In autumn 1939, in te Piaśnickie forests near Wejherowo, the Germans began the largest extermination of civilians in the Gdańsk Pomerania.

Mainly the Polish intelligentsia was murdered there who, becouse of their profession and social activity, played and important role in the public, economic and cultural life. Representatives of other nationalities, mentally-ill persons considered enemies of Germany were also killed.

The action of the annihilation of the Poles was prepared in a precise way. The arrests of specific inhabitants of Pomerania were done on the basis of previously prepared proscription lists.

The names were to a large extent indicated by German neighbours and acquaintances of the victims. Whole families, including children and infants, were killed. Executions were carried out by officers of the Gdańsk gandarmerie, members of the special unit of Wachsturmbann „Eimann”, Einsatzkommando 16 and the paramilitary Selbschutz.

Murders were brutal, victims were beaten and forced to kneel in front of a dug-out hole, shots were fired at the back of the head and wounded were killed with riffle butts. The shots and screams of the murdered were heard by the prisoners waiting almost in the same place for the executions.

The holes of death were to remain anonymous forever, and the perpatrators of the crimes were never to be sentenced. Inthe second half of 1944 in fear of the approaching front, the Germans decided to exhume and burn the bodies of the murdered to cover the traces. To this end, prisoners from the Stutthof concentration camp were brought in and murdered after their work had been done. The burning of the bodies makes it impossible to this day do precisely determine the number of victims of the Piaśnica crime.

The executions in Piaśnica were among the first mass murders of civilians to be carried out on auch a large scale.For the inhabitants of Pomerania, the Piaśnica forests became a symbol of martyrdom and extermination as well as the largest place second tu Stutthof where the Polish population was executed. Unfortunately, ti this day, a  significant number of people murdered in Piaśnica is not known by name.

The number of murdered is estimated at at least 12 thousand.

This stamp, just issued by Polish Post, reminds us about a cruel German crime against Polish intelligentsia in Piaśnica

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