CHAPTER 11

The Office of Public Security (UB)

The Challenger

“How was it possible for a pogrom to happen in a provincial capital where there are strong units of the police, the UB, and the army?” asks Bishop Kaczmarek in his report.1 This is the question that we will try to answer in Part III. Our method will be to analyze the responses of various institutions to the pogrom: the Provincial Office of Public Security (WUBP); the police (MO); Provincial Governor Wiślicz’s circle in his administration; the 2nd Warsaw Infantry Division; and the Internal Security Corps (KBW). A similar method of analyzing catastrophes has been successfully applied, for example, to the study of the space shuttle Challenger explosion,2 which turned out to be the result of NASA engineers’ persistent neglect of technological defects in the equipment.

An ancillary method will involve analysis of the careers of functionaries who worked in these Kielce institutions. Historians researching the Kielce pogrom have tended to examine their later fate. We will approach this matter, however, from the opposite direction, following the thinking of Henryk Pawelec, a Kielce resident and the leader of an underground group in 1945: “The Soviets came, but you could sense a continuity in the air. On Kielce streets, in lines, in government institutions, I was constantly bumping into people I knew. People were saying that there was going to be another war soon. But since that war never began, it became clear that the last one was far from over.”3

Weak Authorities

In 1945 the Office of Public Security was considered the most powerful Kielce institution. The pogrom showed how misleading this impression was.

FIGURE 39. Underground leaflet caricaturing the new emblem of the Communist, pro-Soviet PKWN by adding a Star of David with a hammer and sickle inside it (1944–45). The caption reads, “The PKWN introduces a new emblem.” AIPN BU_1633_285_0002.

The Office of Public Security is put on the defensive beginning with the first conversation between Władysław Sobczyński, the head of the Provincial Office of Public Security (WUBP), and Kazimierz Gwiazdowicz, the deputy commander of the provincial MO under Wiktor Kuźnicki. This discord is made even stronger by the fact that the security operatives (ubeks) sent to 7 Planty Street were in civilian clothes, while the policemen and the soldiers from the Polish Army and the Internal Security Corps (KBW), applauded by the crowd (“the army and police [are] with us!”), paraded around in their uniforms. But what contributed the most to the weakening of the security service’s position was the passivity of the Soviets, who refused to help suppress the incidents,4 pulled soldiers out of the city, and locked themselves within their facilities.5 Without the support of “Russki tanks,” the UB suddenly became completely helpless. The few actions taken by its functionaries were the individual acts of men such as Albert Grynbaum, Jan Mucha, Zygmunt Majewski, and Sylwester Klimczak, not the result of coherent leadership. The UB’s embarrassment was all the greater because not only did the police fail to support it, but the Polish Army and the Internal Security Corps, whose soldiers—usually hostile toward the police—this time completely supported the policemen who had attacked Jews.

How did such a situation develop? What games were playing out in Kielce’s centers of power?

The WUBP’s Strategies: Władysław Sobczyński

All the reports from July 4, 1946, underscore the chaos and lack of leadership on Planty Street that day. As we investigate the reasons for this, we should remember that in Kielce at the time there was a cross-institutional Provincial Security Committee (Wojewódzki Komitet Bezpieczeństwa, WKB), a command structure designed to handle unexpected threats. The chairman of the committee was the commander of the 2nd Warsaw Infantry Division (2DP WP), Colonel Stanisław Kupsza. His deputy was Major Sobczyński, the head of the WUBP. The committee’s deputy for political-educational matters was Major Kazimierz Konieczny, deputy head of the 2nd Warsaw Infantry Division. The committee also included the commander of the provincial police, Wiktor Kuźnicki; the first secretary of the Provincial Committee of the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR), Józef Kalinowski; the chief of staff of the 2DP WP, Artur Pollak; and the commander of the 7th Regiment of the Internal Security Corps (KBW), Major Aleksander Paczkowski. A Soviet advisor, either Colonel Nikolai Shpilevoi or Konstantin Strelnikov, always took part in the committee meetings. Sometimes both attended: the signatures of both appear on a report dated July 5, 1946.6

The composition of the committee helps explain why Major Sobczyński showed up at the headquarters of the 2nd Infantry Division at the culmination of the pogrom. He was, in effect, looking to establish an alibi for himself. Because it was not Sobczyński, but Colonel Kupsza—who became a Soviet officer in 1923, had worn a Polish uniform since 1944, and returned to the USSR in 1948—who was supposed to have taken command on Planty Street.

Sobczyński, who as a matter of fact tried to persuade Kupsza to take more decisive action,7 was awaiting orders. From the start of the investigation, he maintained this line of defense, and in the end the court agreed.8 The matter ended for him with a slap on the wrist from the Central Commission for Party Control for “displaying a degree of helplessness that, for a Communist Party member, is reprehensible, at a moment when fast and decisive action was needed.”9 Meanwhile Kupsza, whose indolence led to the massacre on Planty, was protected by “immunity” granted an officer of the Red Army.

A unique immunity also protected Sobczyński. More than two years earlier, a diversionary operation wrapped in secrecy at the rear of the Soviet-German front had assured him protection for the rest of his life. Sobczyński, a “trusted comrade” in Communist Party New-speak, was a Soviet spy, a parachutist who had landed at the rear of the Soviet-German front in 1943 and was never punished for robberies, nepotism, harassment of female employees10—or for the shooting deaths of Jews at Kotyska and Ukrainians in Rzeszów.11 Thus he had a right to expect that, this time, he would also be held accountable not for the number of Jews who perished but only for compromising the system.

On July 4, 1946, Sobczyński sets two goals for himself: to get out of this situation—a situation reminiscent of a popular uprising—in one piece; and to minimize the damage. Above all, he tries to guess how the Russians will react to the developments. Judging by the behavior of Colonel Stanisław Kupsza, however, they are clearly not eager to take action.

