CHAPTER 5

The People’s Authorities and the Jews

Kumoterstwo [ku mo TER stvo]

In 1946 Kielce was not a big city. Perhaps there wasn’t anyone who knew everyone, but neither could someone pretend that they didn’t know anyone at all. Especially if they had the same last name. Kaczmarek was the last name of the bishop, and it was also the last name of the first commander of the provincial MO, who—as a matter of fact—had recently deserted. One of the bishop’s trusted clergymen, who had been a senator on the Christian Democrats’ electoral list before the war, had the same last name as the head of the security service, Sobczyński. The notary at the bishop’s court had the same first and last names as Sobczyński’s deputy, Jan Mucha. Father Józef Błaszczyk also works at the curia; he has the same last name as the missing Henio. So, in Kielce, people joke that every family has its own delegates in high places, so to speak.

But the last names that repeat themselves are a symptom of something even more important. Kielce is entwined in a network of family relations and connections. In order to understand them, one would have to dust off Old Polish kinship terms: szurza (wife’s brother), zełwa (husband’s sister), dziewierz (husband’s brother), jątrew (brother’s wife) and świeść (wife’s sister). In other words, one would have to consider the now forgotten genealogy of what is called kumoterstwo.

During the partitions of Poland1 and the German occupation, people from Kielce, like Sicilians, learned not to trust one another and to disregard any written law, especially one that was perceived as foreign. They replaced those laws with home-grown mafia-like institutions that—in truth—were unsatisfactory because “instead of healing old problems, they caused new ones and encouraged injustice and tyranny.”2 But at least they belonged to you and supported the family. Everyone in Kielce is someone’s kum or godparent; this in turn creates relationships as strong as blood ties (that’s why kums cannot marry one another).

The Kielce version of “amoral familism”3 is a way of life tested during the German occupation under conditions unfavorable to life itself. Relations in Kielce are straightforward, based on reciprocity, the exchange of services and information, turning a blind eye, and lending an ear. All this comes in handy in an atmosphere of suspicion and the endless purge carried out by the Communist authorities, as well as in a situation in which everything is in short supply. Thus, key positions among the authorities include quartermasters in the army and the MO, who administer ration cards from the Provisions Fund, and administrators of foreign food and clothing assistance (UNRRA). Acquiring other supplies takes the form of “bartering.”

“That day I started work as usual at 5:00 a.m.,” explains an employee of Sawmill no. 1, who was accused of stealing wood. “I made plans with an acquaintance to come to the sawmill to pick up wood that was due to me. . . . We loaded the wood and were driving toward the house. I knew they wouldn’t take any money from me, so I invited them to a restaurant [on Piotrkowska Street] for a shot.”4

In Kielce there are many such watering holes. One of the most popular is located almost across from the police station on 45 Sienkiewicza Street. It belongs to Stanisław Błaszczyk, who has the same last name as the father of the missing Henio. During the war he was in the right-wing, nationalist, and antisemitic National Armed Forces (NSZ). In 1943 he suggested to his buddy Mieczysław Sierant, who had been in the Communist People’s Army (AL) and was now in the security service, that “if the NSZ wins, he, Błaszczyk, will help Sierant; if it’s the other way around, Sierant will help him.”5

In Kielce this is completely normal. It is not uncommon for one brother to be in the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR) and another in an underground “band,” or for one to be in the UB and the other in the MO. The two institutions honestly hate one another. The first is supported by the Soviets and dominates authoritatively, but the second has society’s support. It also has the support of the underground. Zygmunt Broński (pseud. Uskok)—a commander in the AK and WiN—wrote in his journal that the Communists felt “an insane shortage of people and took anyone they could find to work in their offices, and so, more than once, our people got in there.”6 Apparently, WiN had a “mailbox” located a few doors down from the MO station on Sienkiewicza Street, while the dead drop used by Władysław Żbik-Kołaciński’s NSZ group was at the station itself. In other words, this is the same station where Walenty Błaszczyk will report that Henio was missing and from which the MO patrol will be sent to the Jewish Committee building on Planty Street.

“The Citizens’ Militia, while not completely innocent, shows a lot of loyalty to truly Polish considerations, and sometimes secretly rebels against the methods of the Red Terror,” we read in Order no. 4 from the command of the Polish Underground Army. “The organs that most resemble the German occupation and the Gestapo in their deeds are the offices of Public Security, which are directed by the NKVD.”7

The Kielce MO provided an example of “loyalty to truly Polish considerations” in December 1945, when an eighteen-person group from the NSZ was detained. This group was carrying with it a list of officers and noncommissioned police officers. As it turned out, the list was corrected by hand by one of the employees of the MO Provincial Headquarters, Antoni Jarosz, the head of the administration department. His name is worth remembering. Just before Christmas, the entire NSZ group escaped custody, taking weapons and documents with them. A request for an expert opinion to identify Jarosz’s handwriting never made it to Warsaw.8

“Loyalty to truly Polish considerations” does not apply to Jews, who are attacked on streets, in apartments, on buses and trains. Jews are robbed to the accompaniment of shouts such as “lousy Jews! Why did you ever come to Poland?”9 even if those Jews had never lived anywhere else, or to such shouts as “there will never be a Bolshevik Poland,”10 even if the Jews had never been Bolsheviks to begin with. Robbers are usually patriotically inclined.

Supposedly, things are going well for Jews now, but the authorities somehow aren’t eager to defend them. The archival sources are full of complaints lodged with the Central Committee of Polish Jews about the passivity of the MO: “The police treated the entire matter rather indolently, arriving at the scene twenty minutes after being notified”; “Because of the policemen’s indolence, none of the assailants were captured”; The policemen “shot in the air instead of at the bandits”; “They treat these types of murders so terribly indolently.”11 In his report for March 1945, the director of the Office for Assistance to the Jewish Population in the Ministry of Public Administration writes, “This period is unfortunately marked by more and more frequent organized attacks on the unarmed Jewish population, especially in small towns. . . . It is all the more tragic, because the organs of the security service and the police often watch these murders, and there have even been instances in which the organs of the police have participated.”12

The official alibi for neglecting the matter of antisemitism was the Marxist thesis that proclaimed it to be merely a vestigial “defense mechanism of the sick classes against the revolution”13 that would inevitably disappear as communism advanced. But there were more prosaic reasons why the decree on antisemitism that Jewish organizations demanded never came into effect after the Kielce pogrom. This was simply because of a fear of society. As Michał Pisarski expressly concludes, “It was feared that [such a decree] would have a negative impact on the success of the campaign being conducted by the ruling camp before the elections of 1947.”14 This fear is reflected in the minutes of meetings of the Central Committee of the Polish Workers’ Party (KC PPR) in the immediate postwar years. Thunderous slogans opposing antisemitism were heard at these meetings—slogans whose magnitude diminished when in propaganda mode, only to eventually reach the masses in the form of a whisper. The authorities did not want to provoke society, or more precisely “the Nation,” on whom their legitimacy depended. Despite declared internationalism and the adoption of the Declaration of Civil Rights and Freedoms in Poland in 1946, the term Pole (Polak) generally remained understood as excluding Jews, Belarusians, and Ukrainians.

That is why Colonel Franciszek Kamiński (pseud. Twardy), a commander of the Peasants’ Battalions (Bataliony Chłopskie, BCh) during the war and a deputy to the Polish parliament after the war, protests against the wording of the army oath, which obliged soldiers of different ethnic backgrounds “never to stain the dignity of a Pole.”15 He claims that the oath would never obligate them, because they were not Poles in the first place.

Hiding Place No. 1: “Zionists”

Despite opinions repeated in WiN reports about “the exceptionally antisemitic attitude of society,”16 and despite orders from the leadership of the NSZ to counteract the proliferation of wild “pogroms against Jews, rapes, and robberies,” hierarchs of the Catholic Church such as Primate Hlond, as well as many activists and historians, doubted the existence of postwar antisemitism and mass attacks on Jews in the Kielce region.

These skeptics, as well as those who believe that Jews were attacked because of their involvement in communism, should take a look at the collection of documents that I call “Hiding Place no. 1,” so named because one of the most interesting versions of the first interview with Henio Błaszczyk is hidden there. But there is also something else there: reports of extortion and the murder of Jews by policemen in the Kielce MO (in one instance also by a functionary of the UB) between 1946 and 1949. These materials confirm Danuta Blus-Węgrowska’s thesis that incidents of anti-Jewish violence were systematically covered up in order to conceal one of the biggest problems of postwar communism in Poland.17

The odd title of the file, “Zionists” (Syjoniści in Polish, but misspelled Sjoniści on the file), given by some not-too-clever MO archivist, camouflaged it for over seven decades. Another roadblock was caused by the label “operational materials” scribbled in black marker, which effectively turned attention away from the revelations hidden within. These documents were probably not hidden in bad faith but were set aside in the belief that someone else would someday deal with them. They were, however, troublesome enough that despite the passage of seventy years, no one had volunteered to do so. But let’s allow the reports to speak for themselves.

April, 1945. The transcribed statements of citizens Gotlib Chil, Fajntuch Wolf, and Zylberberg Moszek, residents of Klimontów, concern a high-profile murder on Sandomierska Street. Even Bolesław Bierut himself spoke about this murder at a conference in Moscow.18

Gotlib Chil rises and testifies. On the night of April 16–17, 1945, the small town of Klimontów was surrounded by armed units totaling around one hundred people. These units searched the small town with the goal of finding Jews. They entered an apartment where Złotnicki Abram, Lederman Chil, Lederman Szmuel, and Gotlib Chil were located. . . . They forced themselves into the room, breaking a window. Lederman Chil ran to the roof where he was shot, while Lederman Szmuel was shot in the room. And I managed to jump into a hideout and escape whole.19

Citizens Fajntuch Wolf and Zylberg Moszek will testify that a few days before carrying out this act, Józef Batyński [Batorski] of Opatowa appeared in Klimontów. He beat up the Lederman family and threatened to kill Abram Złotnicki, while at the same time declaring that they give over their money, since they’re not going to live anyway; in addition, he said there will be no democratic Poland here. He stated that he worked for the security services and showed his weapon. Cit. Batyński [Batorski] was in Klimontów from that time until the murder was committed. Citizen Bara Dzidek along with his brother-in-law Kaniowski and Skórski from Klimontów carried out an attack on the murdered Złotnicki and severely beat him up. Kilarski Tomek of Klimontów seriously wounded him. Kilarski Tomek, a resident of Nasławice near Klimontów, told Citizen Kac Pesla, who came to him with a request to return a credenza, that he wouldn’t voluntarily return the credenza, and if she complained to the MO, she wouldn’t use this credenza anyway, because she wouldn’t be alive to use it. On this critical day, Abram Złotnicki, who tried to escape from the city, was also killed. They also forced themselves into Penczyna Chaim’s home, where his pregnant wife Rywka was killed in the entryway, and Penczyna Chaim was killed inside the living quarters. In view of the mood prevailing there, the rest of the Jews—twenty-six people in number—left the small town and are wandering from village to village without a roof over their heads and without livelihoods.20

April 1945. “Cit. Mandelman Józef, a resident of Busko, rises and states that on April 10, 1945, in the small town of Połaniec (Sandomierz County), five Jews were killed and four were wounded. Killed were Herszel Berger, his sister, his brother’s wife, and two ten-year-old boys, Chuna Berger’s sons. Wounded are Chuna Berger, his niece, his nephew, and Berek Berger. Berger’s niece and Berek Berger can provide the last names of the bandits, who come from the Połaniec settlement. During the attack the entire settlement was surrounded by organized bandits armed with machine guns. Allegedly one of the attackers was a member of the MO. . . . I request that my name be kept secret for fear of my life.”21

April 1945. “In the town of Denków near Ostrowiec, flyers with the following content were posted: ‘Death to the remaining Jews,’ signed by the PPAŻ [Polska Partia Antyżydowska or Polish Anti-Jewish Party]. We must express our surprise at the fact that the local authorities, such as the MO, the Municipal National Council, the directorate of the PPR [Polish Workers’ Party] are not reacting to these flyers at all, leaving them in public places. The population of Denków interprets this lack of reaction on the part of the local authorities as silent approval of such behavior, as a result of which the life of the Jewish population is exposed to great danger.”22

June 1945. “The chairman of the Jewish Committee in Starachowice, Frymerman Abraham, and the secretary of the Committee, Rozenwald Abram, rise and testify as follows: On June 14, 1945, at around 8:00 p.m., four individuals with handguns attacked the home of Waldman Hersz. One entered the apartment and terrorized the eight men who were present. Five of them managed to run away, while two were killed. This incident occurred near the police station. Several policemen were sitting not far away in a store; despite the shots, they did not intervene. Enisman Izrael and Brotberker Chil were killed.”23

July 1945, the Regional Jewish Committee in Radom. “Last week, flyers—a copy of which we attach—appeared on buildings in the city of Jedlińsk near Radom. They order Jews to leave the limits of the county and the city of Radom by the fifteenth of the month. . . . On July 29 of this year, an attack was carried out against a Jewish dwelling, which resulted in three victims being shot, and it was only thanks to particular circumstances that a larger number was avoided.”24

August 1945, the same Committee. “Today Kuperman Rachmil and Ajdenman Szmul, residents of Zwoleń, 97 Krakowska Street, came forward . . . and testified as follows: on July 29, 1945, at 23:00 some unknown men numbering five or six . . . knocked on their door and—stating that they were functionaries of the UB in Kozienice—violently demanded that the door be opened. The members of the household, sensing that this was a ruse, refused. . . . At that moment, these individuals started shooting through the window and the wooden wall, with the result that Kuperman, who was inside, was wounded twice.”25

April 1945, information reported to the County Office of Public Security (PUBP) in Busko-Zdrój. “In 1943, citizen Wieczorek Władysław, his brother Wieczorek Franciszek, and Wieczorek Stanisław [a policeman] were holding Bałanowski and the daughter of his brother, also Bałanowski, both of Jewish nationality, with family roots also in Chmielnik. One evening citizen Bałanowski came down from the attic in order to light a cigarette. At the time the Wieczoreks’ mother was making supper. When citizen Bałanowski was lighting his cigarette at the stove, citizen Wieczorek Stanisław grabbed a hatchet and hit him so hard that he immediately killed him. Then the other Wieczorek brother also killed Bałanowski’s daughter, and they took all their belongings. Then Citizen Wieczorek Franciszek said he’s not going to walk around in ripped pants until he dies.”26

May 1945, a report by a clerk from the PUBP dated May 18, 1946, in Busko-Zdrój, based on the written testimony of Galus Stanisława, age forty-five, farmer from Antoniów (Gnojno gmina [municipality], Stopnica County), who confirms the earlier reported information:

In 1944 . . . Wieczorek Marianna was walking down the road; she came up to me and said that her sons killed the Jew Bałanowski and his daughter, that this Jew Bałanowski came down from upstairs to light a cigarette, and her sons, Wieczoreks Władysław, Stanisław, and Franciszek, jumped from the living quarters at him, and she said that Bałanowski let out a gurgling sound and they didn’t mess with him for long, they just tore off his clothes and carried him out to the hill, one [holding] his legs, another [holding] his head . . . like a naked bullock, and buried him. . . . I never saw Bałanowski, only his daughter, who grazed geese and cows at the Wieczoreks, and later I didn’t see the daughter either.27

April, 1945, Janina Wcisło’s testimony in this case:

Wieczorek Stanisław, who came over one day, says: “Jasia, do you want me now? ’Cause I have a lot of money.” I, Wcisło Janina, answered, “Maybe you killed someone and now you’re boasting that you have a lot of money?” . . . [Franciszek Jaworski told me that] the Wieczoreks, that is Władysław, Stanisław, and Fran-ciszek, killed the Jews that the Wieczoreks were keeping in their own house. No one ever saw the kike; however, the little Jewish girl who grazed the Wieczoreks’ geese used to show herself with everyone in the village.28

September 1945, the interrogation of Officer Józef Kłuszewski of the MO, regarding a contract killing:

On September 8, I met with Smoliński Roman in a restaurant and we drank a quarter bottle of vodka, and he started a conversation with me about taking care of something serious. . . . He says, “If you kill the Jew Budek, you’ll get ten thousand and two quintals [200 kilograms] of flour.” . . . I say to him, “Give me the money, and I’ll carry out the killing. Because if you don’t give it to me ahead of time, you won’t give it to me later.” . . . He said, “I’ll give it to the wagoner tomorrow and he’ll get the flour.” And I said to him, “Give me the money now, and then you’ll give me the flour when the Jew is killed.”29

December 1945, the transcript of the interrogation of Marian Kępa, age 34, who served in the Home Army (AK) unit of respected commander Antoni Heda (pseud. Szary), during the war. “I got a job at the police station in Skarżysko as an ordinary policeman until the moment I was detained, that is, on December 8, 1945. . . . At the end of the month of November 1945, in the store owned by Mrs. Gzymek, I established contact with Półtorak Czesław of Pogorzały and with Tomaszewski Stefan, the head of the police in Skarżysko. While at Mrs. Gzymek’s, we put together a plan to take money from a certain Jewish woman, whose last name I don’t know, but she lives next door to Mrs. Gzymek on Kościuszki Street.”

Next, Kępa describes robbing Rózia Kopel:

On December 5, 1946, walking down Third of May Street . . . next to Mrs. Gzymek’s store, I ran into Półtorak and we went in the direction of Staszica Street, where we ran into the Jewish girl Rózia, the one we took money from the first time, a total of fifty-two thousand. Półtorak took Rózia under the arm. I, however, went behind the fence, so she wouldn’t recognize me. . . . [They] reached Third of May Street, where she started to struggle and she ran away to Jedynak’s restaurant. Półtorak came up to me and said that he didn’t manage to kill her this time. . . . We entered Mrs. Gzymek’s store, where we drank half a liter of vodka and [then] we went to Jedynak’s . . . [His father bought them another quarter bottle of vodka]. Stopping by his place, we ordered him to go with us to the Jews, so that they would let us in; he didn’t want to agree to it, but he said that we should say a kike has arrived from the East and they’ll let us in.

