The Pomeranian Crime – We Remember

We began commemorations of the 87th anniversary of the Pomeranian Crime on Friday, 2 October, with a ceremony honouring the patients of the Psychiatric Hospital in Świecie and the hospital’s director, Dr Józef Bednarz, who were murdered by the Germans in 1939. Vice-Marshal of the Region Zbigniew Ostrowski and Secretary of the Voivodeship Marek Smoczyk took part in the ceremony held at the Regional Mental Health Hospital in Świecie. The main commemorations, attended by the regional government authorities, will take place on Monday, 5 October, at the Pomeranian Crime 1939 Memorial Park in Toruń.

– The German occupiers brought with them an inhuman ideology that denied the right to life to the most vulnerable – the sick, the suffering and those unable to live independently. The machinery of hatred targeted patients of Polish psychiatric hospitals, treating their lives as unworthy of existence – Deputy Marshal of the Voivodeship Zbigniew Ostrowski stressed in his address. – As the regional government of the Kujawsko-Pomorskie Voivodeship, we feel a profound moral obligation to speak openly about these events. For decades, the victims of that extermination remained overshadowed by other wartime tragedies. The Remembrance Day established by the Sejm of the Republic of Poland restores to them their rightful place in the nation’s history of martyrdom.

The Remembrance Day for Victims of the Extermination of People with Mental Disorders in Occupied Poland was established by a resolution of the Sejm in September 2024, at the initiative, among others, of Dr Maciej Jabłoński of Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz. The first commemorations were held last year.

On Friday, 2 October, wreaths were laid at the commemorative plaque at the hospital in Świecie, and participants also visited the “Flowers of Remembrance” exhibition. MP Iwona Karolewska also took part in the event.

During the five-year occupation of Poland, German Nazis murdered 20,000 Polish citizens with mental disorders, regarding them as people “leading lives unworthy of life”. Among the victims of this planned extermination were patients of the Psychiatric Institution in Świecie. In October 1939, during a week of executions at the gravel pit in Mniszek near Świecie, 1,350 patients were killed, including 120 children. The hospital’s director, Dr Józef Bednarz, was also murdered at the same site after choosing to share the fate of his patients.

The main commemorations marking the 87th anniversary of the Pomeranian Crime will traditionally take place on Monday, 5 October, at the Memorial to the Victims of the Pomeranian Crime of 1939 in Toruń, unveiled in 2018. The programme will include an artistic performance and the laying of flowers at the monument.

On the afternoon of 5 October, the Copernican Library in Toruń will host a meeting with Dr Norbert Bączyk, co-creator of the “Wojenne historie” (“Wartime Stories”) podcast, and Dr Tomasz Ceran of the Bydgoszcz branch of the Institute of National Remembrance.

The commemorations will also be accompanied by the exhibition “The Pomeranian Crime of 1939. The Beginning of German Genocide in Occupied Poland”, prepared by the Bydgoszcz branch of the Institute of National Remembrance.

The extermination of the Polish population had been planned even before German troops entered the territory of the Second Polish Republic. From September to December 1939 and in early 1940, in 400 localities across the then Pomeranian Voivodeship, local Germans from the Selbstschutz Westpreussen organisation, supported by the Wehrmacht and SS units, carried out mass executions of Poles on the basis of previously prepared lists.

In Kujawsko-Pomorskie, we pay particular tribute to the victims of this brutal crime. In 2018, at the initiative of Marshal Piotr Całbecki, a memorial dedicated to all victims of the extermination was unveiled on land provided by the Toruń local government. It commemorates, among others, clergy, teachers, patients and the director of the hospital in Świecie, Józef Bednarz.

The regional government was also one of the initiators of the establishment by the Sejm of the Republic of Poland in 2023 of the National Remembrance Day for the Victims of the Pomeranian Crime of 1939.

Press Office of the Marshal’s Office

2 October 2026