CHAPTER 12

The Kielce Police (MO)

“Let’s show ’em Kielce!”

On January 23, 1949, the Women’s League organized a carnival ball at Perets House, where the provincial Jewish Committee in Lublin was located.1 The residents of the city, young policemen, and functionaries from the Lublin Office of Public Security (UBP) all participated in the ball. Food and vodka were provided. There was dancing in the decorated hall, and toasts were raised. Mixed marriages broke matrimonial prohibitions. Even Hasidim were having fun at the ball.

It was well after midnight when the party turned into a brawl. That’s when the slightly drunken Sergeant Tadeusz Wrona of the Provincial Office of Public Security (WUBP)—born in 1926, “of tall stature, little black mustache, pockmarked face”—shouted out, aiming his comments at the Jews, “Let’s show ’em Kielce!”2 What did Sergeant Wrona have in mind?

It all started when the Hasid Icek Rycer, born in 1929, arrived in the hall with a head covering. Nowak, a messenger from the local police station told him off, saying, “Take off the hat, gudłaj [shaggy head], this isn’t a synagogue.” “It’s not a synagogue,” shot back Rycer, “but it’s also not a church,” in response to which Nowak threw him down the stairs. “Gudłaje won’t be in control here.”

The Hasidim stood up for Rycer, as did a functionary of the WUBP, Czesław Paruszkiewicz. In turn, Nowak’s buddies from the police training course in Lublin supported Nowak, as did the aforementioned Sergeant Wrona of the WUBP. Perhaps the suggestion “Let’s show ’em Kielce” was supposed to stop the male competition from putting on airs and throwing their weight around at the party—from dancing with Polish girls? Acts followed words. Mojżesz Wajsbrot became the first target when Wrona ordered him to “hop like a frog.” When Wajsbrot laughed at him, saying that the German times were over, Wrona beat him up. The policeman Podniesieński was also outraged: “I am going to shoot all of you dead today, you poodles,” he threatened the Jews. “Let them sentence me, but I have to kill a gudłaj!”

The arrival of UB officers put an end to the brawl. This, however, did not calm Sergeant Wrona down. “In 1944, I shot such moishes and joseks like dogs on the Hrubieszów fields,” he shouted. “Your red gates are already done for and you’re also going to be done for straight away.” Five years earlier, as a member of the “Wanda Wasilewska” (Communist) partisan unit commanded by Soviet General Fedorov, Sergeant Wrona had helped prepare the entrance of the Red Army into Poland and had been awarded the Soviet medal of victory for this. Now, working for the WUBP in Lublin, he believed he was defending the Polish national interest against the Jews.

The Patriotism of Wiktor Kuźnicki

Many Kielce functionaries similarly invoked a patriotism that reconciled antisemitism with service to communism. Among them was the provincial commander of the police, Wiktor Kuźnicki, a dąbrowszczak—meaning, he had served in the Dąbrowski Battalion during the Spanish Civil War. Before becoming a police commander, he was director of police operational groups, following in the footsteps of the Red Army offensive and preparing the ground for the sowing of communism.

“I know General Kuźnicki Wiktor from Spain, 1937,” wrote Michał Rossner, a personnel officer at the main headquarters of the MO.3 One of only a few who raised the alarm before the pogrom, he warned that things weren’t going well in Kielce: “As battalion commander, [Kuźnicki] enjoyed a certain authority. In 1937 he was sent abroad [to the USSR].

Later, I met him in the MO in December 1944. Here I got to know him better and determined that he was a man without a political backbone. But I considered him a reliable person. He was sent to Kielce because it was necessary to replace the commander at the time, Kaczmarek, who later deserted, and there wasn’t anyone else. As the provincial commander, I repeatedly had to conclude that [Kuźnicki] not only did not toe the line of our cadre policy, but was straight out influenced by former gendarmes and policemen, counteracting the decisions of the KG MO [Main Headquarters of the MO], appointing to positions suspicious people whom the KG MO did not want to approve. . . . During a briefing of provincial commanders in June of this year [1946], when I criticized his conduct, he defended himself, justifying himself with the argument that these people were irreplaceable. . . . During one conversation, current acting provincial commander Captain Olszański [Przybyłowski] told me that Lieutenant Colonel Kuźnicki had stated that “the boys from the forest shouldn’t be shot at, since they are patriots,” and that he kept emphasizing, “I am not going to wait for the Jews that Rossner sends to me.”4

FIGURE 41. Wiktor Kuźnicki, commander of the Provincial Headquarters of the MO in Kielce at the time of the pogrom. AIPN BU_698_2000_0004.

Kuźnicki’s aforementioned deputy, Roman Olszański-Przybyłowski, who—like many others in Kielce—was working on two fronts, immortalized the symptomatic catchphrases of his boss. The first is: “We were deceived, I fought for a Poland without Jews and without Russkies.” The second is: “If Jews and Russkies are going to continue to be in charge here, then I’ll be the first to go into the forest.”5 It is difficult to imagine these words coming from the mouth of a Communist administrator of the MO, but it is even more difficult to believe what kind of people he surrounded himself with.

Kuźnicki no doubt agreed with Lenin’s motto that cadres decide everything, but he understood it in his own particular way. He presented himself as loyal to the idea of the Polish state, which is why, when he hired experienced prewar bureaucrats in the police,6 he paid no attention to whether a candidate had once been a “blue” policeman or had served in the Hilfspolizei (auxiliary police made up of local collaborators in German-occupied Europe) or Schutzpolizei (uniformed German police deployed in larger cities). In his police force he even wanted to hire Wehrmacht soldiers who had previously been employed in dividing up Jewish property.7 He didn’t care about the local Polish Workers’ Party (PPR), which protested against the MO employing “people who once engaged in or indirectly contributed to the beating or physical abuse of persons devoted to our cause.”8 It may seem a meaningless detail, but judging from photographs filed away in the archives, he selected people who had the impeccable bearing of prewar officers. This lent the appearance of authority to the MO.

Limiting ourselves to only a few select persons from Kuźnicki’s circle, we will describe them in some detail, because it is only in these details that the rather amazing, quasi-prewar structure of the provincial headquarters of the MO in Kielce becomes apparent. In the context of the pogrom, it has its own particular significance.

Kobyłecki and Galiński, Prewar Officers

Let’s start with two typical characters. The first had been an officer in the tsarist army and in interwar Poland was a member of the right-nationalist and antisemitic Endecja movement (National Democracy). He owned two kamienice (apartment blocks). During the war he fought in the National Armed Forces (NSZ). The second had been an officer in the sabotage unit of the AK during the German occupation. Both will be rejected for employment in the MO by Rossner at the main headquarters. This won’t, however, prevent Kuźnicki from hiring them in his office by July 1946.

The first, Lieutenant Jan Kobyłecki, has a mustache and is photographed in full dress uniform in his personal file. He was the head of the disciplinary unit in the provincial headquarters of the MO after completing officers’ school in Petrograd. In his application for employment in the police, he asserted that “service in the MO, being more dynamic, suit[ed] him more as a former military man,” and that knowledge of the area and its residents would enable him “to choose between good sons of the Fatherland and lackeys.” In a biographical sketch he wrote for his superiors, he did not hide the fact that before the war he was dismissed from the army as an Endek, or rightist “opponent of piłsudczyzna [Piłsudski-ism].”9 He made assurances that he was currently, however, an ardent “supporter of the PPR.”

Commander Kuźnicki was eager to hire him and wrote an excellent recommendation for his file: “Attitude toward the USSR: loyal. Attitude to service: reliable. Life experience: rich. Understanding of responsibilities: excellent.” A note based on an interview that the personnel verification committee conducted with Kobyłecki on September 16, 1946, has somewhat different overtones: “It seems that the hostile attitude toward piłsudczyzna was the result of an extreme right-wing orientation (endecja). A suspicion arises that during the occupation [Kobyłecki] belonged to the NSZ. . . . He joined the police in order to protect himself from service in the army.”

Characteristically, however, the newly nominated provincial commander of the police, Olszański, will also speak in defense of Kobyłecki shortly after the pogrom, on September 4, 1946. He will call him an “exemplary” policeman, “who works with remarkable dedication . . . expressing his positive attitude toward democracy every step of the way.”10

The second of the two officers mentioned, equally typical, although without the mustache, is Kazimierz Galiński, a second lieutenant in the AK and a leader of the municipal sabotage unit in the Kielce-Herby neighborhood during the war. After the war he was first commander of the Operational Company of the MO and at the time of the pogrom, of the school for noncommissioned officers at the provincial headquarters of the MO. The customs he introduced among the course participants are described in the following complaint: “We are reporting that Second Lieutenant Galiński . . . as a battlefield instructor . . . says that if you ‘don’t punch a guy in the mug first thing in the morning, then he walks around all day like a drunk,’ and he is most hostile toward the political-behavioral directors. He picks on them the most, saying, ‘You PPR sons-of-bitches.’”11

After the pogrom Galiński became famous for filing a report stating that during the pogrom he turned to UB officers, pointing out three soldiers who were inciting a group of people to murder Jews. These officers did not react. He does not know their last names, “but he would recognize them and knows that they are from the UB.”12

As we shall see, Commander Kuźnicki was surrounded not only by officers from the Home Army (AK), Peasants’ Battalions (BCh), and National Armed Forces (NSZ), but also by former “blue policemen,” Gestapo agents, functionaries of the Schutz- and Hilfspolizei, and even—quite high up—a certain szmalcownik (someone who blackmailed Jews in hiding during the war). Communists were the rarest among them.

The only group that did not have its own representatives in the provincial police headquarters were the local Jews.13 But, after all, there should have been Jews there, since they had been granted access to the “armed” institutions, and they supposedly signed up in droves.

An analysis of available personnel forms reveals that not a single policeman was married to a Jewish woman, which is significant in its own right. Marriage practices, after all, are an objective criterion of social distance.