This is followed by a description of the robbery and the shooting of five Jews: Abraham Herszenfus, Szmul Miller, Icek and Szloma Warszauer, and Chaja Lewitowa, whose corpse was mutilated by sticking a pair of scissors into her abdomen. The loot is then taken to Mrs. Gzymek’s apartment, where the bandits drink another quarter bottle of vodka.

May, 1946, a special report from the head of the PUBP in Skarżysko, Franciszek Sobański, to the head of the PUBP in Kielce:

On May 14 at 22:00, shots were heard from the direction of the train station in Skarżysko-Kamienna. We went in that direction, where, near the railway viaduct that connects Piłsudskiego and Kolejowa Streets, two persons (a man and a woman) were found lying in pools of blood. It turned out that they were Bryks Rachmil and Milsztajn Sonia, both of Jewish ethnicity. . . . It was determined that the aforementioned had walked their acquaintance to the station to catch a train and then were returning home, when—as they were descending from the viaduct—shots were fired at them from close up in an illuminated area. . . . I should mention that at the moment of the incident, there were policemen in H. Szyka’s store at a distance of around 100 meters, who arrived at the scene of the incident later than our functionaries from the UB building located around 300–400 m away.30

Rachmil Bryks was Hanka Alpert’s cousin, and Hanka Alpert was the wife of Jechiel Alpert, the chairman of the Ichud at 7 Planty Street.

January, 1946, a demand for payment signed by “Colonel Krzyk of the AK,” addressed to “Citizens of the City of Kielce! Council of Elders!” dated January 15, 1946: “The city of Kielce has been taxed in the amount of 300 thousand złotys, 20 thousand of which are the responsibility of the Council of Elders. This amount should be collected from among your population, which—though not large in number—is affluent . . . [and] deposited by Sunday, January 20, 1946.” This is followed by a justification:

Wanting to have the complete right to the aforementioned title [i.e., “citizens of the city of Kielce”], one should bear [burdens] in the interest of the State and share the fate of all citizens. You, Jews, claim that you have an enormous right to Poland and to the grand and precious name “Pole.” Our organization, acting on behalf of the hated Gen. Anders, i.e., the AK, which was and is a “local institution” within the city of Kielce, has enacted a tax on all those who can help the citizens of the city of Kielce (regardless of skin color, race, or religion). . . . You, Kikes, have unjustified grievances against the AK. Because several kikes perished at the gun barrels of the NSZ [National Armed Forces] . . ., the NSZ—as an organization that cooperates with the Germans—will be held responsible . . ., but not before the USSR. Why do you make such a fuss: “They’re harming us here.”31

September 1945, an unsigned report with information from Kozienice about another attempt to extort protection money.

One of the functionaries from the Security Department stopped by my nephew Goldsztajn Pinkus’s courtyard, and because I didn’t have any documents on me, he brought me to the MO. Even though almost all of the policemen know me well, since we often paid them protection money so they wouldn’t do anything bad to us . . ., they arrested me. They promised, however, to set me free for a payment of 500 złotys. The next morning, they released me from prison, terribly beaten up, so that I pay them the amount they demanded. On September 5, functionaries of the MO found out that I have a court order for the return of my property. Police officers Komorek and Majewski came to my apartment, took these documents from me . . . arrested me, and stated that they will return them to me after I pay them the sum of 8,000 złotys.32

That same month there was a complaint by Abram Libhaber of Gniewoszów concerning demands for protection money from the local Jewish Committee in the amount of 30,000 złotys under the threat of death to women and children, as “is happening with Jews in other towns.”33 Unable to collect the demanded sum, all the Jews from the settlement decided to leave for Łódź and Lublin. On the topic of what happened when six of them returned to Gniewoszów for their things, Libhaber states the following: “On September 13, 1945, I met Czesław Kubak and Wrotkowski [extortionists], asking them to accept part of the cash, and that I would pay the next installment on the following day. In response, Kubak said the following to me: ‘You made your bed, now lie in it’ and he no longer wanted to accept any money. So I ran away, and my wife got left behind, since she couldn’t keep up with me. I learned only the next day that they killed my wife along with four other people.”34

Next follows the report of Józef Komorek, the police officer from the MO station in Gniewoszów, one of the aforementioned extortionists:

On September 13, 1945, at 17:00, three horse-drawn wagons drove up to the building of the police station in Gniewoszów; servicemen and a couple of people in civilian clothing were riding in them. After coming down from the wagons the civilians were escorted as detainees. . . . Upon entering the station, the persons dressed as civilians, those supposedly arrested, pulled handguns out of their pockets with lightning speed and terrorized those at the station. . . . The rest of the attackers from this group dispersed on the streets of Gniewoszów looking among the buildings for Jewish families. During their search they discovered three Jewesses and three kikes and all five [sic] were killed by guns in the building on the ground floor where our station is located. . . . The murdered Jewish family was made up of Goldsztajn Pinkus, Goldsztajn Szandla, Kirszenbaum Ela, Libhaber (first name unknown) [Abram’s wife], Frejaberk Chawa. . . . The group that disarmed the police station and carried out the lynching on the Jews was made up of around forty people in military clothes, armed with automatic weapons. They looted in Gniewoszów from 17:00 to 24:00, after which they drove off on five horse-drawn wagons in the direction of the village of Oleksy.35

To conclude the topic of mass attacks on Jews in the Kielce region, let’s add one more report that is not filed away in hiding place no. 1 and which concerns profiling Jews as victims of attacks. On the night of May 9–10, 1945, in the village of Koczwary in gmina Duraczów near Końskie, “a dozen or so armed persons in uniforms of the Polish army” shot Jan Gleń, Michał Raczkowski, and Anna Trzcińska.36 Two victims were killed in their beds; the third was taken out behind the barn. “Before the shooting, one of the individuals asked those being shot if they are Jews, and after a few inquiries Raczkowski answered: ‘Yes, I am a Jew.’”37 The landlady testifies that the killer also went to her mother’s bed with the question “Hey, are you a Jew?” and wanted to shoot her, “but on my request and guarantee that she is my mother, he didn’t do it.”38 In order to hush up the whole affair, the policeman who signed the report concludes that the victims were “of German origin,”39 which resulted in the landlady who rented the apartment to them being accused of “harboring Germans.”40 The investigation attributes the murder to a unit of the National Armed Forces (NSZ), whose members are no longer alive, thus they cannot deny anything. The next police report no longer concerns the search for the perpetrators but rather accuses the wife and relatives of those killed of “not wanting to admit that they are of the Mosaic faith.”41

According to my calculations, in the period from March 1945 to July 1, 1946, approximately 95–100 murders of Jews were recorded in the area where military units with headquarters in Kielce were active. Let’s say we agree that at the time the number of Jews in the Kielce region was around 2,000;42 this would mean that in the dozen or so months after the war, on average, and taking into account the victims of the pogrom, one in fourteen Jews (around 7 percent) perished. In truth, these estimates are purely approximate because the number of murders could have been even greater due to demographic fluidity. Nevertheless, this data shows the extent of the threat faced by Jews in the region.43

FIGURE 25. Sonia Zoberman, in light coat, weeps over the coffins of pogrom victims. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Leah Lahav.

A Feathered Fish

One of the key dates in Vasily Grossman’s 1960 novel Life and Fate is September 12, 1942. On that day, according to the law of the Third Reich, Jews ceased to be subject to the jurisdiction of civil courts and were handed over to the authority of the Gestapo.44 Although Jews’ rights were gradually taken away beginning in 1933, Grossman considers this moment in 1942 a turning point in the history of the Holocaust. It is associated with the function of law in human societies. Even though it is only a collection of conventions, law deeply penetrates into the everyday, and the effects of revolutions in legal systems turn out to be, in general, more lasting than the governments that carry them out.

Based on the reports filed in Hiding Place no. 1, it appears that in 1945–46, despite the end of the war and the encroachment of the Soviets, Jews continued to be excluded from the law in the Kielce province. There is no evidence that the people mentioned in the cited reports—namely, the eight-member Berger family from Połaniec, which included two ten-year-old boys; the engaged couple, Rachmil Bryks and Sonia Milsztajn of Skarżysko; the five Jews killed in Gniewoszów; or the three from Koczwary were communists or collaborators of the UB, which according to some historians might have been used as justification for their murder. However, all of them were undeniably Jews. And that is why they were attacked.

We can learn about how the law actually worked in 1946 based on the testimonies of those who survived the Kielce pogrom, such as Marysia Machtynger, who saved herself by showing a Polish soldier her wartime Ausweis; Dora Dajbog and her daughter, Izia, who owe their survival to a girlfriend willing to vouch for them when they claimed to be non-Jewish Poles; Maks Erlbaum, Józef Fajngold, and Abram Moszkowicz, who—despite being exposed as Jews—miraculously survived. Also, one of the pogromszczycy (perpetrators of the pogrom) explains that he was illegally detained—after all, he isn’t a Jew. The behavior of the Polish soldiers checking identity papers is no different from their German predecessors. For both groups, being Jewish means you are excluded from the law. “It’s as if the Gestapo returned,” says Estusia Mappen.45

Those who are under threat are not surprised that someone is controlling their lives. Prosecutor Szpądrowski asks Nowakowski about what preceded the murders of Rywka Fisz and her child: “And the Jews weren’t surprised that you were loading them into a vehicle?” “No.” “What are they, small children or what?” “No, they were not surprised.”46

People are disoriented: “One woman came up and asked what the army was going to do: is it going to disperse the people, or seize the Jews?”47

The everyday has become the norm: policemen, when asked by Władysław Krzeszowski what is happening on Planty Street, said that “they are beating the Jews, b[ut] why they are beating them they didn’t say.”48

But hiding place no. 1 reveals a phenomenon even more interesting than the antisemitism of the uniformed services. “The vascular system is the same in every person,” writes Polish playwright and satirist Sławomir Mrożek, contemplating the phenomenon of Polish attitudes toward Jews. “So, if a person is bleeding, one should help him and dress the wound. However, if a Jew is bleeding because of an antisemite, for example, then it’s as if a feathered fish were bleeding. And therefore this bleeding is also not human, nor even animal, it is Jewish, and therefore neither one nor the other. One can at most watch, but without any feelings, and also without hate or perhaps dislike. Only through the lens of curiosity.”49 It is this curiosity that explains how the above reports survived, tucked away in a hiding place called “Zionists.”

Chairman Kahane’s Reports

From field reports sent to the Secretariat of the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR), we know that the Central Committee of Polish Jews (Centralny Komitet Żydów Polskich, CKŻP) clearly understood the circumstances of the Jews, who were commonly associated with communism and killed under this pretext. Some underground units undeniably used ethnic profiling. When a car or train was stopped, political officers and Jews lost their lives.

The Jewish Press Agency regularly reported on attacks, but this was of little use. “Murders committed against Jews in the Kielce Province are an everyday occurrence. The following day, a representative of the Provincial Jewish Committee intervenes at the scene of the crime committed; however, this has no impact on subsequent incidents,” we read in a report from Kielce written a month before the pogrom.50

It is significant that Seweryn Kahane, the head of the Provincial Jewish Committee in Kielce, who himself will die before long in the pogrom, informed the authorities about the murders of four Jews in Skaryszew, three more who were pulled out of a car on the Kielce-Radom road, and the aforementioned Jewish couple murdered at the station in Skarżysko-Kamienna. Like Zylberberg, who was a member of an analogous committee in Opatów and who was shot in front of the headquarters of his organization on September 5, 1945, Kahane alerts the CKŻP about the attack on the shelter located on Planty Street that occurred almost nine months before the pogrom: “We hereby report that on October 18, 1945, at 19:30 there was an attack carried out by unknown perpetrators on the shelter located at the Jewish Committee. A grenade was thrown into the apartment located on the ground floor. As a result of the attack, two people under our care are seriously wounded, one less seriously, all have been hospitalized. The local authorities have been informed.”51

After the attack Hersz Kersz—who will also perish in the pogrom—was interviewed. “I was sitting in the room, eating supper. A grenade fell into the room as a result of which *Łajewski Lejzor, Knobel Olek, and *Lejzer Natan [Natan Lajzer, who survived the pogrom] were wounded.” Freda Warszauer testified: “Between 7:00 and 7:30 p.m. I was passing by 7 Planty and noticed that a man dressed in a dark-colored overcoat was standing in front of the building with his back against the wall and was loading a handgun. After five or ten minutes, I met cit[izen] Fajnkuchen, who was returning from the building at 7 Planty Street and he told me that a grenade had been thrown at the shelter.”52 Fajnkuchen will also perish in the pogrom.

The CKŻP reacted ambiguously in view of the reports that were coming in. On the one hand, as Natalia Aleksiun writes, “The Communists were seen as the only political power in Poland that was not burdened by antisemitism and capable of opposing it.”53 On the other hand, however, the conflict concerning different visions for the future of the Jews who had survived the Holocaust—some saw their future in Poland, others only in Palestine—led to disagreements within the central and local committees as to how to respond to the reports of murder. For the government, the murders were doubly inconvenient: they revealed that, even at the risk of being labeled “żydokomuna” [Judeo-Communism], the government was trying to guarantee Jews protection; and, at the same time, that the government was not in control of the situation.

On September 27, 1945, the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Polish Workers’ Party (KC PPR) set up a Jewish section of the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR). It was to function within the Central Committee of Polish Jews (CKŻP) and was subordinate to the District Committee (Komitet Dzielnicowy) of the party. Jewish communists, dependent on the party and aware of their isolation within Polish society, more than once decided to act “to the detriment of their own community” by minimizing the threats.54 It is possible that during the weeks and months before the Kielce pogrom, their influence led the CKŻP to turn a blind eye to, or even deny, the alarming reports about antisemitism.55 In a statement from the Central Committee of Polish Jews dated January 13, 1946, the communiqués regarding a wave of antisemitism are called “an egregious lie of reactionary elements from overseas, in particular reactionary cliques [acting] under the banner of the bankrupt London Government” and aimed at the Provisional Government of National Unity.56 Rabbi Dawid Kahane responded to this with the assertion that the statements by the CKŻP should be treated as a part of “Lublin Poland’s” (that is, Communist) propaganda, and that members of the Communist government, such as Jakub Berman and Hilary Minc, should not be considered representatives of the Jewish communities.57

Many Jews who were in the party also noticed the extremely careful policy of the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR) toward antisemitism. One of these was Dawid Sfard, who asked at an August 1945 party meeting in Moscow:

What has the party done so far, specifically and practically, [in the fight against antisemitism]? As a communist, I will be frank and state that it has done hardly anything. On the contrary, the conduct and statements of the party have often been such that they intensified the emigration mood among Jews, and in the process [their] depression, which it is now warning against. . . . Is a wait-and-see policy an appropriate counter-measure? . . . Some party leaders have spoken out with incomprehensible passivity in this matter, for example: in Poland antisemitism is a long-term historical process [i.e., it has to be combated over a long period]. . . . The PPR is a child of the Polish people; therefore, it is clear that antisemitism exists in the PPR. Similar statements indicate somewhat coming to terms with symptoms that need to be fought against.58

The press, controlled by the Communists, initiated a broadly devised antiracism public-education campaign only after the Kielce pogrom. It lasted only for a short time and soon gave way to the same indifference as before.

After the Kielce pogrom the CKŻP toughened its position, demanding a decree against antisemitism and a call for armed Jewish self-defense.59 But by August 25, 1946, it had passed another resolution condemning “irresponsible elements” that intensified “panic, confusion, and an atmosphere of resignation” among Jews. The irresponsible elements “spread exaggerated information about alleged pogroms and murders of Jews in various cities in Poland.”60 In the end, a decree on antisemitism was never issued.

Taking responsibility for wrongs that one did not commit is sometimes a desperate reaction to helplessness. It subjectively increases victims’ sense of agency, though at the price of self-hatred.61 The argument presented by CKŻP member Herman Parnas, a Zionist, regarding co-responsibility for antisemitism is an example of such a self-accusation. At a council meeting organized immediately after the Kielce pogrom, he said: “We Jews are ourselves co-responsible for the increase in antisemitism. Our behavior is sometimes shocking. Here, I am thinking of Jewish illegal currency changers, speculators, looters, who merrily entertain themselves at the most expensive venues in larger cities, which—needless to say—is conspicuous. Jews are capable of selling other Jews’ homes. And so—the decline of morality and ethics.”62

When blaming the victims, did Herman Parnas believe what he was saying? There were far more non-Jewish “illegal currency changers, speculators, [and] looters” than Jewish ones, but no one mounted a pogrom against them. Parnas’s statements were publicized according to the principle that “it is the job of the Jew to beat other Jews.”63 By ignoring discrimination and thus affirming the general opinions shared by society, these statements were a favor to the authorities, who were remiss in the fight against antisemitism, even though they boasted of internationalism. This line of reasoning, stretched between the two poles of servility and duty to the party, becomes part of the historical topos of the Hofjuden or court Jews,64 adapted to the realities of Lublin Poland. It also reveals the price paid after the war by Jewish Communists, who sooner or later were forced to abandon one, as well as the other, identity.

