r/HistoryPorn • u/StephenMcGannon • 1d ago
Polish priest and other Polish civilians as German hostages awaiting execution in Bydgoszcz, Poland. (September 1939) [2062x1353]
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u/MisterDings 1d ago
it’s so orderly and calm
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u/drswaginwagon 16h ago
I wonder if it’s because it was so unreal for them in the moment. Then again, they had to hear about what was going on. So surely they had to be terrified.
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u/aaronwhite1786 8h ago
I have to imagine (because it's thankfully the most I can do for the scenario) that it's disbelief mixed with the hope that it won't actually happen. That something will intervene at the last second and save you.
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u/yourdad499 5h ago
It is because human brain works that way. It would make anything to live as long as possible. Irrationally thinks that "maybe in second something will happen that will save me from this". That is the reason why nobody was rioting even in concentration camps.
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u/ShreddinTheWasteland 1h ago edited 1h ago
Having had the chance to listen to a resistance member who went through a mock execution when they were caught: it might also have something to do with acceptance. Not speaking for the people in the picture, but that person said they had accepted that they would die at the hands of their German captors.
I distinctly remember them talking about a calmness that came over them.
PTSD hit them hard later in life. They mentioned how they still had nightmares decades later. But at that moment they felt calm and had accepted their fate.
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u/Extrabytes 1d ago
What was the rationale for execution in this case?
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u/Xtrems876 1d ago edited 1d ago
According to nazi propaganda, this was done in the name of collective responsibility of the people of Bydgoszcz for the events of Bloody Sunday), when, due to the advancing german army, some of the german minority locals attacked the Polish garrison to make the invasion easier, which in turn led to reprisals and ended with around 40-50 polish deaths and 100-300 german deaths.
This wasn't just the people on the picture killed, bloody sunday was used as justification for exterminating 200-400 Poles immediately following city capture, as well as a supplemental justification for operation Tannenberg, which led to 1,200-3000 deaths in Bydgoszcz alone, though that was a wider programme.
In reality, though, Operation Tannenberg was a premeditated plan to arrest and deal with the top 61,000 people in the country to "cut the head" off of the Polish society. It was one of the earliest extermination actions done in the country, hence its limited scope. This targetted activists, intelligentsia, scholars, clergy, actors, former officers, and others of cultural or political importance. 20,000 of the 61,000 were deemed dangerous enough to exterminate.
We know who the priest on this picture is - his name is Kazimierz Stepczyński. He's notable for restoring a couple of local places of worship, he helped with overseeing matura exams (something like a-levels), he was briefly a judge in the local Ecclesiastical court and he was a member of the Poznań Society of Friends of Learning. We don't know where his remains were discarded.
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u/Johannes_P 1d ago
This targetted activists, intelligentsia, scholars, clergy, actors, former officers, and others of cultural or political importance.
One of them was a Polish Olympic sportsman.
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u/Pochel 1d ago
I don't think Nazis ever felt like they needed one
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u/Drag_king 14h ago
Killing civilians for revenge was something the German army did even before the Nazis came into power.
When the Germans invaded Belgium in 1914 they got frustrated because the Belgian army actually put up a fight which fucked up the Schliefen plan schedule. That combined with a paranoia about “snipers” meant that on multiple occasions they would round up civilians to execute in revenge killings.
The “sack of Dinant” was one example. 674 men, woman and children were killed there because the Germans believed the local population was hiding snipers. This was weeks after the town got taken.
There were many more cases. Aarschot, Leuven (Louvain), Tamines etc.
So the behaviour of the Germans in WW2 was a continuation of what they did in WW1, but on a larger scale especially in the eastern front.
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u/NormanBatesIsBae 7h ago
I think it’s important to identity the excuses and propaganda that the Nazis used when committing these atrocities.
When history attempts to repeat itself, the modern Nazis will not say “we’re going to shoot these foreign civilians because we’re evil”
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u/OnkelMickwald 1d ago
It was a whole big thing. Didn't have the time to read through it all to make a good summary but you can find the wikipedia article about these events here.
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u/Top_Swordfish9806 1d ago
Their rationale was probably that they were not... German? Therefore, shooting practice targets.
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u/OnkelMickwald 1d ago
That does not answer the question, some Poles were shot, some weren't. Why did this happen and why here?
Don't derail genuine inquiries with these sort of inane statements. I really fail to understand why people like to pass these sorts of comments off as "answers" and why people upvote them.
/u/Xtrems876 has a better answer, and there's a Wikipedia article about the event too.
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u/BootlegBastard 1d ago
Is that Maximilian?
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u/Foresstov 1d ago
Maximilian died in Auschwitz, hundreds of kilometers south of Bydgoszcz. I don't think he's ever even been to Bydgoszcz. It's not a large or important city and his work was more tied to the southern regions of the country and later Warsaw
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u/Xtrems876 1d ago
Bydgoszcz was the 3rd biggest city by area, and 7th by population. Today it's 8th by population. To say it's not large or important is an exaggeration.
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u/sampola 1d ago
Slightly weird wording of the title
If you referenced this from Wikipedia it would be
‘Polish priest – one of the hostages awaiting execution’