Sędek and His Brothers

Social distance was undoubtedly important for Stefan Sędek, another employee hired by Commander Kuźnicki. A lawyer with a degree from the University of Warsaw, Sędek was a civil functionary in the criminal investigation service at the police station located at 45 Sienkiewicza Street. On the morning of July 4, 1946, he sent patrols from that station to Planty Street. In a 1951 communication from the head of Department III of the WUBP-Kielce, we read that Sędek, in cooperation with his older brother Jan, had been the first organizers of the far-right National Radical Camp (Obóz Narodowo-Radykalny, ONR) in the Kielce area before the war.

Anyone could have misunderstood the pre-pogrom situation. However, if the person who erroneously evaluated this context was the cofounder of a local anti-Jewish organization, and his “misunderstanding” led to a pogrom of Jews, that provides food for thought.

Even deputies to the Sejm asked about Sędek. During a session of the administration and security commission on July 19, 1946, deputy Kazimierz Banach expressed surprise that “people like Sędek occupy such important positions and can believe in a version of ritual murder.”14 A representative of the Ministry of Public Security (MBP), Grzegorz Korczyński, somberly answered that he considered Sędek’s steps “conscious and deliberate,” and he vouched that he would seek a prompt explanation. In a similar spirit, Hilary Chełchowski and Władysław Buczyński mentioned Sędek in their “Report from the Trip to Kielce,” dated July 6, 1946.15 These were, however, the last times Stefan Sędek was publicly mentioned.

Though the court exonerated Sędek,16 historians of the Kielce pogrom have not paid sufficient attention to this figure until now. He is deserving of attention if only because of his family. Stefan’s older brother Jan, was an activist in the interwar far-right nationalist and antisemitic Camp of Great Poland (Obóz Wielkiej Polski, OWP) and the National Radical Camp (ONR), where he acted under the pseudonym “Prawda.” He was arrested by the UB on October 8, 1945. Like his younger brother Juliusz (Julian), who was also an OWP activist, Jan belonged to the secret Polish Organization (Organizacja Polska, OP), referred to as “the inner order” of the ONR.

Andrzej Tretiak, an OP activist arrested by the UB, described the organization in detail. He underscored that its main directive was the principle that “the right to govern Poland belongs only to Poles.” It was connected with articulating the necessity “to remove all internationals and the influence of foreign capital, and to remove from public and economic life the foreign element—Polish citizens of Jewish nationality.”17

FIGURE 42. Police (MO) officer Stefan Sędek, who sent a patrol to search the building at 7/9 Planty Street on the day of the pogrom. AIPN, BU_0_582_258_0083.

Antoni Symonowicz, another detained OP member, testified, “The goal of the secret organization was . . . concentrating in its ranks an elite undisclosed to the outside and, with the help of this elite, gradually (in contrast to the revolutionary intentions of ONR Falanga) taking control over power in the country and organizing life according to the ideological guidelines contained in the ONR declaration dated April 1934.”18 This was particularly important after the camp’s structures were made illegal.19 The plan was for the OP—as it gained popularity—to fill important state positions, taking care that the nominees were not associated with any party, much less with a national-radical ideology.20 Its strategy was thus typical of secret societies, which, in the form of real and imagined Freemasonry, the right had condemned. The organization’s efficacy depended on the secrecy that increased at each consecutive rung of the organization’s hierarchy and against which society had little opportunity to defend itself.

There were four levels of secrecy in the Polish Organization. Members of level “S” (sekcja, the section) were not aware of the existence of level “C” (referred to as “Czarniecki” after the seventeenth-century Polish military hero), while in turn those at levels “S” and “C” did not know about the highest levels, such as levels “Z” (Zakon, the order) or the most elite and clandestine body “A,” the Political Committee of the Polish Organization (Komitet Polityczny Organizacji Polskiej).

A candidate joining the organization at the “Zakon” level, to which both Stefan Sędek’s brothers belonged, had to pledge on his honor that “there [was] not a single drop of Jewish blood” in his veins.21 The organization had the right to oversee the private lives of its members and “according to the Aryan paragraph,” it vetted members’ planned marriages.

During the war the OP brought to life its own press (in 1940, it established the publication Szaniec (The Rampart), for which it seems that both Sędek brothers wrote) and two military organizations, the Związek Jaszczurczy or Lizard Union, and the National Armed Forces (NSZ).22

After the war the clandestine structures of the OP continued their activities,23 attempting to infiltrate not only the newly emerging authorities and the PPR24 but also the intelligence network of the AK and the intelligence service of Freedom and Independence (Wolność i Niezawisłość, WiN).25 The UB tracked the activities of the OP until at least the middle of 1945. By January of 1946, it was already familiar with the details of its structure.26 The organization appears to have racked up numerous successes by late November 1947, when the head of Department III of the Ministry of Public Security (MBP) said of it, “Despite numerous exposures and arrests, numerous circles of members of this organization remain and continue to act. . . . The OP has managed to place its people in important positions within the central apparatus of our economic or social life.”27

With the exception of the oldest brother, Aleksander, about whose education we do not have any information, all the Sędek brothers—including Stefan—studied before the war in the University of Warsaw’s Department of Law, which was dominated by nationalists. It was precisely in this milieu that the idea of the secret Polish Organization was conceived. Several of its important activists came from the University of Warsaw’s Department of Law, including the aforementioned Symonowicz, a member of the executive committee of the OP. Based on statements he gave after his arrest on November 23, 1945, among other things, the Ministry of Public Security gained insight into the intricate structure of the organization, became familiar with the biographies of all the Sędek brothers, and gradually exposed them.

Other members of Stefan Sędek’s family also held nationalist views. Until 1939 his father, Antoni, a teacher, had been active in the district and county administrations of the National Party (Stronnictwo Narodowe, SN) in Kielce.28 Sędek’s brother-in-law (his wife’s brother), Bernard Urbański, was also connected to the National Party; he was a butcher and an organizer of the Polish Scouting and Guiding Association (ZHP) in Kielce, who was arrested after the pogrom.29

Of course, in the application that Stefan Sędek filled out for employment in the investigation department of the police headquarters in Kielce in February 1945 there is nothing about these connections. We can appreciate the humor in the fact that Sędek, a member of the Kielce bar who spoke fluent French, Russian, German, and Czech, sensing which way the winds of history were blowing, filled out the “social background” question of his application by writing that he came from peasant stock and described his nose as “semitic.”

At the end of April, the provincial commander of the MO, Wiktor Kuźnicki, issued a pass to Sędek in Russian and equipped him with a Nagant-type revolver. After the pogrom, when investigators interrogated him as to whether he had known about Sędek’s past, Kuźnicki would say, “I heard he was not a man of democratic ilk. I was supposed to remove him, but at the request of the previous director of the station I kept him on, since Zagórski,30 a new man, . . . wouldn’t have managed without Sędek.”31

The commander of the MO who preceded Zagórski, and who interceded on Sędek’s behalf, was Edward Kwapisz. As the first postwar head of the police in Kielce, he also deserves attention. Using him as an example, we can see how the structures of the local authorities were formed immediately after the Soviets’ arrived.

Kwapisz worked in the MO from January until September 1945. He was dismissed when it was revealed that he was a second lieutenant in the AK and previously had been in the Peasants’ Battalions and NSZ, where he supposedly led a platoon that “liquidated communists.” His name will surface in the fifties among the files in the case of Marian Sołtysiak (pseud. Barabasz), the commander of the well-known “Wybranieccy” underground unit of the AK and later accused of murdering Jews. Among other things, we read in these files that “Kwapisz, along with other members of the AK organization from Barabasz’s group [such as] . . . Sędek Stefan, supposedly took an active part in setting fire to the home of secretary of the Kielce city court [Stefan Sawa], who was believed to be a Communist. . . . Five people burned to death.”

In late 1943 and early 1944, Stefan Sawa, a court secretary in Kielce, rented a dwelling in Zagórze near Daleszyce, where he built a system of hiding places for Jews. After the war Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial museum, would honor his rescue efforts by awarding him the title Righteous Among the Nations. Among the Jews he worked to save was his wife, Zofia, the daughter of Salomon Zelinger, co-owner of the Hotel Polski in Kielce. Salomon had been a soldier in the Polish Legions during World War I and a soldier in the AK during World War II; he fought and died in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. On February 16, 1944, on the order of Commander Marian Sołtysiak, the “Wybranieccy” unit attacked Stefan Sawa’s home, shot everyone present, including the children, then looted the dwelling and burned it down. On trial for this act in the 1950s, unit members explained that they were carrying out the sentence of Kielce’s dwójka—Department II of the AK, responsible for intelligence and counterintelligence during the war—which had determined that Sawa was a German spy.32

Other than this isolated, unclear trail and the information that Sędek and his brothers were arrested twice by the Kielce Gestapo, there is no trace of Stefan Sędek’s wartime activities. However, the treatment he received after the pogrom was lenient: he was acquitted by the military regional court in Kielce on November 22, 1946. In addition, he was later used as an “operational contact” of the UB in the 1950s (under the telling pseudonym “Zmieniony,” meaning “transformed”). For these reasons we may conclude that Stefan, through his brothers Jan and Julian, provided the Ministry of Public Security (MBP) with important access to the top level of the Polish Organization (OP). For the Communist authorities, this was far more important than the Kielce pogrom. If we are to compare the fates of both Konrad Dybowski (another member of the OP and a policeman) and his father, who were sentenced to death, with the merely symbolic sentences passed on all the Sędeks, Communist justice was exceedingly kind to the Sędek family.

Obviously, Stefan Sędek was dismissed from the MO immediately after he was arrested at the beginning of September 1946. Only then was it discovered in what capacity he actually worked there. In a note dated August 24, 1946, a clerk in the provincial headquarters of the Kielce MO wrote—contrary to the facts—that “the aforementioned did not enjoy a good reputation among his superiors, based on evidence he was accused of two-sided work, that is, of collaboration with reactionary elements. This was established in a report from the Kielce police station.”33

I have not been able to find this report in the archives.

