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The Wola massacre, which took place from 5–12 August 1944, was the systematic killing of around 40,000 people by Nazi German troops during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944.

Polish civilians along with captured resistance fighters were indiscriminately shot or killed in organized mass executions throughout the Wola district of the Polish capital Warsaw. The action was designed to crush the Poles' will to fight and put the uprising to an end without having to commit to heavy city fighting. Recent research in Poland suggests the number of victims maybe even as high as 100,000.

The Nazis perpetrated this massacre to crush the poles to put an end to the uprising. After facing heavy fire from Polish resistance fighters in Warsaw, the Germans were unable to proceed forward, and thus decided to go from house to house, shooting the inhabitants. Many were killed immediately, but many were suffered from torture and sexual assault beforehand. Most of the victims were the elderly, women and children. Three hospitals were burned down with the patients still inside. Nurses suffered untold assault and atrocities by the Nazi troops, and were hung along with the doctors. To enhance their effectiveness, the Nazis forced civilian women onto the armoured vehicles as human shields.

Up until mid September, the Nazis were shooting all captured insurgents on the spot.

After SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach arrived in Warsaw (7 August 1944), it became clear that atrocities only stiffened the resistance and that some political solution should be found, considering the limited forces at the disposal of the German commander. The aim was to gain a significant victory to show the Polish Home Army the futility of further fighting and make them surrender. This did not immediately succeed, but from the end of September on, some of the captured Polish fighters were treated as prisoners of war and civilians were spared, and in the end the districts of Warsaw still held by insurgents capitulated on 3 October 1944. Prof. Timothy Snyder, from Yale University, states that "the ratio of civilian to military dead was more than a thousand to one, even if military casualties on both sides are counted".

The main perpetrators were Heinz Reinefarth and Oskar Dirlewanger, who presided over the most cruel atrocities. Dirlewanger was arrested near the town of Altshausen in Upper Swabia on June 1, 1945 by the French occupational authorities while wearing civilian clothes and hiding under a false name. He died on June 7, 1945 in a French prison camp at Altshausen, probably as a result of ill-treatment. Reinefarth was never prosecuted.

After the end of the war, no German soldier involved in the Wola and Ochota massacres during the Warsaw Uprising was prosecuted for involvement in the killings.

A list of several former SS Dirlewanger members still alive in May 2008 was made available by the Warsaw Uprising Museum in May 2008.