Colonel Frankowski, the duty officer for the Kielce garrison on July 4 says, “When the commander of the [2nd] Division, Colonel Kupsza, came to the headquarters, I immediately reported to him that the situation was exceptionally dangerous. [He answered in Russian:] ‘I went, I saw a couple of women shopkeepers there and they were making a commotion.’ Only later did he send a few officers there, in order for them to calm the crowd, but the crowd didn’t want to listen.”12

Early in the morning Sobczyński calls the Soviet colonel, Shpilevoi. And Shpilevoi—hiding behind a lack of Polish uniforms—refuses to send reinforcements (earlier, he had refused Chil Alpert and Chairman Kahane’s requests for the same). But the real message is clear: This is your internal matter, we are not getting mixed up in it.

The Soviets take a similar stance regarding the use of weapons. The head of the provincial UB training school, Tadeusz Seweryński, testifies, “I heard a fragment of a conversation between them, in which Major Sobczyński said, ‘I would give the order to shoot.’ The abovementioned Soviet [Shpilevoi] answered [in Russian]: ‘That won’t be good.’”13

It is worth noting, however, that contrary to Sobczyński, who was on Planty Street only for a moment, was dressed as a civilian, and stayed away from the building, Shpilevoi comes to the Jewish Committee significantly earlier and is more active. This is confirmed by the bezpieczniaks (security operatives) Kwasek, Kwaśniewski, and Mucha: “We went to Major Konieczny with col[onel] Shpilevoi and told him to take all those soldiers in the yard and disperse the crowd that was standing at a distance of 150 met[ers] from the building, to which [the Polish soldiers] did not react, they ignored [the request], which led to a second incident.”14 Albert Grynbaum will give an identical statement.

At 11:30 a.m., instead of being on Planty Street, Sobczyński and Kupsza are watching from a balcony as the crowd leads a couple of Jews who have been caught. Kwasek says, “I noticed that two people, probably of Jewish nationality, were being led down the street, and a crowd ran behind them. They were led up to the division building, and then I noticed that Major Sobczyński stepped out of the room on the first floor onto the balcony along with the commander of the division, and they didn’t react at all to the people’s shouts of ‘Beat the Jews!’”15 Since the senior commanders of the UB and the Polish Army are not paying attention to Jews being murdered, the question arises: why would anyone even think that the Russians would be concerned with the matter?

“We were certain that if something were to happen, they would protect us,” writes Franek Blajchman about the “Russians” (Soviets) as he describes watching the Red Army parade through his family’s village in 1944. Blajchman, a Jewish partisan, was hated in the Lublin region for participating in the arrests of members of the AK.16 Lucky for him, he had been in the American zone for a while already when the Kielce pogrom broke out.

Sobczyński was known as an antisemite. His diaries from the 1960s, commissioned by the Department of Party History, show that Polish communism utilized the categories natives (krajowcy) and Muscovites (moskwianie)—that is, comrades who had their eyes more or less fixed on the East long before the war broke out. The majority faction of the Communist Party of Poland (Komunistyczna Partia Polski, KPP) in Ostrowiec in the early 1930s competed with the “minority group of comrade-Jews.”17 While the latter were devoured by the purges, Sobczyński’s majority group came out almost unscathed.

According to Sobczyński, antisemitism was never a problem. He considered it a marginal phenomenon, “artificially stimulated, organized and subsidized, foreign to the Polish nation,” while “antisemitic escapades, and even pogroms” were “the pranks of small groups of chauvinistic, enraged, reactionary youth belonging to the National Democrats.”18

In the People’s Army (Armia Ludowa, AL) underground, he had competed with another parachutist, who was his intellectual superior and who was appointed as the first head of the Kielce Provincial Office of Public Security (WUBP)—Adam Kornecki. Sobczyński took it so hard that, oblivious to the consequences, he gave false information in the biographical sections of his personnel forms, suggesting that he had indeed received a nomination for the position, which in reality was not the case. Sobczyński’s defeat deepened the rift between the comrades. In Kornecki’s fictionalized war memoirs, he evaluates Sobczyński (pseud. Władek) unfavorably compared to another comrade: “Chełchowski isn’t the whole world [to me], [but] the more time I spend with him, I don’t think he’s so bad. Despite everything, I prefer to stay in the forest with him, rather than with Władek.”19

Antisemitism and Patriots

The relationship between Polish communism and the Jews who were attracted to it by the promise of equal rights was unclear from the very start. Communist ideologues considered antisemitism a declining product of class struggle that would be eliminated as the revolution progressed. Those who were unhappy with the pace of this process—usually and above all Jews—were accused of Zionism, understood as “improper” nationalism. Not having any other way out, they often became true Zionists.

At the same time, from the outset the Communist authorities gazed at “proper” nationalism with puppy-dog eyes. From the first day of the Lublin government, an experiment with nationalistically legitimizing communism was taking place. Its finale came during an October 11, 1947, meeting of the Central Committee of the Polish Workers’ Party, when Jakub Berman uttered the following words: “It is our great achievement as communists that we are capable of creating a national party that has become deeply rooted in Polish society, among various layers of society, the working class, the peasantry, and in part among the intelligentsia.”20

Almost two years earlier Bolesław Bierut’s 1946 New Year’s speech had made a big impression—and not only on Jewish communists. In this speech he announced that as a result of the war and territorial changes, “the Polish nation [was] transforming from a multinational [wielonarodowe] state into a single-nation one [jednonarodowe].”21 “Single-nation” was widely understood to mean “monoethnic.”22 For Jews this was a sign of the end of the utopian antidiscrimination that had attracted them to communism.

The reach for nationalist legitimization did not begin, however, on New Year’s Eve 1946. The leadership of the international communist movement had come out with the idea of a “national front” five years earlier, following the German attack on the USSR. This was a radical change. During the interwar period such concepts as “a unified front of the working class,” “a people’s, as well as an antifascist, front,” or possibly a “proletarian” one were championed.23 In light of the new ideology, the old one was to be branded “national nihilism”24 and attributed almost exclusively to Jews.

