Nazi espionage in pre-war Poland: an act of terror

Found in the photo albums of several German soldiers are snapshots of the damaged Tarnów train station in Poland. They show a section of the terminal missing its façade, with the roof partially collapsed. Some of the photos are described as showing the effects of a ‘fliegerbombe’, aerial bomb, but unbeknownst to the photographers, the true culprit was Nazi espionage on the night of 28 August, 1939.

Background

The city of Tarnów is located 45 miles east of Kraków. In 1938 it had a population of some 55,000 persons, of which 25,000 were Jews. It was no metropolis like its close-by neighbor. Still the city was fairly prosperous with an ever expanding industrial base. Projects like the construction of the National Factory of Nitric Compounds, opened in 1930, promised further major development in the future.

Integral to the city’s growth was its position on the Galician Railway of Archduke Charles Louis. This was a railway system established in the mid-19th century when southern Poland was a province of Austria-Hungary. Becoming a transportation hub, Tarnów received traffic running on the east-west route between Kraków and L’viv as well as to the south from modern day Slovakia.

Eventually the traffic on the system became too much for Tarnów’s station to handle. Taking four years to construct, a new building was completed in 1910. Adorned in the splendor of Art Nouveau, in contrast to its predecessor’s form-follows-function, the new station was architecturally a loud statement. It symbolically encapsulated the hopes and dreams of the city’s occupants.

Ironically the station was also the center of some of the city’s most darkest episodes in recent history, occurring during the Second World War. On its platforms Jews awaited deportation in huddled masses.¹ Throngs of Poles boarded trains to work as forced laborers in Nazi Germany.

Click here to read the story of one forced laborer, my grandfather, from the Tarnów area.

Before all this, however, was an act of terror that happened just days before the war.

An act of terror

For Nazi Germany, the summer of 1939 was spent preparing for the Invasion of Poland. Likewise the Poles mobilized their armed forces for possible war.² As diplomatic relations between the two nations deteriorated, behind the scenes the Nazis conducted covert espionage operations in Poland.

For instance there was the bombing of Tarnów’s train station on August 28, 1939. This incident was orchestrated by an agent of the German Abwehr, who placed two suitcases containing a bomb in the station’s luggage hall. The bomb detonated at 11:18 pm and claimed the lives of approximately 24 people; however, the exact number of casualties differs in several sources.

Perpetrating the attack was Antoni Guzy. A Polish citizen belonging to the German ethnic minority, he was soon after arrested and confessed to his crime. Having no clear military objective, many of the victims were civilians, the attack was ‘most likely intended to provoke some sort of retaliation by the Poles against the German minority’.³ In turn the Nazis’ propagandist reason for going to war could find credence.

Yet before Tarnów recovered from its attack, Poland was invaded by German forces on September 1. Then three weeks later, on September 17, came the Soviet invasion of Poland. Ultimately the atrocity at Tarnów became overshadowed by much larger ones in the immediate years to come.

A great photo opportunity

For German soldiers, the damage to the city’s train station became a prime photo opportunity. The blast of the explosion caused by Guzy’s suitcase bomb collapsed a portion of the terminal’s outer wall facing the train platform. It meant that a traveling soldier could take a snapshot of the destruction while still onboard his or her train.

Unsurprisingly the Abwehr’s sabotage of the station was kept a secret to the German public. Hence many of the invading soldiers thought an aerial bomb struck the station, which was a reasonable assumption. The Tarnów-Dębica railway route was a particular target of German aircraft in the early days of the war.⁴

Pictured are three photos of Tarnów’s train station taken by German soldiers. Note that two photos have the word ‘fliegerbombe’, German for aerial bomb, in their captions. Also featured is a postcard of the city’s town hall, printed during the German Occupation. All are in the author’s private collection.

1. Poles were also sent to concentration and extermination camps from Tarnów’s train station. The first major transport of Poles to Auschwitz, 14 June, 1940, was received from Tarnów. For more information see the National Institute of Remembrance (IPN) news article ‘The first transport to Auschwitz – commemorations in Cracow, Tarnów and Oświęcim’, IPN.gov.pl, link (accessed 13 September, 2020): https://ipn.gov.pl/en/news/4251,The-first-transport-to-Auschwitz-commemorations-in-Cracow-Tarnow-and-Oswiecim.html
2. For a detailed history of Poland’s mobilization read Andrzej Suchcitz ‘Poland’s Defense Preparation in 1939’, in Peter D. Stachura, editor, Poland Between the Wars, 1918-1939 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, Inc., 1998), pp. 109-136.
3. Roger Moorhouse, Poland 1939: The Outbreak of World War II (New York: Basic Books, 2020), pp. 3-4.
4. This stretch of railway was cut at several points. David G. Williamson, Poland Betrayed: the Nazi-Soviet Invasions of 1939 (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Books Limited, 2009), p. 76.