Warsaw remembers Wola massacre victims
PR dla Zagranicy
Roberto Galea
05.08.2016 12:39
Warsaw's western district of Wola on Friday commemorates the bloody Nazi-German massacres of 1944 during the first days of the Warsaw Uprising.
Monument to Victims of the Wola Massacre. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The commemorations on the 72th anniversary of the massacre on Friday will commence at 6:00 pm CET at the Monument to Victims of the Wola Massacre in central Warsaw.
At 7.00 pm the attendees will walk to the Wola cemetery, where the ashes of tens of thousands of people killed during the uprising are held.
The Wola massacre was a systematic killing of between 40,000-50,000 people in the Wola district by Nazi German troops during the early phase of the Warsaw uprising, which started on 1 August.
Between 5 and 12 August 1944, tens of thousands of Polish civilians along with captured Home Army resistance fighters were systematically murdered by the Nazi German troops in organised mass executions.
It is estimated that up to 10,000 civilians were killed in the Wola district on 5 August alone, the first day of the operation. Most of the victims were the elderly, women and children. The majority of these atrocities were committed by troops under the command of SS-Oberführer Oskar Dirlewanger and SS-Brigadeführer Bronislav Kaminski. (rg)