| Original caption: “Consecration ceremony of the Hitler Youth in front of the town hall in Tomaschow.” Hitlerjugend (“Hitler Youth”) display the Siegrune (“Victory Rune”) as they celebrate the 19th anniversary of the creation of the organization with bugles and drums. On September 6, 1939, less than a week into the invasion of Poland, the Polish 13th Infantry Division under Colonel Władysław Zubnob-Kaliński (March 22, 1891 – August 13, 1952) attempted to stop an armored offensive by 2 divisions of Generalkommando XVI. (Motorisiert) Armeekorps on Tomaszów Mazowiecki, located within the area of Radom, Poland. There were 13,000 Jews in prewar Tomaszów Mazowiecki, a town famous for its textile factories. Nazi German soldaten moved into the town the next day. Einsatzgruppe III under Kommandant SS-Standartenführer Hans Fischer looted the town, arrested 300 Jews, deported 90 and murdered some Polish Christians and Jews. The Arbeitsamt (“State Employment Office”) was established on September 26. Under the German occupation, the small city of Tomaszów Mazowiecki in central Poland was part of the Radom district in the Generalgovernement. The occupiers renamed it Tomaschow. Ethnic Germans in Tomaszów Mazowiecki took political control. Even though it was Germany that had invaded Poland, the Nazi German government propagated the image that Germans were the ones persecuted in the conflict. Immediately following the invasion, the government began sending many “atrocity letters” to German American Lutheran pastors. The letters claimed to have been written by the Reverend Karl Ernst Patzer (???? – ????), German pastor of Trinity Church in Andrespol, near Lodz, Poland. Patzer wrote a long record of alleged Polish atrocities against him and other Germans. He outwardly asked for sympathy for the Nazi cause through American churches. Patzer told of “uninterrupted persecution of our community and our church” by Polish authorities. He also told of “horrible slaughtering of the Germans in Tomaschow and Konstantinow.” He claimed to have fled to Danzig, Germany, after being called the “Hitler of Andrespol,” and had to send his wife and children to a refugee camp before he was reunited with them in Berlin by a Nazi welfare organization. Polish mobs had slaughtered thousands of Germans in Polish cities before the outbreak of war, and had chased him out of his church only moments before burning it down. The German American community responded with empathy, unaware of the atrocities taking place at the same time in the newly named German town of Tomaschow. The Nazi occupation of the town and surrounding area began with a wave of unprecedented terror. Implemented by the Gestapo (the Nazi secret police), many Poles, Jews and members of the intelligentsia were either imprisoned, sent to concentration camps, deployed as forced laborers or were simply shot. In November 1939, the synagogue on Jerozolim Street was set on fire, and the Jews were prevented from extinguishing it. Meanwhile, the ethnic Germans were enjoying a return to kunst und kultur (“art and culture”). Ethnic German children were enrolled in the Hitler Youth and examined by German doctors. Nazi German curricula were implemented in schools approved by the Department of Science, Education, and Popular Culture in Kraków for introduction throughout the Generalgovernement. The teachers, with gender segregated classrooms, were required to maintain close contact with the Hitlerjugend and the Bund Deutscher Mädel (“League of German Girls”). A German kindergarten for preschool children was established in Tomaschow. National Socialist educational values were conveyed through lectures to teachers and students. In 1940, SS-Obergruppenführer Arthur Greiser (January 22, 1897 – July 21, 1946), Gauleiter (“District Leader”) of the Warthegau (“District of Prussian Posen”), was eager to annex 2 sub-districts that were currently in the Generalgouvernement, Petrikau and Tomaschow. Martin Bormann (June 17, 1900 – May 2, 1945), Chef des Parteikanzlei intervened on Greiser’s behalf, arguing that these 2 areas’ textile industry was closely linked to Litzmannstadt and that the current border divided an area best administered as 1. In addition, some 50,000 ethnic Germans lived in these sub-districts; this alone was a good reason to make the areas part of the Warthegau. In September 1940, Greiser had an apparent victory when, after a lunch with Führer und Reichskanzler (“Leader and Reich Chancellor”) Adolf Hitler (April 20, 1889 – April 30, 1945), the Führer ordered Petrikau and Tomaschow to be joined to the Warthegau. But Greiser’s victory was short lived. Since Generalgouvernement Gauleiter Hans Frank (May 23, 1900 – October 16, 1946) refused to relinquish the districts, Hitler asked Greiser and Frank to meet and resolve the issue. At their November 1940 meeting, Greiser shelved the annexation of the 2 sub-districts; he and Frank agreed that the resolution of all outstanding border issues would be postponed until after the war’s end. But the issue of Petrikau and Tomaschow came up once again in 1941, when Frank’s territory was considerably enlarged through the annexation of Galicia to the General Government. It was now thought that Frank might be less sensitive to a loss of territory on his western border. Yet again, though, he