Privileging

Both the underground and the provincial government in Kielce put forth an argument regarding the immoral difference between the standard of living of Poles and Jews. The deputy provincial governor (wicewojewoda), Henryk Urbanowicz, regularly accused Kielce Jews of “isolation-ist tendencies”: “[They] made poverty-stricken Poles green with envy, with their ostentatious wealth and connections. They also insistently demanded the restitution of their property. The most aggressive element were repatriates from beyond the Bug River, who had not shared with Poles the experiences of the German occupation here.”65

The sins of which the deputy provincial governor accused Jews had to do with attempts to claim property that had been seized or appropriated. This was the case, for example, with Pesla Kac from Klimontów, who asked Tomasz Kilarski to return her stolen credenza; Abram Złotnik, hailed as a Communist who “put on airs” (in other words, he wanted to return to his own house); and also Rywka Penczyna, eight months pregnant, who was murdered, along with her husband and cousins, on the threshold of her home in Klimontów.

Yiddish poet Itsik Fefer (Itzik Feffer) wrote,66 “They sleep in our beds/They guzzle at our tables/In our shoes they go to church.” The Jews who couldn’t stand it and who turned to the authorities for assistance were the ones whom the underground punished by death. The matter of the Fajgenbaum family is typical. The peasant who took over their farm categorically refused to return it to them. Not receiving any help from the MO, the Fajgenbaums turned to the military commander of the Red Army stationed in Swoszów. During the night of April 2, 1945, their house was fired on from automatic weapons, and Fajgenbaum’s thirteen-year-old daughter was seriously wounded.67

The Jews had no one to complain to. In the eyes of the Polish Left, they themselves were also guilty. In 1946 a deputy of the Central Committee of the Polish Workers’ Party expressed an opinion about Jews’ “greed”: “In Kielce, around 180 Jews who were not working lived in the Jewish building [at 7 Planty Street], and among these there were only two members of the Polish Workers’ Party. In Ostrowiec several hundred Jews are also not working. Rich Jews and the Polish reactionary element are in the majority in state-owned health resorts in spa towns. At the resort in the spa town of Busko, of the 1,000 patrons, 400 voted ‘3 x no [i.e., against the party’s rigged national referendum].’”

It is possible that one of the patrons of the Busko health resort who voted “no” was sent there by the Jewish Committee from Kielce—namely, Fania Szumacher, who had been a prisoner in a Soviet labor camp, and who was in Busko with her friend Balka Gertner, who had survived Auschwitz. They would both perish in the pogrom. The other malcontents may have been Jews who were waiting for the opportunity to emigrate. They were hiding in Busko, but in the Kielce region there was not a single place where they wouldn’t be bothering someone.

The negative feelings that surrounded Jews in Kielce are reflected in the attitude of neighbors toward residents of the shelter on Planty Street. A Polish woman, living in the same building on the ground floor, says:

“I was [disgusted] by them . . . I didn’t even go upstairs to hang my laundry, I preferred to simply hang it in the courtyard . . .”

“And why was it so repulsive?”

“How should I know ‘why’?”

“Were they that poor?”

“Poor they weren’t, because they had everything in abundance, because they got [things] from America. They got different kinds of packages, they had food to eat. Various . . . even—you could call them—delicacies . . . like fruit. . . . Everything—chocolate, they had everything.”

Other neighbors, however, saw things differently.

It was a gloomy, very gloomy, austere, gloomy building, such people dressed in black, dressed in gray, yes, very sad. Sad and shocking. I . . . recall that when I walked out of that building, I really breathed a sigh of relief, because there . . . how can I explain what the atmosphere was like in that building? It was like a house after a funeral, you know, Ma’am, like when a lot of people gather after a funeral. Sad, depressed, despondent. Well that, that is the impression you got in that building. . . . They looked like the kind of group that is constantly expecting to go somewhere, that they will find someone somewhere, that they will finally start a normal life somewhere.68

A year after the pogrom, the situation had not changed very much. In a special report of the Provincial Office of Public Security (WUBP), the author expresses contradictory opinions, reflecting his way of thinking: “Public opinion about Jews among Kielce society is negative because of prevailing antisemitism. The Kielce population observes Jews, who stroll around the city all day, don’t work anywhere (with minor exceptions), usually spend time in the best restaurants, lead a high lifestyle. . . . They assume a negative attitude toward Jews, though at the same time they do not feel sympathetic toward the present government, saying that it takes better care of Jews that it does of Poles.”69

Provincial Governor Wiślicz-Iwańczyk’s memoirs are teeming with similar assertions. Wiślicz-Iwańczyk bitterly recalls that before the war Jews almost completely controlled “retail and wholesale trade,” as well as “many areas of industry.” Wiślicz laments that, unfortunately, Jews did not draw any conclusions from the past. They continued to provoke [Polish society] with their standard of living:

Expensive suits, gold rings on their fingers, an abundance of money, and a visible reluctance to undertake work that at the time was unprofitable, could not go unnoticed by Polish society. . . . Those who inspire the reactionary underground have exploited the errors in the careless behavior of the Kielce Jewish Community [Kielecka Gmina Żydowska], which were based on a stark difference between the higher standard of living without engaging in productive work, at a time when workers were literally starving, and the fact that there was a significant concentration of people of Jewish descent in management positions of the apparatus of the UB and the Party.70

This is written by a man who occupied one of the finest “post-Jewish” (pożydowski) apartments in Kielce, who wore a gold ring, and who hired his own Jewish tailor. The following recollection of his old comrade-in-arms, Adam Kornecki, also concerns the provincial governor: “The following fact testifies to the dominant attitudes [in Kielce] at the time: the Kielce provincial governor ‘opened up for himself’ a shop and sold linens, dishes, everything that he had taken from Jews. He unlocked an apartment to which Jews and Poles were making claims, and took everything out of it . . . furniture, dishes, everything. This was the Kielce provincial governor.”71

In Wiślicz’s statement, the accusation that Jews slack off appears alongside another accusation: they work, but not where they should be working, because they are “in management positions.” The visibility of Jews, and their tendency to “put on airs,” “throw their weight around,” “be bossy” hurt even more than their laziness and “parasitism.” No one was bothered by the fact that these accusations contradicted one another.

Exploiters

Just as right-wing antisemitism spread to the left wing, the right adopted leftist phraseology directed toward Jewish exploiters. Underground flyers from WiN bandied about the class argument:

As he walks down the street, the average man . . . sees dignitaries with Semitic traits sprawled out in limousines marked by emblems of state institutions; through shop windows, he sees dignitaries, fattened up, with money to burn, sitting in cafes and restaurants, taking advantage of their lucrative positions to make dishonest business deals; and he sees that in the UB (meaning the Polish NKVD)—which is an organ of violence and terror over Polish citizens—the highest ranking officers are Jews; that Jews torment and torture Poles who are imprisoned for their convictions; that in the Industrial Union, which is supposed to be an administrative organ of the labor world in nationalized industry, prewar Jewish industrialists have settled in, imposing starvation-level wages on the worker and taking away the right to strike—a right for which the Polish working class had fought bloodily for decades.72

The resentment that was festering—and not only on the right—gave rise to the image of a Jewish conspiracy. Here is a report sent to the authorities by a party comrade who was concerned about the views of another comrade:

Porczyński said that all Jews—regardless of whether they belong to the party or not—are connected to some kind of international organization that is located in America, and that through its quasi-branches that exist in every country, including Poland, influences all Jews. . . . Porczyński clearly indicated that all Jews, not excluding party members, act on the order of some Jewish organization only in the interest of people of the Jewish nationality, to the detriment of the Polish population and People’s Poland. . . . Porczyński maintained that almost every party member–Pole who holds a serious position has to have a Jewish wife in order to be able to influence him.73

This message about a conspiracy landed on fertile ground, as a letter from “a Silesian worker” to Trybuna Robotnicza (the Workers’ Tribune) attests. The letter, which was blocked by the wartime and military censors, polemicizes with an editorial article regarding the prewar beatings of Jews at universities: “They did the right thing! Beating them as hard as possible should be our main task! Why aren’t Jewish fortunes subject to confiscation or parceling off, while this is happening to Polish ones? Surely—after the Germans—Jews are our greatest enemies!”74

This opinion is, to some extent, supported by a report by Bishop Kaczmarek: “Every Jew has . . . a good job or unlimited possibilities and advantages in trade and industry; there are lots of Jews in the ministries, in foreign posts, in factories, in offices, in the army; and everywhere they are in lead, essential, and management positions.”75

The archival materials, however, show a slightly different image of this alleged privileging of Jews. One reserve officer who reported to register as a lieutenant in the reserves notes: “The Conscription Committee questioned me about my background, but when I declared that the conscription of officers has nothing to do with one’s background, they announced that Jews are exempt from conscription duty.”76

“In Jędrzejów, Starosta [county administrator] Feliks settles all Jewish matters unfavorably. The situation is similar in Chęciny and Chmielnik. The chairman of the Municipal National Council in Ostrowiec, Antoni Wiktor Bruzda-Stawiarski, does not want to receive a delegation from the Jewish population; in December he handed out ration cards only to the Polish population, while he refused them to the Jewish population.” The starosta in Opatów supports his colleague Bruzda’s strategy, since the Jewish population possesses “adequate resources and has a relatively high standard of living; for example, they consume white bread and cold cuts, and are engaged in trade.”77

“Not long ago, office workers were saying that German laws apply to Jews,” says a representative of the Jewish Committee in Ostrowiec.78 The Municipal National Council summoned representatives of the local Jewish Committee, and demanded that all male Jews be sent to the mine. In the south of Poland, the “Municipal National Council in Żywiec voted not to allow Jews into the city. The Factory Council in the Solali factory passed a similar resolution not to hire Jews.”79 Reports flooded in from Tarnów, Kraków, and Dęblin-Irena about Jews thrown out of apartments and charged back taxes for the period during which they were in concentration camps.

Here is an example of how Jews were treated in one of the security service offices: “Whenever delegates go in the name of the Jewish Committee to the UB to intervene, they meet with difficulties at the very entrance, meaning that the guards don’t let them in, using any possible excuse, so long as the delegation does not enter the offices.”80

And here is an example of how Jews were treated in court: “Last week, one of our office clerks went to the mortgage department in the City Court in Lublin to get a copy of a birth certificate for a noncommissioned officer, a Jew, who was doing military service in Koszalin. The court functionary, unaware that he was dealing with a client-Jew, asked, ‘Ma’am, how can you be taking care of such matters for Jews?’”81

Representatives from Jędrzejów, Skarżysko, Kozienice, Chmielnik, Busko, Włoszczowa, Białobrzegi, and Starachowice spoke about the negative treatment of Jews by office workers at a provincial conference of delegates. Echoes of their statements must have reached the Kielce provincial governor because in March 1945 he published a memo—certainly not on his own initiative—in which he called attention to the “inappropriate attitude toward citizens of Jewish nationality, who were not being appropriately received by cit[izen] county administrators [starostas] or properly dealt with.”82 The memo did not improve the Jews’ situation; it only strengthened the myth of the żydokumuna’s influence.

Circumcised Brute, We’re Warning You

Underground and Church documents regularly repeat assurances that racism is in no way the basis for this animosity toward Jews. An analysis of flyers and proclamations circulated during this time tell a different story, however.

Victor Klemperer wrote that, in the light of day, language reveals what one would like to hide.83 In the language of the postwar underground, “Jew” is a symbol of betrayal, bootlicking, and contrariness. The Łódź district of the National Party announced: “We respect and value jews [sic], but in Palestine, not in Polish institutions. . . . Away with jews [sic] in government institutions and the Army! Poland only for Poles!”84

Among the insults intended to warn non-Jews who collaborate with the new authorities, the epithet Jew is regarded as the worst. A letter signed “Armia Krajowa” (Home Army) and addressed to “com[rade] Krawczyk” of the Wąchock MO, for example, insults the recipient by using names for animals and Jews: “Criminal, abomination of mankind, brown beast, take off your glasses, look at your own eyes. . . . Polish Workers’ Party pig, you act against religion, God, and the Christian people, you sell out the most valuable Poles, you are following in the footsteps of Judas, you are following in the footsteps of those who murdered Christ. Traitor, return those pieces of silver sprinkled with the blood of innocents of murdered victims that you took from the UB executioners. Lackey, you carry a Polish name, but you act like an animal in a lair or stable. . . . Circumcised brute, we’re warning you.”85

And Lieutenant Sokół, the author of a flyer circulated in Starachowice, summons “citizen policemen” to:

Come to your senses, Madman!
Stop listening to the Jew’s advice,
Be unblemished like a knight,
And not a criminal, a vile reptileOpamiętaj się szalony
przestań słuchać judy rad
bądź jak rycerz nieskalany
a nie zbrodniarz podły gad

Similar themes appear also in mocking flyers sent to Communists in the form of holiday greetings: “Away with you, PPS-men, to hell with you. . . . We don’t want the kind of government where Jews govern us, away with you, PPS-men, away.”86

On the day the Kielce prison was breached by a partisan group under the command of Heda (pseud. Szary) flyers began to circulate in Kielce: “Poles! The present government is not a government of national unity. . . . At the helm of power are Jews and lackeys of Russia, who are receiving orders from Stalin on everything.” And on the reverse side: “Do you know who judges Poles? Jews. Do you know who is murdering Poles? Jews. Do you know who is governing Poland? Jews and Bolsheviks. Do you know who is the commander of the security service in Kielce? Major Jew.”87 It is enough simply to mention Jewish ethnicity and no further explanation is required.

A pre-referendum flyer written in scribbles summons workers: “Dear friends, Poles . . . elections are approaching. Remember not to lose our beloved kristian [sic] Poland. Remember that the PPR aims to combat kristianity [sic] and the Catholic church. For our Polish children to be taught by a snot-nosed, disgusting jew hebe, who took them away from your breast, mother. . . . Vote, Gentlemen Poles, three times no!”88

Fatigue

Many Jews supported the new authorities, but the most loyal ally of the Polish Communists ended up being fatigue caused by war and death. The degree of this fatigue is attested to by the fact that after 376 prisoners were freed from the Kielce prison that was raided on the night of August 4–5, 1945, by Heda’s (pseud. Szary) unit, 10 refused to leave and 113 returned to prison voluntarily. Even if some of the freed prisoners were Germans and Volksdeutsche, these numbers make an impression.

In a flyer published by the authorities to urge people to trust the military and the Internal Security Corps (KBW), we read: “The Government of National Unity wants to assist society, so that it can finally rest, so that it can heal its wounds in peace, and with a joint effort rebuild the Fatherland.”89 But society showed only moderate levels of trust. As one commander of the KBW writes: “The mood of the civilian population is not very good; the population is negatively inclined toward the organs of the security service and military. For example, young girls don’t want to talk to soldiers. They say they are afraid of retaliation by [underground] bands. . . . In the summer of 1944 and in 1945, after the liberation of these territories, the UB, the MO, the WP [Polish Army], and the Red Army carried out arrests of Poles that often included innocent people who were then sent to Siberia. Many of these [people] have returned and are conducting anti-Soviet propaganda. . . . The population’s negative attitude toward the military dates to this period. . . . Tomorrow, on June 20, on the holiday of Corpus Christi, soldiers chosen by me will take part in the honorary escort of the priest, as was practiced before the war, with the aim of gaining the population’s trust.”90

But combining two elements is not always successful. In Nawarzyce, after the holiday service for the Feast of the Assumption of Mary on August 15, disorder broke out as people leaving church encountered a rally of the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR) and the Polish Socialist Party (PPS). But it ended quickly: it was harvest time. Gestures of resistance were limited to tearing down posters, hanging a committee sign of the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR) in the lavatory in the middle school, or destroying the grave markers of fallen Soviet soldiers. But the Soviet military commander remembered the graves that the pastor had ordered to be ploughed over. The grave markers were rebuilt.

MO and KBW reports suggest that the partisans who harassed the local population not only failed to counteract communism’s victory but in fact hastened it. The KBW gained great popularity as a force for establishing peace in the county. According to a report by the county administrator (starosta) of Puławy against partisan activities, which ended with convictions by the circuit Summary Court, “there is no sense of distrust in the Court for political reasons on the part of society; rather, it is believed that those sentenced to death are bandits who have not escaped the long arm of justice. Society takes note of the young age of the accused, their intellectual obtuseness, often their illiteracy, and this is why emotionally there is intense hate towards those directing these acts of banditry.” In sum, the county administrator writes, “the Summary Court’s activity has had an enormous influence—calming minds, stabilizing the administrative authorities—on order, and on the execution of superiors’ instructions. . . . Murders, robberies, attacks have disappeared. . . . The population has started to fulfill their obligations, satisfying quotas, paying taxes. . . . Thus, I am requesting that the units of the KBW and the Summary Court remain here longer, so that before the elections the county will be calmed for good.”91

The underground authorities were also aware of how fatigued society was. In June 1946, Freedom and Independence (WiN) admitted that “the absorbing power of the everyday” began, over time, to break down the rejection of the Communist authorities. A year later, a WiN report from the Kraków district leaves no illusions: “Society is already, in general, tired of politics. . . . It believes that the elections will be falsified and that the PPR will not walk away from the trough.”92

A couple months later we note that “society’s mood has not changed, however, the exhaustion from the existing state of affairs can be felt more and more strongly, and many people would gladly enter into a compromise, if only to have peace.”93 The authors list fatigue, disorientation, a harsh winter, and terror wielded before the elections as the reasons for mass denunciations of partisans. The result: a dozen or so thousand partisans are exposed.

When an agreement was reached in Radom for forest-based partisan units to come out of hiding, the commander of the WUBP, Jan Tataj, appointed after the pogrom, issued an order to cease any and all offensive operations. For a week, from September 1–7, 1946, partisans strolled around the streets undisturbed. “This led to humorous scenes. The security service drank with partisans, after which they organized shooting in celebration.” People shouted on the streets: “Long live the AK!”94

The National Armed Forces (NSZ) spread propaganda that all the members of the Home Army (AK) were revealing themselves. But this did not correspond to reality. For example, the Inspectorate of the Puławy WiN threatened that anyone who revealed himself would be killed and branded as an informer: “Can there be anything more painful than what is going on in our country and our nation?” asks The Call, signed “the Underground Army.”

