page_title: Bydgoszcz
section_title: World War II
hierarchical_section_title: Bydgoszcz / History / World War II
caption_attribution_description: English: Jewish Synagogue in German–occupied Bydgoszcz (Poland). Inscription in German language means: "This city is free of Jews". September 1939. Polski: Synagoga w okupowanej Bydgoszczy. Wywieszony na murze napis w j. niemieckim głosi: "To miasto jest wolne od Żydów". Wrzesień 1939
context_page_description: Bydgoszcz is a city in northern Poland, on the Brda and Vistula rivers. With a city population of 348,190, and an urban agglomeration with more than 470,000 inhabitants, Bydgoszcz is the eighth-largest city in Poland. It has been the seat of Bydgoszcz County and the co-capital, with Toruń, of the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship since 1999. Prior to this, between 1947 and 1998, it was the capital of the Bydgoszcz Voivodeship, and before that, of the Pomeranian Voivodeship between 1945 and 1947. Located in the historical region of Kuyavia, it is its largest city.
  The city is part of the Bydgoszcz–Toruń metropolitan area, which totals over 850,000 inhabitants. Bydgoszcz is the seat of Casimir the Great University, University of Technology and Life Sciences and a conservatory, as well as the Medical College of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. It also hosts the Pomeranian Philharmonic concert hall, the Opera Nova opera house, and Bydgoszcz Airport. Due to its location between the Vistula and Oder rivers, and the watercourse of the Bydgoszcz Canal, the city forms part of a water system connected via the Noteć, Warta and Elbe with the Rhine and Rotterdam.
context_section_description: During the invasion of Poland, at the beginning of World War II, on September 1, 1939, Germany carried out air raids on the city. The 15th Infantry Division, which was stationed in Bydgoszcz, fought off German attacks on September 2, but on September 3 it was forced to retreat. During the withdrawal of Poles, as part of the diversion planned by Germany, local Germans opened fire on Polish soldiers and civilians. Polish soldiers and civilians were forced into a defensive skirmish in which several hundred people were killed on both sides. The event, referred to as the Bloody Sunday by the propaganda of Nazi Germany, which exaggerated the number of victims to 5,000 "defenceless" Germans, was used as an excuse to carry out dozens of mass executions of Polish residents in the Old Town Market Square and in the Valley of Death. Some of the murders were carried out as part of the Intelligenzaktion, aimed at exterminating the Polish elites. In total, around 10,000 inhabitants, mostly Poles, but also Jews, were killed during the war. On September 5, the Wehrmacht entered the city, German-Polish skirmishes still took place in the Szwederowo district, and the German occupation of the city began.
  It was annexed to the Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia as the seat of the district or county (kreis) of Bromberg. However, the annexation was not recognised in international law. The history of Jews in Bydgoszcz ended with the German invasion of Poland and the Holocaust. The city's Jewish citizens, who constituted a small community in the city (about 2 percent of the pre-war population) and many of whom spoke German, were sent to Nazi death camps or murdered in the town itself. The city renamed Bromberg was the site of Bromberg-Ost, a women's subcamp of Stutthof concentration camp near Gdańsk (Danzig). A deportation camp was situated in Smukała village, now part of Bydgoszcz. During the occupation, the Germans destroyed some of the historic buildings of the city with the intention of erecting new structures in the Nazi style. The Germans built a large dynamite factory (DAG Fabrik Bromberg) in which they used the slave labor of several hundred forced laborers.
  In spring 1945 Bydgoszcz was occupied by the advancing Red Army. Those German residents who had survived were expelled and the city was returned to Poland.
caption: Synagogue in German-occupied Bydgoszcz, Poland, 1939. The inscription reads: "This city is free of Jews"
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