Zamość uprising

The Zamość uprising comprised World War II partisan operations, 1942–1944, by the Polish resistance (primarily the Home Army and Peasant Battalions) against Germany's Generalplan-Ost forced expulsion of Poles from the Zamość region (Zamojszczyzna) and the region's colonization by German settlers. The Polish defense of the Zamość region was one of Poland's largest resistance operations of World War II. Ethnic cleansing of Zamojszczyzna by Nazi Germany In 1942, as part of Generalplan Ost, the Zamość region, with its fertile black soil, in the General Government, was chosen for further German colonisation. In fact the Zamość region expulsions and colonization can be considered the beginning of the large-scale implementation of the Generalplan Ost. The city itself was to be renamed "Himmlerstadt" (Himmler City), later changed to Pflugstadt (Plow City), which was to symbolise the German "plow" that was to "plow the East". The German occupiers had planned the relocation of at least 60,000 ethnic Germans to the area before the end of 1943. An initial "test trial" expulsion was performed in November 1941, and the whole operation ended in anti-partisan pacification operations combined with expulsions in June–July 1943 which were codenamed Wehrwolf Action I and II. Over 110,000 Polish people from approximately 300 villages were expelled to make room for German (and to a lesser extent, Ukrainian) settlers as part of Nazi plans for establishment of German colonies in the conquered territories (Generalplan Ost). In the Warsaw or Lublin area some villagers were resettled, but about 50,000 of those expelled were sent as forced labour to Germany while others were sent to the Nazi concentration camps never to return. Some villages were simply razed and the inhabitants murdered. 4,454 Polish children were kidnapped by German authorities from their parents for potential Germanisation. Only 800 of them were found and sent back to Poland after World War II.