Marxist theoreticians counted on antisemitism to disappear on its own over the course of “the construction of socialism.” First, however, Jews began to disappear as the result of the party’s suggestion that Jews change their last names to Polish ones, and the fact that, more and more often, Jews chose to emigrate. In the spring of 1946, Hugo Steinhaus aptly commented on the murky attitude of the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR) toward antisemitism in response to the well-known murder of Jews in Nowy Targ committed by a group under the control of Józef Kuraś (pseud. Ogień): “Neither the democrats nor the PPR know how to strike the appropriate tone in this matter. Because the PPR invokes the equal rights of races, religions, and so on in Poland, while at the same time it masks all the Jews active in its ranks and in the security service with Polish last names, fearing unpopularity among its own lower ranks. This lack of civil courage makes a mockery of their every pronouncement.”25

To mask this deficiency, the PPR condemned “sectarianism” (the precursor to “cosmopolitanism”), and Jewish comrades were encouraged to develop within themselves the virtue of “non-hypersensitivity as regards nationality.”26 On the day of the pogrom, Sobczyński demanded from his Jewish associates precisely this sort of “non-hypersensitivity.”

“An Organization Run by Jews”

Despite the common perception that the UB was an institution dominated by Jews, it was not easy to find any in the Kielce UB in 1946. Besides Zygmunt Majewski’s secretary, Edka Lewkowicz-Ajzenman, there were three: Sobczyński’s deputy, Mieczysław “Morris” Kwaśniewski; Adam Domowski; and at the county level, the deputy chief of the PUBP, Albert Grynbaum. This isn’t many, considering that at the time of the pogrom there were 400 positions. What is striking is not so much the number of Jews, however, as the managerial positions that Jews took just after the Soviets’ arrival.

Though Sobczyński is a committed Moscow man, he openly despises moskwianie (“Muscovites”), among whom Jewish communists indeed dominate. Decidedly more connects him with the attitude of krajowców (“natives”) such as Mieczysław Moczar,27 who serves in the WUBP in Łódź; and particularly Grzegorz Korczyński, a murderer of Jews from Ludmiłówka, who until not long ago served in the Gdańsk WUBP and presently is the assistant to the minister of public security for operational matters. Nothing makes Sobczyński angrier than attaching the label żydokomuna—“Judeo-Communism”—to the UB, and that is why he does not rush to defend the Jews.

In his conversation with Kazimierz Gwiazdowicz, the deputy head of the provincial headquarters of the MO, the word “provocation” is mentioned several times. This is an echo of Soviet anxieties about being dragged into Polish disputes, and Sobczyński has no intention of being provoked. That is why he drags his feet as much as possible. While other local security operatives, including Mucha, Arendarski, Kwasek, Ziółek, Lichacz, and Dębniak, as well as four officers from the MBP on business in Kielce (Humer, Szablewski, Gutowski, and Jurkowski) are already on Planty Street, Sobczyński is still stuck on Focha Street. And when he does move to Kupsza’s headquarters, he conducts endless debates and telephone conversations.

We know from Kwaśniewski’s report that during the pogrom Sobczyński was planning to fly to Warsaw. But this wasn’t the first time Sobczyński had exhibited such behavior. During the war Marian Langer, a forester and a soldier from the AK, came across Sobczyński in the forests near Iłża. Langer’s assessment of Sobczyński’s behavior sheds light on his flight response on the day of the pogrom: “During training in the Soviet Union, Captain ‘Władek’ [Sobczyński] learned to fear an armed enemy. He was so overly sensitive that when the Germans appeared in Sulejów, the only thing he could think about was escaping. He left his clothes and shoes in the barn where he had been sleeping.”28

The WUBP: Mucha and Kwaśniewski

The “people’s power” was strengthening in Poland as the authorities entered into alliances aimed at a “popular” distribution of goods, with the proviso that power itself would remain in the hands of the Communists. Within the sphere of the Kielce UB, such alliances were established between Sobczyński’s realistically oriented circle (Szwagierczak, Nowak, Ziółek, and Adam Bakalarczyk from the [Communist] People’s Army unit “Świt”) and a group of “internationalist” officers, namely, Mucha, Kwaśniewski, Grynbaum, Andrzej Markiewicz, and Zygmunt Majewski.

From all the July 4 reports, it appears that Sobczyński’s associates did not comprehend their boss’s response strategy. With the exception of Ziółek, whose account comes from a later period, all of them complained about his indolence and lack of energy. Supposedly, Captain Mucha implored him, “What are you doing, Major? We’re all going to be held accountable for this, aren’t we? There are crowds of people there.” Scandalized, the head of the investigative department, Edmund Kwasek added, “Inasmuch as Major Sobczyński always seemed like an energetic man, on this day he behaved as if he didn’t care.”29

But by the following day, despite their indignation toward Sobczyński, the “internationalists,” without hesitation and in solidarity, will cover up for their colleagues in the MO and the army. When American journalists arrive in Kielce, Lieutenant Albert Grynbaum will go to Chil Alpert first thing in the morning to ask him not to mention that the army participated in the pogrom.30 If we are to believe the testimonies of Kazimierz Konieczny of the 2nd Infantry Division, Lieutenant Jakub Goldberg (another insider who was present on Planty the previous day) will present the same strategy to the army.31

Each of Sobczyński’s associates has his own survival strategy. Jan Mucha, the head of Department III (dedicated to the fight against the underground), ensures that—above all—information is up to date. He is one of the first to appear on Planty, as Maria Machtynger will note.32 Later, Mucha will run like a pendulum between the Jewish Committee building and Sobczyński, reporting to him about the situation as it gets worse. He and his people are not in uniforms that day, which will have disastrous consequences. As civilians they will be unable to disperse the crowd. From his report it appears that he tried to influence the leadership, but in contrast to Grynbaum and Majewski, he himself didn’t take any risks.

Mieczysław Kwaśniewski, a Communist from Chmielnik and the deputy head of the WUBP, is well aware of the risks. He barely leaves the office. He drops by Planty Street in the company of Soviet advisors, after which he quickly returns to his office.