Of course, none of Stefan Sędek’s connections as presented above prove that there existed a plot by reactionary elements to incite the Kielce pogrom. Each connection, however, forces us to ask why, until now, were historians so sensitive to any trace of provocation.

Antoni Jarosz of Przewłoka, Quartermaster of the Provincial Police Headquarters

Located in record group 301 of the Archive at the Jewish Historical Institute (AŻIH) is an account by Zelman Baum (b. 1924). During the war Baum hid in the area around Klimontów in Sandomierz County.34 The Baums were millers, so when the war began they had resources that gave them a chance to survive.

“North of Iwaniska, there was a town called Baranówek,” says Zelman Baum’s ninety-four-year-old cousin as he leans over a map, tracing the course of the river Koprzywianka.35

This is gmina Iwaniska. Grandma lived somewhere here. . . . They had a watermill. Three water wheels that moved this mill. And here are the big ponds; it was a river, 10 hectares of land. . . . Water from these ponds went over the water wheels and moved these wheels, and these wheels moved all the milling equipment.

When the water froze during a severe frost, my grandpa, the husband of my grandma, chipped at this ice with a pick of some sort, so that these wheels could turn on this, the Koprzywianka river. This is where the Koprzywianka is, this is where that Iwaniska is.

Grandma’s brother in Kopce was also the owner of a mill. But on this same Koprzywianka river, the current there was really strong. And there were huge mill wheels there, four I think; they had enormous power. And so, my grandma’s brother—his name was Abramek—had three daughters, fine-looking, tall, educated, shapely. They married some sort of distant cousins.36 One cousin lived near Sandomierz, in the village of Wincenty. There he had a large farm, and he also had a mill in Słaboszowice. That’s already a completely different river.

All the members of the Baum family, with the exception of the grandparents, who stayed in the ghetto, hid in the area of their hometowns. And almost all of them perished.37

Zelman Baum survived in family bunkers in the area of Klimontów. Under the name of Wacław Kozieniec, he joined the Peasants’ Battalions (BCh), some of whose members robbed and murdered Jews. One day, Baum and his friends caught the commander of one such group. It turned out to be his older friend from school, Antoni Jarosz from Przewłoka, a second lieutenant in the Polish Army (WP) before the war. Antoni was committing these attacks with his brother Józef, who was in the MO in Koprzywnica after the war. Antoni admitted to murdering Jews and was about to be shot by Baum when the commander of the BCh group, “Dywan,” prohibited Baum from carrying out the sentence.

In his account Baum mentions that Jarosz, who lost his left hand and forearm when he was shot by his own comrades from the BCh in a skirmish, was a “major in Kielce” after the war.

Jarosz may not have been a major, but he had a good position. Starting in October 1944 he worked in the commissary of the provincial MO in Sandomierz as a meat purchaser; by mid-November he was already the quartermaster of the administrative-economic department of the provincial headquarters of the MO in Kielce.

From his biographical sketch we learn that “specifically, he felt social injustice”; that is, that he was a leftist or Communist before the war (or so he claimd). He was on a course for cadets in the 4th Legionary Infantry Regiment, and in September 1939 he was in the guard battalion in Rozwadów. A few sentences concern his “successes” during the September campaign in 1939: Jarosz recalls “bands of robbers,” against whom the Peasants’ Battalions defended the peasants. It was supposedly during such a skirmish with robbers that he lost his hand and forearm.

In a different biographical sketch he will ascribe this “nighttime skirmish” to the National Armed Forces (NSZ). He will admit that in the period from 1942 to 1944, he belonged to a formation of the BCh called the People’s Security Guard and that its commander was the infamous Mieczysław Wałek (pseud. Salerno), about whom we have already heard in chapter 5. Jarosz will also talk about his service under the command of Colonel Ozga-Michalski and his facilitation of the Red Army’s crossing of the Wisła River when they were entering the Sandomierz region. Commander Kuźnicki’s evaluations of him were better than good. The head of the People’s Army (AL) unit “Świt,” namely Tadeusz Maj (pseud. Łokietek) himself, will vouch for Jarosz.

None of this convinces Colonel Rossner, who on June 1, 1946, dismisses Antoni Jarosz from service. But to no effect. In September 1946, Roman Olszański-Przybyłowski, the new director of the provincial headquarters of the MO appointed after the pogrom, will also stand up for him. He will propose that this time Jarosz be given the position of deputy provincial commander for administrative-economic affairs. In his recommendation Olszański-Przybyłowski will write about Jarosz’s “impeccable honesty, devotion, and sacrifice for service.” He will call the rumors about the circumstances surrounding the loss of Jarosz’s hand and forearm “malicious slander,” and he will propose that Jarosz be promoted to captain.38

Michał Rossner will not be convinced and in 1947 will still be keeping a close eye on Jarosz, who in the meantime moves to Poznań. Not until 1949 will the following report from an anonymous agent of the MBP come in: “I met him [Jarosz] in 1943, already knowing beforehand that he had transferred from the NSZ to the BCh. Already then he was missing a hand, which he explained as the result of an accident involving an explosive. As it happened, however, I had been informed that he lost this hand during an operation to liquidate Jews. In 1945 I met Jarosz in Kielce. . . . I didn’t hide from him the fact that in those days I was involved in the underground, revealing at the same time many of the circumstances pertaining to our group. Jarosz listened to me sympathetically, expressing the conviction that everything would soon change but that he wanted to leave the MO even before that. It’s not only that Jarosz did not bring about measures against me, but he didn’t even try to persuade me to get out of the underground. Presently he is the chairman of the District Association of Disabled Soldiers in Wrocław.”39

At this moment, Julia Brystigerowa herself became interested in Jarosz. In the margins of the above-cited report, she noted, “Comrade Liberman, could this be connected to the pogrom in Kielce?”40

In the materials concerning Jarosz’s behavior on the day of the pogrom, there appears a single mention of the fact that he was supposed to lead the Operational Company of the MO sent with a relief force to Planty Street at around 11:00 a.m.

There is no confirmation of this information in his files. There is only a note about a disciplinary punishment for failing to carry out an order, imposed by special order no. 4 of the provincial commander of the MO dated July 20, which could—but does not necessarily—refer to the pogrom events.41

Stefan Dobraczyński, Major in the Eastern Borderlands Gendarmerie

Commander Kuźnicki waged battles from the periphery with the center in Warsaw over his third favorite, Major Stefan Dobraczyński.

A man at his prime with the presence of a prewar officer, Dobraczyński gazes from a photograph. This makes sense: Dobraczyński (pseud. Korczak) completed cadet school in Suwałki and cavalry school in Grudziądz. From 1924 to 1939, he was commander of a gendarmerie squadron in the eastern borderlands of Poland and then worked on the division staff in Kowel. At the very start of the war, he was supposed to be the commander of a domestic gendarmerie unit in the region of Hrubieszów and Włodzimierz Wołyński (today, Volodymyr, Ukraine).42 Next, he was captured by the Germans, escaped, and then hid, posing as a forester and a member of the BCh at the Huszlew estate (Siedlce County). However, in the information file of Department “C” of the provincial headquarters of the MO in Katowice, we read he was an “undisclosed” soldier of the AK.

Entries on his registration card show that he was employed as the head of the training service for the MO in Kielce just ten days after the Red Army entered Kielce. On April 1, 1945, he became the head of the investigative service, and from August 25, he was head of the criminal service in the provincial headquarters of the MO. He was praised for his work, but as early as November 1945, the main headquarters of the MO—again in the person of Colonel Michał Rossner—refused to approve him for this position.43

One of the reasons for this decision was a report sent to Warsaw on March 4, 1946, by the malcontent warrant officer, Zygmunt Majewski of the provincial office of the UB, who in less than six months’ time will rescue the Średni brothers on Planty Street. “While working with the headquarters of the MO in the Kielce province, certain occurrences have arisen that prove that in the above headquarters something is not right,”44 Majewski wrote in a letter addressed directly to the head of the main headquarters of the MO, General Franciszek Jóźwiak. Further, with Dobraczyński in mind, Majewski mentioned the employment of prewar policemen and gendarmes in the MO. He called Dobraczyński a “sworn Fascist” and stated that he had disclosed himself as a major of the AK.

Olszański-Przybyłowski, Kuźnicki’s deputy, observed Dobraczyński’s negative influence on the boss, although he didn’t declare this until after the pogrom. “At first, my interaction with the aforementioned went well. . . . This lasted, probably, until mid-November 1945. Specifically until the discovery and arrest of the band from the NSZ [the detained escaped from prison with weapons] by the Kielce MO station. At that time, Stefan Dobraczyński became part of the scene at the provincial headquarters of the MO in Kielce; on January 11, 1946, he revealed that he was a major in the AK. Lieutenant-Colonel Kuźnicki began to trust this man without limits. In proportion to this, my influence on the person of Lieutenant-Colonel Kuźnicki, and thereby on the course of events, as well as the work of the MO, diminished.”45 We might believe Olszański-Przybyłowski, if it weren’t for the lists of confiscated loot that was divided up—lists on which Olszański’s and Dobraczyński’s names always appear next to one another.

