Czestochowa

On September 3, 1939, Czestochowa was captured without a fight by German troops. But the very next day information was received that Polish partisans had fired on German troops on two different occasions in the city. Where the shots came from was unknown, but the Germans searched several houses without being able to find any obvious suspects. But the Germans could not let this pass unnoticed, and randomly collected 200 ”suspected” people. Suddenly the Germans started to open fire and panic broke out in the column which resulted in about 200 civilians died. Next murderous step came when the Germans collected about 600 civilians in a square in front of the city’s cathedral. There the Germans seperated men from women and searched them. Those who had a knife or similar were shot. The men were then ordered to go into the church, but like the day before, the germans open fire for unknown reason. About 400 people were killed during the fire and about a hundred injured. In addition to these two incidents, additional civilians were killed elsewhere in Czestochowa between 4 and 6 September. Exactly how many people were murdered is difficult to estimate but a figure mentioned is about 1000 people.