After the outbreak of World War II, one of the main goals of both German and Soviet occupiers was the destruction of the Polish leadership. The Germans pursued this through the so-called Intelligenzaktion, or „Intelligence Action,” during which approximately fifty thousand Poles, mainly political and social activists, priests, teachers, officials, as well as landowners and retired officers, were killed.
The Intelligenzaktion was just a small part of the „General Plan East,” which aimed at the complete Germanization of Polish territories occupied during World War II. To achieve this, the Germans decided to eliminate the Polish leadership, which they considered unnecessary and harmful from their perspective. These plans were explicitly confirmed during a meeting of representatives of major German police offices on September 7, 1939, where it was stated: „For Poland, there is no provision for any protectorate government but completely German administration […] The leading layer of the population in Poland should be neutralized as much as possible.”
The Germans quickly proceeded to implement this plan, whether in areas directly incorporated into the Third Reich, such as the Gdansk Pomerania and Wielkopolska, or in the General Government. In the latter, the criminal operations were carried out as part of the Außerordentliche Befriedungsaktion, better known as the „AB” action. However, the largest crimes against Polish elites were committed in Pomerania. There, according to historians’ estimates, over thirty thousand Poles were murdered in various locations.
Importantly, these actions were organized by the Germans. They prepared for them for several months, creating, for example, so-called proscription lists, which included the names of over sixty thousand Polish citizens whom the Germans considered particularly dangerous. These people were to be arrested and then exterminated. The so-called Einsatzgruppen, infamous operational groups composed of representatives of various police formations, were responsible for carrying out these horrific acts and operated with every German army participating in the invasion of Poland.
Returning to Pomerania, the German forces entered the pre-war capital of the Pomeranian voivodeship, Toruń, on September 7, 1939, immediately organizing military administration. This administration ended in late October when Toruń was incorporated into the Third Reich as part of the Gdansk-West Prussia District.
Apart from these administrative changes in Toruń and other towns in Polish Pomerania where German minority members lived before the war, a paramilitary organization called Selbstschutz was formed. It played an extremely cruel role in dealing with the Polish intelligentsia. The members of this organization were co-responsible for mass arrests carried out in Toruń in the second half of October 1939. The leader of the Pomeranian Selbstschutz, SS-Oberführer Ludolf-Hermann von Alvensleben, gave a speech in Toruń on October 15, 1939, encouraging ruthless actions against the Polish intelligentsia.
Following this speech, German military-police forces engaged in criminal activities. Mass arrests were conducted within a few days, not only in Toruń but also in many nearby villages. The detainees were initially taken to the famous Toruń prison, known as Okrąglak, located in the city center and still existing today. Then, they were sent to an internment camp organized by the Germans in Fort VII, a part of the Toruń Fortress, now relatively close to the Nicolaus Copernicus University campus but then located on the outskirts of the city.
This was the first place of execution for the detained Poles. They were treated extremely brutally, primarily by members of the Selbstschutz. They also formed a special commission known by detainees as the „Mordkommision” or death commission, as it more often sentenced people to death than pardoned them.
Most of the Poles held in Fort VII awaited a tragic fate in the nearby Barbarka forest, near Toruń. There, on October 28, 1939, the Germans began mass executions of citizens of the Second Polish Republic. Subsequent, supposedly weekly, executions took place in November and December 1939. The last mass murder by the Germans in Barbarka occurred on January 10, 1940.
The pattern of these terrible events remained unchanged. Poles sentenced to death were gathered in one of the cells of Fort VII, where they were undressed to their underwear and robbed of their last possessions. They spent time in a dark cell, and later they were transported by covered trucks to Barbarka. There, they were shot, and their bodies were thrown into unnamed graves. Initially, SS officers carried out the executions. However, from November 1939, members of the Selbstschutz, with the camp commandant of Fort VII, Karl Freidrich Strauss, leading, exclusively performed them.
In Barbarka, the Germans undoubtedly took the lives of nearly three hundred people, including fifteen women. Among them were priests, merchants, teachers, including school principals, policemen, lawyers, entrepreneurs, councilors, village heads, senators, officials, mayors, landowners, etc. Their buried remains were discovered in the forest after World War II, where exhumation studies revealed the extent of the German crime, one of many committed by the Germans against the Polish nation during World War II.