Adjutant Nowak remembers a typical incident related Kwaśniewski and Sobczyński. Straight from the barber, the commander went to his deputy, ordering him to march out with a unit to Planty. “Kwaśniewski refused. Then the boss supposedly took out his pistol [and wavered], but [in the end] he didn’t shoot Kwaśniewski,” recalled Nowak.33

In turn, Wacław Ziółek remembers that Kwaśniewski was assigned to protect trains that were threatened by attacks on the Kielce-Radom and Kielce-Częstochowa routes. “When Lieutenant Kwaśniewski declared that he would not go out with any group, Major Sobczyński turned bright red in the face and reached for his pistol. He stopped his hand at his belt, dropped it, and declared that he was appointing me as the deputy head of the second group. After which there was a short silence, Major Sobczyński turned to Kwaśniewski and literally declared, ‘It’s a good thing that I realized you are a Jew, and one that is easy to recognize at that, because I was about to shoot you for refusing to follow orders.’”34

Four months later, on November 20, 1946, the investigation into the matter of Władysław Sobczyński’s failure to fulfill his responsibilities during the Kielce pogrom will be closed.35 Kwaśniewski, who—speaking harshly against his boss—filed a report about this matter,36 was not even called as a witness. Instead, the prosecution cast the missing Albert Grynbaum in the role of witness, though it was difficult to expect him at the trial since he had been dead for three months.37

Just before his former boss’s sentence was announced, Kwaśniewski filed his letter of resignation from the security organs. In it, he complained that all his coworkers considered him “foreign, unnecessary.” He concluded, “All of this is due to reasons of nationality, that I am of Jewish nationality. The recent events that occurred in Kielce on July 4 completely broke me, morally as well as physically. I have come to the conclusion that I—as a Jew—with my presence and work in the security organs, despite my best intentions, do not benefit the reconstruction and strengthening of democracy, so much as I might interfere [with it] by provoking antagonism and hatred of me as such.”38 The truthfulness of his words is confirmed by evaluations in his personnel file—consistently positive to the moment he is dismissed and negative thereafter.

In late 1946 or early 1947, Kwaśniewski will bump into Sobczyński on a Warsaw street. By then Sobczyński is an officer on the information board of the Internal Security Corps, and he will say to Kwaśniewski, “You see, kike, not even your report helped.”39

Albert Grynbaum

The deputy head of the County Office of Public Security (PUBP), Lieutenant Albert Grynbaum, showed up on Planty on his own initiative just after 9:00 a.m. He came in order to clear up rumors about children being kidnapped, rumors that began circulating secondhand in the provincial office first thing that morning. Seweryn Kahane told him the latest information about his visit to the MO headquarters, where he supposedly encountered “a hostile attitude toward Jews.” Despite his requests the police officers conducted an ostentatious search of the Jewish Committee, allowing people to believe that something must be up, and implying that Jews were not at all untouchable.

Twenty-eight-year-old Grynbaum, the son of Majer, was a communist from Chmielnik and a tailor by profession. Nonetheless, he knew Flemish, French, and Spanish. The last he learned during the war in Spain, fighting with the Dąbrowski Brigade at the battle of Ebro. He intended to return soon to France in the role of a Communist diplomatic courier.

Grynbaum will not die on Planty, because at around noon he will be forcibly taken from there by his friends from the UB. He will not, however, live much longer. Less than a month and a half later, on August 12, 1946, while on a business trip to Warsaw, the truck transporting him will be stopped between Białobrzegi and Grójec by a right-wing underground unit.40 Grynbaum will be taken to the village of Witaszyn and shot dead there. Jan Kukułka, a member of the group that will conduct the execution, had served in the operational battalion of the Radom MO a year earlier.

Some years will pass before the secretary of the Provincial Office of Public Security (WUBP), Edka Ajzenman, will relate that as she and Grynbaum “were waiting at the railway station in Warsaw, someone supposedly came up to them and said, ‘Director, sir. We’re heading back home, come with us, why should you wait?’ Apparently, it was someone he knew.” She will also recall a similar occurrence from before the pogrom: “A car was passing by somewhere near Kozienice; [this] automobile was stopped, military men in uniform got out and said, ‘Get out, commies.’”41

Meanwhile, however, Grynbaum had just turned up on Planty Street and—over and over again—called the head of the Provincial Office of Public Security (WUBP), with whom he had the worst possible relationship. Sobczyński assured him that the army was on its way. At 10:00 a.m., troops from the 2nd Warsaw Infantry Division (2DP WP) did indeed arrive, but the situation only got worse. Instead of firing warning shots, the gendarmerie of the 2DP WP sprayed the Jewish Committee building with bullets. The Internal Security Corps and the police Operational Battalion and Training Company mixed in with the crowd, which—seeing the animosity of the uniformed men toward the Jews—spurred them on to fight, shouting, “Long live our army and the police!” In the end the combined forces of policemen and gendarmes stormed the doors of the Committee building.

Seeing that it is necessary to organize a defense, Grynbaum gathers together forty Jews in a room on the first floor (they call it Goldwaser’s room) and orders them to guard the door. In this group, in addition to the titular host, the recently demobilized soldier Julian Goldwaser, there are others, including Jechiel Alpert and his wife, Hanka; Marysia Machtynger, who will next slip out into the stairwell; Maria Welfman; Kahane’s secretary, Ewa Szuchman; Seweryn Kahane himself; Dora Dajbog and three-year-old Izia; as well as Juliusz Bertinger and Berek Fajtel. On the second floor other residents of the kibbutz have barricaded themselves in a while ago: Natan Leiser, Izrael Ferkieltaub, Mordka and Natan Grynewidze, Symcha and Chil Sokołowski, Second Lieutenant Abram Wajnryb, Hersz Gutman, Niusia Borensztajn, Rachela Sander, Balka Gertner, Beer Frydman, and Naftali Tajtelbaum and his cousin Menasze. Every so often, Jechiel Alpert slips away from below and brings them information about how events are unfolding.

Now, on the pretext that “their task is to maintain order on the street, and not [to conduct] a search,” Grynbaum tries to keep soldiers and policemen from going up to the first floor. But the soldiers do not intend to listen to him, especially after the incident with the woman and the boy who has been found—perhaps it is Henio Błaszczyk and his mother—who are led around the building as evidence of Jewish guilt. They demand keys to the storeroom, where they will look for murdered children. Grynbaum orders that the keys be turned over. After checking, the soldiers go to the second floor. “A few minutes later, two Jews, that is, Kamrat and another whose last name I don’t know, came to me and said that the military men were killing Jews and stealing their property,” reports Grynbaum. “I then heard shots. At the sound of shots fired from the second floor, shots rang out from the street and inside the building.”42

The testimony of the above-mentioned Henryk Kamrat has been preserved in the archives. Kamrat names one of the civilians who made it upstairs at that time—Leon Wróblewski, whose “father had a mechanical workshop on Leśna Street.” When shots were fired, Kamrat and his friend, who had not been recognized as Jews, were in the hallway of the second floor. The military men interpreted the shots as the Jews shooting at them, and they themselves answered by firing back. (At that time Lieutenant Abram Wajnryb was killed and Symcha Sokołowski was shot.) Seeing what was happening, Kamrat ran to Kahane’s office and stayed there until the moment when everyone was ordered to go downstairs. Along the way, he noticed young Fugiński, the son of the butcher, who, as we might remember from Chil Alpert’s account, hit him with the window frame, shouting, “This one wanted to shoot at me!”