The poison sipped by lousy communism unfortunately penetrates into our organisms. There is a lack of unity in the Nation, lack of fortitude in the soul, [lack of] determination, strong will, and perseverance. . . . Brothers, let’s pull ourselves together, let’s just think about it. Let us not seek out the reasons why misfortune has fallen upon us, since we ourselves are most often to blame. Let us not look at those for whom the road has ended, who, having broken their oath, humiliated, have gone for a better standard of living. Let’s not look at those who sell us into agony and death for meager scraps thrown to them with Judas-like calculation by the executioner’s hand of the betrayer.95

Those who decided to reveal themselves were not always left in peace. For example, on July 13, 1945, a well-known officer from the Inspectorate of the AK, Captain Bolesław Czerwiński (pseud. Wir) revealed himself and turned over a warehouse filled with weapons.96 The remaining members of his unit, including Antoni Heda (pseud. Szary), stayed underground. But even the latter established contact with the UB in Radom regarding the possibility of emerging from the underground. When his superior, pseud. “Kos”, found out about this, he banned him from any further negotiations under penalty of death. Next, he ordered “Szary” to shoot Wir, which he did on August 13, 1945, in a city park in Końskie.97 In Stefanów (Lublin County), “Wiktor”’s group conducted similar executions, always justified by an act of treason.98

Sometimes, as in the case of the Zaręba family from the village Warchoły, these executions affected entire families whose members had backed out of the underground. On the evening of April 18, 1947, Edward Zaręba was standing at the fence smoking cigarettes with his neighbor. Suddenly, three individuals appeared, two in civilian clothing, one in a uniform of the Polish Army. They ordered Zaręba to go into the cottage, where they shot him while shouting, “Your spying has ended.” Next, they killed the farmer’s mother, Anna, shooting her in the larynx. Then, they ordered one of Zaręba’s sons, Grzegorz, to harness the horses to a wagon onto which they loaded all the family’s belongings, including furniture and bed linens. Finally, they shot Grzegorz and his son, Stanisław, and then set the house on fire. The sister of the elderly murdered woman witnessed the crime; the bandits let her go.99

“I lost confidence in the higher ups after the unpleasant amnesty experiences,” wrote the commander of an underground unit, Zygmunt Broński (pseud. Uskok) in the fall of 1945. “These amnesties of devilish invention introduced a great deal of devastation into our work, and gave the Communists more than all the armed operations put together.”100 After many years the head of propaganda for the National Military Union (Narodowy Związek Wojskowy), Jerzy Pilaciński, will himself criticize the utopia of this indefinitely protracted armed struggle, calling it an error or “an ordinary crime,” depending on his motives.101

In another powerful blow to the underground’s morale, some members of the underground broke down during their trials and publicly accused their colleagues. We read about them in a WiN report dated December 15, 1946: “During the trial of twenty-four members of the BW Intelligence Brigades and the NSZ, everyone was beneath criticism, falling apart like children.”102

More and more often, articles in the underground press voiced bitterness: “Forty-five percent of Poland is dying in a suffocating grasp that is horrendous, more devastating, though more camouflaged than the German, even more deceitful, a hundredfold more duplicitous. . . . Can Polish youth have fun and dance while this is happening to her brothers, oftentimes to their comrades in arms?” Announcements in newspapers proved that the answer to this question was, of course, yes.103

Privatization of Power

In wartime Kielce it was difficult not to notice crowds of young men whose “tall, polished boots, breeches, and long jackets” implied that they were officers of the underground army—which they often were.104 The arrival of the Soviets meant that suddenly all of them became invisible. By the middle of 1945, even those who had created an underground unit, as had Henryk Pawelec (pseud. Andrzej), considered disbanding them. “I will not shoot at Poles, that is not what I fought for,” said Pawelec about his decision, which prompted him to flee across the “green border,” in other words, across the forested areas along the border that were not well patrolled.

The places left empty by the old elites, however, were quickly filled by new ones.

Looking through the record of those who were dismissed from Kielce police stations in 1945 and 1946, one gets the impression that the entire population of the Kielce region passed through it at one point or another.105 To expand upon Marcin Zaremba’s finding, it wasn’t only “good-for-nothings” or “useless people” who were attracted to it.106 Though the majority of Kielce police officers were indeed “of peasant background,” the higher positions in the provincial headquarters of the MO in Kielce were filled—as we shall see in chapter 13—by the prewar officers and lawyers with whom Commander Wiktor Kuźnicki liked to surround himself.

An analysis of personnel files from the MO shows that the majority of its policemen were not members of any party, or described themselves as “peasant activists” (sg. ludowiec, pl. ludowcy). Mass registration in the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR) took place only after the pogrom, with the goal of currying favor with the newly appointed Personnel Verification Commission. Since wartime affiliations were often concealed—they would be revealed only through special inspections conducted after the pogrom and in 1949—it is difficult to evaluate which underground organization enjoyed the most popularity among these candidates. Zaremba states that in the Rzeszów region there were counties where members of the Home Army (AK) made up as much as half the police staff.107 The minutes from a fall meeting of the Central Committee of the Polish Workers’ Party (KC PPR) give a similar estimate; we read there that, for example, “in Mińsk County, members of the Home Army make up . . . 60 percent of the police staff.”108

In the Kielce region applicants to the MO most often indicated their underground affiliation as the Peasants’ Battalions (Bataliony Chłopskie, BCh), which—in the context of the BCh’s integration with the AK—could have been, of course, a euphemism.

The last names of many people who had murdered Jews during the war are recorded on lists of policemen from 1945–1946. Reasons varied for joining the police, and to a lesser degree the UB, where candidates were more thoroughly screened: hunger, ruin, exhaustion, and chaos. However, these reasons were not legible within the context of a heroic narrative. Underground institutions supplied people with honor, but they did not provide a roof over their heads, uniforms, cafeterias, or protection against gangs and the lawlessness of the new authorities.

Jews were not the only ones who needed protection. The postwar situation in the Kielce region is fittingly captured in Jan Gross’s concept of the “privatization of power” during the Sovietization of eastern Poland after the invasion of Soviet troops in 1939.109 An illustration of this concept can be found in complaints regarding the brutish behavior of MO commander Stanisław Olczyk (pseud. Garbaty) in breaking up a holiday celebration and beating and insulting local authorities on May 20, 1945.110 Olczyk had been a distinguished leader of the Communist underground during the war, and a significant number of staff at MO stations in the Kielce region were recruited from his units.

Another illustration of Gross’s concept can be found in the example of a certain Major Władysław Sobczyński, who plays a role in our story as the head of the WUBP in Kielce. This man organized for himself a private polity, albeit a mobile one, because it was first located in Rzeszów and only later in Kielce. We learn about this from the documents of the investigation conducted by the Ministry of Public Security (MBP) in May 1946.

One of Sobczyński’s subordinates testified, “When summoning [his subordinates], Major Sobczyński treats them in the following way: ‘You dick, for fuck’s sake, fuck you’ and the like. The filth coming out of his mouth doesn’t stop.” Further, we read about the theft of furs by Sobczyński’s brother-in-law, Szwagierczak. The owner of the furs doesn’t want to accuse [a relative of] the head of the WUBP because she is afraid. Sobczyński’s cousin, Żaczek, fired a salute on the anniversary of regaining independence so carelessly that he almost “killed the daughter of one of the department directors, Lieutenant Kołacz, and her friend who was keeping her [company].”

In the Rzeszów WUBP, Sobczyński employed and supported his entire family, immediate and extended. Providing them with goods and supplies crossed the boundary of propriety. “Whoever wants to, takes [whatever they want] in whatever quantities they like. The servants take all the goods in the storehouse for their entire family several times a day. Before the maid leaves, an adjutant comes in and the same story repeats itself. After the adjutant comes the major’s boy, then his daughter, who doesn’t work in our office, and this continues, on and on, constantly. And if one of us dares to say that there’s [such a thing as] too much of a good thing, then his holster will be removed and he will be taken into custody. Isn’t this how magnates lived in the previous era?!”111

There are numerous calculations of linear meters of flannel, gray linen, material for curtains, upholstery for davenport sofas, spare uniforms, suits, shirts, hundreds of “Bałtyk” cigarettes, as well as use of official vehicles for moving Sobczyński’s relatives and their furniture to Rzeszów.

A litany of Sobczyński’s lovers follows. Among those mentioned are his illegitimate children; a wife who throws jealous fits; as well as “the Cit[izen] Major’s adjutant, Sergeant Nowak Roman,” who “collects money for his inactivity, but is just a close friend of Olga, the major’s daughter. He hasn’t been seen in the office for two months; you can only find him in the storehouse rummaging about the basements of the Provisions Department.”112 The summary of jobs and family relations reveals that Sobczyński’s inner court in the WUBP in Rzeszów was comprised of twenty-six posts.

Major Sobczyński did not behave any differently after moving to Kielce, as indicated by a grievance filed by the aforementioned Dr. Bałanowski from the medical clinic of the UB.113 Bałanowski, who later cared for the pogrom victims, declared:

I am officially reporting, that because of incessant harassment by the head of the WUBP in Kielce, who treats me not as the director of the Health Department of the WUBP, but . . . worse than his messenger boy, I am no longer in control of the situation in my own department. . . . I asked that a vehicle be allocated to the hospital for the purpose of visiting our patients. “And why don’t you go on foot?” was the ironic answer given to me. From that moment, I gave up requesting a means of transportation and walk everywhere “on foot.” . . . I explained that our space for the health department and medical clinic was too small, showing him as evidence that I had to put my desk into the head nurse’s room. In response he asked, “And do you also share a bed? You’re blushing, and you didn’t reply. How many venereal patients do you have?” I dared to explain that this was confidential. “So then, you don’t know the full reach of your authority. There are no secrets before me. I order you to deliver a list of names of venereal patients; I don’t want to keep those sons-of-b**ches around here!” This was a loud conversation in front of everyone. I felt terrorized and demeaned. “So, then, [how] am I to conduct a review?” I didn’t want there to be a scandal. I had in my mind’s eye the remnants of my family, for whom I am the only source of support.114

This is only a small fragment of Dr. Bałanowski’s grievance, which concludes with his resignation.

Tomasz Korus, a functionary in the PUBP in Kielce, privatized power on a smaller scale. Korus, along with a group of brothers, cousins, and more distant relations, monopolized attacks on trains in the Zagnańsk region. During the war, he provided the local Home Army unit with supplies. For nearly a decade after the war, thanks to Korus’s position as clerk in the PUBP, his people terrorized potential witnesses of these abuses. This gang established a classic mafia structure that was not broken up until the 1950s.115 They stole electric motors, sheet metal, textiles, shoes, furniture, radios, vodka, wheat, flour, oranges, sugar, oils, and tobacco being transported by rail. They robbed the cash wages from nearby workplaces, cloth for foresters’ coats, lubricant, and rope—anything they could get their hands on.

Analysis of these types of transgressions by policemen and UB members provides a window into everyday life in the Kielce region after the war. If one of them takes a bike, it falls to the owner of the bike to prove that the vehicle was not looted. The same goes for shoe leather, coal, kerosene, meat, salt and sugar, soap, sodium bicarbonate, matches, tea, and watches. “At present, bread is eaten by those who are in the Party,” repeats Sobczyński.116 And he is right: activists from the PPR receive a monthly salary upwards of 55,000 złotys and additional provisions beyond those apportioned through rationing—canned meat and fish, lard and margarine from the United States, Canadian flour, clothing, underclothing, and bed linens. Another activist appeals to farmers: “Do you want good land? Then join the PPR!”117

The War of All against All

There is much to fear. In police accounts and situation reports from the first months of 1946, attacks, robberies, and murders are recorded almost every day. Across the country war is being carried out with heavy weapons. Underground units conduct “liberation forays,” such as the one carried out on November 19, 1945, in Bolesławiec, where a group dressed in Polish Army uniforms forcibly entered “the police station, the Społem cooperative, and local Jews’ homes” all at the same time. The result: twelve people were killed, including three Poles, eight Jews, and one Ukrainian.118

In places controlled by the underground, ethnic profiling occurs constantly; Jews and communists die. On May 27, 1945, a group from the National Armed Forces (NSZ) led by Władysław Żbik-Kołaciński raids Przedbórz.119 The group shoots eight local Jews who had recently returned from camps to this small town. Among them are a woman and child. Their property is plundered.120 Another nine Jews and three soldiers from the Red Army who are their guests will perish in Leżajsk.121 Nine Jews and three Poles will lose their lives on May 24, 1945, in the course of a raid carried out in Czyżew-Osada by a unit under the command of Kazimierz Kamieński (pseud. Huzar) and Żbik.122

On February 5, 1946, a WiN group under the leadership of Leon Taraszkiewicz-Jastrząb conducts a similar raid. This raid is described in reports from the Provincial Jewish Committee in Lublin as “a uniformed band of assailants, 100–200 people strong.”123 Several Jews are executed by shooting, Jewish apartments are robbed, the residents’ possessions are put on carts and taken away.124 In the diary of the commander’s brother, the goal of the raid is described as “dealing a crushing defeat” to Jewish residents, who in the author’s opinion are too numerous, and “who completely seized trade with their own hands, taking away the livelihoods of other petty merchants and Polish tradesmen. . . . On this occasion, it was possible to recuperate a bit using the Jewish stores.”125 The author underscores the conduct of the youth from Parczew, usually students of the local middle school, who “recklessly helped . . . search for Jews.”126

On the first day of June 1946, in the morning, an armed group takes control of Szydłowiec for three hours, stopping to check all passing cars. The guard on a truck belonging to the “Bata” company is killed; he didn’t stop for their inspection.127 On March 29, 1946, after disarming the MO station in the town of Oblassy, WiN partisans enter the “red” village of Mszadla Nowa, robbing and beating residents. On May 19, 1946, the “Lasy” (forests) unit under the command of “Grot” (arrow) sets up a blockade in the city of Radomsk. Partisans patrol the streets; they attack the post office, the PUBP, the MO, and the prison, from which they release fifty-seven prisoners. While withdrawing from the city, the group stops a vehicle with soldiers from the Red Army who were employed to guard and rebuild a damaged telephone line (two officers, six soldiers). “The bandits killed the officer who objected on the spot, and disarmed and took the rest of them to forester Graba’s lodge, where at 11:00 on April 20, 1946, they shot all of them.”128

Attacks on police stations are the norm. Here is a typical report: “On March 29, [1946,] a band of fifty persons, people dressed as civilians, armed with automatic weapons, after an unknown number of rounds, forcibly entered the station . . ., where they stole from the policemen all their linens, food allocations, coats, uniforms, belts, and KBK ammunition. This same band plundered linens and clothing, shoes, two sewing machines, and a number of other things from almost every house in this village.”129 The chief commander of the MO reminds his subordinates about the “defensive value that every station must have.”130 If the building is wooden, then bunkers with embrasures should be built around it, and weapons and ammunition should be amassed. No one is to be spared in battle. June 5, 1946: “[The attackers] forcibly entered the station leading the wife and child of the [Orońsk MO] commander [Stanisław Gromek] in front of them. The commander and one police officer were abducted.”131

The bodies of the deceased are not respected. “Corpses of the bandits killed were displayed in Lipsk on the town square in order to be identified. . . . So far, no one has come forward to claim them.”132 There must have been many victims, since in August 1946 the main headquarters of the MO writes to the commander of the Kielce MO that because of a lack of documentation, they still have not paid out the death benefits to families of fifty-three policemen killed in the Kielce region alone.133 If we are to believe an official report from near Częstochowa, the fallen MO victims are sometimes buried in mass graves.134

The confessions of policemen who are arrested in the late 1940s for using prohibited methods of interrogation are similarly drastic. One such unlucky fellow was Henryk Rybak, a functionary of the PUBP, who explained his behavior as follows: “From the start I encountered beatings during investigations and shootings of bandits at the slightest attempt to escape, and, at the command of our superiors, we even led them off to the side in the forest and shot them like dogs. . . . I shot bandits in 1945, ’46, ’47, ’48, and even in ’49. I killed and maimed during operations, I shot at those sentenced to death, and I even specifically tried to participate in the execution of death sentences.”135 Henryk Rybak became so accustomed to these practices that he demanded he receive a reduced sentence for killing two people as they were being interrogated.

The underground, the MO, the UB, and the army—Polish as well as Soviet—fight among themselves for the right to use violence, a classic attribute of power. Rapes, murders, and plunder committed by Soviet soldiers are recorded in an expanding column in WiN reports, dreadfully monotonous in its brutality. One exception is the humorous story of a Soviet soldier who, while watching the film Kościuszko pod Racławicami (Kościuszko at Racławice), shot at the movie screen during the scene in which the Poles attack the Muscovites.136 According to WiN reports, we know that demobilized Polish soldiers—who are accustomed to providing for themselves while at the front lines—also commit rape, plunder, and “thuggery” (bandziorka). Based on a review of police investigations in Opatów in 1945, it appears that village boys were following their example.

