Mass grave of German civilians found in Poland
HMiS:
Quote
WWII mass grave of German civilians found in Poland
Image: Malbork inside the territory of the Republic of Poland, 2009. Malbork is near Gdansk (German: Danzig).The discovery helps solve the mystery of what happened to the civilians who did not evacuate as the Soviet Red Army were approaching.Warsaw -- The remains of 1,800 2,000 German civilians who perished in 1945 have been exhumed from a mass grave in Malbork (German: Marienburg) in northern Poland.
"Since it was discovered in October, we have exhumed the remains of 1,800 people who we are almost certain were Malbork residents," municipal official Piotr Szwedowski told AFP on Wednesday.
Once part of the German region of East Prussia and known as Marienburg, Malbork was in the territory handed over to Poland after World War II.
Men, women and children of all ages were found in the grave, Szwedowski said. "Some of the victims must have been shot dead,” he added. “One skull in 10 bears bullet holes."
Investigators believe the grave was dug in the spring of 1945, as the Soviet Red Army advanced from the east.
It was discovered by accident in October last year on the construction site of a luxury hotel in the heart of Malbork.
It lies around 300 meters from the medieval castle of the Order of Teutonic Knights, which is one of Poland's most popular tourist attractions.
"The bodies were strewn about in a chaotic fashion in a vast crater created by a shell explosion," Szwedowski said.
State prosecutors in Malbork have opened an investigation.
"The exhumation work is not complete, but due to freezing temperatures we have had to suspend it for the time being," prosecutor Waldemar Zduniak told AFP.
Polish press reports suggest the Red Army may have killed some of the victims, while others perished in aerial bombardments, from starvation or from hypothermia.
"It will be a difficult investigation," Szwedowski said. "All of the people were buried naked, without shoes or any personal effects. Metal detectors found no traces during the exhumation work conducted so far, not even dental work."
Some 30,000 people lived in the German-era city. In the spring of 1945, the city was the site of savage battles between the advancing Red Army and retreating Nazi German forces.
As the Red Army was approaching, Malbork residents, mostly ethnic Germans, were ordered to evacuate deeper into the Third Reich. The fate of 1,800 of the 3,800 people known to have stayed behind has long remained a mystery.
AFP/Expatica
The Castle of Marienburg in Malbork (German: Marienburg), in modern Poland. It was the main centre of the German Order or the Teutonic Knights and its Monastic State in Prussia.
Malbork (German: Marienburg in Westpreußen) in the former West Prussia province of Germany, is now in Poland.
I think these German civilians' deaths may now be blamed on the Red Army and "the Russians" by the Polish authorities, but I think it is possible too, that these German residents were murdered by Polish (communist and nationalist) milicians under the Polish People's Republic's government after May 1945, when historical eastern Germany was annexed to modern Polish territory (as per Potsdam Agreement), and ethnically cleansed by Polish and Soviet units.
To blame everything on the Red Army may be too simplistic, although it is possible that Soviet Russian units murdered the remaining German civilians. But I think Poland is too quickly in concluding it was "Russians" who did this massive war crime.
HMiS:
The darker green and darkest green territories are those territories gained by communist Poland from Germany's territory after 1945.
HMiS:
Gerhard Hintz and his mother could flee before the Soviet Army and its Polish Communist divisions captured Malbork (Marienburg) in February 1945. He lost his aunt, who was deported to Siberia or murdered after being raped.
Now 75 years old, he is no longer ashamed to show his tears, after yesterday he heard about the article above.
http://www.bild.de/BILD/news/vermischtes/2009/01/13/marienburg/die-russen-haben-alle-abgeholt.html
(In German. With video and images.)
CatholicThurifer:
So we don't want Hitler to take lands, but it's okay for Poland to do so...
HMiS:
Quote from: CatholicThurifer
So we don't want Hitler to take lands, but it's okay for Poland to do so...
Well, it was 'okay' for Stalin, in the eyes of Roosevelt and Churchill. And Stalin kept a communist new Polish state under his controll. Polish government in exile in London wanted the pre-1939 borders of Poland, including possibly entire Upper Silesia and Gdansk (Danzig). But not more. But after 1990, the fall of communism, the Polish governments continue to deny the sufferings of the eastern Germans who were deported by Soviets and Poles.
Czechoslovakia also took ethnic German territories 'back' and ethnically cleansed the so-called Sudetenland and other parts of Czech lands. The Russian SFSR inside the Soviet Union took northern East Prussia including Koenigsberg (now: Kaliningrad, in the exclave of the Russian Kaliningrad Oblast), while the Lithuanian SSR (occupied by the Soviet Union and a Soviet communist constituent state) took the Memel Land or Klaipeda Territory which also had ethnic German majorities.
After December 1944 more died than ever before from 1939-1944 in fact. Not only due to Nazi war crimes, but also of the Allies and subsequent post-war policies.
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