Valley of Death (Bydgoszcz)

Valley of Death in Bydgoszcz
Polish teachers from Bydgoszcz led by members of the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz to their execution site
Commanders of the new Selbstschutz battalions of German executioners in Bydgoszcz. From the left: SS-Standartenführer Ludolf von Alvensleben, chief of the Selbstschutz inspectorate in Płutowo. SS-Obersturmbannführer Erich Spaarmann, chief of the Selbstschutz inspectorate in Bydgoszcz (till November 1939). SS-Obersturmbannführer Hans Kölzow, chief of the Selbstschutz inspectorate in Inowrocław. SS-Sturmbannführer Christian Schnug, chief of the Selbstschutz inspectorate in Bydgoszcz as of December 1939.
Mass killings of civilians
Period	October and November 1939
Territory	occupied Poland
Part of	Intelligenzaktion in Pomerania

Valley of Death (Polish: Dolina Śmierci) in Fordon, Bydgoszcz, northern Poland, is a site of Nazi German mass murder committed at the beginning of World War II; and a mass grave of 1,200 – 1,400 Poles and Jews murdered in October and November 1939 by the local German Selbstschutz and the Gestapo. The murders were a part of Intelligenzaktion in Pomerania, a Nazi action aimed at the elimination of the Polish intelligentsia in Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia, which included the former Pomeranian Voivodeship ("Polish Corridor"). It was part of a larger genocidal action that took place in all German occupied Poland, code-named Operation Tannenberg.

Victims, mainly Polish intelligentsia: teachers, priests, office workers, were listed on so called Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen (a list of people destined to be executed, made by Third Reich officials before World War II) and another list made by Gestapo during the war.