Everyone feels that they have the right to kill. An analysis of reports from the MO and the UB demonstrates that in the Kielce and Lublin provinces attacks and murders are the norm. Civilians always constitute the largest group of victims. If we are to believe the statistics presented at an internal meeting of directors of WUBP, in January 1946 a total of 308 people perished in conflicts with the underground: 182 civilians; thirty-six soldiers from the Polish Army; thirty-two functionaries of the UB; seventeen policemen from the MO; ten members of the PPR; nine members of the People’s Party; seven soldiers from the Red Army; seven bureaucrats; and four members of the Democratic Alliance (Stronnictwo Demokratyczne). There were fifty-two victims from the underground, which raises the number of those killed to 360.137

Rarely did those attacked manage to defend themselves. “On the night of May 7–8, a band of around thirty strong under the banner of the NSZ crossed the Vistula in the area of Koszyce. . . . In the village of Przemyki, this band attacked farmers who belonged to the PPR, and then stole three horses, one pig, and all sorts of clothing. After this raid the bandits went to the village of Ława and attacked the house belonging to Popiel, who—firing a shotgun [along with his sons]—resisted the bandits. The bandits opened fire at Popiel’s house and threw a grenade into the living quarters.”138 The family defended itself; the house, however, was destroyed.

Andrzej Goluch from Podwierzbie lost all his family members when, on the night of May 22, 1946, his house was set on fire by a marauding band in the area of Kozienice. “Several of them entered his house and fired without saying a word, wounding him in the right shoulder. The wounded man immediately fell to the ground and lying there like that, he heard . . . a gunshot in the direction of the bed where his wife was lying, and then . . . six more bandits came in . . ., delivering one shot to his son who was lying in bed. At that moment, taking advantage of the momentary inattention of the bandits, the wounded man jumped through the window and hid among the rye. . . . He heard twenty more shots and in the following moment he saw his farm buildings go up in flames.”139 In the early morning, he finally arrived through the fields at the airport in Modlin where he was tended to by the KBW.

During a robbery in the village of Pieczonogi, bandits who claim that they report to an unspecified command in Kraków keep asking the owner of a store if he is in the PPR, though the owner belongs to the People’s Party. When to his misfortune he explains that he returned not long ago from the West, they yell: “Son of a bitch, you robbed Pomerania!”140 In the village of Spytkowice, similarly patriotically inclined assailants tell a member of the PPR, Edward Jakubik, that “if he doesn’t give them the amount of 50,000 złotys, they will shoot his son. Since the aforementioned did not have this amount, the bandits shot his son and stole the amount of 13,000 złotys.”141

People are regularly intimidated and robbed, after which they submit anonymous reports such as the following:

Mr. Commander, Sir, I am writing to you with a request that you apply yourself [to your job] and hear my request. As I was returning on Sunday night, three people with firearms in their hands searched me and took my money and cigarettes. But I recognized them. . . . As it turned out, these were the same ones who were in Wola Władysławowska at the attack on the Dudek family. They almost shot a girl, took money and clothing, and when leaving, ordered them [not] to turn them in because they will shoot them. I am asking the authorities to immediately arrest [them], kind sirs, [so that] when they are arrested to take [from them] the goods, wool, even the market basket, clothing, because they stole such things. Dear Sirs, I cannot sign my name, if you don’t believe me then examine Dudek’s daughter.142

Woe unto anyone who, like “one girl, Domagała’s daughter from the village of Gac,” will recognize a stolen tie in the possession of one of robbers. “A couple of days later, the girl died.”143

WiN reports present some of the underground groups glorified in the 2007 Atlas polskiego podziemia niepodległościowego 1944–1956 (Atlas of the Independence Underground in Poland, 1944–1956) in a completely different light. For example, one report writes that the group of the National Armed Forces (NSZ) under the command of Captain Tadeusz Gajda (pseud. Tarzan), which operated in the Rozwadów and Nisko regions,144 is a band made up of “a criminal element, railway thieves, [and] deserters from the Polish Army. They walk around openly with firearms, invade individual houses in some villages demanding accommodations, [and] advertise themselves as an AK group that is authorized to establish peace and order and to combat banditry.”145

In another WiN report we read that other groups in Jarosław County “cultivate ruffian practices.”146 The activities of Władysław Składzień (pseud. Twardy) are commented on in similar terms. For a time, Składzień was the head of the Inspectorate of the Home Army in Przemyśl where he organized “diversionary bands” that in reality engaged in robbery and plunder. One of these units “plundered and murdered the Polish population in the Krasiczyn-Bircza region, arousing among the population bitterness and hatred toward the AK. This unit committed a whole sequence of atrocious attacks and robberies, and in the end, it was disarmed by its own outpost.”147 Also censured is a unit of the NSZ operating in the area of Ostrołęka County under the command of “Wierny,” who “organizes . . . bands attacking the population with robbery as the goal. It has been found that they impersonate the AK, while in fact ‘Wierny’s’ operations have harmed many members of the Polish underground.”148

The writers of the WiN reports clearly cannot believe some of the underground’s exploits: for example, a group from the National Military Union (Narodowe Zjednoczenie Wojskowe, NZW) led by Romuald Rajs (pseud. Bury) attacks the Belarusian minority by sending the villages of Zaleszany, Szpaki, Zanie, and Końcowizna up in smoke between January 29 and February 1, 1946, killing forty-nine people.149 The author of the WiN document is certain that the crime of “destroying the villages, burning down houses, locking people in burning houses” could not have been committed by the underground, because it was more reminiscent of “German or Soviet methods of pacifying the mood.”150

Another example: “On October 1, 1945, in Ostrowsk, a pregnant woman (last name withheld) was hanged. Pinned to her breast was a card with the note: ‘Death sentence. For treason against the state and society. For cooperating with the German occupiers. The sentence was carried out by Second Lieutenant Błyskawica [lightning].’”151

The behavior of a resident in the village of Ujazd shows the extent to which the countryside was tormented and intimidated by the underground. As late as 1951, when agitators were trying to convince her to sign the appeal for world peace, “she knelt down and with hands raised in prayer she said: ‘Gentlemen, you are here today and today you will leave, but at night they’ll come and I don’t know what they’ll do to me. Do not force me to sign.’”152 A smallholder from Słabki gave a similar answer to delegates from the local government administration: “You are good and just people, I can host you, give you food, but I will not sign unless I do it [in secret] so that no one will know.” Those reporting add that it is easy for the underground to blackmail people because during the postwar years almost every peasant in these villages has a crime on their conscience, even if it is just stealing wood.

According to an MO assessment, during the first two years after the war, the majority of crimes were committed by “young people” who were passing themselves off as partisans, “of whom ninety percent were farmers with low levels of education” or unemployed persons, derailed by the war and easy money earned from “banditry.” WiN officers see the problem of banditry differently. They think that often “a more energetic element that has not found a way to discharge” indulges in it; in other words, the problem is caused by the people who have a past history of working in underground organizations.153

In Łagów policemen themselves terrorized the area, coming to an agreement with the bandits. In the evenings shots could be heard. Usually policemen shot from the Łagów station, but they told the local population that bandits were the ones shooting. The people came to hate the MO and wrote complaints to Warsaw such as this one:

At the beginning of October, I was working at Dziarmaga Bolesław’s, he resides in Zamkowa Wola. The wife of this Dziarmaga complained to us that three days ago she was attacked; the assailants demanded that she surrender a horse to them; when she refused to surrender the key, they beat her terribly, as well as the four-year-old child, at the same time taking butter and bread, and they also demanded chickens. She said, Kill me, and I still won’t give [you anything]. This Dziarmaga’s wife recognized the perpetrators of the above-mentioned attack; however, when we advised her to go to the police and report it, she stated that she won’t go because the police will notify the bandits.154

The result of this letter was the brutal pacification of Łagów, conducted by the provincial headquarters of the Kielce MO. But more about that in chapter 12.

Trains, railway stations, banks, post offices, mills, and dairies are robbed repeatedly. The bandits do it because they are bandits; the partisans—because they are fighting against the communist system; and this is how the communist system fights against fascism. An MO commander comes to the state-owned mill to interview the caretaker. He learns that before the war he served in the police, so he insults the man by calling him a fascist, tossing out a comment like “your reign has ended,” after which he illegally requisitions twenty-five kilograms of flour.155

On May 15, 1946, in Zwoleń, as a result of a clash between partisans and Soviets, the losses amounted to “29 barns, 22 cattle sheds, 17 residential houses, 24 pigs, 9 sheep, 3 heifers, and also during this shoot-out two underage boys were killed and five people were wounded.”156 In December 1946 in Rozkopaczew, twenty-six farmsteads were burnt down as a result of an attack by groups under the command of “Uskok” and “Jastrząb” acting jointly.157

As part of the settling of accounts between the underground and members of the PPR, people were abducted from their homes in large numbers, and their bodies were later found in the forest. A particular intensification of attacks was recorded in the areas of Jedlińsk and Jedlnia, where on April 6, 1946, the entire staff deserted the police station—and not for the first time.158 WiN reports are full of unending lists of informers, residents, members of the PPR, collaborators of the UB, and in general anyone ready to cooperate with the new authorities. When a Russian or a Jew makes it onto the list, it is generally noted, and sometimes an epithet such as “cunning” or “dirty” is added.

Next to some last names there appear additional comments. About one young man, we read that even though he has been “bruised” twice, he makes threats that he will not abandon his communist activities even if he is completely broken.159 Another man was also thrashed “for cooperating with organs of the security service,” and his daughter’s head was shaved.160 The WiN commander Uskok sentences people to death even for participating in the May 1 parade: seven people perished during an attack on young people returning from May 1 celebrations in Serniki.161 The author of a letter from Lubartów that was intercepted by the censor complains that she is afraid to sleep at home “because there are terrible attacks and robberies”—the neighbors’ farm buildings went up in flames; these neighbors joined the PPR, and two boys were burned alive in the buildings. “You have no idea what is going on, four corpses a day are transported out of Lubartów.”162

The Communist authorities, aware of the danger posed by lists of supporters of the new system, forbade functionaries to carry them on their persons. But the underground also had their people in the UB offices and in the MO.

In addition, priests prepared lists on their own initiative, using their knowledge of who did or did not attend church services.163 Priests were not entirely happy with their parishioners, who were more and more attracted to the “people’s authorities” and whose faith was cooling off. There were also acts of true profanation. In April 1945, in Chroberz in the Kielce region, two drunken policemen shot at an icon of Our Lady of Częstochowa that was hanging on a tree. One of the witnesses said, “I noticed that the population present was deeply moved and outraged, and one old man by the name of Wojciech Prostak, a resident of the village Chroberz, cried and asked that the painting be given to him so that he could protect it from desecration. Next, these words could be heard coming from the crowd: Tatars, Turks, Gestapo men were here, and nobody touched this painting.”164

The change in the status of religion, which had suddenly lost the support of the state, was felt as a widespread threat. Father Teodor Ząbek from the parish in Piasek Wielki appealed to the people to send their children to mass more often, instead of sending them to graze geese. “For not sending them [to mass], everything you have should die!” he shouted.165 In turn, Prefect Gadomski went so far as to beat children, asking them, “Maybe I should give you red ties, so that you can attend meetings against God?”166

As Poles snarl at one another, Soviet and German marauders lie in wait for everyone. A report from the WUBP in Kraków that was intercepted by the underground reveals that among the population of one Kraków suburb, there were 180 murders, robberies, or rapes committed by soldiers of the Red Army within a period of ten days, while the atmosphere was “downright revolutionary.”167 There is no one to defend the residents. Trofyeynyye komandy, or offices for the spoils of war, are directly subordinate to Moscow, and no one wants to provoke Moscow. At a briefing of commanders of the MO in Białystok in the fall of 1945, policemen are officially discouraged from getting involved in incidents caused by the Red Army, since “the alleged plunder and robbery by Soviet soldiers against the Polish population is a patriotic impulse of the Russians, because there has not yet been an incident when [the latter] inflicted any harm whatsoever on a true Polish patriot.”168

The MO usually defends itself. Sometimes, however, even the MO doesn’t stand a chance, as attested to by a question asked during a lecture at the Kraków police academy: “Why, when our [guys] in Miechowskie arrest a Soviet, does a Soviet punitive expedition arrive and take control of the police station?”169 The answer: since the higher-ups are afraid, the underlings also don’t respond.

All of this has a bad influence on morale. “The training of officers and rank-and-file police are below criticism in military and professional terms,” we read in a WiN report from 1945 evaluating the condition of the police cadres. “The work of the MO in uncovering crimes and protecting society from plunder by Soviet troops is insignificant. For the most part, the MO has functionaries who . . . take advantage of their official capacity for personal goals that stem from a desire for profit.”170 The statement of a repentant assailant who successfully stormed a station while in a drunken state shows how little power the average police station in the Kraków region had at its disposal.171

In accordance with Lenin’s postulate, the Citizens’ Militia is not prejudiced when it comes to hiring people from the social margins; the opinion issued by the verification commission that examined the policemen after the pogrom attested to this: “Stawiarski Antoni is listed in the prewar criminal files. Punished six times for assault with burglary. . . . Generally known within the city as a prewar burglar; on account of protecting the good name of the MO, dismiss and transfer to the WUBP.”172 This burglar, who, as a matter of fact, was the Błaszczyk family’s neighbor on 10 Podwalna Street, demonstrated a particular sense of humor, justifying his request for employment with the MO by stating that he was “acquainted” with criminal matters.173

There is also the example of the functionary Józef Mojecki, a gun-smith in the provincial headquarters of the MO, who was never punished for participating in the pogrom. Being “in a highly tipsy state,” he got involved in a fight with a fellow police officer, who—like him—was dressed in civilian clothes. After asking one another to show their identity documents, they started to insult each other. Then one hit the other “with his fist in the face, only after which they recognized one another as MO functionaries.”174

The Middle Ground

Employment in the MO or the UB was the best way to ensure that wartime sins—one’s own and those of one’s friends—didn’t come to light. Mieczysław Wałek (pseud. Salerno), a commander of a Peasants’ Battalions unit in Sandomierz County involved in crimes against Jews, takes over the Sandomierz police station as soon as possible in the fall of 1944.175 In November of that year, when things start to get a little too hot, he will vanish for a bit, only to reappear at a police station in the “New Territories,” as western Poland was called in 1945.176

A partisan with a similar past, Jan Kurgan,177 the commander of the Peasant Battalions in the administrative districts of Połaniec, Tursko Wielkie, and Rytwiany, will first take over the county headquarters of the MO in Sandomierz and then in Jędrzejów. He will soon desert, fleeing to the forest with a group of thirty functionaries. One of these thirty will be Zdzisław Domagała, who will next appear in the provincial headquarters of the MO in Kielce and who will play the role of a “false witness” to the pogrom.178

At the end of May 1945, a former soldier under Wałek-Salerno’s command will also desert: Marian Grombala (pseud. Czarny), a policeman in the station in Sandomierz, who along with his buddies will form the armed group Orzeł Biały (White Eagle). On August 4, 1950, he will be sentenced to twelve years in prison for, among other things, the murder of Srul Kofman.179

The milkman Aleksy Styczeń from the Peasants’ Battalions will join the ranks of the police station in Kościelec, and then in Wiślica and Pińczów; five years later he will be sentenced to life in prison for the wartime murders of Jews.180 The station in Sędziszów will be taken over by another member of the Peasants’ Battalions, Feliks Świerczyński, who during the war terrorized the area by spreading the news that bodies of “Jews and communists” murdered by his unit are located in a local well.181

The network of people who have similar crimes on their conscience will include Stanisław Krakowiak of the station in Szumsko, who served as a member of the German auxiliary forces, the NSZ,182 and the diversionary unit “Jędrusie”; as well as the commander of the MO in Gręboszów, Career Sergeant Biskup, who during the war was a member of the NSZ and who also has the murders of Jews on his scorecard (he will be arrested a day before the pogrom).183

Similarly entangled in this web is Marian Wilczyński (pseud. Grom), a partisan from the “Wybranieccy” unit commanded by Marian Sołtysiak-Barabasz. Wilczyński joins the MO184 and ends up in a defense platoon in Zgorzelec, under Stanisław Piaskowski, who in turn was first postwar provincial governor of Kielce. Another partisan belonging to “Barabasz’s” group, Józef Molenda, will also become a policeman in Zgorzelec and later a secret collaborator with the authorities. Molenda, who was a policeman before the war, hid himself away in the MO in the Western Territories immediately after the war; he was not tried for crimes against Jews until the 1950s.185 At his trial he will be defended by Leopold Arendarski, a functionary of the Kielce UB who briefly belonged to “Barabasz’s” group.186 Arendarski himself will also be accused—along with two others—of murdering Icek Grynbaum on the town square in Chęciny.187

Lieutenant Albert Grynbaum, a relative of the same Icek who was shot and the deputy head of the local PUBP, is a friend of the Arendarski who is in the Kielce security service. Albert will also play a significant role in the pogrom; he will be in the building at 7 Planty Street until 1:00 p.m. organizing a defense of the Jews besieged there. Other functionaries worked in similar circumstances at the WUBP. For instance, there was Bernard Zelinger, whose aunt Zofia Zelinger and cousin Danusia were put to death by partisans from Barabasz’s group.188 A situation in which the victim and the perpetrator, or at least their representatives, are able to form an alliance that creates not only the expectation for a chance to return favors but also the chance to achieve common goals can be called “the middle ground,” to borrow Richard White’s term. According to White, the middle ground is based on mutual concessions and compromises advantageous to both sides. It is conditioned by the fact that neither side can win by force, and so both must find ways to induce the other side to cooperate.189 He developed the term to describe the situation on the American frontier during the conquest of Native American lands by settlers moving to the West: the pioneers and the Native Americans were able to develop an arrangement satisfactory to both sides. The system functioned for many decades and was damaged only every so often by “zealots” who broke ranks. The functioning of such an arrangement in provincial Poland in 1945–1946 is fundamental to understanding how the Kielce pogrom could even have happened.

