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[[Image:PL pomnik rzez woli.jpg|thumb|225px|Memorial with the list of mass execution sites]]
The '''Wola massacre''' ({{lang-pl|Rzeź Woli, "Wola slaughter"}}) (August 5-August 8, 1944 in [[Wola]], [[Warsaw]]) was the scene of the largest single [[massacre]] in the [[history of Poland]]. According to different sources, some 40,000 to 100,000 Polish [[civilians]] and [[POW]]s were killed by the [[Nazi Germany|German]] forces during their suppression of the [[Warsaw Uprising]]. The [[Nazism|Nazis]] tried to suppress the uprising early with an attempt to [[state terror|terrorize]] the inhabitants of Warsaw, hoping to end without having to commit to heavy [[urban combat]], before realizing it was only stiffening the opposition.
==The massacre==
[[Image:Polish civilians murdered by German-SS-troops in Warsaw Uprising Warsaw August 1944.jpg|225px|right|thumb|Polish civilians murdered by the SS and police troops in Warsaw, August 1944]]
German forces, including subunits of the ''[[Sicherheitspolizei]]'' security police and the ''[[SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger]],'' an infamous unit composed of amnestied criminals, rounded up and indiscriminately executed many of the people in the Wola district, including the elderly, women and children, as well as the [[Insurgency|insurgents]] taken prisoner. Mass executions in the district also included the [[mass murder]]s of patients and personnel of the local hospitals, some of them burned alive. A critical aim of this German policy was to crush the will of the Poles to fight and bring the uprising to an end without having to commit to the heavy city fighting.
On August 5, the three groups started their advance westward along ''Wolska'' and ''Górczewska'' streets toward the main East-West communication line of [[Aleje Jerozolimskie]]. Their advance was halted, but the [[Heinz Reinefarth]]'s and [[Oskar Dirlewanger]]'s regiments started to carry out orders of [[Heinrich Himmler]]: behind the lines, special groups of SS and police forces went from house to house, rounding-up and shooting all inhabitants. Regular German soldiers of the ''[[Wehrmacht]]'' also took part in the killings.
[[Martin Gilbert]], in his book ''The Second World War: A Complete History'', page 565, (see [http://books.google.com/books?ie=UTF-8&hl=en&id=Y_sfOn8BkOwC&pg=PA565&lpg=PA565&dq=wola+warsaw&prev=http://books.google.com/books%3Fq%3Dwola%2Bwarsaw%26lr%3D%26start%3D20&sig=0fzvAMxrwRolIgZBDRR69Lkpo9U Google Books page view]) describes the event:
By August 5, more than fifteen thousand Polish civilians had been murdered by German troops in Warsaw. At 5:30 that evening, General [[Erich von dem Bach]] gave the order for the execution of women and children to stop. But the killing continued of all Polish men who were captured, without anyone bothering to find out whether they were insurgents or not. Nor did either the [[Cossacks]] or the criminals in the [[Kaminski Brigade|Kaminsky]] and Dirlewanger brigades pay any attention to von dem Bach Zelewski's order: by rape, murder, torture and fire, they made their way through the suburbs of Wola and Ochota, killing in three days of slaughter a further thirty thousand civilians, including hundreds of patients in each of the hospitals in their path.
At the same time, the insurgent ''[[Batalion Zośka|Zośka]]'' and ''[[Batalion Wacek|Wacek]]'' battalions managed to capture the ruins of the [[Warsaw Ghetto]] and the [[Warsaw concentration camp]]. The area became one of the main communication links between the insurgents fighting in Wola and those defending the [[Warsaw Old Town]]. On August 7, 1944, the Nazi forces were joined by tanks, with civilian women being used as a [[human shield]]s. After two days of heavy fighting, they managed to cut Wola in two and reach the [[Plac Bankowy]].
The massacre was halted on August 12, when von dem Bach ordered the captured civilians to be sent to [[Nazi concentration camps|concentration camps]] or directed to [[forced labor]]. Selected Polish civilians were detained by the SS, formed in a ''[[Verbrennungskommando]]'' and forced to collect most of the victims' bodies and then burn them in order to destroy the evidence of the German crimes.
==Aftermath==
[[Image:Uprising mass graves.jpg|thumb|right|225px|Postwar [[mass graves]], each containing remains of dozens of mostly unidentified civilians killed in the Wola massacre]]
Up until mid September, the Nazis were shooting all captured insurgents on the spot. After ''SS-Obergruppenführer'' [[Erich von dem Bach]] arrived in Warsaw (August 7, 1944), it became clear that atrocities only stiffened the resistance and that some political solution should be found, considering the limited forces at the disposal of the German commander. The aim was to gain a significant victory to show the [[Armia Krajowa]] the futility of further fighting and make them [[Surrender (military)|surrender]].
This did not immediately succeed, but from the end of September on, some of the captured Polish fighters were treated as [[prisoners of war]] and civilians were spared, and in the end the districts of Warsaw still held by insurgents [[Capitulation (surrender)|capitulated]] on 3 October 1944.
The main perpetrators were Heinz Reinefarth and [[Oskar Dirlewanger]], who presided over the most cruel atrocities. Dirlewanger was tortured to death by Polish military guards after the war, but Reinefarth was never prosecuted. A list of several former ''Dirlewanger'' members still alive and never prosecuted was made by the [[Warsaw Uprising Museum]] in May 2008. After the end of war no German soldier involved in Wola and [[Ochota massacre]]s during Warsaw Uprising was prosecuted for their crimes.
==See also==
*[[List of massacres in Poland]]
*[[Military description of the Warsaw Uprising]]
*[[Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles]]
*[[Ochota massacre]] - August 1944 atrocities in [[Ochota]] district of Warsaw, committed mostly by [[Russia]]n collaborators led by [[Bronislaw Kaminski]]
==External links==
*[http://stosstruppen39-45.tripod.com/id6.html Waffen-SS im Einsatz: The Rape of Warsaw]
*[http://www.warsawuprising.com/witness/atrocities3.htm Witness testimony on German massacre of Polish hospital patients]
*[http://www.warsawuprising.com/witness/atrocities4.htm Witness testimony on German massacre of Polish civilians in Wola] [http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-45140332.html?name=Nacht+%26uuml%3Bber+WoIa Nacht über Wola], ''[[Der Spiegel]]''
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