Exhumation of victims of the Piasnica massacre,
photo: M. Syrowatko, 1946 (from the collection of the Museum of the City of Gdynia)
The Piaśnica crime refers to a series of mass executions carried out by German occupiers in the early months of World War II in the Piaśnica Forest near Wejherowo.
Thousands of people were killed as a result of these extermination operations. It is still very difficult to estimate the exact number of victims. In 1944, the Germans carried out an operation to burn the bodies in order to destroy the evidence of their crimes.
Since 2011, the investigative department of the Institute of National Remembrance in Gdańsk has been conducting an investigation which will ultimately establish new data on the number of victims.
The Piaśnica crime is one of the first Nazi crimes carried out on such a large scale during World War II. The experience gained during this crime was used by the Germans in the implementation of further extermination plans. Piaśnica is the largest place of execution of the Polish population in Pomerania, after the Stutthof concentration camp. In the historical consciousness of the local community, especially the Kashubians, the Piaśnica Forests are a symbol of the martyrdom of the inhabitants of Pomerania.
The area of the Piaśnica Forests, located in the Darżlubska Forest, was chosen by the Germans in accordance with the guidelines of the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin (RSHA, Reichssicherheitshauptamt). It was to be a place far from human settlements, yet located not far from the main prisons and detention centers.
The forest area covered approx. 250 hectares and was located approx. 9 km north of Wejherowo. After the Wehrmacht occupied these areas in September 1939, they became part of the Reich District of Danzig-West Prussia (Reichsgau Danzig-Westpreussen). The district was ruled by the governor, or Gauleiter of the NSDAP party, Albert Forster.
Those arrested were placed in prisons and other detention centers in Gdańsk Pomerania. From there, after brutal interrogations, they were taken to the Piaśnica Forest for execution. Those brought from the Third Reich were transported to Wejherowo by train. From the station, which during the German occupation was called Neustadt in Westpreussen, the arrested were taken to the place of execution by trucks and buses.
The Piaśnica Forests. Photo: Marek Jasiński
The victims were shot by German special forces soldiers. First, usually at night, German farmers living in the area were hired to dig graves. Then the victims were brought in. Five or six people were placed in a kneeling or standing position near the dug graves. The victims were killed by a shot to the back of the head, fired from a distance of about one meter. A few hundred meters from the execution site, the rest of the prisoners awaited death amid the shots and screams of those being killed. Witness accounts, the results of exhumations, and inspections of the crime scene confirm that the German perpetrators also finished off the wounded with rifle butts and smashed the heads of children against tree trunks.
The villa of Dr. Franciszek Panek, a district doctor and social activist, built in 1926, became the headquarters for the Piaśnica crime. Winter clothing and items belonging to the victims were collected in the house and garden occupied by the Germans.
Currently, the interior of the Pank family villa houses the Piaśnica Museum, which will be open to visitors in August 2023.
Representatives of the Polish political, socio-economic, and cultural elite from Gdańsk Pomerania were murdered in the Piaśnica Forest. People transported by rail from the Third Reich also died there. Among them were people with mental illnesses, Poles, and probably Czechs – members of national minorities in Germany – who were considered by the Third Reich authorities to be opponents of Nazi ideology.
The executions took place as part of operations codenamed “Intelligenzaktion” and “Operation Tannenberg.” The criminal goal of these operations was the extermination of the Polish leadership. The Germans considered the following to be part of the elite: clergy, senior officials, teachers, doctors, merchants, entrepreneurs, landowners, and people with higher and secondary education. Members of political parties and associations promoting Polishness were also considered representatives of the leadership. These included organizations such as the Polish Western Union, the Society of Former Insurgents and Soldiers, the “Sokół” Gymnastics Society, and the Kurkowe Shooting Brotherhood.
Arrested residents of Gdynia, September 1939.
Reproduction from the collection of the Museum of the City of Gdynia.
Executioners
The executions were carried out by members of the Gdańsk SS-Wachsturmbann “Eimann,” Einsatzkommando 16, military police officers, members of the Selbstschutz (i.e., “self-defense”) and local Germans from the Wejherowo and Puck areas. Sometimes the murderers were neighbors and acquaintances of the victims. The operation was led by the head of the Gdańsk Gestapo and Einsatzkommando 16, Dr. Rudolf Tröger, and the criminal director of the Gdynia Gestapo, Friedrich Class. The firing squad consisted of about 40-60 people. The special 550-strong guard and assault unit Wachsturmbann “Eimann” was commanded by Kurt Eimann.
The Selbstschutz was disbanded after completing its criminal task at the end of November 1939, and its members were incorporated into other police formations and transferred to other locations. In this way, they were protected from criminal responsibility and their future identification was made more difficult.
After the war, most of the perpetrators settled in northern Germany. Several criminal trials were held against the perpetrators. A few death sentences were handed down. The highest penalties were imposed on SS-Untersturmführer Herbert Teuffel (1948), SS-Gruppenführer Richard Hildebrandt (1951), NSDAP Gauleiter Albert Forster (1952), and Friedrich Freimann. SS-Wachsturmbannführer Karl Eimann served two years of his four-year sentence (1968), while SS-Oberführer Georg Ebrecht did not even serve three years of his sentence, as his internment in 1945 was counted towards it.