Amnesty and Amnesia

Although not from the Kielce region, an incident described in reports from the Leżajsk police station from 1945–1946 can be considered typical. The commander of the police station in Przemyśl County is Bonifacy Słota, who was a Blue policeman in 1942 and took part in roundups of Jews in the village of Husów (Łańcut County).190 The local fire brigade spontaneously organized these roundups, while the Germans were irritated by this and ordered that the prisoners be released. The aforementioned Słota was a member of a team of “catchers” (łapacze) led by Józef Rak, who was also in the MO after the war. In 1944, when Jakub Einhorn, one of the few Jews from Husów who survived, tried along with UB functionaries from Łańcut to arrest Rak, he escaped his house through a tunnel while under fire.191 Rak was captured and arrested in 1946, not for his crimes against Jews but because, while drunk, he had had the gall to call communists “Jews” and uttered threats that he would “shoot them all like dogs.”

Einhorn’s persistence, which resulted in the convictions of Słota and Rak, is rather unusual. For others like them, assuming similarly unforgiving Jews did not get in their way, loyalty to the new authorities constituted a guarantee of absolution. “Were you allowed to slaughter ten Jews in Ukraine during the time of German rule? This will be forgiven. As long as you loudly applaud Stalin, you will be absolved of sin forever. Were you allowed to shout ‘Heil Hitler’ for ten years and parade around with a swastika? As long as you later traded it in for a hammer and sickle or applauded at a democratic rally, you are an innocent lamb,”192 scoffed a Bundist newspaper published by immigrants in New York.

Józef Kocioł turned out to be such an “innocent lamb.” Beginning in 1944, Kocioł was a functionary of the PUBP in Słomniki near Kraków and a plenipotentiary for matters related to agricultural reform. During the war, he contributed to the death of at least ten Jews in Klimontów Proszowicki but was never held accountable for this.193 He landed in prison only for the murder of a secretary of the PPR.

It certainly didn’t hurt that Kocioł was related to Jan Dąb-Kocioł, an activist in the Nonpartisan Bloc for Cooperation with the Government (Bezpartyjny Blok Współpracy z Rządem, BBWR), the deputy representative to the Government Delegation for Poland (Delegatura Rządu na Kraj, the in-country arm of the Polish government-in-exile) from the Łódź district, and—after the war—a deputy of the State National Council, a Łódź provincial governor, and a minister. “I’ve never met such a cunning specimen,”194 informers of the UB chirped about him when describing the political about-turns of the provincial governor, who hit the following patriotic note over and over: “We have to fill positions immediately, because when those Bolsheviks from Lublin come, they won’t let any of us in.”195

Similarly, Mirosław Smaga worked as an investigating officer in the Lublin WUBP. A functionary of the fire brigade during the war, he hunted Jews in the town of Nieciecza and robbed those who were hiding in the area of Opole Lubelskie.196 A soldier from the Peasants’ Battalions, Marian Ćwiertnia, became the deputy commander of the police station in Koprzywnica. Under the German occupation, he and his friends had murdered Jews in the name of the People’s Security Guard (Ludowa Straż Bezpieczeństwa).197 The list of examples could go on.

When materials surfaced that incriminated UB functionaries or policemen of the MO, the authorities usually began an investigation. But if the matter was not “glaring” because, for example, there were no vocal witnesses, the inquiry was remitted. In these cases, the authorities took care that there was no spread of information about murderers who worked in provincial administrations, the police, the UB, or in the prosecutor’s office.198 Suspects and witnesses were ordered to sign pledges obliging them to secrecy. Thus it was not uncommon for reports about murders to be brought to today’s commanders of police stations, who happened to be yesterday’s commanders of partisan units to which the killers had belonged.

This was the situation, for example, in the case of the Fingerhut family murders—fifty-year-old Liba and her sons, twenty-year-old Abram and fifteen-year-old Berek—on February 18, 1945, in Grodzisk Dolny near Leżajsk. The report on this matter was taken by MO commander Stanisław Kulpa, who during the war had belonged to the same AK unit as those people suspected of the murders.199 As an officer of the law, Kulpa felt confident enough to parade around the village dressed in clothes stolen from the victims.200

Candidates for the MO and the UB wrote extensive biographies for their applications. Some of them had real talent, like the aforementioned Henryk Rybak from the Kielce County Office of Public Security (PUBP), who gave important testimony after the pogrom.

As I remember my father, he was a heavy drinker and a brawler. This behavior infected me and in religion class I behaved inappropriately, for which Father Szafraniec gave me my first good hiding, which was decidedly too harsh for my young age. . . . At the time father had a shotgun allocated to him to destroy herons and ospreys. Every day I walked around with this shotgun and shot at anything. . . . I spent all of 1940 on ponds and meadows, where I occupied myself with setting up traps for ducks and musk deer. . . . In the winter of 1940–1941, I sat at home and went out to set up rabbit snares and tracked polecats with the dog.

In breaks between hunting, Rybak (pseud. Pirat) went back and forth between the local AK, the People’s Army (AL), and the National Armed Forces (NSZ) underground groups. On January 22, 1945, when the Soviets came, he and his friends banded together and entered Włoszczowa in groups of four “in order to assume power.” Rybak took over the County Office of Public Security in Włoszczowa.201 We can make fun of the bulletin boards, community centers, evening parties, and amateur clubs that we read about in the never-ending activity reports of these offices, but for many of these peasant sons who found themselves in the army or MO, this was their first-ever visit to a well-lit room and the first time that somebody bothered to care about them.

Applications for work in the MO and the UB usually don’t give information about the candidates’ true motivations, but they do tell us about those ideas they considered most valid. “My application is motivated by my goal—[to] battle the reactionary endecja [National Democrats] and ozon [Obóz Zjednoczenia Narodowego, Camp of National Unity],”202 writes one applicant, even though all traces of both organizations had already disappeared. “Presently being of the Peasant Party outlook, I am voluntarily applying to the police in Koprzywinca and intend . . . to be on guard, so that there is peace and order,” assures Antoni Jarosz of the Peasants’ Battalions, who murdered Jews and who applied to the MO in the fall of 1944.203 “Kindly please hire me in the MO in Sandomierz, since my passion is to serve in it,” declares NSZ member Jan Mazur, the commander of the MO operational company during the pogrom.204 Władysław Janowski, who is also joining the MO at this time and is full of enthusiasm, has on his conscience a dozen or so people, including two Jewish children. “I want to entirely devote myself to destroying the enemies of democracy,” he says.205 The following blunder is committed by “the paramour in a turtleneck” whom we already know, Leopold Arendarski: “I could combat elements that stand in the way of betraying Polish democracy, as well as enemies of the Fatherland.”206 He further writes, “Since I am inclined toward this service and in this service I want to be of exemplary service to Democratic People’s Poland.”207

Having joined the MO, the Jarosz brothers from Przewłoka—who had the deaths of many Sandomierz Jews on their consciences—helped their friends from the Peasants’ Battalions obtain the rights to Jewish property. In a letter that has been preserved, Józef Jarosz, a policeman in Koprzywnica, writes about transferring the mill in Trzykosy to Edward Śliwiński, a prewar policeman who during the war collected protection money from Jews in hiding. The mill was owned by the Penczyna family, which had been murdered.208 Józef’s brother Antoni—who in his application will write that he lost his hand in a skirmish with the National Armed Forces (NSZ) while in truth colleagues from his unit shot him by accident as he was returning from a raid on Jews—will transfer to Kielce, where he will reinforce the staff of the MO during the pogrom.209

In MO documentation there is evidence of numerous desertions, shootings, plots, emotional breakdowns, and suicides of policemen, as well as an enormous number of dismissals when the authorities realized whom they had hired and contractually committed to keeping on the job for at least three years. According to one participant in a meeting of directors of the provincial UB offices in December 1945, “The recent liquidation of bands in this area and arrests have shown that the bands have support, and even organized posts in the MO.”210 Similar opinions concerned the army: “We cannot expect extensive help on the part of the troops stationed in Chełm. More than a hundred people there drink with members of the AK. There have been instances of fights with policemen because of this.”211

At meetings of the top Communist management, this phenomenon was later explained as an advanced “phase of sabotage” that started in the summer of 1945 after a phase of “minor civil war”: underground organizations were now conducting intense infiltration of the apparatus of repression. According to Colonel Mietkowski, the authorities should have responded to this with a thorough self-purging.212

An analysis of Kielce records shows that this purge did not take place until 1949. And then, the reason for dismissal was usually recorded as negligence in the workplace, concealing the real reasons. One indication of such circumstances was that the person dismissed lost the right to file for damages.

While a self-purge was possible in the UB, it was completely unrealistic within the sphere of the MO, which—because of a lack of qualified staff—hired anyone who simply kept up appearances. It didn’t take long for the impact of this to emerge. “There are certain elements in the police that collaborate with bands, and as a result the burden falls on the security and the military,” reported the Kielce command of the KBW to Warsaw on November 30, 1945.213 One functionary of the security service commented, “It is interesting that in those areas where the MO and the UB do not work together, we do not suffer losses. Where the MO works with us, they are murdered.”214

One of the most notorious collaborators from the underground to work among the Communist authorities was Major Konrad Stefan Dybowski (pseud. Zet). He was the deputy provincial commander for political-educational matters in the provincial headquarters of the MO in Kraków when he was arrested on October 15, 1946, along with twenty other people.215 If we are to believe the testimonies of Jerzy Zakulski (pseud. Borejsza), the commissioner of the Kraków district organization of the NSZ, Dybowski, along with his father, Władysław, directed an intelligence network that cooperated with WiN.

It also happened that UB members worked for both sides. In his book Z życia akowców w Polsce Ludowej (The Life of AK Members in People’s Poland), Andrzej Ropelewski writes about moles from underground organizations in the Jędrzejów PUBP.216 In Rzeszów Stanisław Ludwikowski, a functionary of the WUBP, is a well-known example. He was exposed in the trial against the IV directorate of WiN. Another such person is the typist from the WUBP, Alicja Wnorowska, who collaborated with the Intelligence Brigades until the fall of 1946.217

Even a year after the pogrom in Kielce, a blind eye is turned to such collaboration, as in the example of the aforementioned Tomasz Korus, who—along with his brothers—engaged in looting (szaber).218 During one of the raids on a band of looters, the residents of the village of Siodła, who had been tormented by their attacks “started to shout that . . . as long as Korus Tomasz is in the UB, we would never catch this band, because he always knows when the UB will arrive.”219

Above all, however, it was the Polish Army that turned out to be a disloyal ally of the Communists. This is demonstrated by Order no. 4 of the Command of the General Staff of the Underground Polish Army, a large unit that operated in the Kielce region under the command of Stanisław Sojczyński-Warszyc. The order describes the Polish Army as “Polish” and as “feeling Polish,” emphasizing that it consists of “our comrades-in-arms from the anti-German underground and the Warsaw uprising, and only the main leadership has sold out to Moscow.”220 In a report from this command about a prison attack in Radomsk, we read, “During the fray some of the soldiers of the Polish Army started to cross over to our [i.e., the underground’s] side.”221 Another example occurred when the 5th Kołobrzeg Infantry Regiment did not provide assistance to the UB during Warszyc’s attack on the prison in Piotrków.222 The situation was similar during Heda’s (pseud. Szary), attack on the prison in Kielce.

Hatred dominated the relationship between the Polish Army and the UB, according to a WiN report from October 1945. At midnight on October 28, 1945, the soldiers of the 8th Infantry Division of the Polish Army, a gendarmerie platoon, shot at the building of the County Office of Public Security in Tarnów from machine guns.223 The soldiers taking part in the raid shot one of the security service operatives because he didn’t want to show his identity documents, but they were extremely helpful to the population, letting go those who were under threat and helping them escape.

The Provincial Headquarters of the Kielce MO

The above conditions all impact the atmosphere in Kielce in 1946. A well-matched team works in the provincial headquarters of the MO. It is not made up of unfledged applicants but of prewar lawyers, officers, and policemen. The team was personally chosen by the head of the provincial headquarters of the Citizens’ Militia (KW MO), Wiktor Kuźnicki, an adherent of the Stalinist principle that proclaims that “cadres decide everything.”

Everyone in Kielce knows that Kuźnicki isn’t afraid to employ members of the Polish Peasant Party (PSL), that he “prefers members of the Home Army to members of the Polish Workers’ Party,” and that he is not ashamed of this. From the start he competes with Sobczyński, the head of the WUBP, over which one of the two is a better Communist and a better patriot. Sobczyński has a history in the Communist Party of Poland (KPP) and the NKVD, while Kuźnicki’s history is in the KPP and the war in Spain.

Both fight for “a Poland without Jews,” but only Kuźnicki proclaims this publicly. In Sobczyński’s office Kuźnicki allows himself to state deliberately that “only Jews sit in the UB,” and at a conference of heads of the MO, he announces that “we’re better off with an NSZ Poland than a Bolshevik-Jewish Poland.”224 Almost immediately, and not only because of Sobczyński, these opinions find their way to the central office in Warsaw. However, the office doesn’t respond at all. Kuźnicki is not even reprimanded. True, the cadres in the main headquarters won’t agree to fill positions with the people he proposes, but this will be the end of it. Kuźnicki’s position is so strong that the lack of appointments doesn’t deter him from employing his own candidates in the provincial headquarters of the MO in Kielce.

And so, in the top brass of the Kielce police force we have Tadeusz Majewski-Laske, “who was in a prison of the PUBP in Częstochowa for three months, suspected of membership in the NSZ”; Lieutenant Bronisław Kurczyński from Lwów, who was a szmalcownik, or blackmailer of Jews in hiding during the war; and the recently exposed major of the Home Army, Stefan Dobraczyński. The position of quartermaster in the Kielce provincial headquarters is filled with someone we already know, namely, Captain Antoni Jarosz from the Peasants’ Battalions, a murderer of Jews who is missing a hand. Major Olszański, formerly a member of the Podlaski Legion of Death in 1940, will become one of the deputy heads. And the personnel officer will be Lieutenant Latosiński, an officer suspected of belonging to the NSZ. Among the functionaries of the provincial headquarters of the Citizens’ Militia accused of wartime collaboration with the occupiers will be, among others, Franciszek Augustynowicz, Euzebiusz Dyguda (a Blue policeman), and Marian Martyński, the deputy commander of the police station on 25 Sienkiewicza Street, where Henio’s father will report Heino’s disappearance. All three will be sent to rescue the Jews attacked on Planty Street.

The commander of the police station at 45 Sienkiewicza Street is Edmund Zagórski. A month before the pogrom, he was investigated for shouting in the street while drunk, “As an old akowiec [member of the AK], I say fuck the PPR!” When we add to this that one of his employees is Stefan Sędek, a graduate of the University of Warsaw Law Department and an organizer of the prewar National Radical Camp (Obóz Narodowo-Radykalny, ONR) in Kielce, the picture is just about complete. It is difficult to believe that these will be the people who will decide what will happen to Walenty Błaszczyk’s report when Błaszczyk and his son arrive at the police station on the morning of July 4.

Notes

1. The Partitions of Poland, which began in 1772 and temporarily ended the republic’s independence, divided the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth among Russia, Prussia, and Austria. The partition lasted 123 years, through several rearrangements, until independent Poland was restored in 1918.

2. Luigi Barzini, From Caesar to the Mafia (New York: Bantam Books, 1972), 75–76. See also, Anton Blok, The Mafia of a Sicilian Village 1860–1960: A Study of Violent Peasant Entrepreneurs (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1988), 6.

3. Edward C. Banfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (New York: Free Press, 1958). See also Juliet du Boulay and Rory Williams, “Amoral Familism and the Image of Limited Good: A Critique from a European Perspective,” Anthropological Quarterly 60, no. 1 (1987): 12–24; and Martin Ljunge, “Was Ban-field Right? Family Ties and Civic Virtues,” University Copenhagen (2011).

4. AIPN Ki_0_13_3233, k. 10.

5. Report to the deputy director of the Department for Cadres and Training of the Ministry of Public Security (MBP), Colonel Młynarczyk, regarding a complaint by former MBP functionary Mieczysław Sierant (AIPN BU_01193_4044, k. 71).

6. AIPN BU_0187_1_1, k. 16.

7. AIPN BU_2207_1, k. 98; see also Ld 6_43_4, k. 36.

8. See chapter 12. See also the testimonies of Kazimierz Gwiazdowicz (SL 3.3A) and Wiktor Kuźnicki (SL 3.4A).

9. AAN MAP, 199, k. 37. See also AAN PPR, sygn. 295/VII-149, k. 264.

10. AAN PPR, sygn. 295/VII-149, k. 266.

11. AAN PPR, sygn. 295/VII-149, k. 252, 259.

12. Cited according to Danuta Blus-Węgrowska, “Atmosfera pogromowa,” Karta, no. 18 (1996): 88.

13. “Fakty i widma,” Kuźnica no. 36: 5. See also Ki 53_4745, cz. 1, k. 139.

14. Maciej Pisarski, “Emigracja Żydów z Polski w latach 1945–1951,” in Studia z dziejów i kultury Żydów w Polsce po 1945 roku, ed. August Grabski, M. Pisarski, and A. Stankowski (Warsaw: TRIO, 1997), 36–37.

15. See MP Franciszek Kamiński’s speech to the Sejm on July 3, 1947, (AIPN BU_0259_585, t. 2, k. 55).

16. ANKr, WiN 16, 695.

17. Danuta Blus[-Węgrowska], “Pogrom kielecki” (MA thesis, University of Warsaw, 1994), 23.

18. Other than Mordechaj Penczyna’s account, Gotlib, Fajntuch, and Zylberberg’s statement is the most complete description of the events in Klimontów. It contains all the perpetrators’ last names, which are otherwise scattered among various sources. See Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, Pogrom Cries: Essays on Polish-Jewish History, 1939–1946 (New York: Peter Lang, 2017), 161–72.

