, 15, 25 and finally 50 people. The pauses between calling out and the series of shots became longer and longer. The clergyman Stefan Chwilczynski, who was staying among us, granted those who went out the absolution articulo mortis ; ... In front of this house we saw a wall of dead people about one meter high. Human bodies, partly wrapped in white coats or in hospital dressing gowns, partly in civilian clothes - all bloodied. In front of the heap of corpses two rows of soldiers with the SD badge were posted , four of them in a row with rifles ready to fire ... "

- Janusz Piekałkiewicz: Battle for Warsaw. Stalin's betrayal of the Polish Home Army in 1944. FA Herbig Verlagbuchhandlung, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-7766-1699-7 , pp. 74 ff.

The Kaminski Brigade, coming from the southwest (on the right flank) through Ochota with two points along Ulica Grójecka and the Mokotów airport , which was held by German troops, was supposed to advance to Aleje Jerozolimskie and the large Lindley water filter systems located there from Reinefarth via radio. Through this closer and direct contact, he wanted to ensure that his orders were followed by the troops, which were considered to be unreliable. The two Russian battalions led by Frolov, however, arrived late. Although they were equipped with some captured tanks, they did not have enough ammunition. As a result, they did not attack the defeated Polish units at the barricades in Wawelska and Ulica Kaliska, as ordered. Instead, they ransacked homes and raped and murdered civilians. The Marie Curie Cancer Hospital at 15 Wawelska became the scene of gruesome crimes. Sick women and nurses working here were raped and murdered along with the doctors; partially hanged. Fires were set in the hospital and people were burned to death. Captured men were tortured. In the intoxication of violence and under the influence of alcohol, there were even attacks on German women. So also were KDF -Angehörige raped by soldiers of this brigade and murdered.

Meanwhile, Reinefarth complained to his superior foreman that the ammunition allocated to him was insufficient to shoot all the civilians captured.

At 2 p.m., a company from the Zośka battalion under Wacław Micuta managed to take the Gęsiówka concentration and labor camp with the help of a captured panther main battle tank . Around 500 Jewish prisoners were liberated. In addition, the conquered area made it possible to establish the previously missing connection between the rebels in Wola and the old town .

Civilians are imprisoned in the Adalbert von Prag church in Wola, which has been converted into a transit camp.

August 6, 1944

The next day the attack by the partially regrouped German units continued. In the south there was still the Kaminski Brigade, in the north there were now 3 rifle companies and the company of the SS-Führerschule Braunschweig . In the middle were the two Dirlewanger battalions, now reinforced by the Bergmann battalion as well as police and gendarmerie units from Posen, Litzmannstadt , Pabianitz and from the Gendarmerie School in Weichselstädt . The Reserve Regiment 608 of the 203rd Security Division, the field replacement battalion "Hermann Göring" and six other field gendarmerie companies were available. In addition, the SS-SchuMa-Brigade "Siegling" was on the march.

The groups "Middle" and "North" recorded their first successes, even if on that day with higher losses. Reinefarth himself led the middle group and advanced in the morning with two armored cars along the Ulica Elektoralna and the Ulica Chłodna to the Palais Brühl to the Warsaw Wehrmacht commander Stahel, who was trapped there. In this way, the further procedure could be agreed. In the afternoon, parts of the 1st Dirlewanger Battalion made it to the Saxon Garden . The insurgent battalions “Parasol” and “Zośka” could not prevent the breakthrough. With the creation of the corridor, the parts of the Home Army operating in Wola and Ochota were cut off from one another. The coordination of the action was headed by Major i. G. Völkel. The “South” group, on the other hand, could hardly make any progress. As on the previous day, it was mainly looted and murdered.

Reinefarth's units increasingly used captured civilians as human shields due to the higher losses incurred in cracking down on the insurgents' vigorously defended barricades . Groups of up to 300 Poles - often women and children - had to go in front of the German combat vehicles; others formed living walls behind which German infantrymen took cover. Still others were used to clear the barricades during the fighting.

