Verbrennungskommando Warschau
A Polish prisoner of the Verbrennungskommando disposing of corpses after the Nazi German Wola Massacre in Warsaw, photographed by an unknown German SS officer, 1944
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| Date | 1944 |
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| Location | Warsaw, occupied Poland |
| Cause | Wola Massacre |
| Participants | Wehrmacht, Gestapo, SS, Trawnikis, Sonderdienst |
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Approximately 40,000–50,000 Part of a series
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Nazi crimes against the Polish nation |
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Approximately 40,000–50,000
Verbrennungskommando Warschau (German: Warsaw burning detachment) was a slave labour unit formed by the SS following the Wola massacre of around 40,000 to 50,000 Polish civilians by the Germans in the early days of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.
The purpose of the Verbrennungskommando was to remove evidence of the city-wide campaign of mass murder that took place during the Uprising, by collecting corpses into large piles and burning them in open-air pyres on Elektoralna and Chłodna Streets among others. The squad was directly subordinated to SS-Obersturmführer Neumann and was also earmarked for execution after the completion of their work.
During the Warsaw Uprising, Polish civilians were indiscriminately killed by the Germans and their Ukrainian and Russian collaborators in punitive mass executions, the most notorious of which took place in Wola, Ochota and in Warsaw's Old Town, based on the explicit orders of Heinrich Himmler, who said: "Every inhabitant of Warsaw is to be shot. Prisoners will not be taken; the town is to be razed to the ground."
Most of the atrocities were committed by troops under the command of SS-Oberführer Oskar Dirlewanger,Gruppenführer Heinrich Reinefarth, and the Russian Waffen-Brigadeführer der SS Bronislav Vladislavovich Kaminski.
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