Facing the Death: the different expressions of six Polish civilians moments before death by firing squad, 1939
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Facing the Death: the different expressions of six Polish civilians moments before death by firing squad, 1939
Facing the Death: Poles shot by Germans in Bydgoszcz, September 9, 1939.
It’s interesting to see the range of emotions displayed by
these men: anguish, defiance, stoicism, acceptance, and fear, the third
one from the left is even smiling. The execution took place during the
Bloody Sunday in Bydgoszcz, Poland, 1939.
Bloody Sunday was a series of killings of members of the German minority that took place at the beginning of World War II.
On September 3, 1939, two days after the beginning of the German
invasion of Poland, highly controversial killings occurred in and around
Bydgoszcz (German: Bromberg), a Polish city with a sizable German
minority. The number of casualties and other details of the incident are
disputed among historians.
The Nazis exploited the deaths as grounds for a massacre of Polish
inhabitants after the Wehrmacht captured the town. In an act of
retaliation for the killings on Bloody Sunday, a number of Polish
civilians were executed by German military units of the Einsatzgruppen,
Waffen SS, and Wehrmacht.
According to German historian Christian Raitz von Frentz, 876 Poles were
tried by the German tribunal for involvement in the events of Bloody
Sunday before the end of 1939. 87 men and 13 women were sentenced
without the right to appeal.
Polish historian Czesław Madajczyk notes 120 executions in relation to
Bloody Sunday, and the execution of 20 hostages after a German soldier
was allegedly attacked by a Polish sniper.
The term “Bloody Sunday” was created and supported by Nazi propaganda officials. An instruction issued to the press said: “… must show news on the barbarism of Poles in Bromberg.
The expression ‘Bloody Sunday’ must enter as a permanent term in the
dictionary and circumnavigate the globe. For that reason, this term must
be continuously underlined”.
Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry heavily exploited the events to try to
gain support in Germany for the invasion. Reports from the press and
newsreels showed Polish violence against the German minority in Poland.
Goebbels had initially estimated that 5,800 Germans had been killed
during Bloody Sunday but in 1940 increased the estimate to 58,000 which
was subsequently published in the pamphlet “Polish Atrocities Against
the German Minority in Poland” which convinced most Germans for the
invasion and fueled more hatred against the Poles.
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