Grynbaum’s friends from the county office of the UB will take him from Planty at around 1:00 p.m., when—according to his report—the Ludwików workers were already in the yard. Seweryn Kahane was still alive, but he didn’t want to abandon the committee. Sobczyński’s adjutant, Ziółek, observed Grynbaum leaving. “We saw Second Lieutenant Albert Grynbaum being escorted under the protection of five employees. . . . The employees rescued their boss from the hands of terrorists. Among them were: Henryk Rybak, Mieczysław Wrona, Jerzy Lichacz, and Wątroba.” The person who made the decision to get Grynbaum away from Planty was most likely Edmund Kwasek of the investigative department of the Provincial Office of Public Security. He did this at the request of Grynbaum’s wife, Dorota,43 who in turn was alerted to the situation by their housemaid. “She ran over shouting that he [Mr. Grynbaum] had gone to the building and that a grenade was thrown after him,”44 says Edka Ajzenman, who shared a flat with the Grynbaums on Focha Street.

After leaving the building, Grynbaum was still there to see someone being thrown from the second floor onto the street. “A soldier walked up to the corpse lying there and kicked him in the head in the presence of the entire crowd. Then among the crowd of people gathered, you could hear such shouts as: ‘Let’s not be afraid of the army, the army is with us.’” He found three commanders in the yard: Konieczny of the 2nd Warsaw Infantry Division; Kazimierz Szczepanik, the deputy head of the provincial office of the UB; and the Soviet advisor Nikolai Shpilevoi. “The people gathered within about 200 meters of the building were crying out for all the Jews to be killed. The commanders on site did not react to the above.”

Sylwester Klimczak

A colorful character among the security team on Planty Street is Sylwester Klimczak, an employee of the prison division of the Kielce provincial office of the UB, first as a clerk in the department of prisons and prison camps, and beginning on June 1, 1946, the prison warden in Kielce. Though he hid three Jewish families during the war, and on July 4, 1946, he saved another five people on Planty, we can have our doubts as to whether he belongs on the list honoring the Polish Righteous Among the Nations.

“I was born on September 28, 1909, in Częstochowa,” he writes about himself in his biographical CV.45

My father died when I was barely two years old. My mother, a factory worker, raised me as best she could. At the age of seven, I began to attend elementary school in Częstochowa, and I completed it with a good grade. Then I worked at a printing shop as an apprentice. I did not complete the apprenticeship because of difficult material circumstances. My mother was let go from her job in Częstochowa due to cutbacks. Being already seventeen years old at the time, I started to work for private owners in quarries, where I earned a modest living.

Having been raised in such difficult conditions, I started to make contacts with the comrades. In 1922 I joined the . . . KPP [Communist Party of Poland] and was in it in January and February 1922. In March 1922 I was taken into the army. In 1923, when there was a revolt in Kraków, I—serving in the 8th Uhlan Regiment—was sent to Wawel, in order to prevent workers from entering. There were six of us soldiers and one corporal who were assigned to be there. I talked the soldiers into escaping to the workers’ safe house, where we spent two days. We next returned to the regiment, where I was arrested and put in the prison on Montelupich. I was sentenced to nine years, discharged from the army, and deprived of my rights forever.

After being released from prison in September 1932, I went to Częstochowa. After contacting my comrades, I started to work as before in the party as a Częstochowa-Zawodzie regional technician. In 1932 I started to work in the Dawidowicz limestone quarry in Częstochowa, where we are setting up a party cell.

The war started, and I was left without work, so Comrade Knapik Stanisław and I got together at his place for lectures and discussions. That was 1940 all the way until 1942. That’s when we set up a PPR cell.

In 1942 I go to work in the Stradom factory in Częstochowa, where I work until 1945. In 1943 I bring in to my home a Jewish family made up of eight people, that is Markowicz Roman, Markowicz Genowefa, Markowicz Bolesław, Markowicz Lucjan, Markowicz Mira, Doctor Rozenowicz Bronisław, Rozenowicz Danuta, Rozenowicz Helena.

I state that all of those mentioned above are alive, as the Jewish Committee in Częstochowa can confirm. In connection with sheltering Jews at my house, I was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and was in prison for four weeks. Next, they released me from prison, because they couldn’t find the bunker, and this is how we made it through until 1945, until liberation.

In another such CV-biography Klimczak will write that in order to hide so many people, he moved to the edge of the city. He won’t mention, however, that the purchase of the house was financed by the Markowicz family; the house became his notarized property and was sold after the war for 100,000 złotys. He set up a hiding place in this house, which the neighbors—who were members of the National Armed Forces (NSZ)—tried repeatedly to uncover.

A characteristic fragment of Klimczak’s biographical sketch concerns the circumstances in which he argued with one of the rescued Jews: “We had a fist fight, because Roman Markowicz, for the two years that he was in hiding in my house, kept giving me his word of honor that if we survived the war, he will reward me for my work. But when the war ended, Roman Markowicz moved out of my house without giving me a single penny for my work, that’s what we fought about. And he accused me of wanting to rob him, which is not true, as Doctor Rozenowicz Bronisław and his wife, as well as his sister, can attest.”46

After the pogrom, Helena Majtlis, the nurse whom we already know, vouched for Klimczak’s decency. “He really did hide a few Jewish women. So what if he was a scoundrel? Let him be a scoundrel ten times over, but those Jewish women came to me [after the pogrom] and said that they survived thanks to him. . . . They were there, they came to me for a drop, and they were in shock, they were scratched up. I asked them, ‘Where did you come from, ladies?’—‘Well, it was that Klimczak, who rescued us.’ When he came to me in Częstochowa, was I not supposed to go, you know, and testify that he saved them? Of course I attested [to this] in front of a notary.”47

Arendarski, Gajewski, and Ogonowski, the Driver from Infantry Unit 4

Leopold Arendarski (pseud. Skała) of the Kielce WUBP serves in Department III, the one that combats underground activities. A handsome youth in a turtleneck, he worked in the prewar amateur theater in Kielce. He is a complicated character, suspended between the nativists and the internationalists.