On the evening of August 6, 1944, the Polish commander-in-chief Komorowski was forced to move his headquarters to the still little contested old town of Warsaw . Also in the evening of the day, Bach-Zelewski ordered the cessation of the looting and shooting of women and children for tactical reasons. The excesses of violence of the two days of the fighting threatened to damage the discipline of the troops. He also realized that the hoped-for effect of the terrorist measures did not materialize. From now on, women and children were no longer to be killed on site, but instead brought to camps and murdered there by special task forces . However, male civilians in Wola continued to be executed. These later shootings were mainly carried out by Hauptsturmführer Spilker's troops, the security police force at Kampfgruppe Reinefarth .

The cremation squad , here in the Wedel House
Signing of the capitulation of the AK at the headquarters of the Bach-Zelewskis (sitting in the middle) in Ożarów Mazowiecki

The following days

On August 7, the German troops received support from tank units that had been brought up in the meantime. Even now, groups of people had to leave as protection from the vehicles. With the help of the reinforcement, the corridor along the Elektoralna could now be expanded and secured, as was Plac Bankowy . Several hundred captured male civilians had to clear barricades; they were then shot in the Mirów halls .

It was not until August 12 that the order was issued not to shoot male civilians either. Von dem Bach-Zelewski ordered such prisoners to be sent to concentration or labor camps . Members of the Home Army were exempt from the regulation and were not granted combatant status.

Military consequences

The idea of ​​the German leadership to turn the Warsaw population against the rebels by perpetrating atrocities was not fulfilled. The opposite was the case. The inhabitants of Warsaw, who were largely skeptical at the beginning of the uprising, now sided with their home army. Their troops seemed to offer the only protection against the unrestrained attacks by the Germans. Tens of thousands of residents of Vola therefore fled to the districts occupied by the Home Army. The readiness to support the AK troops grew there. This strengthened the fighting spirit of the Polish soldiers. The massive influx of residents, however, also exacerbated the supply problems in the occupied territories.

Another consequence of the mass murders in Wola was the increasing brutality of the Polish soldiers. In the following weeks, foreign German soldiers in particular were not captured, but instead executed immediately. This also affected units that did not take part in the shootings in Wola. Their relatives could not expect mercy from the insurgents. In addition, the soldiers of the Home Army began to shoot members of the SS and police. Only members of the Wehrmacht were captured for extradition purposes.

Under these circumstances and also because of the tough house-to-house fighting, the losses of the Germans were very high. Von dem Bach-Zelewski later estimated the number of fallen German soldiers at 17,000; in addition there were 9,000 wounded. In his opinion, the relatively high casualty rate was due to the short combat distances in connection with the accuracy of the Polish fighters. The German losses during the uprising were roughly the same as those during the entire September campaign in 1939.

Combustion Command

From August 8, 1944, a cremation squad, forcibly recruited from arrested Poles, was formed to cremate the murdered people piled up in heaps of corpses. The responsible SS leadership wanted to destroy the traces of the mass murders in addition to preventing the risk of epidemics. The approximately 100 members of the command were largely liquidated after the work was completed around mid-September 1944.

Mass graves in the "Warsaw Uprising Cemetery" (Cmentarz Powstańców Warszawy)
Memorial at the Aleja Solidarności

Consequences for the perpetrator

On November 5, 1944, Reinefarth wrote in the Posener Ostdeutscher Beobachter , a proclamation of the Reich Governor in the Reichsgau Wartheland , under the headline "To the freedom of the Warthegau":

"Whether a soldier, an SS man, a policeman, an SD man ... they all ensured that Poland's metropolis, from which we Germans have suffered so much harm over the centuries, was finally removed as a source of danger ... We also have this enemy defeated and caused him losses of about 1/4 million people "

As early as September 30, 1944, at the request of Bach-Zelewskis, he was awarded the Oak Leaves Knight's Cross as the 608th soldier in the Wehrmacht . For his part, Reinefarth had applied for the Knight's Cross for Dirlewanger, which - praised by Himmler as a “good Swabian” - received it for his work in Warsaw on September 30th. In addition, Dirlewanger had been invited by the NS Governor General Hans Frank to a gala dinner on the Kraków Wawel .

