Krasnosielc massacre
The Krasnosielc massacre was a Nazi war crime during the September 1939 invasion of Poland. About 50 Jews were killed in Krasnosielc.
Before the war, Krasnosielc had around 2,000 Jewish residents. On September 4, 1939, German forces from the Kempf Division captured the village. The bridge over the Orzyc River had been blown up by retreating Polish forces, but German sappers repaired it overnight.
On the night of September 5, the Kempf Division carried out a large roundup of Polish and Jewish men to help repair the bridge. The Jews were beaten and humiliated; some elderly men were shot on the riverbank, and others were driven into a swamp and struck with logs.
In the evening, the Germans gathered the workers in the local synagogue. They separated the Jews from the Poles, then mocked them while forcing them to pray. Most of the Jews were shot, and their bodies were dumped into a ditch near the Jewish bathhouse, doused with flammable liquid, and set on fire.
About 50 Jews were killed. Six or seven men survived thanks to help from an unnamed Wehrmacht unit; a paramedic treated their wounds. The survivors were taken to a hospital in Olsztyn and later managed to reach areas of Poland occupied by the USSR.
On September 6, a field court tried the perpetrators. SS-Sturmmann Ernst of the Kempf Division was sentenced to three years in prison, and another officer received nine years of hard labor. The court’s verdict was criticized as too lenient, and no other participants were punished. General Georg von Küchler tried to reopen the case, but Hitler ordered a general amnesty, and the verdicts were overturned; Himmler blocked further prosecutions.
A memorial tablet with the victims’ names was created in Israel and sent to Poland, where it was installed at the massacre site.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 06:34 (CET).