Kuźnicki’s second deputy, Kazimierz Gwiazdowicz, confirms Olszański’s words, though also only after the pogrom, connecting Dobraczyński and Jarosz to the aforementioned escape of an NSZ group. “Major Dobraczyński was in charge of this case. . . . A list of officers and noncommissioned officers was found on the NSZ group detained in December 1945. This list was corrected by hand, in a handwriting that was similar to the handwriting of the head of the administrative-economic department, Captain Jarosz. I compared this list to Captain Jarosz’s handwriting; later, I handed it over to Colonel Kuźnicki with the goal of sending it to main headquarters in order to determine whether it was his handwriting. After a month’s time, I noticed this letter on Colonel Kuźnicki’s desk, and I understood that he had not sent it to the main headquarters.”46

As a result of persistent actions on the part of his colleagues from the MO, who looked upon him unfavorably, Stefan Dobraczyński was dismissed a couple of days before the pogrom and placed under surveillance by the special department of the main headquarters of the MO. Before this occurred, Colonel Kuźnicki managed to once again underscore how much energy and desire to work had been exhibited by Dobraczyński—and how indispensable he was to the police.47

The Jewish Szmalcownik Bronisław Kurczyński-Vogel

Kuźnicki judged Second Lieutenant Bronisław Kurczyński—probably the most colorful figure in the Kuźnicki circle—less enthusiastically.48

Though Kuźnicki accused the second lieutenant of antisemitism, alcoholism, debauchery, and gambling, as well as “a critical attitude toward the USSR and other allies,” he also praised his “excellent knowledge of the duties,” his serious approach to work and his effectiveness. According to Kuźnicki’s evaluation, it appears that without Kurczyński, the entire operation of the investigative department in the provincial headquarters would have been paralyzed.

But in this case as well Colonel Rossner was uncompromising towards Kuźnicki and rejected his proposal to accept Kurczyński into the MO. “It is incomprehensible, generally speaking, how you can possibly make a request to hire an officer, about whom you yourself write that he is an enemy of democracy, that he is negatively disposed to our eastern neighbor and to our system, and that he is an alcoholic and a lecher. It simply sounds like a joke. All the more so because on April 30, 1946, this man, having been detained by a forest band, was released under suspicious circumstances. In all likelihood he signed a commitment that he would work in the MO on behalf of that band. Perhaps he even worked on their behalf earlier, while still employed in the county headquarters.”49

Bronisław Kurczyński, a former student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Lwów Polytechnic and a firefighter in the fire brigade in Lwów and Starachowice, had a truly Uhlan-like imagination. He was renowned for stopping a train in order to “conduct a search of people returning from the Reich,” or in other words, to seize their belongings. His rapid military career was not even held back by the mutiny of a cell of the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR) in the county headquarters of the MO in Starachowice, which accused him of counter-revolutionary tendencies.

He was employed by the local MO in January 1945 on a recommendation from the Polish Socialist Party (PPS). “During a battle fought against a unit of partisans, Kurczyński was surrounded and taken prisoner.” He was then released with the order that he must resign from the police. This heroic report appeared to have aroused a sense of disbelief even then, since an anonymous superior reacted to it: “I am sending information concerning the alleged exploits of Second Lieutenant Kurczyński—please send me . . . a comprehensive, yet objective, report.”50 Although a report less favorable to Kurczyński was sent in short order, its author, Commander Władysław Bownik, ended up in prison for it, while Kurczyński was promoted and transferred to Kielce on September 1, 1945. This was possible because his acquaintances—Lieutenants Kobyłecki and Dobraczyński—were by then working in responsible positions in the provincial headquarters of the MO.

We won’t describe all of Kurczyński’s subsequent exploits, which are reminiscent of a picaresque novel. Rather, we will get straight to the point.

“Please find enclosed case files and a deposit of 750,000 złotys sent with cit. Kurczyński Bronisław, who has been detained on suspicion of collaboration with the Germans,” wrote the director of the police station in Świdnica exactly a year after the pogrom. “With the participation of the Gestapo and SS in 1943, the suspect, accommodating the German authorities, acted to the detriment of persons from among the civilian population, in particular from the Brych [Bijak] family in Lwów, which he robbed and harassed based on the charge that they were of Jewish descent.”51

Soon after his dismissal from the Kielce police force, Lieutenant Kurczyński had just managed to put down roots in Silesia when he was recognized on the street as a szmalcownik (a blackmailer of Jews in hiding during the war) from Lwów [Lviv] who had worked in the service of the Kripo (German criminal police). But this was only the beginning of the bombshell because the accused then announced that he himself was Jewish, that his last name was Vogel, and that as a Jew he had been brutally persecuted by Germans as well as Ukrainians.

Here is a fragment from his interrogation:

QUESTION: Did you conduct a search with the Gestapo at the home of a Polish family in Lwów at Tokarzewskiego no. 49, first floor, in 1943?

ANSWER: I did not conduct any search, as I was under arrest and I do not know about any search.

QUESTION: What were you imprisoned for in March 1943 and by whom?

ANSWER: I was identified on the street by German intelligence as being of Jewish background and that I wasn’t wearing an arm-band.

QUESTION: What name did you use in German times?

ANSWER: In German times I used the name Bronisław Kurczyński. . . . In 1939 I was at the front with a Pole by this name who was killed in warfare. . . . Before he died he gave me [his] documents. . . .

QUESTION: What is your real name?

ANSWER: My real name is Fogiel Bronisław.

QUESTION: And of what nationality are you in fact?

ANSWER: I am of Jewish nationality.

QUESTION: And why didn’t you admit to being of Jewish nationality?

ANSWER: Because my wife is a Roman Catholic.52

The story Kurczyński made up, which he recanted shortly afterward at trial, did not convince the court. He was sentenced to six years in jail, which, by virtue of an amnesty, was reduced by half. The court based its decision on the testimonies of witnesses whom Kurczyński had beaten up in the building of the Lwów Gestapo, as well as others whom he had robbed in Starachowice. During the trial, Kurczyński maintained that he was an officer of the AK from Stanisławów, Starachowice, Radom, and Częstochowa, who collected plans of German factories as part of intelligence gathering for the AK. He also claimed that he had belonged to an execution group of the AK that used the cryptonym Lektor. Those who knew him before the war, however, testified that even before war broke out, he was known in Złoczów as a swindler, trading in school report cards, and for “moving in circles of batiars [street boys] and hooligans.”53

Zdzisław Domagała and the Democratic Youth

Sergeant Zdzisław Domagała assisted Kurczyński in extorting money. Together they drove from bakery to bakery, collecting bribes from bakers who had produced white bread, which was illegal after the war because of flour shortages. After the bakers complained, both policemen were detained but were quickly released. Kurczyński’s underage children, who were suffering from tuberculosis, became the mitigating circumstance.

The report that Zygmunt Majewski sent to the chief commander about relationships within the Kielce provincial headquarters of the MO was not only about Major Dobraczyński and Kurczyński but also about Domagała. He was “a graduate of the training course for MO unit directors, who shortly before the war joined the mounted police in Silesia, and hid the fact that his brother was in the police in the eastern borderlands. At school he became known as an antisemite, reserved towards his colleagues, politically wavering or actually uncertain, and a candidate for dismissal from school.”54

Once again only Colonel Rossner exhibited presence of mind: “In the matter of Cadet Sergeant Domagała, on the recommendation of the chief commander of the MO, an evaluation of the aforementioned’s current behavior should be sent, since his reputation at the school is not particularly good.”55

A visit he made on the day of the pogrom to the Kielce headquarters of the Democratic Alliance—of which he was a member and where he served as the chairman of its youth organization—became Sergeant Domagała’s greatest achievement in life.

On July 4 at 12:20 p.m., he arrived at the premises of the Alliance located on 8 Mickiewicza Street, a few intersections away from Planty. According to the minutes from the meeting taking place there he announced that he had just been “in the building of the Jewish community in Kielce on Planty Street, where there was a battle going on, and where he saw arranged to one side corpses of [the number 11 is crossed out] a dozen or so children of the male and female genders, some with their throats slit. He did not notice any particular injuries on the bodies. In the yard and square he counted seventeen murdered Jews—one officer and two soldiers have been killed. Jews continue to be hidden in the basement56 and the attic—they are shooting—and they are not letting the building be taken under control. Troops of the 2nd and 4th regiments are taking part in the operation.”57

The day after the event, Domagała was called to the Alliance a second time to be interrogated again about this matter. This time he added to his observations that in truth, “in the building of the Jewish community he saw corpses in a room with closed shutters,” but since it was dark, it was not possible for him to definitely say if these were corpses of children or adults.

On the following day, this situation repeated itself yet again. This time, Domagała had nothing else to say. Only those members of the executive committee who were upset spoke: “Considering that the rumor sown by cit. Domagała is to the highest degree harmful to the interests of the State and the Alliance—even though it was spread by cit. Domagała inside the Alliance and already after the events in Kielce on July 4 of this year—the Executive Committee of the Provincial Council has decided to exclude Domagała from the Alliance of Democrats and, in its supervisory role, suspend his rights as the chairman of the Democratic Youth Alliance in Kielce.”58 We do not know whether the incident led to the suspension of the activities of the Kielce branch of the Alliance, which occurred that same month, nor do we know what official consequences Domagała suffered because of it.

Tadeusz Majewski-Laske, Lover and Hotel Thief

FIGURE 43. MO investigative department chief Tadeusz Majewski-Laske. AIPN Ki_41_1353_t1_0010.

Our gallery of characters from the provincial headquarters of the MO concludes with the head of its investigation department, Doctor Lieutenant Tadeusz Majewski, who was neither a doctor nor a lieutenant, but only a swindler and a hotel robber. He made up for a lack of substantive titles with his ability to persuade. According to the testimonies of fellow detainees in the Murnau Oflag (German prisoner-of-war camp for Polish officers), he once persuaded them to invest in a nonexistent theater in Warsaw; embittered by this, they talked about it later during interrogations. He met his wife by placing a personal ad in the newspaper: “Looking to meet and wed in the future a woman who will be able to help me survive the war.”59 And he found one who was both willing and able.

In view of his double life, Majewski-Laske resembles Bronisław Kurczyński. In terms of his political stripes, however, he resembles Stefan Sędek. Before the war he was an activist of the National Democracy movement (Endecja) in Łódź, where he took part in anti-Jewish riots. These actions allegedly landed him in Bereza prison, where the Sanacja regime established by Piłsudski imprisoned its opponents. In an application for work in the MO dated February 14, 1945, he permitted himself to make a subtle joke using the language of nationalists; he wrote that he wanted work for “Great Poland,” as long as it was democratic and just. From April to mid-July 1945, he was imprisoned in Częstochowa on the charge of belonging to the NSZ, but he was released because of a lack of evidence.