His wartime experiences have never been verified. However, based on numerous, but varied, biographical sketches he wrote, it appears that he fought first in a unit of the Home Army led by “Ponury” and then in the one commanded by “Barabasz” (let us not forget the story of Barabasz’s participation in the murder of Icek Grynbaum on the main square in Chęciny).48 Then he landed in the even more infamous People’s Security Guard of the Peasants’ Battalions and the People’s Army (Armia Ludowa, AL). As the front was getting closer, his unit combined with a group of Soviet parachutists led by Anton Chernomyrdin—Sasha—who wrote him the best possible letter of recommendation. This letter served as a kind of immunity similar to Sobczyński’s immunity for his activities behind the front lines.

Arendarski will at first find himself in the military headquarters of the city of Kielce; then in March 1945 he will become the deputy head of the County Office of Public Security (PUBP) in Kozienice. He will not be liked by his superiors. They will accuse him of slacking off, crashing work-issued cars, conceit, neglect of duties. “Taking an interest in motorcycles . . . he has already ruined two bikes, not knowing how to ride well. . . . Second, he took the best things, such as, for example, suits, from among the deposits held by the PUBP in Kozienice. . . . On September 7, 1945, food products from the WUBP in Kielce from the warehouse were transported by Arendarski. . . . 30 kilograms of sugar were missing. . . . Arendarski is supposed to be marrying a young lady who was fired from her job at the county headquarters of the MO in Kozienice, [because] her sister’s husband was a gendarme.”49

In general, things weren’t going well in the Kozienice Office of Public Security—usually, the functionaries ran away or they were constantly laid up in the hospital. In May 1946, Arendarski was transferred to Kielce, where yet again he didn’t stick around for very long. In the end, he was dismissed as part of a disciplinary action in 1948 for “disrupting the activities of Department III.”

Arendarski was present at the building of the Jewish Committee from early morning on July 4. He appeared in civilian clothes. From his report it appears that the head of the County Office of Public Security (PUBP), Tadeusz Gajewski, was also present on Planty Street that day. It was Arendarski who eventually suggested to him that the wounded be taken away in a truck. Their transport, however, was horribly executed:

I arrived with cit. head of the Kielce PUBP Gajewski at the building located on Planty no. 7 with the goal of taking those cit. Jews who were still alive and transporting them to a safe place. Seeing this, the people gathered there started to hurl words at us, shouting “Jewish lackeys,” and in addition they threw stones at us. The car in which we arrived was directed right up to the entrance of the building, after which we wanted to take the remaining Jewish cits. to a safe place. The people gathered, seeing this, started to break the fences and force their way to us. We could not react to this, because the gathered population and army started to stand up against us. We could not react to this, because there were not many of us and we were forced to retreat; however, the army let the people through, and they themselves forced their way into the Jewish building, stealing [the Jews’] property and murdering them.50

There is something strange in this report: the author is excusing himself for something, without clearly saying for what. This is partially explained by the testimony of Wiktor Ogonowski, the driver from the communications platoon of the 2nd Infantry Division: “I, Wiktor Ogonowski, was present at the pogrom of Jews on Planty between the hours of 1:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. I reached Planty by vehicle with soldiers who took me with them, explaining to me that they were going to pick up the wounded. . . . The moment I arrived on Planty for the wounded, I consciously ran over a wounded person, whom I was supposed to take, because I was afraid for my life, since I saw people threatening, warning me to run away. So I, seeing that people’s threats were directed at me, ran over a wounded person, for which I received thunderous applause from the crowd.”51

Arendarski and Gajewski will stand up for the imprisoned Ogonowski, as will the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR) from Jasieniec Iłżecki. Their support will be effective: the investigation is suspended under the assumption that the Jew who was run over was already dead. It won’t be until 1986 that the eighty-year-old Józefa Łabuda, who lived on the other side of the Silnica River, will reveal to journalists of Przegląd Tygodniowy (Weekly Review) that between the gaps of the pickets she saw how a Jew fell and then a vehicle ran over him.52

However, a completely different picture of the attempt to transport the wounded emerges based on the testimony of Zygmunt Kuruszczak, an apprentice in the foundry of the Ludwików steelworks: “At some point a truck with open sideboards drove up to the door and then Jews walked out of the building wanting to get into the truck, to then be taken away from there. I saw that when the Jews walked out of the building, the vehicle started to drive away without the Jews and that’s when the crowd caught and beat [them].”53

Adolf Berman’s “Information for Report” (see chapter 6) sheds light on this incident. In it, the circumstances under which Arendarski and Gajewski’s truck most likely arrived on Planty Street are described: “Gajewski and Arendarski from the UB come in to get the chairman Doctor Kahane. Two military men call out to Gajewski: ‘You Jewish lackey!’ They push both of them aside, they force their way in to Kahane, shots are fired, Kahane is killed.”54

Zygmunt Majewski

The last figure from the Provincial Office of Public Security (WUBP) in our survey of characters will be Zygmunt Majewski (pseud. Chrystus), whom we know from the stories told by Chil Alpert and Borys Wajnryb, as well as by the boys whom he rescued from the pogrom, Jakub and Eliasz Średni.

A taxi driver from Częstochowa, Majewski was a self-educated man and an idealist. For a time, he was the driver of Wacław Kobyłecki, a deputy to the Sejm (Polish parliament) in the interwar period. Initially he was an anarchist and later he became a communist (in the Communist Youth League in Poland and the Communist Party of Poland [Komunistyczna Partia Polski, KPP])—for which he landed in jail, including a year in Bereza prison, where the regime imprisoned its political opponents. In 1935 he begins a relationship with party comrade Czesława Golberg, a Jew (her father Majer, a porter, was murdered by the Germans). They have a son. During the war, however, they live first in the Sandomierski region because of the child’s illness, and later they are forced to move into the ghetto in Częstochowa.

