page_title: Suwałki
section_title: Second World War
hierarchical_section_title: Suwałki / History / 20th century to present / Second World War
caption_attribution_description: pl, Suwałki, konkatedra św. Aleksandra,
context_page_description: Suwałki is a city in northeastern Poland with a population of 69,420. It is the capital of Suwałki County and one of the most important centers of commerce in the Podlaskie Voivodeship. Suwałki is the largest city and the capital of the historical Suwałki Region. Until 1999 it was the capital of Suwałki Voivodeship. Suwałki is located about 30 kilometres from the southwestern Lithuanian border and gives its name to the Polish protected area known as Suwałki Landscape Park. The Czarna Hańcza river flows through the city.
context_section_description: During the later stages of the Polish Defensive War of 1939, the town was briefly captured by the Red Army. However, on October 12 of the same year, the Soviets withdrew and transferred the area to the Germans, in accordance with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The city was renamed Sudauen and annexed directly into Nazi Germany's province of East Prussia. Germans carried out mass arrests of Poles as part of Intelligenzaktion in the fall of 1939 and spring of 1940. Arrested Poles were deported to a transit camp in Działdowo or murdered on the spot. Nazi German severe laws and terrorism led to the creation of several resistance organisations in response. Although most initially destroyed by the Gestapo, by 1942 the area had one of the strongest ZWZ and AK networks. In the Szwajcaria district there are mass graves of members of the Polish resistance movement murdered by the Germans on April 26, 1940 and April 1, 1944.
  Despite the resistance, almost all of the town's once 7,000-strong Jewish community was deported and murdered in Nazi concentration camps. The Nazis attacked and desecrated the Jewish cemetery, where a memorial and wall of fragments stands today.
  Also, in Suwałki's suburb of Krzywólka, the Germans established a POW camp for almost 120,000 Soviet prisoners of war. On October 23, 1944, the town was captured by the forces of the Soviet 3rd Belarusian Front. The fights for the town and its environs lasted for several days and took the lives of almost 5,000 Soviet soldiers before they defeated the Germans. The anti-Soviet resistance of former Armia Krajowa members lasted in the forests surrounding the town until the early 1950s.
caption: World War II destructions in Suwałki
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