established – a paramilitary formation of members of the German minority in the region. The head of Selbstschutz in Graudenz was Doctor Joachim Gramse. In October 1939, Selbstschutz created an internment camp for Poles seeking to restore Polish independence, whose commandant was a local German Kurt Gotze. Teachers, officials, social workers, doctors, merchants, members of patriotic organisations, lawyers, policemen, farmers and 150 Polish priests were held in this camp. There were also around 200 Polish boys, students of local schools, who were soon deported to forced labour in Germany. It is estimated that around 4,000 to 5,000 people went through the camp. Other arrested Poles were held in the cellars of the Grudziądz Fortress. The local Germans who ran the camp established their own "court" which decided the fate of the prisoners. The "court" comprised: Kurt Gotze, Helmut Domke, Horst Kriedte, Hans Abromeit (owner of a drugstore), Paul Neuman (barber). Based on their decisions, some of the prisoners were sent to concentration camps, 300 were murdered en masse; only a few were released. Those sentenced to death were mostly executed through shooting by the Selbstschutz in Księże Góry near Grudziądz; in October and November 1939 several hundred people were murdered there and their bodies buried in five mass graves. The victims were usually shot at the edges of already dug out graves. Further executions were carried out in desolate areas of Grudziądz: on 11 November 1939 near Grudziądz Fortress, the Selbstschutz executed ten Polish teachers, four Polish priests and four women. Additionally, 37 people were murdered in Grudziądz city park. On 29 October 1939 a unit of Selbstschutz mass-murdered ten Polish hostages as revenge for posters that had appeared in the city calling for resistance against Nazi occupation. World War II aftermath As the result of heavy fighting in 1945, over 60% of the city was destroyed. Soviet Major Lev Kopelev participated in those battles and covered the final surrender of the German garrison in his book "To Be Preserved Forever". He describes the joint psychological warfare in March 1945 by the Red Army and members of the NKFD. As the war ended, the German population of the city fled or was expelled to Germany in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement. The city became home to Poles who had emigrated from Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union east of the Curzon line, where they had been asked by the