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• September 1939 marked the beginning of the German occupation (...)
• The task of the elimination (...)
• It would need to be considered (...)
• A place of execution of the Polish elites (...)
• Many Greater Poland insurgents (...)
• Leon Kmiotek, the commandant (...)

It would need to be considered to what extent the insurgent past determined the fates of victims of the October terror. As it seems, it was of high importance, however, it was not necessarily always a decisive factor. Participation in current political and societal life or in Polish-German battles in September 1939 was more important, as has already been mentioned, and the fact of any participation in the Greater Poland Uprising was additional - though still serious - incriminating evidence. It should be supposed that Edward Potworowski was killed in an execution in Gostyń, as he was, above all, a land-owner and the president of the Poviat Society of Agricultural Circles. His tragic fate was determined by active participation in the Uprising, when he was a poviat commandant of the People's Guard and quartermaster in the “Leszno Group” staff. Władysław Pioch, in turn, stood before a firing squad because he held the post of mayor of Śmigiel at the moment of the outbreak of the war, and in the years 1918-1919, he had taken part in insurgent battles and co-organised the Polish administration in the city and surrounding areas. Also Maksymilian Stachowiak, the mayor of Śmigiel for many years, was a Greater Poland insurgent. He was also murdered at that time.  

Insurgents were also killed in other numerous executions. For instance, on 30 September 1939, Stanisław Bock, a municipal and poviat councillor was shot in Śmigiel. Ignacy Cieśla, a social activist and a Greater Poland insurgent died in the same execution. Members of the Selbstschutz, in turn, murdered Konrad Pomorski, a parish priest in Rogoźno, who was a prominent independence activist already in the period of the Prussian partition. In the years 1918-1919, he participated actively in fighting against Germans, and was involved in social activity in independent Poland. He was murdered probably at the end of the year 1939. In the same year, on 14 October, another clergyman - Priest Mateus Zabłocki was shot in the prison yard in in Inowrocław. Zabłocki was a distinguished figure of the Polish independence struggles. He took part in the Greater Poland Uprising as a volunteer, fighting on the Northern Front. He was also an insurgent chaplain. In September 1939, Priest Zabłocki became the head of the citizen’s guard in Gniezno and held the post of commandant of the city defence. On 10 September he was severely injured when a car in which he was a passenger, was attacked with grenades. He was taken to hospital, where a German physician took care of him. On 12 October 1939, still hospitalised, Zabłocki was arrested by the Gestapo. He was imprisoned in Inowrocław, where he was taken to a special court. Zabłocki received a double death sentence for “fighting as a partisan and incitement to sabotage”, that is, both for the participation in the Greater Poland Uprising and the organisation of the civil defence of Gniezno. 

A shocking testimony to the massacre of insurgents was left by Stanisław Lose, who survived the mass execution at the Jewish cemetery in Szubin. At the beginning of September 1939, Lose served as the defence commandant in Barcin. After his arrest, he was imprisoned in the camp in Szubin. From there, on 30 October 1939, together with a group of nine other Poles he was taken to the Jewish cemetery in Szubin. Lose found himself in the first group of persons who were supposed to be shot. He was told to jump into a previously prepared pit, and after that, the Germans shot them. Lose fell and lost his consciousness. When he regained consciousness, the bodies of two other murdered people lay on him. Pretending to be dead he heard the grave diggers putting two other people, who begged them for mercy, to death. ”Then – according to Lose– the Germans buried the Poles lying in the pit under a layer of earth with a thickness of 25-30 cm. Let me emphasise that the corpses of two murdered Poles lay on me in the pit. I managed to avoid being completely buried under the sand, especially my head, as it lay secured under the wall of the pit excavated at an oblique angle (…). Then I heard the echoes of footsteps of grave diggers leaving, then the sound of the iron cemetery gate… After some time I freed myself from under the weight of the two corpses lying on me along with the sand, I got my legs out, kneeled and got up. I tried to cover the tracks of my leaving of the tomb....” Lose survived the war. In 1942 he joined the Home Army and was its active member in the Masovia region.