The "Einsatzgruppe IV" entered the city on September 12–15, 1939, to commit various atrocities against Poles. Poles arrested during the "Intelligenzaktion" were held in the local prison and in a transit camp, and afterwards mostly murdered in the prison or in the nearby Gniewkowo forest, while some were deported to Nazi concentration camps. In a large massacre, on the night of October 22–23, 1939, the Germans murdered 56 Poles in the prison, including numerous teachers. Families of the victims were expelled, alike local Polish activists and craftsmen, whose workshops were handed over to German colonists in accordance to the Nazi "Lebensraum" policy. In total, the Germans expelled a few thousand Poles from the city, including over 2,900 already in 1939. Several Poles from Inowrocław were also murdered by the Russians in the large Katyn massacre in April–May 1940. Multiple local members of the Home Army, a major Polish resistance organization, were imprisoned and murdered by the Germans in the prison camp in Żabikowo in 1944–1945.