Before the ghetto is liquidated, Majewski miraculously manages to save his family. They hide first in Skarżysko, then near Zawichost, making a living on illicit trade and shoemaking. Party comrades who are hostile toward him do not fail to point out his reprehensible lack of conspiratorial activity during this time. Beginning April 12, 1945, he works for the Kielce UB as, among other things, senior clerk in personnel. On July 26 of that year, the head boss of the WUBP, Kornecki, will give him a very good review: “serious, even-tempered, possesses a good dose of criticism, . . . morally upstanding.” In the space marked “religion” in Majewski’s personnel file, the standard “rom.-cath.” for ethnic Poles, is crossed out, after which is written “no religion.”

In the following chapter we will discuss the mission to purge the police (Citizens’ Militia, MO), that was entrusted to Majewski immediately after the pogrom. The task clearly overwhelmed him. In 1948, he was dismissed and died; his death became fodder for rumors that as an inconvenient witness, similar to Grynbaum, Dzik, and Szczepanik, he was eliminated.55

On the day of the pogrom, Majewski was on Planty first thing in the morning. Based on the Średni brothers’ account, in contrast to the other security operatives, he was always in uniform. And thanks to this, he managed to rescue Jakub Średni, whom he escorted through the city at gunpoint.

Majewski’s report about the course of events on Planty has not been preserved. He must have been questioned, however, since he was instructed to write a report on how antisemitism was manifesting itself in the WUBP. In it we read:

Based on my own observations, dating from the time I arrived in the Kielce area and in the UB, I noted within the party, as well as within the security apparatus, a bothersome . . ., shameful attitude toward the matter of antisemitism [in the party] as well as in the office. . . . In a conversation with Ziewiec, one of the employees assigned to me, I determined he was a resolute antisemite. . . .

FIGURE 40. Zygmunt Majewski, right, with Adam Kornecki, left. Courtesy of Agnieszka Majewska.

[Ziewiec thinks that Jews occupy all the positions in the UB] as an example he pointed to Kornecki the major; Domowski, the head of the personnel department; and the head of the prisons department, cit. Blajchman] In conversations with individual employees I repeatedly found [that they were strongly interested] in various employees of our office whose external looks could serve as the basis for assuming that they were of Jewish background.

It is necessary to state that a shameful attitude toward the Jewish question could also be felt in the party, in that there was never any attempt to elucidate the Jewish matter in political lectures, even though the existing trends were well known, and—as far as I know—the party, leveraging its influence, tried to remove individuals of Jewish background from top positions, [for example], the head of the office, Major Kornecki.56

Majewski cites a statement by the secretary of the Polish Workers’ Party in Sandomierz, Sergiusz Demianow, who “maintained that the figure of Kornecki contributes to the intensification of antisemitism.”

He concludes the report as follows: “Ignoring the existing trends and the party’s failure to undertake any concrete efforts toward combating antisemitism among the masses produced concrete results on July 4 of this year.”

Information about the negative mood in the Kielce office after Colonel Sobczyński was arrested, and about how his employees were getting ready to strike, appears at the end of the report.

Looting in the WUBP

Even before the pogrom Majewski had crossed Czesław Byk-Borecki (pseud. Brzoza) the head of the county office of the UB in Radom, who was one of the emblematic members of the People’s Army and had been a brutal robber of manor houses in the Kielce region during the war. In 1946, during the arrest of Stefan Bembiński (pseud. Harnaś and Sokół), a commander in the Kielce underground, Borecki personally robbed the man of his clothes and watch, as well as his “fountain pen with a gold nib, a gold ring with a red stone, a radio and gramophone, 60,000 złotys belonging to the organization and 10,600 złotys of his own.”57

It appears that Bembiński’s fiancée, Halina Łudczak, brought the matter to Majewski, who in turn alerted his superiors. Majewski’s report first got stuck on Sobczyński’s desk; after Sobczyński’s dismissal it was immediately directed to the regional military prosecutor’s office, which ordered an investigation. However, in February 1948, the matter was definitively dismissed. The justification was rather bizarre: Borecki had shared the loot with colleagues, which meant that there was no “evidence that by possessing this property illegally, he acted with the goal of achieving financial benefit for himself.”58

An undated document signed by one of his functionaries, Czerwiński, talks about the scale of looting that the Kielce UB cultivated from its very inception.

When I was working in the WUBP in Kielce, I saw, [that] there was a lot of gross misconduct in the workplace with the goal of looting. . . .

A search was conducted in Jedlnia-Letnisko, where bands stole more than two million zlotys’ worth of machinery, bicycle parts, leather, and rubber belts, and several cars were taken to the Radom County UB. Brzoza led this operation; . . . [the loot] was transported away, at night, who knows where. . . .

Gold was dug up in the ghetto, this was also divided up between them. . . .

When the prison was breached in the same way as in Radom, just as in Kielce, the personal effects of the prisoners they didn’t managed to capture were divvied up.

Black marketeers, Gypsies [sic] [with goods] such as wedding bands and foreign currency in gold were captured. They were released, and [the goods were] taken away from them.

A passenger car was brought in . . . . I thought it would be handed over to the PKS [State Bus Service], however, it was sold into private hands. . . .

I assert that I have described on paper all of these matters that I knew of, and addressed [the paper] to the MBP [Ministry of Public Security] in Warsaw, where I consulted the PPR secretary at the WUBP in Kielce, [Andrzej] Markiewicz, where he questioned me about certain matters and was supposed to facilitate access for me to the MBP. He kept me on hold with these matters for almost a year. . . . Then I find out in February 1947 that I have been dismissed from my job.”59

The 1951 decision of the Ministry of Public Security is included at the end of the report: “I consider returning at the present time to the matters presented by Czerwiński, which allegedly took place in the years 1945 and 1946—in view of the impossibility of investigating given the current state of affairs—pointless.”

