Militaria Archive

Wehrmacht Engineers, Nürnberg - Sandowitz (Żędowice) Album 1 of 3

This is the first of 3 wehrmacht photo albums covering Germany, Poland and Austria which also came with over 100 loose pictures (and a 4th unconnected album). This album starts in Germany with some familiar tourist locations in Berlin (including the zoo) and also the reeperbahn & Bismarck memorial in Hamburg, port of Rostock, Nürnberg & some fine examples of Backsteingotik architecture. This album focuses mainly on Poland and in particular the heavily jewish towns of Szczebrzeszyn & Zamość (home of the communist Rosa Luxembourg) also including Łaszczów, Lublin & Sandowitz (Żędowice). Zamość was occuppied on Sept 14 by the German forces who then left it to the soviets who stayed only until October and on departure took approx 5,000 communist jews with them. A week later the Wehrmacht returned and re-occuppied this town. There is also a picture of the Warsaw Hauptbahnhof. In July 1944 Szczebrzeszyn and Zamość were taken by partisans & Polish resistance as part of the country-wide Operation Tempest. These albums come from a wehrmacht engineer crew and there are many pictures of them at work in workshops in Poland (Including Werkstatt zug 128). Other features include rifle practice, roma gypsies and a Polish funeral procession. Also wehrmacht food distribution to the local population & a ceremony at the memorial to Josef Schefzik, Franz Panek, Franz Piskor who died during during the invasion of Poland (appears) 19.9.1939. Volksbund records their deaths as Laszczow, Poland.