Bromberg Bloody Sunday
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Bromberger Blutsonntag or Bromberg Bloody Sunday is an event that is said to have taken place on September 3, 1939 during the German invasion, in and around Bydgoszcz (German Bromberg) Polish Pomeranian Voivodship.
This territory was a part of Poland until 1772 (the First Partition of Poland) and in February 1920 was returned to Poland after the Versailles Treaty. Many former German citizens, now only ethnic Germans, had already resorted to leave the German provinces that fell to Poland after WWI, partially as effect of German propaganda which thought that without German lawyers and doctors Poland will be forced into chaos. The minority rights appendix of the Versailles treaty was recognized by Poland.
After the inclusion of Soviet Union into League of Nations, Poland withdrawn from the recognition of the minority rights appendix of the treaty. However, the rights of minorities in both countries was to be based on mutually good relationship between 2 countries. In March 1939 Polish-German relationships deteriorated.
The German inhabitants of this new part of Poland felt not welcome, because Germany was one of the neighbouring countries that was seen by Poland as wanting to wipe out Poland from the map of Europe and the ethnic Germans were quite often seen as just members of the fifth column.
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Claims of Polish atrocities against Germans
Most controversial is case of Bydgoszcz events in September the 3rd. Polish witnesses testified that early that day Polish army withdrawing via Bydgoszcz was attacked by diversants; someone was shooting at soldiers and civilians from roofs and church towers. The fact of shooting is confirmed by some German witnesses.
Polish soldiers claimed that German diversants were shooting at them and started to search houses. In the next hours a disputed number of Germans were executed, most of them probably innocent of subversive involvement. The scale of the event is controversial. De Zayas estimates it for 2000. Hugo Rasmus compared Bydgoszcz address books and data for population for 1939 with Nazi lists of supposed victims and found 358 persons known from name who died that day in Bydgoszcz. Most of them are female and children. Jastrzebski, Polish historian, initially doubting in the scale of event, now is backing the Hugo Rasmus' number, thinking that Polish official government was unable to control the mob and sanctioned later what was in fact lynch. However, Jastrzebski has bad opinion among Polish historians, because he used to support communists propaganda.
Initially, Nazis claimed that 5000 Germans died in Poland in September 1939. Later, they inflated that number in 1940 to 58,000, and Hitler personally raised that number to over 60,000. De Zayas now estimates "conservatively" that number to be 5,000. Although many of those killed were victims of the war conditions (many Germans were drafted to Polish army for example, cities were bombed by Luftwaffe and artillery, civilians on the roads were strafed), it's without doubt that some Germans were victims of local acts of violence, of which Bydgoszcz was the most known example.
As the act of revenge, imidiately 3000 of Poles were victims of street executions.
Reasoning
A common argument for the lack of provocation by Germans of Polish soldiers, is the contention that no Germans in Poland had been allowed to possess weapons for years. It would not be realistic to believe that all weapons had been removed, surely some had hidden their guns, rather than turning them in, if only for economic reasons. It is also believed that German sabotageurs acting in other cities were provided weapons from outside and so also for those in Bydgoszcz. While there are German documents confirming actions by saboteurs in other cities, no such documents are preserved in case of Bydgoszcz; one may assume, that it would be unlikely that German secret services would omit Bydgoszcz specifically from its actions.
There are also Polish claims of German atrocities against Poles in Bydgoszcz, cited in the evidence given to the War Crimes Tribunals. A document produced by the Polish authorities claims that:
- "On 3 September 1939, at 1015 in the morning, German Fifth Columnists attacked Polish troop units retreating from Bromberg. During the fighting 238 Polish soldiers and 223 German Fifth Columnists were killed. As a consequence of the events after the entrance of the German troops into the town of Bromberg, they began mass executions, arrests, and deportations of Polish citizens to concentration camps, which were performed by the German authorities, the SS, and the Gestapo. There were 10,500 murdered, and 13,000 exterminated in the camps.
However, the updated version of Polish claims should by confirmed by IPN.
Source: Nuremberg Trial Proceedings. Vol. 9, day 88, Friday, 22 March 1946
Literature: Dywersja czy masakra? Włodzimierz Jastrzębski, Gdańsk 1988.
Other German claims
After invasion against Poland by German forces a number of ethnic Germans were collected by the Polish authorities from of a number of cities and towns and sent on a march, herded from town to town. Some German sources claim that many of them were murdered including many pastors, precisely because they were now the 'official link' remaining to the ethnic Germans. It's hard to say how many Germans died during such marches; a few German historians claim the number as high as 1700 and attributes it mainly to Polish atrocities, but Polish side points that since Germans were marching during war, most of losses should be attributed to war conditions, especially since many German witnesses confirm, that columns were sometimes attacked by Luftwaffe (which strafed all civilians on the roads) and artillery.
External links
- Nuremberg Trial Proceedings, question to Göring (Nitzkor) (http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-09/tgmwc-09-88-01.shtml)
- Nuremberg Trial Proceedings, question to Göring (Yale) (same material as above) (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/proc/03-22-46.htm)
- Outside link with partial list of names and towns of murdered pastors (http://www.iolaos.com/scriptorium/deutsch/archiv/blutsonntag/bsonntag05.html)
- Text of German claims published in 1940 (http://www.jrbooksonline.com/polish_atrocities.htm)de:Bromberger Blutsonntag
fr:Dimanche sanglant de Bydgoszcz pl:Krwawa niedziela (Bydgoszcz 1939)