Prosecution

Oskar Dirlewanger was arrested by Allied troops on June 1, 1945 . He died on June 7, 1945 in a French prison. Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski was convicted a few years after the war, but was never held accountable for his involvement in the Wola massacre. He died in prison in 1972. Heinz Reinefarth was also not held responsible for his actions in Wola. He even had an impressive, once -in -a - lifetime post - war career. He became a lawyer, mayor of the city of Westerland , state board of the GB / BHE and member of the Schleswig-Holstein state parliament . Investigations against him have been stopped without charge. Reinefarth died in 1979.

No German soldier involved in the massacres in Wola or in German service was prosecuted in the Federal Republic of Germany after the war . This is all the more astonishing when the German military historian Hanns von Krannhals stated as early as 1964 that the fact that commanders at the Wola massacre witnessed the implementation of their orders with their own eyes brought a new dimension of responsibility for war crimes with it.

In 2008, Janusz Kurtyka , the head of the Polish Institute for National Remembrance , asked the German authorities to prosecute members of the Dirlewanger unit who were still alive. The central office of the state justice administrations for the investigation of National Socialist crimes in Ludwigsburg was involved. By chance, people in Poland became aware of the soldiers who were still alive. In its search for contemporary witnesses , the Warsaw Uprising Museum received the names and addresses of around eighty members of the Dirlewanger SS special formation from the tracing service of the German Red Cross in Munich who had returned from Soviet captivity in the 1950s . These index cards had been lying in the museum's archives for two years, until a journalist for the daily newspaper Rzeczpospolita came across them and found some survivors in the Federal Republic of Germany through telephone book entries. A list of these still living, former Dirlewanger soldiers was published in the uprising museum in May 2008.

See also

literature

  • Adolf Ciborowski: Warsaw. Destruction and reconstruction of the city. Impress Publishing House (PAI), Warsaw 1969.
  • Janusz Piekałkiewicz , Battle for Warsaw. Stalin's betrayal of the Polish Home Army in 1944. FA Herbig Verlagbuchhandlung, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-7766-1699-7 .