refused to cede any land. Petrikau and Tomaschow remained part of Distrikt Radom in the Generalgouvernement for the duration of the war. During the next 2 years, Nazi racial policy was put into full force. With the creation of a ghetto in December 1940 for the Jews of Tomaschow and its neighboring villages, the surrounding area could be “cleansed” of Jews who were gathered there. In Tomaschow, 16,000 Jews lived in a total of 250 residential houses, on average 64 persons per house. The economic situation in Tomaschow was much better than in Warsaw, for the ghetto inhabitants were able to have contact with Poles, and could thus find ways of earning some money, an opportunity inconceivable in Warsaw. The Tomaschow Ghetto was initially run by SS-Untersturmführer Paul Christophersen (February 4, 1902 -) and SS-Untersturmführer Erich Wotsche (???? – ????). Typhus spread in late 1941. The Tomaschow Ghetto had the highest rates of Typhus in Radom District. 33 Jews who escaped other ghettos and returned to Tomaschow were executed to prevent the spread of Typhus. An “Aktion” on April 27-28, 1942, targeted the intelligentsia, teachers, doctors, lawyers, the Judenrat, and Jewish Ghetto Police. Another Action killed more Jews in May. October 31, 1942, saw the ghetto “cleared,” with surviving Jews being transported to the Nazi death camp of Treblinka. Initially, the Nazis faced fierce resistance from the Polish population, but within a year the ruthless counter-tactics of the Nazis had paid off. However, Polish resistance had not been completely eradicated and soon “secret societies were springing up all over the place, like mushrooms after the rain.” The Nazis’ genocidal policy had ensured that opposition grew on an unprecedented scale. The Gestapo responded by adopting a “hands-on approach” to policing in Nazi-occupied Poland by proactively recruiting Polish citizens as paid informers, known as Vertrauensleute (“people of confidence”). Through its network of paid spies, the Gestapo was able to eliminate partisan groups, but those groups soon mimicked the methods of the Nazi occupiers. Sicherheitsdienst (SD, Security Service) authorities in the Generalgouvernement district of Tomaschow kept files on more than 500 local Polish residents. The last Aktion in Tomaschow took place at Purim on March 21, 1943, when patients at the hospital were shot. The forced labor camp was closed on May 29, 1943, when 650 Jews deported to Bliźyn. 40 more were departed to Starachowice after they cleaned up the Tomaschow Ghetto. 15,000 residents of Radom District, mostly from Tomaszów Mazowiecki, were gassed at Treblinka. As the Soviet Red Army approached in July 1944, SS-Obersturmführer [????] Prüss (???? – ????) of the Sicherheitspolizei und Sicherheitsdienst (Sipo – “Security Police and SD – Security Service”) issued an order on July 25, 1944, for the Branch Office Tomaschow that all the forced laborers – Christian Poles – and any remaining Jews should be shot and their bodies “disposed of…burning, blowing up the building, et cetera” if they couldn’t be evacuated “to the quickest route to a concentration camp.” Prüss specifically ordered that “the liberation of prisoners or Jews by the enemy, be it the Armia Krajowa or the Red Army, must be avoided at all circumstances nor may they fall into their hands alive.” During the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944, the Germans deported 30,000 Varsovians (Warsaw residents) to Tomaschow from the Dulag 121 camp in Pruszków, where they were initially imprisoned. Those Poles were mainly old people, ill people and women with children. These deportations continued until November 1944. 12-year-olds were part of the forced labor that transformed Tomaschow into a strong defensive position with concrete bunkers, anti-tank ditches, and trenches. Regardless, the Soviet Red Army attacked on January 18-19, 1945. The Nazi Germans had formed the Volkssturm-Bataillon Tomaschow out of ethnic Germans in 1944, but it is not clear if it ever went into battle or if it even was equipped. The Nazi Germans failed to destroy the bridge over the Pilica River; the Soviets captured the railroad station. Fighting continued through the night until the town was liberated the next day. The Soviets continued the brutal regime of terror and torture. Polish Home Army soldiers, anti-Communists, textile factory owners, and others who had survived the Nazi German occupation were sent to the gulags in Siberia. Many never returned. Most of the ethnic Germans were deported to their homeland; they were disposed of their possessions, and many were beaten, killed, or raped on the journey. Around 200 Jews returned to Tomaszów Mazowiecki after the war. A Jewish community was not established again. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0754.jpg |
| Image Size | 714.73 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2920 x 1974 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | Kriegsberichter |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | May 11, 1941 |
| Location | |
| City | Tomaschow |
| State or Province | Lublin |
| Country | Poland |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | NWDNS-238-OR-143(23) |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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