19. See Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, “Town of K.: Postscript on Gadulski,” in Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, Jewish Fugitives in the Polish Countryside: Beyond the German Holocaust Project (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2022), 307–38.

20. AIPN Ki_0_16_4, k. 67.

21. AIPN Ki_0_16_4, k. 68.

22. AIPN Ki_0_16_4, k. 49.

23. AIPN Ki_0_16_4, k. 70.

24. AIPN Ki_0_16_4, k. 60.

25. AIPN Ki_0_16_4, k. 61.

26. AIPN Ki_0_16_4, k. 9.

27. AIPN Ki_0_16_4, k. 7.

28. AIPN Ki_0_16_4, k. 8.

29. AIPN Ki_0_16_4, k. 10.

30. SL 2.1.1.19, in particular k. 27. See also AAN, PPR, sygn. 295/VII-149, k. 299–301.

31. SL 2.1.1.19, in particular k. 28.

32. AIPN Ki_0_16_4, k. 41.

33. AIPN Ki_0_16_4, k. 45. The Polish original is as follows: “to będzie tak, jak w innych miasteczkach z Żydami, jeżeli nie będzie mężczyzn, to kobiety będą odpowiedzialne.”

34. AIPN Ki_0_16_4, k. 42. A witness with this same last name also testified in the matter of the “railway action” in July 1946: “Libhober is saying that at the Puszczykowo [?] station, 10 km from Kielce, hooligans dragged a Jewish woman from the train and immediately murdered her. Libhober hid in the wagon.”

35. AIPN Ki_0_16_4, k. 5–6.

36. Investigation Unit in Końskie at the county headquarters of the MO, “Report on Accepting the Verbal Notification of a Crime,” signed by the functionary E. Jędrzejczyk, Końskie, May 10, 1945. Copy in AIPN, uncataloged.

37. Testimony of Antonina Misiowiec, May 10, 1945, conducted by the police Investigation Unit in Końskie. The autopsy report notes that both men were circumcised.

38. Testimony of Zofia Stańczyk, May 10, 1945, conducted by the police Investigation Unit in Końskie.

39. Telegram delivered by phone and dated May 10, 1945, from Kieniowski, a clerk in the police Investigation Unit in Końskie, to the Investigation Department, County Headquarters of the MO in Łódź.

40. Letter from the Prosecutor of the Criminal Court in Lublin, Radom branch, to the county headquarters of the police Investigation Unit in Końskie, June 2, 1945. The matter is eventually dismissed and attributed to an error on the part of a functionary in the Investigation Unit.

41. Report of functionary Antoni Kowala of the police Investigation Unit in Końskie, head of the investigation, May, 19, 1945.

42. This was the estimated total on May 1, 1945. See Adam Penkalla, “Stosunki polsko-żydowskie w Radomiu (kwiecień 1945 – luty 1946),” in Biuletyn ŻIH, no. 3 (July 1995) and no. 2 (July 1996): 57.

43. On the basis of a letter from the deputy provincial governor, Danuta Blus-Węgrowska has written that between July 1945 and February 1946, 135 persons were killed in the Kielce province, of whom only five were Jews (Blus[-Węgrowska], “Pogrom kielecki,” 35, citing AAN, MAP, 866). Other scholars have used this finding to conclude that in the context of the total number of murders, the safety of the Jewish minority in the Kielce region was not particularly at risk. However, the numbers varied significantly over the course of the period examined. A document dated September 29, 1945, and compiled by the head of the sociopolitical department of the Ministry of Public Administration, is titled “Offences against the Jewish Population, as provided in Art. 154, 164, and 240 KK” (Występki przeciwko ludności żydowskiej, przewidziane w art. 154, 164 i 240 KK). It is made up of two parts: a cover letter and a list of events attached to it (Odpisy niektórych mordów i rabunków dokonywanych na obywatelach polskich narodowości żydowskiej, AIPN BU_1572_733, k. 6–8). According to this document, from March through August 1945, there were approximately thirty-eight murders in the Kielce region (the result depends on which counties are included in the calculation).

According to my calculations, more than seventy Jews were murdered from March through August 1945, and approximately twenty from September 1, 1945 to July 1, 1946, in the Kielce region, defined here not according to strict administrative borders but rather as the area of activity of the Provincial Office of Public Security (WUBP) in Kielce, the 7th and 8th Regiments of the Internal Security Corps (Korpus Bezpieczeństwa Wewnętrznego, KBW), and the 2nd Infantry Division of the Polish Army (2DP WP). Because of the significant decrease in the number of murders after September 1945 (which was probably affected by the amnesty in August), we cannot regard the period considered by Blus as typical.

44. Life and Fate, trans. Robert Chandler (New York: New York Review of Books, 2006), 195.

45. See “Estera Mappen” in chapter 1. Analogous principles of selection were applied by the bandits who attacked Riwka Fisz’s flat. They did not take the Polish maid with them. From Officer Stefan Mazur’s testimony: “Nowakowski said, ‘This is a Pole, I know her well. . . . We ordered her to take her things and leave.’” See SL 13, in particular pp. 91 and 105.

46. SL 13, in particular k. 107.

47. The testimony of Józef Dzwonek, a worker who was detained (AIPN BU_0_13_3234).

48. Interrogation of Władysław Krzeszowski, July 3, 1946 (AIPN Ki_0_13_2346, k. 13).

49. Sławomir Mrożek, “Nos,” in Varia: Życie i inne okoliczności (Warsaw: Noir sur Blanc, 2003), 81.

50. AŻIH, American Joint Distribution Committee (1945–1950), sygn. 350/54, k. 13.

51. See copy of a letter from the Provincial Jewish Committee in Kielce to the Central Committee of Polish Jews (CKŻP) in Warsaw, dated October 19, 1945 (GFHA, Catalog No. 024140, p. 19).

52. Arnon Rubin, The Kielce Pogrom: Spontaneity, Provocation or a Country-Wide Scheme?, Vol. 6, Facts and Fictions about the Rescue of the Polish Jewry during the Holocaust (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 2004), 66–67.

53. Natalia Aleksiun, Dokąd dalej? Ruch syjonistyczny w Polsce (1944–1950) (Warsaw: Centrum Badania i Nauczania Dziejów i Kultury Żydów w Polsce im. Mordechaja Anielewicza, Wydawnictwo Trio, 2002), 240.

54. Alina Cała, Ochrona bezpieczeństwa fizycznego Żydów w Polsce powojennej: Komisje specjalne przy Centralnym Komitecie Żydów w Polsce (Warsaw: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny im. Emanuela Ringelbluma, 2014), 23.

55. Blus[-Węgrowska], “Pogrom kielecki,” 19–24. In the Freedom and Independence (WiN) archive there is a report from the Kraków area about the existence of a separate cell of the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR) within the local Jewish Committee. Its task was to counteract “the mood of pessimism among Jews and to draw the Jewish element into productive work, calculated for [their] permanent stay in Poland” (ANKr, WiN 7, 86). See also Arieh Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics: Britain, the United States, and Jewish Refugees, 1945–1948 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 166.

56. Quoted according to Blus-Węgrowska, “Atmosfera pogromowa,” 87. This statement also appears among the results of preliminary research in the Archiwum Akt Nowych (AAN, Polish Central Archives of Modern Records) requested by the Instytut Pamięci Narodowej (IPN, Institute of National Remembrance) during the second Kielce investigation. These results are cataloged as AIPN 53_4743, k. 89.

57. Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics, 171. From the materials contained in Dawid Kahane’s file, it appears that the rabbi also negotiated with the authorities by expressing similar opinions, as when he applied in 1946 for a passport to attend the Jewish Congress in Paris. See the report by MBP official A. Liberman, which begins with a summary of Kahane’s views. The rabbi distances himself from the Central Committee of Polish Jews (CKŻP), which “ignores and harasses the Jewish clergy and Jewish believers”; he presents antisemitism in the context of “an age-old struggle between the Catholic and Jewish churches”; and claims that despite the good intentions of the government, he is unable to do much because “70–80 percent of the Polish nation is poisoned by antisemitism.” In connection with the above, there is no place for Jews in Poland, Liberman continues, writing that Kahane would receive permission to leave the country on the condition that he strictly complied with instructions while abroad (and indeed, the file contains his document entitled “Report from My Time Abroad.”) Kahane explained (it is not clear whether this was while abroad or after he returned) that “the CKŻP should not be attacked since the foreign Jewish reactionary element is prone to take advantage of this as a pretext for diminishing, or completely withholding, assistance of American Jews to Polish Jews”; and that “the emigration of Jews from Poland should not be supported, but steps should be taken in order to set them up in the country.” See “Memo of A. Liberman,” dated February 19, 1947 (AIPN BU_0192_28, k. 32).

58. Quoted according to August Grabski, Działalność komunistów wśród Żydów (1944–1949) (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Trio, 2004), 85.

59. Cała, Ochrona bezpieczeństwa fizycznego Żydów.

60. Quoted according to August Grabski, Centralny Komitet Żydów w Polsce (1944–1950). Historia polityczna (Warsaw: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny im. Emanuela Ringelbluma 2015), 139. Taking into account the strong “ripple effect” after the Kielce pogrom, this information cannot be considered fabricated or exaggerated. See “The Spark and the Tinder” in chapter 15.

61. On the topic of managing through stigmas, see Sander L. Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred: Anti-Semitism and the Hidden Language of the Jews (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990). For a discussion of the latter’s theory, see Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, “Hassliebe: Żydowska samonienawiść w ujęciu Sandera L. Gilmana (część pierwsza: od Hermana z Moguncji do Johannesa Pfefferkorna),” Studia Litteraria et Historica, no. 2 (2013).

62. On July 13 and 14, 1946, according to Blus[-Węgrowska], “Pogrom kielecki,” 36. Also quoted in Grabski, Działalność komunistów wśród Żydów (1944–1949), 176. Quoted according to AŻIH, sygn. 303/5, k. 51.

63. From Michał Chęciński’s interview with Wilhelm Strasser, a former director of the communist-era state censorship office (Główny Urząd Kontroli Prasy, Publikacji i Widowisk) and the editor-in-chief of Folks-Sztyme: “I understood why a Jewish newspaper [Folks-Sztyme] was placed in the hands of a Jew: let him show how a Jew beats other Jews,” Archive of Michał Chęciński (henceforth, AMCh), Interview no. 75, p. 161.

64. See, for example, Leon Poliakov, The History of Anti-Semitism: From the Time of Christ to the Court Jews, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Vanguard Press, 1974).

65. Jerzy Sławomir Mac, “Kto to zrobił,” Kontrasty, no. 11 (1986): 4.

66. A Jewish poet born in Soviet Ukraine, Fefer was a member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC), whose members were arrested in 1948 under Stalinism. He was executed in 1952. See Gennady Estraikh, “Fefer, Itsik,” in The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. I am grateful to Ewa Gwóźdź for the quote.

67. In AIPN BU_1572_733, the daughter’s age is noted as forty-three, though this may be a mistake. See AŻIH, CKŻP, Sekretariat 138, cited according to Dzieje Żydów w Polsce 1944–1968: teksty źródłowe, ed. Helena Datner and Alina Cała (Warsaw: ŻIH, 1997), 25–26.

68. Based on transcript of raw and unused footage for Marcel Łoziński’s documentary Świadkowie (Video-Nova, 1988).

69. See “Report by Cit. Góralski to the Director of Department V of the MBP dated August 5, 1947” (AIPN Ki_016_4, k. 135). On the topic of a similar split in the attitude of party activists in Łódź, see Padraic Kenney, Rebuilding Poland: Workers and Communists, 1945–1950 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 107–8, 110–11, 114–15.

70. Antyżydowskie Wydarzenia Kieleckie 4 lipca 1946 roku: Dokumenty i Materiały, vol. 2, eds. Stanisław Meducki and Zenon Wrona (Kielce: Urząd Miasta Kielce, Kieleckie Towarzystwo Naukowe, 1994), 83.

71. SL 12. 2. For examples of similar testimonies about “heavier looting” by state bureaucrats like the Olsztyn administrator (starosta) in 1945, see ANKr, WiN 42, k. 226.

72. SL 1.18, in particular k. 6. There is also well-developed leftist language in a 1945 flyer entitled “Towarzyszki i towarzysze” (“Comrades”) (AIPN BU_1550_829, k. 41).

73. Aleksander Ochal about Bogdan Porczyński, a member of the Communist Party of Poland (KPP) and the People’s Guard (GL), February 18, 1951 (AIPN BU_0298_878).

74. AIPN, MBP 3378, k. 55–56.

75. SL 1.2.

76. AAN, PPR sygn. 295/VIII-149, k. 314.

77. APK, 306 Urząd Wojewódzki Kielecki II, sygn. 1524, k. 2–3, 4.

78. Adam Penkalla, Sytuacja ludności żydowskiej w maju 1945 roku, “Kieleckie Studia Historyczne” 1995, nr 13, 241–43.

79. See the report from the personnel department of the Provincial Committee of the Polish Workers’ Party (KW PPR) in Kraków (ANKr, WiN 4, 331).

80. AAN PPR, sygn. 295/VII-149, k. 258.

81. AAN PPR, sygn. 295/VII-149, k. 271.

82. Quoted according to Adam Penkalla, “Władze o obecności Żydów na terenie Kielecczyzny w okresie od wkroczenia Armii Czerwonej do pogromu kieleckiego,” in Kwartalnik Historii Żydów, no. 4 (208), December 2003: 560. On the negative attitudes of local administration officials, see also Łukasz Krzyżanowski, Dom, którego nie było. Powroty ocalałych do powojennego miasta (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Czarne, 2016), 152–56.

83. Victor Klemperer, Lingua Tertii Imperii, Notatnik filologa, trans. M. Stroińska (Toronto: Polski Fundusz Wydawniczy w Kanadzie, 1992), chapter 1.

84. AIPN BU_00231_152, k. 109.

85. AIPN BU_00294_45, t. 47, k. 16.

86. AIPN BU_00294_45, t. 50, k. 69. See also a collection of similar flyers from 1945–1949 in the Katowice branch of AIPN (AIPN Ka_011_14, k. 15).

87. Conversation with Stanisław Meducki and quoted according to Tadeusz Wiącek, ed. Zabić Żyda!: Kulisy i tajemnice pogromu kieleckiego (Kraków: Temax, 1992), 144.

88. Joanna Dardzińska, Ulotki, hasła, anonimy: Formy indywidualnego sprzeciwu wobec systemu komunistycznego w Polsce w okresie 1945–1989 (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2015), no pagination.

89. AIPN BU_635_9, k. 91.

90. AIPN BU_635_9, k. 15.

91. Letter from the Puławy starosta (county administrator) to the Lublin provincial governor, Szczepański, 1946 (AIPN BU_ 578_632).

92. Informational report for the month of August 1946, Kraków district (ANKr, WiN 4, 157).

93. ANKr, WiN 25, k. 46. See also “Tzw. ‘sprawa Radosława’ i inne pokrewne” and “Sprawa ujawniania AK” (ANKr, WiN 42, k. 363–64).

94. ANKr, WiN 19, k. 73. Similarly, “In Kozienice scenes of friendship and brotherhood took place between the Security and partisan bands that came out of the forests.” See Aleksander Kochański, ed., Protokoły posiedzeń sekretariatu KC PPR 1945–1946 (Warsaw: Instytut Studiów Politycznych PAN), 54–55.

95. AIPN BU_ 00231_152, t. 5, k. 98.

96. Ryszard Śmietanka-Kruszelnicki, Podziemie poakowskie na Kielecczyźnie w latach 1945–1948 (Kraków: Towarzystwo Naukowe Młodych Historyków “Societas Vistulana,” 2002), 116.

97. AIPN BU_0173_217, k. 2–10. Also mentioned in AIPN Ki_025_675, cz. 1, k. 18. The person who executed the sentence was supposedly Michał Okoniewksi (pseud. Wojnat). See also AIPN BU_01286, k. 17 and AIPN BU_0173_291, k. 5ff.

98. AIPN BU_0187_1_4, k. 122.

99. Report of Corporal Józef Burczyński from the investigation department of the provincial headquarters in Ostrów Mazowiecka, Otwock, dated May 7, 1947 (AIPN BU_00735_1526, k. 5).

100. AIPN BU_ 0187_1_1, k. 89.

101. Jerzy Pilaciński, Narodowe Siły Zbrojne: Kulisy walki podziemnej 1939–1946 (London: Wydawnictwo Towarzystwa im. Romana Dmowskiego, 1976), 200. Cited according to Krzysztof Komorowski, Polityka i walka: Konspiracja zbrojna ruchu narodowego 1939–1945 (Warsaw: Rytm, 2000), 518.

102. “Wine Bottling Plant [Management of the Kraków District WiN, 1945–1946] to the Assembly Plant,” informational report dated December 15, 1946 (ANKr, WiN, t. 4, 52).

103. An anonymous flyer “The Nameless Speak” (after October 1945) quotes from these announcements: “A great attraction,” “Night-long dance party,” and so on.

104. See “Największe szlagiery sezonu” (Greatest Hits of the Season), APIN Ka_011_14, k. 507.

105. See, for example, AIPN BU_01179_616.

106. Zaremba writes, “A real social revolution was underway. Previously ‘expendable’ people were ruling in provincial Poland in the first postwar months and years.” See Marcin Zaremba, Wielka trwoga: Polska 1944–1947: Ludowa reakcja na kryzys (Kraków: Znak i ISP PAN, 2012), 638; English-language edition Entangled in Fear: Everyday Terror in Poland, 1944–1947, trans. Maya Latynski (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2022), 203.