A year later the investigation concerning the participation of policemen in the pogrom fell precisely within the area of Tadeusz Majewski’s responsibility. The investigation scrupulously covered up the majority of leads and added many a false one—for example, about “a ‘Maxym’ Ckm heavy machine gun that was operated by a crew of four Jews,” allegedly found in the attic of the building located at 7 Planty Street. Majewski didn’t conduct the inquiry too briskly, since by July 7 he still had not delivered the autopsy reports on Rywka Fisz and her child to the prosecutor’s office. The four-day delay “was caused by a road that was impossible to travel on,” he explained,60 oblivious to the fact that on the day of the attack, the perpetrators covered the eight kilometers to the scene of the crime, between Cedzyna and the village of Radlina, in less than two hours.

Also on July 7, 1946, Majewski’s signature ends up in the file of Maria Syncerz, the custodian who admits that “she beat a Jew with rocks” (the last name of the beaten man is not provided, even though his wounds were bandaged in the police infirmary located at 3 Głowackiego Street, where it was certainly recorded) and in the file of Stanisław Wawszczyk, who “does not want to give the names of other perpetrators of the beating, even though the building, in which he is a custodian is located across from the place of torment.”61 His report on the course of the pogrom has the same date and concludes with the characteristic sentence, “It should be denied, as categorically as possible, that the police were shooting at jews [sic].”62

There are so many files from the first week after the pogrom stamped “Dr. Lt. Majewski” that their author must not have left headquarters at all that week. Soon, however, realizing that the ground was burning beneath his feet, he left it for good, using an acute case of “bronchitis” as an excuse. Only later did it come to light that he had fled not in connection with the pogrom but rather because he was afraid he might be punished for the rape of a sixteen-year-old girl. Nonetheless, one circumstance that might have hastened Majewski-Laske’s decision to flee was the mysterious suicide of the head of the external service of the rank-and-file police training course, Józef Dzik, whom he had interrogated several times before.

On August 24, the new head of the investigation unit of the provincial headquarters of the MO, Lieutenant Stanisław Boryń, wrote to Prosecutor Golczewski that Tadeusz Majewski had deserted and that Boryń was issuing an arrest warrant for him.63

It is easy to confuse Tadeusz Majewski of the provincial headquarters of the MO with Zygmunt Majewski of the Provincial Office of Public Security (WUBP), who for a few months had been involved in putting the Kielce MO in order. But it would be difficult to find two people who were more different. Exactly a year after the pogrom, in July 1947, Zygmunt Majewski arrests Tadeusz Majewski-Laske. This happens in Brzeg on the Oder, where Laske has already managed to become the head of the city national council (Miejska Rada Narodowa, a sub-unit of the national government).

The military prosecutor’s office then launches an investigation into his case. When his real name is revealed, Majewski’s old misdemeanors come to light: in the Częstochowa police he was known as a drunkard, “a con man on a greater scale,” exhibiting “a significant interest in women, even though he is married.”64

After his arrest Majewski-Laske tries as hard as he can to incriminate his boss, the deputy commander of the provincial headquarters of the MO, Olszański. A well-documented accusation is put forward about terror and looting in the village of Łagów near Starachowice. The identity documents of the entire village were checked, sixty people were taken to the gmina administration, and all the houses were searched from top to bottom. Majewski-Laske and Dobraczyński first interrogated the detained for four days and nights, and then things were taken over by Olszański, who “beat the prisoners so horribly that the typists walked out, unable to watch it.” Everything the policemen took a liking to in the houses was stolen. “During the operation, three cows were requisitioned; they were led to the KW MO in Kielce. After a certain time, in response to a report by quartermaster Captain [Antoni] Jarosz, that they were dying, Captain Olszański ordered them to be killed and allotted to the kitchen.”65

“In addition, I state,” says Majewski-Laske, “that . . . in Kozienice, among other things, gold items were taken, that is jewelry and gold coins. In this case, empty boxes were handed over for deposit without my knowledge. . . . I know that Captain Olszański ordered a piano from the community room of the MO in Radom to be transported for him. This piano was some sort of very good brand. . . . I know that paintings made by very good masters were brought for Captain Olszański from the city and county headquarters of the MO-Częstochowa.” As late as the 1970s, Olszański will be involved in the antiques trade.

The litany of looting doesn’t end here: a transport from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) is stopped; a delivery of Bata-brand shoes is stolen; a passenger car owned by the Friends of Children Society is sold privately. A farmer’s property outside of Bydgoszcz is expropriated and Olszański’s own family moves there. The head of the Special Department of the KW MO, Zygmunt Majewski, gathers two volumes of evidence: receipts for wall clocks, pianos, sewing machines, telephone and radio equipment, gramophones and records, chandeliers, bikes, ottomans, easy chairs, irons, rugs, vehicle batteries, motorcycle tires, sheepskins and leather, undergarments and clothing, as well as head cheese, bacon, pork fat, blood sausage, and ham.

The food was transferred to the police cafeteria. In order to avoid being accused of theft, all products were divided among the employees, which, as we have seen, made it possible to avoid being accused of “illegal enrichment.” In addition to the leadership and functionaries of the headquarters, the list of participants included the whole of well-connected Kielce, from deputy provincial governor Urbanowicz of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), who concealed the looting, to local prosecutors.

Euzebiusz Rydzek and the “Outcasts of the NSZ”

On October 2, 1945, a letter addressed to Minister Stanisław Radkiewicz arrived at the Ministry of Public Security in Warsaw.66 The letter has survived thanks to the fact that it was of interest to the demonic Major Helena Wolińska, who at the time was head of the office at the main headquarters of the MO, and who later became a prosecutor in political trials.67 As a matter of urgency, she ordered the Kielce police to check all the facts presented in it.

“Dearest Sir,” begins the letter to the minister written by an otherwise unknown citizen of Radom, Euzebiusz Rydzek.

In the period between August 15 and 20, I was in the areas of Jelenia Góra and Kamieniogóra. I noticed there a curious phenomenon, which in an interesting way characterizes the activity of the people there who are subordinate to you, namely the Citizens’ Militia and the Public Security.

It is an open secret there that if someone wants to buy valuables, clothing, cars, motorcycles, bikes, etc., they can find these items wholesale and retail only from policemen. Because they, based on their entitlements, plunder and steal so thoroughly that there are no other opportunities left for private thieves to sin. . . .

In stealing, the police and the so-called Public Security have their backs protected thanks to bribes or threats and clientele in Starachowice, Ostrowiec, Radom, Kraków, and Warsaw. They can transport and have transported [goods] without fear of searches, because a uniform and some little papers that describe the bearer as an employee of the so-called police or the so-called Public Security duly protect them.

Next come names from Starachowice as well as details describing the circumstances of the looting, after which the topic of the letter changes somewhat: “In addition to eliminating the presently thieving policemen, couldn’t you also examine their pre-police past? After all, what I am about to say is compromising to you: you’ve got the majority of the outcasts from the NSZ working for you, even though they continue to be active in an organization that is officially hated by you.”

And again there begins a litany of names, and details of murders, robberies, and witness intimidation. The letter ends with the appeal, “Sift through to see how many from the NSZ you have presently among your associates. Perhaps they are your deputies, or perhaps they will rob you when there is a shortage of loot in Silesia, or perhaps instead of defending Silesia, they will run away from it before the German rabble raising their heads there?”68

The provincial headquarters of the MO in Kielce delayed carrying out Warsaw’s orders for as long as possible. Olszański, Kuźnicki’s deputy, responded to another reminder about this matter in March 1946 by blurring the matter, and the next month in April, Kuźnicki himself did the same. The main headquarters, however, stubbornly kept returning to the topic of the NSZ. Without difficulty, it also determined which station Kazimierz Michta worked in—the first person on Euzebiusz Rydzek’s list.

But Michta wasn’t interrogated in Kielce until three years later, when he returned to his home region as commander of the police station in Samsonów. The explanations he gave after being arrested didn’t really convince anyone: “Beginning in fall 1943 I started working for an underground organization; however, I didn’t know for which one because I was not told. It was only in 1944 that I became convinced that this organization was the NSZ. The commander of this organization was “Bohun”, whose last name is unknown to me.”69

But it was known to Michta’s neighbors, one of whom testified, “I know precisely that Michta Kazimierz during the German occupation belonged to the organization of the NSZ in the area of Belno and served as . . . a commander of an outpost. The commander of this unit was Szacki, pseud. Bohun.”70

Zygmunt Majewski versus the Rest of the World

Suspicions regarding the character of the institution created in Kielce by Commander Kuźnicki arose in the main headquarters of the MO only after the pogrom. In August 1946 the headquarters issued order no. 182, “establishing a Verification Commission following the events in Kielce.” The commission was led by the head of the personnel department of the main headquarters of the Citizens’ Militia (KG MO), Colonel Rossner.71 But Zygmunt Majewski—transferred here from the Provincial Office of Public Security (WUBP) and appointed head of the Special Department of the Provincial Headquarters of the Citizens’ Militia (KW MO)—was supposed to take care of the practical cleaning out of the Augean stables. Rumors that he was a Jew reappeared.

Two years later Majewski died during a routine hernia operation. Before that, however, he managed to make himself so many enemies that suspicions that this was not a simple accident might have been well founded. Such suspicions, however, have no basis: the signature of Dr. Bałanowski appears on the death certificate under the diagnosis “acute congestive heart failure.”72 And we have already met Dr. Bałanowski, who did not bear Majewski any ill will.