Web links

Commons : Wola Massacre  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

References and comments

  1. a b c Article War Crimes: Men with a Past ; at One Day / Spiegel Online (accessed October 23, 2012)
  2. a b c d Andreas Mix: Die Henker von Wola from July 5, 2008 at BerlinerZeitung.de (accessed October 21, 2012)
  3. a b c d e f Timothy Snyder : Bloodlands. Europe between Hitler and Stalin. CH Beck, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-406-62184-0 , pp. 310-314.
  4. a b Jörg Gägel, Reiner Steinweg : Discourses of the past in the Baltic Sea region. Volume 2: The view of war, dictatorship, genocide and displacement in Russia, Poland and the Baltic states (= Kieler Schriften zur Friedenswissenschaft. Vol. 15). Lit-Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-8258-0203-5 , p. 116, footnote 123.
  5. ^ Edward Pawłowski, Zbigniew Wawer (Ed.): Wojsko Polskie w II wojnie światowej. Bellona, ​​Warsaw 2005, ISBN 83-11-10119-1 , p. 139 (in Polish).
  6. Małgorzata Danecka, Thorsten Hoppe: Discover Warsaw. Walking tours through the Polish capital. Trescher, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-89794-116-8 , p. 232.
  7. ^ A b c d e f Robert Forczyk : Warsaw 1944. Poland's Bid for Freedom (= Osprey Military Campaign Series. Vol. 205). Osprey Publishing, Oxford 2009, ISBN 978-1-84603-352-0 , p. 51 ff.
  8. ^ Earl F. Ziemke: Stalingrad to Berlin. The German Defeat in the East. United States Army - Office of the Chief of Military History, Washington DC 1968, p. 344, footnote 78.
  9. Catherine Epstein: Model Nazi. Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland. Oxford University Press, Oxford et al. 2012, ISBN 978-0-19-954641-1 , p. 295.
  10. ^ Piotr Rozwadowski: Warszawa 1944-1945 (= Historyczne Bitwy ). Dom Wydawniczy Bellona, ​​Warsaw 2006, ISBN 83-11-10480-8 , p. 102 (in Polish).
  11. ^ Hanns von Krannhals: The Warsaw Uprising 1944. Bernard & Graefe Verlag für Wehrwesen, Frankfurt am Main 1962.
  12. Wilm Hosenfeld : "I try to save everyone". The life of a German officer in letters and diaries. Published by Thomas Vogel on behalf of the Military History Research Office. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-421-05776-1 , p. 1166, footnote.
  13. ^ Samuel W. Mitcham , Jr .: The German Defeat in the East. 1944-1945. Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg PA 2007, ISBN 978-0-8117-3371-7 , p. 110.
  14. a b according to an organization chart prepared by Bach-Zelewski (Nuremberg Trials), in: Adolf Ciborowski: Warsaw. Destruction and reconstruction of the city. Impress Publishing House (PAI), Warsaw 1969; P. 57.
  15. a b c The information on subordination and personnel strengths - at certain points in time - is often contradictory in different primary sources (e.g. troop strength reports from AOK 9) and secondary literature.
  16. Józef Kazimierski et al. (Ed.): Dzieje Woli. Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Warsaw 1974, p. 400 (in Polish).
  17. Brigitte Berlekamp (Red.): The Warsaw Uprising 1944 (= Berlin Society for Fascism and World War Research eV Bulletin. No. 3, ISSN  0946-4700 ). Edition Organon, Berlin 1994, p. 38.
  18. a b Hitler commands: “Wipe them out” ( Memento from October 25, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), Part 4 of the series: Warsaw Uprising of 1944 at Polonia Today Online , Polonia Media Network, Chicago (in English, accessed on 26. October 2012).
  19. Adolf Ciborowski: Warsaw. Destruction and reconstruction of the city , Impress-Verlag (PAI), Warsaw 1969, p. 48.
  20. ^ A b c d e Janusz Piekałkiewicz: Battle for Warsaw. Stalin's betrayal of the Polish Home Army in 1944. FA Herbig Verlagbuchhandlung, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-7766-1699-7 .
  21. Barbara Chojnacka: Czarna sobota na Woli of August 7, 2012 at Solidarni2010.pl (in Polish, accessed October 25, 2012).
  22. ^ Niels Gutschow, Barbara Klain: Destruction and Utopia. City planning Warsaw 1939–1945. Junius, Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-88506-223-2 , p. 132.
  23. ^ Bulletin of the Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Poland. Volume VI, p. 90 f., In: Adolf Ciborowski: Warsaw. Destruction and reconstruction of the city. Impress-Verlag (PAI), Warsaw 1969, p. 50.
  24. ^ Stefan Chwin : Places of remembrance. Memory images from Central Europe. Dresden Poetics Lecture (= literature in Central Europe 2000). Thelem, Dresden 2005, ISBN 3-933592-59-3 , p. 62.
  25. Sean M. McAteer: 500 Days. The War in Eastern Europe, 1944-1945. Self-published, Pittsburgh PA 2008, ISBN 978-1-4349-6159-4 , p. 212.
  26. a b c Włodzimierz Borodziej : The Warsaw Uprising of 1944. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison WI et al. 2006, ISBN 0-299-20730-7 , p. 80 f.
  27. ^ Tadeusz Klimaszewski: Combustion Command Warsaw. Warsaw 1959, cf. Andreas Lawaty , Wiesław Mincer, Anna Domańska: German-Polish relations in the past and present. Bibliography. Volume 1: Politics, society, economy, culture in epochs and regions (= publications of the German Poland Institute Darmstadt. Vol. 14, 1). Harrassowitz-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2000, ISBN 3-447-04243-5 , number 13459, p. 901.
  28. quoted from: More Poland than powder ; in Der Spiegel , issue 39/1961 of September 20, 1961
  29. B. Philipsen: The two careers of Heinz Reinefarth from May 5, 2012, Sylter Rundschau at shz.de (accessed on October 25, 2012).
  30. ^ Hanns von Krannhals: The Warsaw Uprising 1944. Bernard & Graefe Verlag für Wehrwesen, Frankfurt am Main 1962.
  31. Cezary Gmyz: Odkryta kartoteka zbrodniarzy at rp.pl ( Rzeczpospolita ) from May 17, 2008 (in Polish, accessed October 23, 2012)