10 Zlotys Massacres in Piaśnica

The Piaśnica massacres took place in the forests near Wejherowo in late 1939, when SS and Selbstschutz units murdered between 12,000 and 14,000 people — primarily Polish intelligentsia, priests, and psychiatric patients evacuated from Pomeranian institutions. The killings began within weeks of the German invasion and predated the better-documented Katyń massacre by months, yet Piaśnica remained almost entirely suppressed in Western historical memory for decades, partly because the site fell within postwar Poland's communist information landscape, where German war crimes were politically inconvenient to discuss without broader ideological framing.

NBP's commemorative series addressing specific atrocity sites has been running since the 2000s. This issue is among the later additions.