A new museum has been founded in the Pomeranian Voivodeship. It is a Department of the Stutthof Museum under the name of Piaśnica Museum in Wejherowo. The role of the museum is to commemorate the tragedy that took place near Piaśnica Wielka and disseminate both in Poland and abroad information about Piaśnica as the first place of mass homicide perpetrated by the Germans during World War II, when no military activities were underway, as well as about other places where representatives of Polish intelligentsia were murdered in the Pomerania region.
The Piaśnica Museum will be seated in the Villa Musica building in Wejherowo, at 6 Ofiar Piaśnicy Street. The building has historical connections with the tragic events that took place in Piaśnica. It was built in the 1920s by Franciszek Panek, a doctor and local activist who died several years before World War II. His two daughters, Stanisława and Kazimiera, who worked as teachers, were murdered in Piaśnica. In 1939 the villa was seized by Germans. They set up local Gestapo headquarters there. The massacre in Piaśnica was coordinated from the building, and the clothes and other belongings stolen from the victims were stored in its basement.
The Piaśnica Museum in Wejherowo was established on 16 December 2015 as a Branch of the Stutthof Museum. Its Director is Ms. Teresa Patsidis.
Mass executions in Piaśnica were started at the end of October 1939 and continued till the beginning of April 1940. They were a part of the so-called Intelligentsia operation and were performed by SS officers and members of a paramilitary organization named Selbstschutz. In the opinion of historians, the mass homicide perpetrated in the forests near Piaśnica Wielka claimed the lives of 12 to 14 thousand people. The victims were mainly representatives of the Polish intelligentsia from Gdańsk Pomerania. Piaśnica is the place of the second largest after KL Stutthof (Stutthof Concentration Camp) collective execution of Polish people in Pomerania during World War II. Source: stutthof.org
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