During German occupation when food rations were inadequate, when store shelves were empty, when the occupant pillaged the country, there emerged a class of courageous men and (predominantly) women who took to the roads to smuggle food to the starving cities. They risked capital punishment by scouring the countryside for illegally raised and slaughtered animals, vegetables, and all else that sustains life. They were honored by what became the unofficial anthem of the smugglers, one of the most iconic songs of Resistance of WW2 Poland. The lyrics were written to the tune of Cielito Lindo, today one of the favorite Mariachi requests across Mexico. Smuggling during WW2 is an important topic in WITHOUT PITY...
Operation Tannenberg / Inteligenzaktion: In the years prior to the outbreak of World War Two, German Fifth Column operating inside Poland was building a list of Poles slated for extermination. Death squads operated on the heels of the advancing Wehrmacht hunting down, rounding up and executing persons who could rouse the Nation to resist or hinder occupation, who could lead the masses: anyone with higher education, doctors, clergy, nobility, lawyers, officers, politicians, etc. As time went by the list grew to include anyone falling under the broad definition of intelligentsia. Hence the code name for the operation: Inteligenzaktion. Prison cells filled quickly. Mass executions by firing squads could not keep up with the intake. A new plan was hatched: a death camp was opened to facilitate a more efficient way to dispose of Poles. Its name was Auschwitz.
"All representatives of the Polish inteligentsia are to be killed," Martin Bormann, Head of Nazi Party Chancellery.
From 1939 to 1944 approximately 100,000 people were imprisoned in the dreaded place of mysery, torture and death. Of those about 37,000 were killed and / or died as a result of 'interrogations'. Germans destroyed the prison in 1944 in an effort to cover their horrific crimes committed there. Pawiak prison is prominently featured in WITHOUT PITY.
New intakes were placed against the wall. As an introduction of things to come the Gestapo monsters smashed their faces against the wall...
Prisoners were shot, hanged or "interrogated" to death....
To facilitate a more efficient mass-murder prisoners were driven to a forest outside the city where they were machine-gunned down and burried (and / or burned) in mass graves. Overtime, as the truth of the horrors of Pawiak reached the population, the prisoners attempted to retain or obtain personal identifying objects for future post-mortem identification...
While Pawiak Prison was the holding place of thousands of Poles, the Gestapo Headquarters located on Strasse der Polizei (Aleja Szucha) was the place where prisoners were transported to for interrogations. Transports brought the victims twice a day from Pawiak Prison, or sometimes directly from street roundups or raids. While awaiting interrogations they were crammed into dark cells, seated on benches, facing the wall. The setup resembled, and was nicknamed a "streetcar". Prisoners were forbidden to turn their heads and to communicate - disobedience was punished with severe beating.
August 1, 1944. The people rose and fought valiantly for 63 days. Hunger and horrific civillian death toll forced the command to lay down arms. But Germans suffered too and agreed to treat the insurgents as prisoners of war. In the first instance in history women combatants were also considered POWs. In retaliation for the Uprising Himmler ordered complete destruction of Warsaw. Germans looted the city first: 1,000 trains (approx. 45,000 train cars) of stolen goods left for the Reich. Special units raized what was left of the city, block-by-block, building-by-building. 84% of all building were destroyed. For modern-day context: as of November 2025 it is estimated that some 78-83% of Gaza has been destroyed...
"I have morover given the order to destroy Warsaw completely. The order was: to set fire to every block of houses and blow them up," Heinrich Himmler to generals, after the Warsaw Uprising.
February 1, 1944. A special unit of the Polish Underground executed SS Brigadier General Franz Kutschera, aka the Butcher of Warsaw. During the six months he held the position of the SS and the chief of police in General Government in Warsaw, Kutschera introduced a terror unheard of even by German wartime standards. Every few days he ordered roundups and public street exucutions, in which approximately 5,000 people were murdered. Information about the executions, along with the names of the murdered, were printed and posted all over Warsaw. The Polish Underground issued a death sentence for the crimes.
In retaliation for Kutschera's killing the Germans shot 300 Poles.
An eyewitness recalls: "Those who were killed in retaliation were carefully selected-—all were young boys. Kutschera's SS-men prepared for this spectacle with genuine joy. They occupied windows along the way of the procession as if in theater boxes. One of them brought his 15-year-old daughter so she could enjoy the spectacle. The condemned were brought in trucks from which they were thrown like sacks of potatoes, kicked and beaten. According to the established ritual of street executions, they were dressed in paper bags and had their mouths plastered so they couldn't shout 'Long live Poland!' Because their hands and feet were bound with rope, they could barely stand. They were lined up in a checkerboard formation and fired in a volley. And so it was, the first, the second, and the next rounds. Streams of blood stained the paper clothes, flowed onto the pavement, and then turned into streams flooding the sidewalk and road."
Although bloody German retaliation followed Kutschera's killing, the operation led to a halt to mass street executions.
Four days after Kutschera's execution a wedding ceremony took place. A Norwegian Jane Steen married Franz Kutschera, the executioner of Warsaw who had been dead for days. The pregnant bride, dressed in black, stood next to her fiancé's coffin, pledging love and loyalty to the corpse.
An eyewitness: "The coffin was placed on the ground floor, in the hall, amidst the stiff greenery of laurel trees. I stood among the others in the semi-darkness, observing the grim spectacle. What else could I feel at that moment but satisfaction? What inhuman times these were! The wedding plans were shattered, yet the wedding took place! The bride, showing signs of a very advanced pregnancy stood next to the catafalque. This extraordinary ceremony was held so that the unborn child could receive the surname of the father who had earned the title of the Butcher of Warsaw..."
Various posts related to Without Pity, its background and context. Historical events described here might not appear in chronological order
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