107. Zaremba, Wielka trwoga, 265.

108. For example, see Kochański, Protokoły posiedzeń sekretariatu KC PPR 1945–1946, 127.

109. Jan Gross, Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland’s Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 119.

110. AIPN BU_706_687, k. 26.

111. AIPN BU _0193_7009_1, k. 58–61.

112. AIPN BU _0193_7009_1, k. 58–61.

113. Dr. Natan J. Bałanowski survived the war thanks to the assistance of Dr. Wojciech Ruszkowski. See Krzysztof Urbański and Rafael Blumenfeld, Słownik historii kieleckich Żydów (Kielce: Wyd. KTN, 1995), 22, 74. See also CKŻP, sygn. 303/534a, k. 13.

114. AIPN BU_0193/7009, t. 1, k. 76–80. On the murder of Bałanowski’s brother and daughter, see “Hiding Place no. 1: Zionists” in this chapter.

115. AIPN BU_0_703_1025.

116. AIPN BU_00231_137, t. 12, k. 72.

117. Bronisław Bełczewski, Pierwsze dni (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Minis-terstwa Obrony Narodowej, 1964), 138.

118. AIPN BU_2207_1, k. 76–77.

119. In a file of offenses committed in Kielce, there is a record of the murder of seven Jews in Przedbórz (see AIPN Ki_022_3, k. 11). On the Przedbórz attack, see “Terror in Przedbórz,” in Tokarska-Bakir, Jewish Fugitives, 269–306.

120. Krystyna Kersten, Polacy, Żydzi, komunizm—anatomia półprawd (Warsaw: NOWA, 1992), 116. See also Dos Naje Lebn, July 11, 1945. According to the information shared with the author in 2008 by Dr. Marek Edelman, his friends from Hashomer Hatsair—among them two women and a child—were victims of the National Armed Forces (NSZ) in Przedbórz. There were no communists among them.

121. On February 2, 1945, in Leżajsk, “9 Jews Were Shot Dead.” See Rafał Wnuk, ed., Atlas polskiego podziemia niepodległościowego 1944–1956 (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2007), 182.

122. Wnuk, Atlas, 90.

123. AAN MAP 199, k. 41.

124. AAN PPR, sygn. 295/VII-149, k. 271. See also Wnuk et al., Atlas, 146.

125. Edmund Edward Taraszkiewicz “Żelazny,” Trzy pamiętniki, ed. Andrzej T. Filipek and Bożenna Janocińska (Warsaw–Lublin: IPN, 2008), 92.

126. Trzy pamiętniki, 94. On the details of this incident, see Mariusz Bechta, Pogrom czy odwet? Akcja zbrojna Zrzeszenia “Wolność i Niezawisłość” w Parczewie 5 lutego 1946 r. (Poznań: Zysk i S-ka, 2014). For a critique of Bechta’s antisemitic book, see August Grabski, “Antysemicki pogrom jako kolejne polskie powstanie? Na marginesie pracy o pogromie w Parczewie w 1946 r.,” Kwartalnik Historii Żydów 2, no. 258 (2016): 550–57.

127. AIPN BU_1572_321, k. 10.

128. See the description of incidents in the Łódź province from April 19 to 23, 1946 (AIPN BU_636_1802, k. 152).

129. See the Investigation Unit’s description of the most serious crimes in the Kielce region (from March 1946), (AIPN BU_00294_45_46, k. 25–26).

130. AIPN Ld_00186_59, k. 64–5 and 123.

131. AIPN BU_00294_45_45, k. 66 and 184. Gromek’s corpse was found on June 25, 1946 (see AIPN BU_00294_45_46, k. 55). This was an operation conducted by WiN, more precisely by the “Union of Armed Conspiracy” (“Związek Zbrojnej Konspiracji”), which operated in the southern part of the Kielce region. See Ryszard Śmietanka-Kruszelnicki, “Zrzeszenie WiN na Kielecczyźnie 1945–1948,” in Zeszyty Historyczne WiN-u, no 19–20 (2003): 175.

132. AIPN BU_00294_45_45, k. 142.

133. AIPN BU_00294_45_45, k. 147–48. On November 13, 1945, a decree was issued regarding benefits for widows and orphans of “victims of the enemies of the democratic system of Poland.” Bernard Markiewicz writes that in the Kielce province in 1944–1948, 928 functionaries of the MO, UB, and army perished in the fight against the anti-communist underground. See Bernard Markiewicz, Postawa polityczna chłopów województwa kieleckiego w latach 1944–1948 (Warsaw: Instytut Historii Ruchu Robotniczego, 1987), k. 243.

134. See special report no. 60 dated July 27, 1946, regarding gmina Węglowice near Częstochowa (AIPN BU_00294_45_45, k. 188).

135. AIPN BU_765_98, k. 28. We should also note that the Ministry of Public Security (MBP) made a few attempts to counteract such practices. Order no. 19 of the MBP, dated May 15, 1945, warns against “committing illegal acts in relation to detained persons,” i.e., “beating and abusing” (k. 106). MBP order no. 88, which was read to all functionaries of the UB and MO in July 1946, reported that on July 6, 1946, the regional military court in Katowice sentenced to death the commander and two officers of the MO in Ługnianie, Opole County, who “together with other policemen from this station . . . were accused of committing criminal acts toward those arrested. They beat those detained at the station with refined cruelty, as a result of which, in several cases, the arrested died. Then they buried the corpses, and sent false reports to their superiors that the arrested had escaped from detention. . . . The accused explained that those arrested were of German nationality” (AIPN BU_636_1802, k. 105).

136. ANKr, WiN 42, 245.

137. See the statement of Major Józef Czaplicki in Aparat Bezpieczeństwa 1944-1956: Taktyka, strategia, metody, cz. 1: Lata 1945–1947 (Dokumenty do dziejów PRL), ed. Andrzej Paczkowski (Warsaw: Instytut Studiów Politycznych PAN, 1994), 1:61.

138. AIPN BU_00294_45_46, k. 41.

139. See the report from the command of the Operational Group of the Internal Security Corps (KBW) Dęblin-Irena, dated May 23, 1946 (AIPN BU_2386_18937, k. 48–49).

140. AIPN Ki_0_13_2999, k. 32.

141. AIPN BU_0172_250, k. 6.

142. AIPN BU_0207_3636.

143. AIPN Ki_0_13_2999, k. 68.

144. Wnuk, Atlas, 274.

145. See the informational report for the period of December 22, 1945, to January 22, 1946 (ANKr, WiN 38, k. 317).

146. ANKr, WiN 7, 127.

147. See “The Case of Major Twardy,” review signed “Tor,” dated September 22, 1947 (ANKr, WiN 1, 94). See also ANKr, WiN 1, 165–66.

148. ANKr, WiN 42, 210.

149. “In addition, another 30 Belarusian cart drivers were shot dead,” operation of the III Wilno (Vilnius) Brigade of the National Military Union (Narodowe Zjednoczenie Wojskowe), from January to March 1946, under the command of Romuald Rajs. See Wnuk, Atlas, 96, 98.

150. ANKr, WiN 38, k. 367.

151. AIPN Kr_056_3, t. 4, k. 65. A few pages earlier (k. 56) Józef Kuraś (pseud. Ogień [fire]) mentions that this “Błyskawica” is a bandit, whose crimes are being unfairly attributed to him. See also AIPN Kr_041–42, t. 4, k. 338, table of those murdered by reactionary bands of the underground in the years 1945–1950. Personal sheet of Helena Luberda. I am grateful to Karolina Panz for this reference.

152. This incident concerns collecting signatures at the National Plebiscite of Peace in May 1951 and is described in excerpts from the report of the Central Committee instructor about the situation in the Kielce region, dated June 1951 (AIPN BU_0298_580_5, k. 6).

153. ANKr, WiN 7, 127.

154. AIPN Ki_1353, cz. 4, k. 213.

155. ANKr, WiN 7, k. 185.

156. AIPN BU_00294_45_46, k. 49.

157. AIPN BU_0187_1_4, k. 107.

158. AIPN Ki_025_675, cz. 1, k. 19.

159. ANKr 42, WiN 42, k. 250.

160. AIPN Kr_056_3, t. 4, k. 27, 34.

161. AIPN BU_0187_1_4, k. 129.

162. See the report from the department of Military and Wartime Censorship in the Ministry of Public Security (MBP), 1944–1946 (AIPN BU_1572_3378, k. 90).

163. Śmietanka-Kruszelnicki, Podziemie poakowskie, 189.

164. See the transcript of the interrogation of witness Edward Kucharski (AIPN Ki_6_3874, k. 5). Policemen of the Citizens’ Militia were arrested (see k. 13). The intention was to charge them with provocation, but they were never sentenced.

165. AIPN Ki_014_155, t. 2, cz. 2, k. 39.

166. AIPN Ki_014_155, t. 2, cz. 2, k.

167. ANKr, WiN 42, k. 251.

168. ANKr, WiN 42, 217.

169. ANKr, WiN 7, 249.

170. ANKr, WIN 42, k. 349 and scan 5457.

171. This is in reference to the station of the Citizens’ Militia in Wadowice (see AIPN Kr_056_3, t. 4, k. 67).

172. AIPN Ki_6_4267, k. 7.

173. AIPN Ki_6_4267.

174. AIPN Ki_6_2610, k. 52.

175. Mieczysław Wałek was born on June 7, 1916, in Gierczyce. See Tokarska-Bakir, Pogrom Cries, 167–9. For more about Mieczysław Wałek (pseud. Salerno), see AIPN Ki_035.

176. On Salerno and his comrades in the Peasants’ Battalions, see “The Home Army and Peasant Battalions’ Sabotage Teams in the Sandomierz Region. A Supplement to Zelman Baum’s Testimony,” in Tokarska-Bakir, Jewish Fugitives, 83–142.

177. Jan Kurgan (pseud. Huragan-Leonard) was born on December 15, 1918 in Pijary (AIPN Ki_9_28, cz. 1 and 2; see also AIPN Ki_0_13_1185_t1, k. 304, 307).

178. See “Zdzisław Domagała and the Democratic Youth” in chapter 12. See also the list of deserters from 1945 (AIPN BU_01179_391); Bełczewski, Pierwsze dni, 152; and Andrzej Ropelewski, Z życia akowców w Polsce Ludowej (Gdynia: Marpress, 1997), 71–72, 130–31ff . Finally, see the charge against Kurgan for participating in the murder of Jews during the German occupation in Połaniec and vicinity (AIPN Ki_9_28, t. 2, cz. 1).

179. AIPN BU_0173_91.

180. AIPN BU_01355_170, cz. 3, k. 1; AIPN Ki_027_165, k. 86–87.

181. AIPN Ki_0_13_1138, t. 1–3.

182. AIPN Ki_41_1874.

183. ANKr, WiN 4, 440.

184. AIPN Ki_0024_5205_1. From 1946–1956, Wilczyński was assigned the cryptonym “TW Dezerter” by the UB.

185. AIPN GK 306_48, k. 9–13, 14–18, 312, 323, 359. Molenda was acquitted, even though an eyewitness described in detail how Molenda beat Icek Grynbaum, who was led from house to house in search of property that he had hidden with neighbors. The court did not believe their testimony. See GK_306_48, k. 312. See also AIPN Ki_0_13_368, t. 1, k. 6.

186. 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, 279–352.

187. AIPN GK 306_48, k. 258–61. From Kazimierz Karwas’s testimony: “Jasicki Stanisław told me that Arendarski, Gruszczyński, and Stępniewski murdered Grynbaum” (k. 324). From 1942 to January 17, 1945, Stanisław Jasicki of Chęciny hid three Jews in the basement: Berta Witenberg, Pesla Zelcer, and Mordka Kenigstein. See Krzysztof Urbański, Zagłada Żydów w Dystrykcie Radomskim (Kraków: n.p., 2004), 224.

188. See “Sędek and His Brothers” in chapter 12. See also Skibińska and Tokarska-Bakir, “Barabasz i Żydzi.” Finally, see Bernard Zelinger, Into Harm’s Way (New York: Vantage Press, 2004), xiv, 65, 67, 88, 101–2, 49, 55, 71.

189. Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republicans in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). On the topic of “the quiet coexistence of the police and the underground,” see Rafał Wnuk and Sławomir Poleszak, “Zarys dziejów polskiego podziemia niepodległościowego 1944–1956,” in Atlas polskiego podziemia niepodległościowego: 1944–1956 (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2007), xxviii.

190. The Polnische Polizei im Generalgouvernement, or Polish Police of the General Government, consisted of former Polish policemen mobilized and commanded by the German Ordnungspolizei (Orpo), or Order Police, in occupied Poland in October 1939. They were commonly referred to among Poles as the “blue police” because of their navy-blue uniforms.

191. See the transcript of the interrogation of witness Jakub Einhorn, Szczecin, September 8, 1950 (AIPN Rz_06_23, k. 3–4).

192. See the Bundist emigration newspaper from New York, Der Wecker, no. 761, October 1, 1946 (AAN, PPR, sygn. 295/VII-149, k. 195).

193. See the personnel files of the UB functionary Józef Kocioł, son of Karol and Ewa Łój, born February 2, 1901, in Szczytniki, administrative district Klimontów Proszowicki, Miechów County (AIPN Kr_057_1307; AIPN Kr_07_194; and AIPN Kr_96_195).

194. AIPN BU_01222_2773, k. 50.

195. AIPN BU_01222_2773, k. 52.

196. AIPN Lu_028_2056, k. 31–35. See also Sławomir Poleszak, “Pion śledczy WUBP w Lublinie: Struktura i ludzie (sierpień 1944–kwiecień 1947),” http://polska1918-89.pl/pdf/pion-sledczy-wubp-w-lublinie-struktura-i-ludzie-sierpien-1944kwiecien-,5087.pdf.

197. On January 21, 1951, Marian Ćwiertnia was sentenced to eight years in prison by the provincial court in Kielce according to the Decree of the Polish Committee of National Liberation dated August 31, 1944 (AIPN Ki_0_13_1185, t. 1, k. 35). This decree concerned “sentencing for fascist-Nazi criminals guilty of murders and abuse of civilians and POWs, as well as traitors of the Polish Nation.”

198. Even a decade later, and with an openness that is worth noting, Lieutenant J. Kusa, director of the PUBP in Jędrzejów, reported about a certain Stefan Moś, a former member of the Peasants’ Battalions (BCh) who then became a functionary in the PUBP in Jędrzejów and who, along with his colleagues, killed at least eighteen people, Poles and Jews, from Sędziszów. Kusa wrote: “Due to the fact that the aforementioned is a member of the PZPR and a [Party] secretary, he is not subject to operational interests” (AIPN Ki_0_13_1138, t. 2, cz. 2, k. 8).

199. AIPN Rz_06_23, k. 82, 85. Skarbimir Socha writes that “the police station in Sieniawa was completely filled by people from the underground.” See Czerwona śmierć, czyli narodziny PRL (Stalowa Wola: Światowy Związek Żołnierzy Armii Krajowej. Koło Miejskie w Stalowej Woli. 2000), 310.

200. AIPN Rz_06_23, k. 83.

201. AIPN Gd_071_71, k. 24.

202. AIPN Wr_59_1467, k. 15.

203. AIPN Ki_6_1462.

204. Request dated December 2, 1944, personal file of Jan Mazur, son of Łukasz (AIPN Wr_061_1682, k. 9).

205. AIPN Ki_103_3247, k. 20.

206. AIPN Ki_103_994, k. 23.

207. AIPN BU_0891_1810.

208. APK, Sandomierz branch, sygn. 580. For more on the Penczyna family’s mills, see the chapter “Ethnographic Findings on the Aftermath of the Holocaust through Jewish and Polish Eyes in the Memory of the Polish Hinterland” in Tokarska-Bakir, Pogrom Cries, 115–160.

209. For references to the ambush on Jews during which Antoni Jarosz lost his hand, see AIPN Ki_0_13_1185, t. 1, k. 100, 306, 307. For more on Jarosz, see chapter 12.

210. Aparat Bezpieczeństwa 1944–1956, 1: 28.

211. For Lieutenant Colonel Faustyn Grzybowski’s statement at a briefing of the WUBP on November 30, 1945, see Aparat Bezpieczeństwa 1944–1956, 1: 27.

212. Colonel Mieczysław Mietkowski’s statement at the briefing of heads of the WUBP on April 28, 1947, in Aparat Bezpieczeństwa 1944–1956, 1: 13.

213. CAW (WBH), 7 pułk KBW, sygn. 1580/108, k. 26. Quoted according to Śmietanka-Kruszelnicki, Podziemie poakowskie, 64. “In Mińsk County, members of the Home Army have exposed themselves, they constitute 60 percent of the police staff” (Kochański, Protokoły posiedzeń sekretariatu KC PPR 1945–1946, 27).

214. See the statement by Major Władysław Dominik in Aparat Bezpieczeństwa 1944–1956, 1: 25.

215. AIPN Kr_0_74_199_4, k. 106–107.

216. Ropelewski, Z życia akowców w Polsce Ludowej, 37.

217. Socha, Czerwona śmierć, 330–35.

218. See Marcin Zaremba, “Gorączka szabru,” Zagłada Żydów: Studia i Materiały, no. 5 (2009): 193–220. See also Wielka trwoga, 273–313.

219. AIPN BU_0703_1025, k. 4.

220. AIPN BU_2207_1, k. 98. The same message appears in a flyer of the Underground Polish Army dated May 2, 1946: “We see in them our brothers, our most bosom comrades in arms, whose will has only been temporarily hindered, but who are always ready to support us” (AIPN Ka_011_14, k. 336).

221. AIPN BU_2207_1, k. 45–47.

222. AIPN BU_01355_170, cz. 3, k. 188.

223. AIPN Kr_056_3, t. 4, k. 18.

224. SL 1.1.