Wola
Wola is a district of western
Warsaw,
Poland, formerly the village of Wielka Wola, that was incorporated into Warsaw in
1916. An industrial area with traditions reaching back to the early
19th century, it's slowly changing into an office and residential district. Several museums are located in Wola.
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Modern buildings in Wola District |
Mentioned in texts of the
14th century, it became the site of the
free elections, from
1573 to
1764, of Poland's kings by the
szlachta (nobility) of the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The Wola district later became famous for the Polish Army's defence of Warsaw in
1794 during the
Kościuszko Uprising and in
1831 during the
November Uprising, when
Józef Sowiński and
Józef Bem defended the city against tsarist forces.
During the
Warsaw Uprising (August-October
1944), fierce battles raged in Wola. Around
August 8, Wola was the scene of the largest single massacre of (according to different sources) 40,000 to 50,000 of the Polish population. The Nazi units indiscriminately executed the civilians of the district, including hospital patients, elderly, children and women, as well as any insurgents taken prisoner.
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German forces during their failed assault on Wola, suburb of Warsaw, on September 9, 1939 |
To quote
Martin Gilbert, in his
The Second World War: A Complete History, page 565, (see
Google Books page view):
By August 5, more than fifteen thousand Polish civilians had been murdered by German troops in Warsaw. At 5:30 that evening, General von dem Bach Zelewski gave the order for the execution of women and children to stop. But the killing continued of all Polish men who were captured, without anyone bothering to find out whether they were insurgents or not. Nor did either the Cossacks or the criminals in the Kaminsky and Dirlewanger brigades pay any attention to von dem Bach Zelewski's order: by rape, murder, torture and fire, they made their way through the suburbs of Wola and Ochota, killing in three days of slaughter a further thirty thousand civilians, including hundreds of patients in each of the hospitals in their path. The mass murder of civilians in Wola district was investigated by Central Commission for Investigation of German Crimes in Poland.
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Witness testimony on German massacre of Polish hospital patients*
Witness testimony on German massacre of Polish civilians in Wola
