Logo Polskiego Radia

Warsaw conference debates 1944 massacre

PR dla Zagranicy
Paweł Kononczuk 09.11.2016 12:32
An international conference entitled ‘Wola 1944: An Unpunished Crime and the Notion of Genocide’ is being held in Warsaw.
Monument to Victims of the Wola Massacre. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Monument to Victims of the Wola Massacre. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Historians and lawyers from Poland, Israel and the United Kingdom are discussing various aspects of what is known as the Wola massacre - the systematic killing of between 40,000 and 50,000 people in the Wola district of Warsaw by Nazi German troops during the first days of the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944.

Most of the victims were elderly, women and children.

The debate focuses on the Wola massacre, its place in the entire body of research on the German occupation of Poland in World War II, its legal aspects and its perpetrators.

In addition to Polish academics, the speakers at the conference include Professor Yoram Dinstein (emeritus professor of international law at the University of Tel-Aviv), Professor William A. Schabas of Britain’s Middlesex University and Professor Kevin Jon Heller of the University of London.

According to the American historian Timothy Snyder "the massacres in Wola had nothing in common with combat ... the ratio of civilian to military dead was more than a thousand to one, even if military casualties on both sides are counted".

The perpetrators of the massacre have never been prosecuted. SS Obergruppenfuhrer Heinz Reinefarth even became the mayor of Westerland and a member of the Landtag parliament of Schleswig-Holstein. He died in 1979.

In 2014, the mayor of Westerland, Petra Reiber, came to Warsaw for the 70th anniversary of the Wola massacre. She paid tribute to its victims and pleaded for forgiveness on behalf of her countrymen. (mk/pk )

tags: WWII
Print
Copyright © Polskie Radio S.A About Us Contact Us