Bydgoszcz – »Valley of Death«

Bydgoszcz – »Dolina Śmierci«

In autumn 1939, members of the German »Selbstschutz« and Einsatzkommando 16 (mobile killing squad) murdered Polish and Jewish civilians in a valley close to Fordon, a part of Bydgoszcz that used to be an independent township, 12 kilometres north-east of the town. Today, the »Valley of Death« (Polish: »Dolina Śmierci«) is home to a memorial complex in honour of the victims.

History

In January 1920, the victorious powers laid down a new order for Germany's eastern territories in the Treaty of Versailles. Most of West Prussia, parts of Upper Silesia and the Posen province, including Bromberg (Polish: Bydgoszcz) were ceded to the newly independent Polish state. At the beginning of the 1920s, over 30 percent of the Polish population were part of a national minority; there were about one million German nationals living in Poland. The German minority and the German-Polish border were much disputed by the governments in Berlin and in Warsaw. On September 1, 1939, Germany launched its invasion of Poland, during which the Luftwaffe also bombarded civilian targets. The Wehrmacht's advancing units were closely followed by »Einsatzgruppen« (mobile killing units). Using lists of names that had been compiled before the war, members of these units arrested and shot thousands of representatives of the Polish intelligentsia: teachers, lawyers, civil servants and members of the clergy.
Two days before taking Bydgoszcz, on September 3, 1939, Polish troops were attacked by unknown persons. In reaction, Polish soldiers and civilians murdered between 100 and 300 local German nationals. The National Socialist propaganda claimed a ten-fold number of victims and used this incident as a pretence for carrying out the previously planned murder of the Polish upper classes. During the first week of occupation in Bydgoszcz, Wehrmacht units and mobile killing units carried out mass shootings. In October and November 1939, members of Einsatzkommando 16 (mobile killing squad) and members of the »Selbstschutz« – an auxiliary police unit of the SS established by members of the German minority in August 1939 – shot Polish and Jewish residents of Bydgoszcz in the remote and narrow valley in Fordon. Similar killing operations also occurred in other towns.

Bromberg, undated, Historical postcard, Stiftung Denkmal

Bydgoszcz, 2010, Last station of the Way of the Cross in the »Valley of Death«, Rada Ochrony Pamięci Walk i Męczeństwa

Victims

In total, about 10,500 people were murdered in Bydgoszcz after the German invasion. Historians estimate that between 1,200 and 1,400 Polish and Jewish residents of Bydgoszcz and surrounding areas died in the »Valley of Death«; up to 3,000 perished in the area. Most of the victims belonged to the Polish intelligentsia.

