During World War II, from 1939 to 1945, the town was under German occupation. Poles were subjected to expulsions, carried out in late 1939 and in 1940. The local furniture factory was seized by the occupiers and handed over to Germans, while its owner was expelled to Warsaw, and later also imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp, where he died of exhaustion in 1945. Tadeusz Staniewski, mayor of Swarzędz, was imprisoned and tortured by the Germans in the infamous Fort VII in Poznań and afterwards deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he was killed in August 1940. Stanisław Kwaśniewski, commander of the 1919 Swarzędz insurgent unit, was killed by the Germans in Fort VII. From 1941 to 1943 a Nazi German labour camp for Jews was located in the town.