Massacre in Warsaw

5th August 1944: The notorious Dirlwanger Brigade attack men, women and children in the Wola district of the capital in a barbaric atrocity

Members of the Dirlwanger Brigade had already gained a terrible reputation for their behaviour in Belarus. Its ranks included convicted murderers and other criminals. There were even some in the SS who considered it out of control.

One of the more notorious groups operating on behalf of the Nazis in Warsaw was the 'Dirlewanger Brigade', the 36th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS led by Oskar Dirlewanger. Most of them had been released from prison to serve in the SS and they had committed appalling crimes on the Eastern Front during ‘anti-partisan’ operations.

Heinz Friedrich Reinefarth (1903-1979) lieutenant general of the Waffen-SS and police. Reinefarth was responsible, among other things, for the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising, in which 20,000 to 60,000 civilians were shot by the troops under his command in the Warsaw district of Wola alone.

This group now led a direct attack on residents of the Wola district of Warsaw. It was not on the ‘front line’, simply the first area where the SS chose to conduct reprisals. Large numbers of civilians were evicted from their homes or simply burnt out of their apartment blocks.

Oskar Dirlewanger (1895-1945) gave his name to the Brigade which he led. A sexual sadist, he was known to torture women before killing them.

SS Gruppenfuhrer Reinefarth¹ was to complain "What shall we do with all these civilians? We have less ammunition than prisoners?". The answer to his own question was to massacre most of them.