NIEZABITÓW KOLONIA
Memorial Monument to the Soviet POWs (prisoners of war) murdered on their way to the camp by the Nazi executioners in Poniatowa on November 1, 1941
At the edge of the "Dębniak" forest in Niezabitów Kolonia, there is a burial place of an unknown number of Soviet prisoners of war, soldiers of unknown names and surnames, who died of exhaustion or were killed on their way to the camp in Poniatowa.
On November 1, 1941, the first transport of Soviet POWs arrived in Nałęczów from the liquidated Stalag No. 307 in Biała Podlaska. From here, they were led on foot to Poniatowa, where in autumn 1941, the barracks and other factory facilities were transformed into a camp for prisoners of war, called stalag No. 359. In 1941, around 24,000 Soviet prisoners of war arrived in Poniatowa in three transport.
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Without rest, in a tight column, although it was difficult for the tired soldiers to keep the formation, the Soviet POWs had to travel more than 20 kilometres to a site where inhuman conditions prevailed. If any of the prisoners fell during the march and did not have the strength to get up, the escort killed him with a pistol bullet or stabbed him with a bayonet. Often dead soldiers lay in the ditches and in the fields of the towns they passed (Wąwolnica, Niezabitów, Kowala, Kraczewice). Behind the column of prisoners, there were carts. Poles, ordered by the village leaders (on the order of the Germans), threw the killed or died from exhaustion on them. There were so many bodies that they could not keep up with their removal, so they were left for the next days or buried in nameless, often mass graves.
In one of such places, 30 years after the end of World War II, in 1975, the dwellers of the City and Municipality of Poniatowa commemorated the murdered.
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