Zygmunt Majewski’s two-year mission in the KW MO led to many discoveries that reached their finale only after Commander Olszański was dismissed in 1949. Did he uncover the past of the former “blue policeman” Euzebiusz Dyguda, one of the commanders of the MO training company on Planty Street during the pogrom, or of its head, Jan Mazur, a member of the NSZ during the war? Or perhaps he uncovered the past of his co-worker, Bonifacy Kielan, who was now the head of the political-education department of the KW MO. Was Majewski on the trail of Marian Martyński from the county headquarters of the MO, who was suspected of collaborating with the German occupiers, or on that of Tadeusz Szcześniak of the NSZ, who had the murder of two Jews on his conscience? Did he expose Jan Rokicki of the County Office of Public Security (PUBP), who was “suspected of murdering three Jews during the occupation”?

Or perhaps he was exposing his colleague Józef Lichacz, whose father and brother—as German schutzman—shot Jews dead in Słonim (in what is now Belarus). Or did he discover the past of Tadeusz Prokop, a soldier in the German army, or that of the former Schutzpolizei functionary, later a guard in the WU UB, Kazimierz Kaczor, who took part in executing Jews by shooting in Stanisławów (today, Ivano-Frankivsk in Ukraine)? Or perhaps he was uncovering the past of Kuś and Janowski, policemen in the MO who each had shot dead two Jewish children.

These activities and others undertaken by Majewski had to trigger a reaction. Its effect was a classified evaluation written in the fall of 1947 by Colonel Piątkowski from the main headquarters of the MO. Piątkowski reported that Majewski was completely “without initiative [sic!], does not know how to properly delegate work in the department for which he is responsible”; and though he is “absolutely politically reliable . . . he is not suited for a management position.”73 Six months later, two months before his death, Majewski was dismissed and placed at the disposal of the director of the personnel office of the Ministry of Public Security.74 The last missive in his file is about providing assistance to the family of the deceased.

Roman Olszański-Przybyłowski of the Podlasie Legion of Death

Zygmunt Majewski lost because he underestimated three people who had significant reason to fear his inquisitiveness. The first was Kuźnicki’s deputy and successor, Roman Olszański-Przybyłowski. The second and third were Przybyłowski’s confidants, Marian Warych and Stefan Latosiński, whose signature can be found on most of the cadre decisions taken in the MO from January 1946 to 1949.

FIGURE 44. Roman Olszański-Przybyłowski, KW MO commander following the pogrom. AIPN BU_706_822_t1.

Born in the Podlasie region, Przybyłowski boasted that after the Russians entered in 1940 he worked as a collaborator with SMERSH (Soviet counterintelligence),75 which provided him with immunity similar to that of Władysław Sobczyński. He did not, however, reveal that he had been recruited through blackmail; that is, he was blackmailed with evidence that he had belonged to the Podlaski Legion of Death (an underground organization of the National Democrats), which he then helped to expose. After the Soviet-German war broke out, fearing revenge from his colleagues, he changed his last name to Olszański and moved to an area outside of Garwolin.

When the war ended, he thought about his days collaborating with SMERSH and reported to the Soviet commander of the city, who ordered him to organize the police in the region. Wanting to regain the trust of the NKVD, he then delivered to them a list of AK members from Garwolin, which resulted in numerous arrests. Once again afraid of revenge, he ran away, this time taking cover in the Polish Army in Lublin. The details of his career during this time are unclear: during this time he briefly came in contact with Colonel Rossner and with the chief commander of the MO, Franciszek. With Rossner, he tried unsuccessfully to “act out” his Jewish complexes. He charmed Jóźwiak with flattery, and from that point on, Jóźwiak would always defend Olszański despite Ross-ner’s skepticism (“a loafer, a liar, a cheater, a brilliant clown”). It is precisely this arrangement of likes and dislikes that will contribute most of all to the defeat suffered by Zygmunt Majewski, who had no one’s support.

Thanks to an extraordinary talent for mimicry, Olszański turns out to be the “evolutionary champion” of his circle. He outlives not only Majewski but all the other characters of this chapter. Living according to the folk saying “the humble calf drinks from two mothers” (pokorne cielę dwie matki ssie), he misleads practically all his superiors. He brags about being tossed out of the army for antisemitism by Hilary Minc himself.76 But very soon, on August 30, 1945, he will become deputy provincial commander of the MO in Kielce. A year later, despite the vehement objections of prosecutor Kazimierz Golczewski, he replaces Kuźnicki as provincial commander.77

After the pogrom Olszański’s circle included such people as Jan Mazur who, as an NSZ member, was suspected of the murder of Jews in Wilczyce during the war and who was the commander of the Operational Company of the MO during the pogrom. Colonel Rossner persistently refused to approve Mazur’s nomination, which Kuźnicki had already put forward. In his evaluation Olszański would write that Mazur was “a politically reliable, sincere democrat,” definitely deserving of the position of commander of the operational company. Mazur was also supported by Colonel Kupsza, who on November 30, 1946, awarded him the “Distinguished on the Field of Glory” medal (Zasłużony na Polu Chwały). As a result, Olszański’s charge—instead of being expelled from the MO (this was put off for three years)—landed in the position of county commander of the MO in Starachowice.

Olszański’s winning streak ended only in 1949, when the main headquarters of the MO reviewed the details he had provided in a somewhat colorful version of his biographical sketch. As a result the MO questioned the information about his wartime affiliation with the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR) and his participation in the battle of the People’s Guard (GL) near Orły in 1942, as well as his 1943 affiliation with a nonexistent organization he called “Sickle and Hammer.” He himself would finally admit to these lies in 1950 at a session of the Central Commission of Party Control (Centralna Komisja Kontroli Partyjnej, CKKP). In the spring of that year he was expelled from the party and stripped of his officer’s rank. But only six years later, during the 1956 “thaw,” he would claim that he had been persecuted for “right-nationalist deviation” and that, along with a few others, he was the real leader of socialist renewal.

He was lucky for many years. Using his predecessors as a model, he built a private manor for himself in the Kielce region where he and his buddies played billiards, and during work hours they entertained ladies and hunted. Thanks to his scheming and his network of connections, he was always able to get himself out of the accusations of looting with which the tireless Zygmunt Majewski hounded him. As the provincial commander of the MO after the pogrom, he also avoided several ambushes the underground had planned for him, including the most serious one, which took place on June 12, 1947. Tadeusz Zieliński-Igła’s group was on the lookout for the car Olszański was traveling in while on an inspection in the Skaryszew region—but the commander unexpectedly took the train back to Kielce.78

Zygmunt Majewski wrote about him very clearly. “As Kuźnicki’s deputy, he was perfectly aware of the prevailing circumstances at the time [meaning, before the pogrom], and he was in complete agreement with them, because the quagmire that existed then made it easier to extract material gains.” Attached to Majewski’s report were arrest reports containing lists of valuables that had been deposited and retained. Majewski underscored that one of these matters was formally concluded, which indicates that the deposits were stolen. “It should be stressed,” he concluded, “that Major Olszański was definitely responsible for the personal connections that dominated at the time. [Olszański] was at the time deputy to Colonel Kuźnicki, a man who was, in the fullest sense of the word, deprived of his own will, completely under the influence of his deputy and those of his circle similar to him, like Major Dobraczyński and Dr. Tadeusz Majewski-Laske.”79

And indeed, Olszański’s personal politics precisely resembled those of Kuźnicki before the pogrom. In September 1946 he fought with the skeptical Rossner about approving the appointment of the “blue policeman” Franciszek Kuś as the head of the science and technology section of KW MO. A year later Kuś was sentenced for participating in the murder of sixty Jews, including personally shooting two Jewish children.80 Olszański fought with similar enthusiasm for Władysław Janowski, who in truth had fewer victims on his conscience, though he too shot two children.81 All of them, including Major Dobraczyński, are present on the lists of the “redistribution” of loot, a process that constituted the basis of the prosperity of the provincial headquarters of the MO during the 1940s.82

Counter to the view that the UB prisons were the toughest in the immediate aftermath of the war, it was in fact during Olszański’s tenure that the Kielce MO introduced the most brutal methods of nighttime interrogations. When those being beaten called out to Jesus, Olszański would say, “God is sleeping right now.”83 In the fifteen volumes recording the investigation against Olszański for the years from 1948 to 1950, we can watch his empire fall apart. His subordinates, including his secretaries, reveal that he tortured, ordered evidence to be planted, or ordered executions by shooting without a trial. One poignant story is that of two horse thieves whose lives were saved only because of the intervention of a second lieutenant in the 2nd Infantry Division (“tall, in a steel-blue uniform, with a cross belt”).

Employed as Kuźnicki’s harmless competitor, Olszański turned out to be his boss’s harshest critic after Kuźnicki’s downfall. Similarly, he criticized communism, when he was interrogated in 1996 during the second Kielce investigation.84 It was a stroke of luck that raised him to the highest position within the police in the province: on the day of the pogrom he was not in Kielce, and that is the only reason he was entrusted to lead the investigation.

A claim he made five decades later bears witness to the quality of his work at the time: “At some point, someone from the crowd shouted that through the window to the basement you could see a bloody stump.” As we know, there was no basement in the building on Planty Street.

He related similar nonsense about the death of Rywka Fisz: “I was interrogating, among others, Franciszek Mazur. . . . He shot a mother and her several-month-old child. As he himself testified, he ordered the Jewish woman to lie down on the floor with her face to the ground, he then laid the infant on the mother’s back, stepped on [them] with his shoe, and with one shot, he shot through the heads of the mother and child.”85 The problem here is that Mazur’s name was Stefan, not Franciszek; Abram Fisz was four weeks old, not several months; none of this happened “on the floor,” but in a forest in the area of Cedzyna; and the postmortem reports showed that Rywka Fisz and her child died several minutes apart and from two different shots to the head.

