Jeszcze w sprawie tragicznych wydarzeń 3–4 września 1939 roku w Bydgoszczy
More on the Tragic Events of 3–4 September 1939 in Bydgoszcz

Summary/Abstract: The tragic events of 3–4 September 1939 in Bydgoszcz, which went down in his- tory as ‘The Bloody Sunday of Bydgoszcz’ due to German propaganda, are among the unsolved mysteries of World War II and mark the beginning of the Polish campaign in September 1939. The prevailing view in Polish historiography is that in the morning hours of 3 September, a German sabotage took place in Bydgoszcz, which involved an attack on the retreating troops of the Polish Army, defeated in the so-called ‘Pomera- nian corridor’, by either local Germans or outside saboteurs. According to the opinion prevailing in German historical publications relating to these events, amid wartime panic and anti-German psychosis, as the Polish troops were retreating through the city, they and the armed groups of local Polish self-defence started mutual shelling of one another. The German minority was blamed for this, which resulted in its brutal pacification. For over ten years, a Polish historian Włodzimierz Jastrzębski has been presenting an opinion that differs from the Polish historiography. The present article is a polemic against his latest book on the subject, in which he blames the events of Bydgoszcz and the brutal pacification of the German community in Bydgoszcz and neighbouring towns on local Polish military and civilian authorities who, in his view, sought a crackdown on the German minority. The article addresses errors in his meth- od, criticism of sources and the manner in which they were used, in compliance with a preconceived thesis. The author has also presented his own hypotheses on the origin and the course of the events of 3–4 September 1939 in Bydgoszcz.

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