Skrwilno
About twenty kilometres southeast of Rypin lies a small village called Skrwilno and there in a wooded area the Germans murdered and buried about 1500 Polish citizens in the autumn of 1939. The victims came mainly from Rypin, where the Gestapo and Selbschutz (paramilitary units of ethnic Germans) had subjected them to interrogation, beatings and torture before they were taken to Skrwilno and shot. The victims were buried in mass graves. In 1944, the bodies were excavated and cremated over open fires in an attempt to conceal the murders. The work of excavating and cremating the bodies was carried out by prisoners taken from different places.
Current status: Monument (2024).
Location: 53°01'17.24"N 19°39'02.64"E
Get there: Car.
Follow up in books: Lukas, Richard C: Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation 1939-1944 (2008).
There are two sites with memorials. One is located next to a road junction and the other is about a kilometer into a forest. The monument in the forest is impressive and revolves around a well-managed pit that was probably a mass grave and perhaps where the bodies were cremated in 1944. Scattered around in the forest are smaller and simpler graves where the Germans shot and buried the victims on the spot.