“It looked like the end of the world.”
80 years ago, the Polish city Łomża was bombed by warplanes of Group III of the Kampfgeschwader 27 “Boelcke” from Delmenhorst.
>>Read this article in German at dk-online
Delmenhorst/Łomża. The city was in ruins. After days of bombings, only the outlines and chimneys of houses stood in the city centre of the Polish city of Łomża (pronounced: Womsa) some 150 kilometres Northeast of the capital Warsaw. 80 years ago, on 8th September 1939, also Group III of the Kampfgeschwader 27 “Boelcke” from Delmenhorst threw bombs on the city at the Narew river.
Jan Bonkowski today is 81 years old and lives at the Capuchin monastery in Łomża. He was born in the city and grew up there. As a 16-month-old toddler he was too young to remember the German invasion. But as a survivor he remembers to stories of his mother, how the airplanes flew over the city and how the German troops invaded the city later.
“The first September 1939 was a very hot and sunny day,” Bonkowski tells. Hence his mother went outside with him and lay him on a blanket in the garden: “Probably I watched above the sky, when suddenly the airplanes appeared.” They looked like shiny stars as the sunlight was reflecting on them, he recalls the memories of his mother. It was the moment when she ran out of the house to take her baby and screamed “Wojna!”. War. On this day the citizens of Łomża were also warned of the air raids by sirens.
Shells in the wall
Little later, on 3rd September, the first bombs were dropped on Łomża, after the railway station and military barracks had been targeted on 1st September already. Until today artillery shells are part of the wall of the Capuchin monastery — it is one way to remember these days in Poland.
Bonkowski barely knows, what happened in the following days. But the Benedictine nuns documented what happened on this 8th September, when the battle squadron from Delmenhorst provenly bombed Łomża: At 4.30am the believers gathered for the holy mass, when the priest at the altar was killed by an airstrike. “Additionally, the enemy airplanes shot with machine guns. We could hear the bullets, how they hit the church wall or rolled down the roof.” A few hours later the airplanes circled over the monastery and the city “like a flock of black birds” — the nuns counted 17 of them. Then the bombs fell on this place of worship. “The moment was terrible. It can not be described,” the nuns noted. “It looked like the end of the world.”
Five bombs hit the monastery
Five bombs hit the monastery, it almost collapsed completely. In panic the nuns fled from the different parts of the building under the hail of bombs, bars and bricks. “When they ran into the garden, they could not recognize themselves, they were covered in smoke and dust.” But not everyone made it, sister Salezja Przestrzelska for example later was found dead under wreckages in the kitchen.
It was also the day of the attack of the squadron from Delmenhorst, during which Father Biskup advised the nuns to leave the city. But it was difficult for the ones, who wanted to go: The day before, most of the men had already left so as to not fall into the hands of the Germans in case of an entry. “There was no one to take us away.” So they were forced to stay: “The night was terrible. The sound of cannons and the whistle of bullets did not stop for a moment.” Because of smoke and fire it was as hot as on a searing summer day.
“A wrecked place of fierce fights”
This attack is documented in a report of Major Andreas Nielsen in the Boelcke archive. On the 8th of September his group received the order to destroy Fort Łomża to enable the troops for their crossing of the Narew river. Even before his group was involved in bombings of the Narew region. “The attacks were timely implemented, city and fort, in which the Polish people stubbornly defended themselves, were almost completely destroyed with exception of the two churches,” Nielsen noted coldly about the attack on Łomża. SS war reporter Rolf Bongs incidentally wrote about the war situation: “The Fort Lomza, a wrecked place of fierce fights.”
Like this, it should continue until 11th September, when German troops finally entered the city. On the next day, they set the Synagogue at the bombed-out marketplace on fire. Until 13th September, the nuns had counted 36 bombings only within the area of the monastery — excluding the church and the monastery itself. At the end of the month, the city was handed over to the — at this time allied with the Germans — Soviet troops. Tomasz Sudoł, historian at the Institute of National Remembrance with a focus on German war crimes classifies: “It was one of the most violent battles during the Polish campaign.”
For the citizens of the city, this battle was a crucial event. “Especially for the older generation the memory is still very vivid and emotional,” says Adam Sokołowski, a historian at the North Mazovian Museum in Łomża. The city with its 28.000 inhabitants was not very big, the community was closely connected. Also the 10.000 Jews among them were respected people, living in the city-centre and active in local politics. “The war destroyed everything for the people,” the historian says. In the Ghetto, which was liquidated in 1942, more than 10.000 Jews were murdered, also mass murders in a forest nearby were documented.
Even today the oral histories the like the ones of Jan Bonkowski were an important part in exchange of older and younger generations. And the aftermath of the events are unavoidably present until today. Just at the end of August some 300 people needed to be evacuated, because a bomb was found in Łomża. A few days before almost the whole city of Nowogród had to be evacuated. “There were numerous accidents in the post-war period, when people lost their arms and legs,” Sokołowski explains.
After the war, around 80 percent of Łomża was destroyed. In the decades after, the city was rebuilt, although without the Synagogue. The old market hall is being modified to become a cultural centre soon. This upturn after all the suffering explains historian Sokołowski with a territorial reform in the 1970s, when Łomża became an independent town and capital of the voivodship of Podlasie. “Since then, the city grew fast. Important institutions like courts and hospitals were placed here. With this, many opportunities came up.” Due to its close distance to Belarus and Lithuania the city with its today more than 60.000 inhabitants also became party of an important long distance traffic road.
Thanks to Kelsey Montzka for proofreading.
