About 50 percent of members of the Jewish Community of Danzig had left the city within a year after a pogrom in October 1937 , after the Kristallnacht riots in November 1938 the community decided to organize its emigration and in March 1939 a first transport to Mandate Palestine started . By September 1939 barely 1,700 mostly elderly Jews remained . In early 1941 just 600 Jews were still living in Danzig who were later deported to the ghetto in Warsaw or to Theresienstadt . The majority of them were later sent to various extermination camps . Out of the 2938 Jewish community in the city 1227 were able to escape from the Nazis before the outbreak of war Following the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland , Germany in October 1938 urged the Danzig territory 's cession to Germany . On 1 September 1939 Nazi Germany invaded Poland , initiating World War II . On 2 September 1939 Germany officially annexed the Free City . The Nazi regime murdered the Polish postmen defending the Polish Post Office : this was one of the first war crimes during the war . Other Polish soldiers defending the Westerplatte stronghold surrendered after seven days of fighting . The German commander returned the sword to the Polish commander for putting up a brave fight , while the same time one the captured defenders , Kazimierz Rasinski was brutally tortured by Germans and murdered when he refused to reveal Polish communication codes . On Sep 7th NSDAP organised night parade on Adolf-Hitlerstrasse to celebrate success . It was bombed by a single Polish hydroplane operating from Hela peninsula piloted by Jozef Rudzki and Zdzisław Juszczakiewicz . Six bombs each weighing were dropped from very low height . In October 1939 , Danzig , together with the prewar Pomeranian Voivodship to the south and west , became the German '' Reichsgau '' ( administrative district ) of Danzig-West Prussia ( '' Danzig – Westpreussen '' ) . With the start of the war the Nazi regime began its policy of extermination in Pomerania ; Poles , Kashubians and Jews and the political opposition were sent to concentration camps , especially neighbouring Stutthof where 85,000 victims perished . Kashubian and Polish intelligentsia were killed in the Piaśnica mass murder site , which is estimated to have had 60,000 victims
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
History of Gdańsk