The Second World War began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland and the occupation of the west of the country by German troops and the east of the country by the Red Army. Persecution and terror directly followed the invasion in both parts of the country. German units massacred members of the intelligentsia, Jewish and non-Jewish civilians as well as hospital patients. At the end of 1939 the German administration established ghettos where the Jewish population was forced to live in cramped and horrendous conditions. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, eastern Poland also fell under German control. SS Einsatzgruppen started to systematically murder Jewish men, later also women and children. In autumn 1941, local German authorities in the former west of the country began to prepare for the mass murder of Jewish ghetto prisoners using poison gas. By 1945, some three million Polish Jews had been murdered in the extermination camps at Chelmno, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek or Auschwitz, starved to death in the ghettos or shot dead. In 1943 the Jews living in the Warsaw ghetto staged an uprising, which was brutally crushed by the SS. Polish soldiers fought with the Allies on all fronts during the Second World War. Polish partisan groups, including the patriotic »Armia Krajowa« (Home Army), formed the largest resistance movement in occupied Europe. August 1, 1944 saw the start of the Warsaw Uprising, the most extensive civilian campaign against the Germans in occupied Europe. It failed also because the Red Army, already standing on the opposite side of the Vistula River, chose not to intervene. It is estimated that up to 250,000 people lost their lives in the uprising. A total of around three million non-Jewish Poles met a violent death during the German occupation. Once the Red Army had arrived on (East) Polish soil in January 1944, the troops of the Armia Krajowa were stripped of their weapons by the Soviet secret service and the officers were either shot or deported. The millions of deaths during the occupation, the permanent Soviet annexation of eastern Poland, the incorporation of former eastern German territories and the ensuing population transfers all left a traumatic political and social legacy in Poland. Remembrance of the murder of European Jews in German extermination camps was initially marginalised in the Polish culture of memory. Although Auschwitz soon became an international symbol of the Holocaust, in Poland it was viewed for decades above all as a »site of Polish martyrdom«. However, the start of the 21st century brought about changes in this respect, due in part to the fierce debates over the Jedwabne massacre in eastern Poland. The massacre of around 340 Jews on July 10, 1941 was originally attributed to the »Gestapo and Hitler police« but had in fact been carried out by Polish »neighbours« without orders from the Germans. Debates in Poland and abroad on Polish perpetration resulted in the Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski (*1954) issuing an apology to the victims in 2001. There were increasing calls from experts, such as those from Poland’s Institute for National Remembrance, for the country to confront the most difficult chapters in its history, which also include the anti-Jewish pogroms in 1946-47 and state anti-semitism in communist Poland during the post-war period. The Polish invests extensively in memorial culture, including grand projects with international ambition. The Warsaw Rising Museum was opened already in 2004. The POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews was opened in 2013 on the territory of the former Warsaw Ghetto, a new museum dedicated specifically to the Warsaw Ghetto will follow suit in 2024. Since 2017, there is a major Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk. Since the turn of the millennium, the sites of the former German extermination camps have also been converted into modern memorial sites. An ever-growing preoccupation with Poland’s Jewish and multicultural heritage can be observed in the field of culture as well.

Remembrance

In 1947, the area was investigated and several mass graves were discovered. 306 bodies were exhumed and buried on the »Cemetery of the Heroes of Bydgoszcz« (Polish: Cmentarz Bohaterów Bydgoszczy) together with the remains of victims murdered at other sites. In 1946, a column was dedicated in memory of the victims. Since 1975, there has been a monument on the site bearing plaques with the names of many victims. In the 1980s, a housing estate was established close to the site and with it a new parish, which has since then supervised the area of the »Valley of Death«. In 1999, following the visit of Pope John Paul II, the idea of recreating the 13 Stations of the Cross in memory of the suffering of the victims came about. Each station consists of a two metre-high cross, only the 12th station, symbolising Jesus' death on the cross, is made up of a wall of candles. In 2009, the last station was set up.
In 1969, a monument was set up on the old market square, one of the central squares in Bydgoszcz on which several residents were murdered on September 9 and 10, 1939 – the »Monument of Struggle and Martyrdom« (Polish: Pomnik Walki i Męczeństwa Ziemi Bydgoskiej), in memory of the victims of National Socialist crimes in Bydgoszcz and surrounding area. After the political transformation of 1989, a memorial wall consisting of sandstone blocks was added behind the monument, in memory of the victims of Soviet terror in Poland. The memorial wall was moved in 2007 and is now in the possession of a local parish.

Bydgoszcz, September 9, 1939, Execution of Polish civilians on the old market square, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej

Bydgoszcz-Fordon, 2010, The 1975 monument in the »Valley of Death« memorial, Rada Ochrony Pamięci Walk i Męczeństwa

Open

The memorial is accessible at all times.

Contact

http://www.dolinasmierci.pl/

parafia@mbkm.pl

0048 (0)52 346 76 25

ul. gen. M. Bołtucia 5
85-796 Bydgoszcz

Bydgoszcz-Fordon, 2005, Plaques with the names and professions of the victims, affixed to the 1975 »Valley of Death« memorial, Rada Ochrony Pamięci Walk i Męczeństwa

Bydgoszcz, 2010, Monument of Struggle and Martyrdom on the old market square, Rada Ochrony Pamięci Walk i Męczeństwa

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