Marian Warych and the Gold Teeth of Soviet Soldiers

Olszański’s right-hand man in the provincial headquarters of the MO was Marian Warych. He adopted the pseudonym “Kmicic,” after a character in Henryk Sienkiewicz’s novel The Deluge. And he was quite an amazing figure even by the standards of the Kielce police headquarters.

A construction foreman from Opatów County, he completed a program for noncommissioned officers before the war with the rank of corporal. In 1939 he took part in the September campaign on the southern front in the Carpathians. After escaping from German captivity, he returned to his home town and joined the Peasants’ Battalions (BCh) as a training instructor. He claimed that he had been denounced for being a Communist and that during an attempt to arrest him, the German gendarmerie burned down his house and killed his family. He was transferred to the Sandomierz area, and on the order of “Mściwój,”86 a commander in the Peasants’ Battalions (BCh), he organized a “sabotage team” and a school for noncommissioned officers. There he met two characters already known to us: the “one-armed” Antoni Jarosz and Mieczysław Wałek “Salerno.” Perhaps he met them during joint raids on Jews?

When the Red Army arrived, like Jarosz, he facilitated its crossing over the Wisła and took part in capturing Staszów. Declaring in his application that he had an “immaculate past,” he joined the MO. Commander Kuźnicki hired him, but Olszański signed the form. For over five months Warych worked as a station commander, first in Łoniów, then in Dwikozy, and then in Pińczów, and from there he transferred to the provincial headquarters of the MO-Kielce before the pogrom. He must have been quite accomplished, since he was promoted two entire ranks to sergeant major.

When Olszański’s previous deputy, Stefan Olczyk, left for Gdynia, the commander chose Warych to take his place. In this way, Przybyłowski openly mocked Rossner, who was against this candidature; Piątkowski, the envoy from the main headquarters of the MO, who reported that Warych “exhibit[ed] antisemitism”;87 and Kozłowski, the secretary of the Kielce provincial committee of the PPR, who had provided an evaluation. He could do this because almost all of those protesting were Jews. Had they intervened, they would have subjected themselves to accusations of “hypersensitivity.”

Although Zygmunt Majewski had started the case against Warych on October 31, 1947, witnesses testifying “about the murder of Jews by the BCh” were not questioned until a year after Majewski’s death in 1949. At that time Michał Rossner pulled out a report in which we read that Warych’s sabotage group was not directed against the Germans but against peasants, at whose homes he searched for Jews. Whether he found Jews or not, he stole shoes, clothing, and money from the farmers.

Rossner also mentions Warych’s BCh superior, Jan Smalera (pseud. Widuch), a member of the municipal national council in Łoniów in 1949, who beat and robbed three farmers for hiding Jews. From witness statements it appears that “Smalera caught two Soviet partisans and took them to a dentist in order to have their gold teeth pulled out. The dentist didn’t want to pull them, and Smalera killed them with a shovel,” after which he ordered them to be buried between the villages of Jasieniec and Świniary.

Rossner writes that Smalera’s BCh group, to which Warych belonged, murdered more than one hundred Jews, whose bodies were buried in the area of Świniary and Jasieniec or thrown into the Wisła River.88 People reported all of these cases after the war to the authorities and the PPR, but Smalera was always the first to find out about it. They were even searching for him for a certain time, but when someone reported that he was at midnight mass, the commander of the police station in Łoniów, Stefan Mazur, did not accept the report at all.

Smalera’s signature, rather than that of the gmina administrator (wójt), appears on the references for Warych: “a reliable man, worthy of trust in the task of reconstructing Democratic Poland.”89

Stefan Latosiński of the NSZ, AK, BCh, and AL

An equally dangerous opponent for Majewski was Stefan Latosiński, who was deputy head of the personnel department of the provincial headquarters of the MO beginning in January 1946, and then its head from summer 1947. His sprawling handwriting accompanies all the cadre decisions of the police, yet he himself remains continually in the shadows.

The first negative evaluation of Latosiński appears in his files only in 1949. “Hardworking, rather energetic, an egoist . . . devious and fake. . . . In the field he conducted fake divisive operations (throwing a crucifix from the station into a field in Jędrzejów, which people then collected); during the occupation he belonged to the NSZ.”90

FIGURE 45. Stefan Latosiński, who was the human resources officer in the provincial MO headquarters during and after the pogrom. AIPN BU_706_21_t1_0004.

Details about Latosiński are provided in a report from the beginning of 1947 that was found among Zygmunt Majewski’s papers.91 There we read that while Władysław Żbik-Kołaciński’s NSZ group was stationed in Bałtów, Latosiński, presenting himself as a member of the People’s Army (AL), not only remained in contact with leaders of the AK but also maintained a relationship with the NSZ under Żbik’s command. He did this with the assistance of a person described as a “technician from the Poznań region,” with whom he supposedly hid the AL archive. When members of the NSZ killed two members of the AL, “Mir” and “Ładno,” nothing happened to Latosiński, who was accompanying them. The report established that as a member of the NSZ, beginning in 1942, Latosiński had received an order to join the Peasants’ Battalions (BCh), and next, with the same goal, he was delegated to a unit of the AL under the leadership of Stanisław Olczyk (pseud. Garbaty).

During the purge in 1949, witnesses confirmed Zygmunt Majewski’s discoveries, adding that Latosiński was also the contact for Mieczysław Tarchalski (pseud. Marcin), the commander of the Home Army group whose story we chronicled in chapter 7. In this story there was talk of the execution of Jews intertwined with descriptions of outdoor masses. Let’s now juxtapose this with a description of several days from the calendar of Żbik-Kołaciński’s NSZ unit.

May 3, 1944, Lubcza, postal address Działoszyce, County Miechów. A two-day stop without action—commander “Żbik,” Second Lieutenant “Gustaw,” Second Lieutenant “Harry,” and the pianist “Nocoń” stayed for 24 hours at a Knyszyn manor house . . . next at the Zaryszyn manor house located one kilometer away. The party had a purely social character, at a sumptuously set table, in the company of ladies.

May 5, 1944, Dębica (forester’s lodge), postal address Pińczów. A two-day stop without any events except for an operation against thirteen jews [sic] hiding in Górki Budziszowskie in the area of Książ Mały—four teams numbering forty soldiers under the command of the head of the company “Bursik” set out in wagons to the location mentioned, where, after dragging out thirteen Jews (a couple of children, older unmarried women, older women, seven men around the same age), cruelly beating the farmer with whom the Jews were staying, they drove them a couple of kilometers from this location to a forest clearing and shot them dead, leaving them there on the spot. Distinguishing themselves in their bestiality were “Dąb,”92 “Owies,” “Zachar,” . . . “Malarski,” “Michał,” “Znicz.” On the faces of many of the soldiers, one could see pity and disgust at the act being committed.93

Notes

1. See Natalia Aleksiun, Dokąd dalej? Ruch syjonistyczny w Polsce (1944–1950) (Warsaw: Centrum Badania i Nauczania Dziejów i Kultury Żydów w Polsce im. Mordechaja Anielewicza, Wydawn. Trio, 2002), 76, 110. Named in honor of Yiddish and Hebrew poet and essayist and promoter of secular Jewish culture, Yehoshua Leib Peretz, the Peretz House housed Jewish survivors and refugees following the liberation of Lublin in 1944.

2. Interrogation of Izrael Szmirman, 1/29/1949 (AIPN Lu_19_543). The investigation that began the day after this incident attempted to conceal the fact that Wrona was a WUBP officer.

3. Before taking the post of director of personnel at the headquarters of the MO, Col. Michał Rossner had served there as head of military censorship for several months in 1944.

4. SL 3.4D.

5. SL 3.24A. Here “to go into the forest” means joining a partisan unit.

6. This accords with Party directives as described by Jakub Berman: “We have decided to make maximum use of the old elite and to include them in socialist construction.” See Teresa Torańska, Oni (London: Aneks, 1985), 283. Available in English as “They”: Stalin’s Polish Puppets (New York: Harper & Row, 1987).

7. See Rossner’s answer in June 1946 to a question about hiring Konstanty Woźnicki, who had been born in Berlin and had served the Germans in various capacities during the occupation, including voluntary service in the Wehrmacht (AIPN BU_0_1453_3, k. 173).

8. See the case of officer Stęplewski, who had served in the “blue police” during the war (AIPN Ki_6_4301, k. 28). See also Kuźnicki’s reaction (k. 35).

9. Endek/Endecja derive from the initials of the right-nationalist Narodowa Demokracja (National Democracy), which promoted a monoethnic Polish state. In the interwar period the movement found itself in opposition to the authoritarian regime imposed by Marshal Józef Piłsudski which followed the failure of a number of post–World War I governments.

10. AIPN Ki_6_2308, k. 27, 32, 33.

11. AIPN Ki_6_987, k. 25.

12. AIPN Ki_29_117, k. 9.

13. Two Jews, Rolnik and Rubkowski, briefly worked in the Kielce MO after the war. Rolnik “deserted” in March 1946, and Rubkowski’s trail goes cold at about the same time (see AIPN Ki_104; AIPN Ki_6_3801; and AIPN Ki_6_3801, k. 19).

14. See the minutes entitled “Protokół 13 posiedzenia Komisji Administracji i Bezpieczeństwa, Warszawa, 19/7/1946,” in Opozycja parlamentarna w Krajowej Radzie Narodowej i Sejmie Ustawodawczym 1945–1947, ed. R. Turkowski (Warsaw, 1997), 155.

15. See Sprawozdanie Hilarego Chełchowskiego i Władysława Buczyńskiego, pracowników KC PPR, z wyjazdu do Kielc, 6/7/1946 as reprinted in Stanisław Meducki, ed., Antyżydowskie Wydarzenia Kieleckie 4 lipca 1946 roku: Dokumenty i Materiały (Kielce: Kieleckie Towarzystwo Naukowe, 1994), 2:99.

16. See the judgment of the Kielce Regional Military Court (Wojskowy Sąd Rejonowy, WSR), dated 11/22/1946 and 3/5/1947 (AIPN Ki_0_27_165, k. 24–34, 50–53).