The head of the execution squad in Wejherowo, Hans Söhn (1909-1987), and SS-Obersturmbahnführer Paul Köpke were never convicted, although the German public prosecutor's office conducted proceedings against them. The public prosecutor's offices in Munich (1961), Dortmund (1964), and Mannheim (1965) dealt with Hans Söhn, while the public prosecutor's office in Dortmund (1964) questioned Paul Köpke. Meanwhile, Gustaw Bamberger, the mayor of Wejherowo during the occupation, became deputy mayor of Hanover after the war.
Albert Forster
One of the people responsible for the mass shootings in the Piaśnica Forest and other places in Pomerania was Albert Forster.
After the outbreak of World War II, Forster became the governor of the Reich District of Gdańsk-West Prussia. He set about exterminating the Polish population in the areas under his control with great zeal. Of all the territories of the Republic of Poland annexed to the Third Reich, it was Pomerania that became the place where the Germans murdered the largest number of Poles during the extermination operations codenamed “Intelligenzaktion” and “Tannenberg.” Forster was also one of the initiators of the establishment of the Stutthof concentration camp on the Vistula Spit.
In 1945, he managed to escape to Germany, but there he was captured and handed over to the Polish authorities, as his name was on the list of war criminals. After trying Forster in Gdańsk, the Supreme National Tribunal sentenced him to death. The sentence was carried out on February 28, 1952, in the Mokotów prison in Warsaw.
Selbstschutz
One of the formations responsible for the executions in Piaśnica was the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz (i.e., “German People's Self-Defense”). This organization included representatives of the German national minority living in the Second Polish Republic. The purpose of the formation was to protect the German population and its property. In reality, Selbstschutz units took part in the extermination of Poles living in areas incorporated into the Third Reich after the outbreak of World War II. The formation was extremely useful for this task, as its members knew the area and its inhabitants well.
The executions in which the Selbstschutz participated were carried out together with SS units and Einsatzgruppen, i.e., operational groups of the German security police and security service. On many occasions during the shootings, a member of the Selbstschutz killed his Polish neighbor, whom he had previously reported to the authorities as an “anti-German element.” The procedures made it possible to take revenge on a Polish neighbor with whom one had previously had a dispute and to take over his property.
SS-Wachsturmbann "Eimann"
The SS-Wachsturmbann “Eimann” was a unit involved in executions in the Piaśnica Forest. The unit was established in July 1939, and its commander was Kurt Eimann, commander of the 36th SS Regiment. On its basis, a unit was formed, which took its name from the surname of its commander. During the September 1939 campaign, Eimann's unit took part in the capture of Polish resistance points in Gdańsk, and later carried out arrests of Poles in the city. One of the crimes committed by the SS men from Wachsturmbann “Eimann” was the shooting of the defenders of the Polish Post Office in Gdańsk. The unit was used in the extermination of the Polish leadership and patients of psychiatric hospitals. During his trial, Kurt Eimann confessed to murdering 1,200 mentally ill people in the Piaśnica Forest. Of the four years he was sentenced to, he served only two.
Einsatzkommando 16
Einsatzkommando 16 was another unit responsible for crimes committed in the Piaśnica Forest. Einsatzgruppen were operational units of the German security police and security service. Their tasks included murdering individuals and groups considered enemies of the Third Reich behind enemy lines. The Einsatzgruppen played a key role in the extermination of Jews.
Einsatzkommando 16 operated in Pomerania. After the unit was formed in Gdańsk, branches were established in Gdynia, Bydgoszcz, and Toruń. The commander of the Gdynia unit, SS-Hauptsturmführer Friedrich Class, played a special role in organizing the executions in Piaśnica. The designation CL+ next to his name on the wanted lists meant a death sentence.
The commander-in-chief of Einsatzkommando 16 was SS-Sturmbannführer Dr. Rudolf Tröger, one of the most important figures responsible for the implementation of the Intelligenzaktion in the Gdańsk-West Prussia district. In 1940, Tröger joined the Wehrmacht. In the same year, he was killed in action in France.
Heinrich Himmler's visit to the Stutthof camp, 1941. Photo from the archives of the Stutthof Museum in Sztutowo.
The Germans feared that their extermination activities would be discovered by the approaching Red Army. Therefore, in 1944, in accordance with the order of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, they began to remove the traces of their crimes. The work carried out in the Piaśnica Forests consisted of exhuming bodies from mass graves and burning them on pyres prepared nearby. Prisoners from the Stutthof concentration camp were brought in to carry out this task. Fearing that the prisoners might escape, the Germans shackled their legs. The smoke and stench of the bodies burning on the pyres reached Piaśnica Wielka, Domatówko, Warszków, Leśniewo, and other nearby villages. During the approximately six weeks of work, the prisoners slept on the ground covered with a thin layer of straw. After completing the task, they were killed and their bodies burned.
No German documentation related to the organization of the Piaśnica crime has survived. All the actions taken to remove its traces make it very difficult today to determine the scale and circumstances of the mass executions carried out in the Piaśnica Forests.
Photo: Marek Jasiński