THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE PALMIRY MASSACRE " WOMEN TAKING TO THE FOREST TO MURDER."...

MASSACRE

Between December 1939 and July 1941 more than 1700 Poles and Jews – mostly inmates of Warsaw's Pawiak prison – were executed by the SS (Schutzstaffel) and Ordnungspolizei in a forest glade near Palmiry. 

The best documented of these massacres took place on 20–21 June 1940, when 358 members of the Polish political, cultural, and social elite were murdered in a single operation.

Palmiry is one of the most infamous sites of German crimes in Poland, and "one of the most notorious places of mass executions" in Poland.[1] Along with the Katyn massacre, it has become emblematic of the martyrdom of Polish intelligentsia during World War II.

PRELUDE

Warsaw was perceived by Nazi leaders as one of the biggest obstacles to their plan to subjugate the Polish nation.

After the Nazi invasion of Poland, Warsaw was reduced to a provincial city in the newly created General Government. However, it remained a center of Polish cultural life.

 Warsaw also headquartered the high command of the Polish Underground State and soon became a stronghold of armed and political resistance against the German occupation. On 14 December 1943 Governor-General Hans Frank noted in his diary:

There is a one place in this country which is a source of all our misfortunes – it is Warsaw.

Without Warsaw we wouldn't have four-fifths of the troubles which we're facing now. Warsaw is the focus of all disturbances, the place from which discontent is spread through the whole country.

The Polish capital surrendered to the Wehrmacht armies on 28 September 1939. Three days later members of Einsatzgruppe IV led by SS-Brigadeführer Lothar Beutel entered the city. They immediately conducted a search in public and private buildings, as well as mass arrests.

 On 8 October 1939 about 354 Polish teachers and catholic priests were detained because occupational authorities assumed that they are “full of Polish chauvinism” and “created an enormous danger” for public order. 

Soon Warsaw's prisons and detention centers Pawiak, Mokotów Prison, the Central Detention Center at Daniłowiczowska Street, the cellars of the Gestapo headquarter on 25 Szucha Avenue were full of inmates.[6] Many of the prisoners were deported to Nazi concentration camps. Many others were murdered.

In the first months of German occupation political prisoners from Warsaw were secretly executed in the back of the Polish parliament (Sejm) building complex at Wiejska Street (in the so-called Sejm gardens, ogrody sejmowe). 

Between October 1939 and April 1940 several hundred people were murdered in this place. However Nazi German police authorities soon realized that they would not be able to keep executions secret if they were conducted in the very center of a large city. 

It was decided that henceforth mass executions would be carried out in the small forest glade in Kampinos Forest, located near the villages of Palmiry and Pociecha, about 30 kilometres (19 mi) northwest of Warsaw.

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