17. AIPN BU_0250_15_2, k. 154.

18. AIPN BU_00231_274_1, k. 203. See also the ONR declaration of 1934 (“Deklaracja ONR 1934,” AIPN BU_00231_274/1, 198–201).

19. For more on the prewar Polish government’s stance toward the ONR, see AIPN BU_00231_274_1.

20. Wojciech J. Muszyński. Duch Młodych: Organizacja Polska i Obóz Narodowo-Radykalny w Latach 1934–1944: Od Studenckiej Rewolty Do Konspiracji Niepodległościowej (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2011), 114.

21. See the statutes of Czarnecki’s organization, the “Zakon,” and the other levels of the organization in AIPN BU_00231_274_1, k. 203, 208.

22. AIPN BU_00231_274_1, k. 226.

23. See the testimony of Antoni Symonowicz, dated 12/23/1945 (AIPN BU_00231_274_1, k. 202–213). See also Jan Żaryn, Taniec na linie, nad przepasćią. Organizacja Polska na wychodźstwie i jej łączność z krajem w latach 1945–1955 (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2011).

24. See the interview with Konrad Dybowski from October 29, 1946: “After the entry of the Soviet troops, my father, my direct superior in the OP, gave the order that the members of the OP should join the PPR, as well as other parties, in order to hide themselves” (AIPN Kr_009_68, t. 1, k. 10 and k. 49–58). Dybowski’s father, Władysław, was sentenced to death on June 16, 1947, and was executed on July 31, 1947 (AIPN Kr_0116). See also Żaryn, Taniec na linie, nad przepaścią, 41–42.

25. See Jan Sędek’s testimony, dated 4/3/1947 (AIPN BU_01006_418473, k. 477).

26. See the report of the director of Department VII of the MBP, Col. Józef Czaplicki, AIPN BU_00231/274/1, k. 240–44.

27. AIPN BU_00231_274_1, k. 250–58.

28. AIPN BU_0330_233_20, k. 164–65.

29. SL 1.25.

30. This refers to Edmund Zagórski, the head of the police station at 45 Sienkiewicza Street, who was arrested a month before the pogrom for shouting, “As an old Home Army man, [I say] fuck the PPR.”

31. SL 3.4.

32. See Alina Skibińska and Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, “‘Barabasz’ and the Jews. Chapters from the History of the Home Army Unit Wybranieccy” in Tokarska-Bakir, Pogrom Cries: Essays on Polish-Jewish History, 1939–1946 (New York: Peter Lang, 2017), 279–352. According to various estimates, between nine and eleven people perished in Zagórz. See Bernard Zelinger, Into Harm’s Way (New York: Vantage Press, 2004), 65, 67, 88–89, 149, 155, 171.

33. AIPN Ki_6_3960, k. 23.

34. AŻIH 301_2425.

35. Łukasz Konopa, unpublished transcription of interview with Zelman Baum, recorded on video on July 6, 2009 (in author’s possession).

36. On the circumstances of the deaths of Baum’s daughters Rojza and Szejwa, who were murdered by BCh members, see AIPN Ki_0_13_1036, k. 42–43.

37. I wrote about the Jewish millers of Klimontów in the essay “Ethno-graphic Findings on the Aftermath of the Holocaust through Jewish and Polish Eyes in the Memory of the Polish Hinterland” in Pogrom Cries. For more on the history of the Baum family, see Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, “The Home Army and Peasant Battalions’ Sabotage Teams in the Sandomierz Region: A Supplement to Zelman Baum’s Testimony,” in Jewish Fugitives in the Polish Countryside 1939–1945 (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2021), 83–142.

38. AIPN Ki_6_5718, k. 51.

39. AIPN Ki_6_5718, k. 81.

40. AIPN Ki_6_5718, k. 81–82.

41. AIPN Ki_6_5718, k. 63. In a subsequent questionnaire Jarosz states that in mid-July 1946 he was sentenced to three days’ arrest for use of a motor-pool car for private travel to Busko.

42. APIN Ki_6_5698, k. 29.

43. APIN Ki_6_5698, k. 41.

44. APIN Ki_6_5698, k. 11.

45. SL 3.24A.

46. SL 3.4A.

47. AIPN Ki_6_5698, k. 24–26, 39.

48. AIPN Ki_41_478, k. 60.

49. AIPN Ki_6_5535, k. 70. Evidence for this thesis can be found in AIPN Ki_30_78, k. 64 and following, and AIPN Ki_30_78, k. 76.

50. AIPN Ki_6_5535, k. 26.

51. AIPN Ki_6_5535, k. 28.

52. AIPN Ki_6_5535, k. 15. Kurczyński’s wife was a Greek-Catholic.

53. AIPN Ki_6_5535, k. 184.

54. AIPN Ki_6_5535, k. 80. The document was signed by Second-Lieutenant Kraśnicki, but Zygmunt Majewski was de facto its author.

55. AIPN Ka_0176_360, k. 41.

56. As we have already established, the building at 7/9 Planty Street was on a riverbank and never had a basement.

57. See SL 1.16. Perhaps this refers to the 2DP WP and its 4th Regiment, the “Czwartaks.”

58. AIPN Ki_6_5535, k. 109. Domagała was transferred to the Katowice MO as head of police station II.

59. AIPN Ki_41_520, t. 1, cz. 1, k. 316. During an interrogation on January 7, 1948, Majewski stated falsely that they had known each other before the war (AIPN, Ki_41_1353, t. 1, k. 335).

60. AIPN BU_0_1453_4, t. 2, k. 51.

61. AIPN Ki_41_520, t. 1, cz. 1, k. 60.

62. See SL 1.6.

63. AIPN Ki_41_1353, t. 1, k. 245–46.

64. AIPN Ki_41_1353, t. 1, k. 343.

65. AIPN Ki_41_1353, cz. 1, k. 276.

66. AIPN Ki_6_5535, k. 41–42.

67. AIPN Ki_6_5535, k. 45.

68. AIPN Ki_6_5535, k. 64 and following. The facts checked under Col. Tadeusz Majewski-Laske’s supervision indicated that although there were robberies, the MO did not commit any instances of professional misconduct.

69. AIPN Ki_41_2110, k. 25–26.

70. AIPN Ki_41_2110, k. 13–14.

71. AIPN BU_00342_9, t. 1, k. 227.

72. AIPN BU_0_193_5897, k. 64.

73. AIPN BU_0_193_5897, k. 55.

74. AIPN BU_0_193_5897, k. 43, 58.

75. It seems that the Soviets confirmed this unequivocally. See AIPN BU_706_822 t. 3, k. 103–4.

76. AIPN BU_706_822, t. 1, k. 45. Hilary Minc, born to Jewish parents in Kazimierz Dolny, was a leader of the Polish Workers’ Party, as well as the architect of Poland’s postwar economy in various ministerial roles.

77. See the letter from prosecutor Kazimierz Golczewski dated 29/7/1946 to the head of the Judicial Services Department of the Ministry of National Defense, containing a list of Olszański’s crimes, including bribes, thefts (together with Gwiazdowicz and Dobraczyński), use of prohibited methods in interrogating prisoners, throwing tenants out of private apartments, unlawful arrest of four police chiefs, and so on (AIPN BU_706_822, t. 12, k. 5). See also AIPN BU_706_822, t. 6, k. 11.

78. Ryszard Śmietanka-Kruszelnicki, Podziemie poakowskie na Kielecczyźnie w latach 1945–1948 (Kraków: IPN, 2002), 282.

79. See Zygmunt Majewski’s memo, dated 20/1/1948, to the Special Department of the Headquarters of the MO in Warsaw (AIPN Ki_41_1353, cz. 3, k. 289).

80. AIPN Lu_011_279, k. 80–81.

81. AIPN Ki_103_3247.

82. AIPN BU_706_822, t. 9, e.g., k. 15.

83. AIPN BU_706_822, t. 11, k. 13. Police functionary Eugeniusz Kitliński, convicted of killing a woman during an interrogation, later tried to have his record expunged by stating that “former Deputy Chief of the Provincial MO Capt. Olszański Roman introduced the practice of forcing statements from suspects and arrested persons, and personally encouraged us to exert physical and psychological pressure” (AIPN Ki_41_72, k. 141).

84. SL 3.24B.

85. Olszański-Przybyłowski, Okruchy pamięci.

86. Tokarska-Bakir, “The Home Army and Peasant Battalions’ Sabotage Teams” in Jewish Fugitives, 83–142.

87. AIPN BU_1082_5052, k. 169.

88. AIPN BU_1082_5052, k. 89.

89. AIPN BU_1082_5052, k. 20.

90. See the letter dated 7/10/1949 from 2nd Lt. T. Pełech of the Special Department of the Provincial Headquarters of the MO in Kielce to the Head of the Special Department of the Main Headquarters in Warsaw, referring to the 31/3/1949 decision of the chief commander of the MO to remove Latosiński from the MO for concealing his membership in the NSZ (AIPN Ki_104).

91. AIPN BU_706_21, t._3, k. 82.

92. See the testimony of Stanisław Stelmach (Dąb) on the murder of ten Jews who were hiding in the area of Książ in Miechów County in the spring of 1944 (AIPN Ki_013_1374, t.1, k. 294–95). See also “The Righteous in Giebułtów. The National Armed Forces in the Battle against the Jews” in Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, Jewish Fugitives in the Polish Countryside, 1939–1945 (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2022), 143–176.

93. See the report signed using the pseudonym “Janusz” regarding the operation of the NSZ group (Kielce regiment) under the command of “Żbik” in the areas of Miechów, Busko, and Opatów from May 1, 1944, to July 14, 1944 (AIPN BU_00231_234, t. 3, k. 99–100). The pseudonyms mentioned in this report were decrypted in Tokarska-Bakir, “The Righteous in Giebułtów.”