Mass grave of one hundred Poles.

Austere granite monument and a symbolic grave in the Lućmierz forest commemorate one hundred Poles. The site speaks to the policy of terror and collective responsibility imposed by the German occupation authorities.

On the twentieth of March nineteen 1942 a public execution was carried out in Zgierz. Thousands of residents were herded onto the former Stodoły Square to intimidate the town with a staged spectacle. One hundred hostages were shot in reprisal for the killing, by Sergeant Józef Mierzyński, of two Gestapo officers. Although the Germans knew the perpetrator, they deliberately punished the innocent to break social resistance. It was the largest public execution of Poles in the so-called Wartheland.

The victims were selected from Łódź prisons. They included people of different ages and professions: members of the intelligentsia, office workers, craftsmen, and laborers. Four women were also killed, including the wife of an underground soldier. After the execution, the bodies were taken to the nearby Lućmierz forest and buried in a mass grave dug by prisoners. Today’s grave recalls the fate of these people and the mechanism of occupation terror that punished the random in order to subjugate the whole society.