The Wawer massacre was the execution of 107 Polish civilians on the night of 26 to 27 December 1939 by the German occupiers of Wawer (near Warsaw), Poland.
The Wawer massacre was the execution of 107 Polish civilians on the night of 26 to 27 December 1939 by the German occupiers of Wawer (near Warsaw), Poland. The execution was a response to the deaths of two German NCOs. 120 people were arrested and 114 shot, of whom 7 survived. It is considered to be one of the first large scale massacres of Polish civilians by German Wehrmacht in occupied Poland. On the evening of 26 December, two known Polish criminals, Marian Prasuła and Stanisław Dąbek, killed two German non-commissioned officers from Baubataillon 538. After learning of it, the acting commander of the Ordnungspolizei in Warsaw, colonel Max Daume ordered an immediate reprisal, consisting of a series of arrests of random Polish males, aged 16 to 70, found in the region where the killings occurred (in Wawer and the neighboring Anin villages). After a kangaroo court presided over by Major General Friedrich Wilhelm Wenzl, 114 of the 120 people arrested - who had no knowledge of the ...