All events · The World Wars

The Warsaw Uprising and the Expulsion of the City's Population

1944–1945 · Europe & Northern Eurasia

Displacement Mass Killing Sexual Violence Killing was the defining act

Displaced

550,000

About 550,000 inhabitants of Warsaw and some 100,000 people from surrounding districts were expelled after the capitulation of 2 October 1944, passing mainly through the Dulag 121 transit camp at Pruszkow, from which roughly 150,000 were sent to forced labour in the Reich and about 60,000 to concentration camps. The figures come from German transit camp records, the Polish Red Cross and the Warsaw Rising Museum.

Share of the population affected

60%

of the population of Warsaw at the outbreak of the uprising in August 1944, 1944

Killed

150,000–200,000

direct killing

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What happened

The Polish Home Army rose against the German occupation of Warsaw on 1 August 1944 as Soviet forces approached the Vistula. Over sixty-three days German units, including the Dirlewanger and Kaminski formations, retook the city district by district; in the Wola massacre of 5-7 August alone tens of thousands of civilians were shot in a matter of days. Soviet forces halted on the east bank and Allied airdrops were limited. After the capitulation on 2 October the entire remaining civilian population, about 550,000 people, was expelled through the transit camp at Pruszkow; some were sent to labour in Germany, some to concentration camps, and the rest dispersed across the General Government. German demolition squads then systematically destroyed what remained of the city until January 1945, so that roughly 85 per cent of the left-bank city lay in ruins at liberation. Warsaw's prewar population of about 1.3 million had already been reduced by the destruction of the ghetto and its inhabitants in 1942-43.

Parties

German forces suppressed the Polish Home Army rising, killed civilians en masse, expelled the surviving population of Warsaw and demolished the city

Disputed

The number of civilians killed during the rising is estimated rather than counted, and the responsibility of the Soviet command for halting on the Vistula while the rising was crushed remains politically disputed between Poland and Russia.

The denominator

Warsaw held about 1.3 million people before the war; after the murder of the ghetto's population and wartime deportations roughly 900,000-1,000,000 remained in the city in mid-1944. Some 150,000-200,000 civilians were killed during the 63-day rising, about 550,000 were expelled from the city through the Pruszków transit camp with a further 100,000 from the suburbs, and the Germans then demolished what was left.

Where the baseline comes from

Warsaw Uprising — Wikipediaopen-edited
Planned destruction of Warsaw — Wikipediaopen-edited

On the death toll

Estimates of civilians killed during the sixty-three days run from about 150,000 to 200,000, including some 40,000 to 65,000 shot in the Wola and Ochota massacres of early August; about 16,000 insurgents were also killed. The figures come from Polish postwar exhumation and registration work and are approximations, since many bodies were burned by German clearance units.

Documented forms of violence

Mass KillingSummary ExecutionDestruction of PropertyForced LabourArbitrary DetentionSexual Violence

The mass shooting of civilians in Wola and Ochota, the expulsion of the population through Pruszkow and the planned demolition of the city are documented in German operational orders, Polish Red Cross records and the collections of the Warsaw Rising Museum.