Notes

1. SL 1.2. See also the anonymous statement in the documents from the trial of Jan Dygnarowicz and others: “Society abroad is also asking, where were the security service, the police, the military? Why did they not intervene during the course of those 9 hours and why did they not disperse the unarmed crowd?” (AIPN Ki_4_520, t. 1, cz. 2, z. 2, k. 268).

2. See Diane Vaughan, The Challenger Launch Decision: Risks, Technology, Culture and Deviance at NASA (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). Vaughan analyzes the “sociology of mistake” that led to the decision to launch the Challenger despite its construction defects. Analyzing the organizational culture of NASA, the author explains how pressure to finalize a project as soon as possible resulted in the disregard of technical procedures and standards. The equivalent in Kielce was the employment of people in the organs of authority who were accused of murdering Jews.

3. Conversation with Henryk Pawelec, Kielcach, June 2010 (in author’s archive).

4. See SL 2.1.1.2B and Alpert’s testimony in Pinchas Cytron, ed., Sefer Kielts: Toldot Kehilat Kielts (Tel Aviv: Organization of Kielce Immigrants, 1957), 254: “The entire time we maintained telephone contact with all the people from the NKVD, and we asked them to come help us. They refused, saying, that they didn’t have Polish uniforms, and that they couldn’t send soldiers in Russian uniforms because Poles might say that Russians were killing Polish workers.” See also Borys Wajntraub’s testimony in Miłosz (raw footage) regarding Colonel Artur Pollak, who rescued survivors from Planty Street: “He said that he had called Warsaw, [asking] whether he should come to put an end to it. They told him no, don’t get involved, don’t go out on the street. No Russian soldier may appear, lest they say that the Russians did it” [i.e., that Russians were involved in the pogrom].

5. See Władysław Dzikowski’s report (AG PK, t.3, k. 400–412).

6. See SL 1.24.

7. SL 4.3A.

8. AIPN BU_0193_7009, t. 1, k. 158–60.

9. This statement is dated August 1947 (AIPN BU_0193_7009_1, k. 117).

10. AIPN BU_0193_7009, t. 1, k. 52, 55–56, 76–80, 58n.

11. AIPN BU_0193_7009, t. 1, k. 73–76. The Ukrainians, who were summarily executed for belonging to an anti-communist Ukrainian underground group, are listed in the archival documents as: Jan Tchórz, Michał Chrebot, Stefan Antoszko, Antoni Kociuba, Jan Ulijarczyk, Michał Leśniak, Jan Poczekajło, Józef Bonik. The shootings were probably carried out by Sobczyński’s adjutant and son-in-law, Roman Nowak.

12. Krzysztof Sidorkiewicz, “Jak komuniści organizowali pogrom kielecki,” Gazeta Polska 25 June 1995.

13. SL 4.17.

14. SL 4.4.

15. SL 4.3B.

16. Frank Blajchman, Wolę Zginąć Walcząc: Wspomnienia Z II Wojny Światowej, trans. Kamil Janicki (Zakrzewo: Wydawnictwo Replika, 2010), 156.

17. AAN, sygn. 7774.

18. See Władysław Sobczyński’s personnel file (AAN, sygn. 7509, k. 104).

19. AAN, sygn. 7774, especially the section “Gustawów”(p. 45).

20. AIPN BU_01428_7, k. 92.

21. “Noworoczne orędzie Bieruta,” Głos Ludu, January 1, 1946.

22. See, for example, Hersz Smolar, as presented in August Grabski, Działalność komunistów wśród Żydów (1944–1949) (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Trio, 2004), 38.

23. Marek Nadolski, Komuniści wobec chłopów (1941–1956). Mity i rzeczywistość (Warsaw: Uniwersytet Warszawski Instytut Nauk Politycznych, 1993), 28–29.

24. See Władysław Gomułka’s December 1948 letter to Stalin cited in Andrzej Werblan, “Ostatni spór Gomułki ze Stalinem. Nieznana korespondencja z 1948,” Dziś 1983, no. 6: 108. “On the basis of a number of observations, I can state . . . that some of the Jewish comrades do not feel connected to the Polish nation, and therefore to the Polish working class, by any thread, or they take a position that can be called national nihilism.” Cited in Grabski, Działalność komunistów, 37.

25. Hugo Steinhaus, Wspomnienia i zapiski (London: Aneks, 1992), 346.

26. Bernard Goldsztajn writes that Jews in the highest government positions were examples of this “non-hypersensitivity”: Minc, Berman, Zambrowski, Borejsza. “Their actions do not lead to the strengthening of the Jewish community. They are mercenary henchmen of the dictatorship.” Cited according to Krystyna Kersten, Polacy, Żydzi, komunizm—anatomia półprawd (Warsaw: NOWA, 1992), 81.

27. Mieczysław Moczar was a leader of the communist underground partisan movement during the German occupation. After the war, he headed the security service in Łódź. After falling out of favor for several years, Moczar returned to power in 1956 as a high-ranking official in the Ministry of Internal Affairs (a successor ministry to the Ministry of Public Security). He eventually became the minister of internal affairs.

28. Marian Langer, Lasy i ludzie: Wspomnienia z lasów starachowickich 1939–1945 (Warsaw: self-pub., 1993), 207.

29. SL 4.3B.

30. SL 2.1.1.2B: “At five in the morning Albert [Grynbaum] comes to me and says, ‘I have a request of you. . . . American journalists want to interview you, but I ask you . . . not to tell them that the Polish army and the KBW started the pogrom.’ . . . I promised him. . . . I get to the hospital and I see those reporters in uniforms. One of them was shorter than the others, a little bit darker, and he was taking pictures of the morgue. He became hysterical when he went into the morgue, crying, and I figured he could be a Jew, because no one else would have been so hysterical. His name was Sznajderman [S. L. Shneiderman]. He was a journalist. I took him aside and said, ‘Sznajderman, I’ll tell you exactly how it was.’”

31. Kazimierz Konieczny testified that Izaak Goldberg was the one who collected officers’ statements for a report on the role of the 2DP WP in the pogrom. See materials dated February 24, 1994, in AG_PK, t. 2, 204v.

32. SL 2.1.1.28A.

33. AG-PK, t. 10, k. 24.jpg. See also Jan Żaryn and Łukasz Kamiński, eds., Wokół pogromu kieleckiego (Warsaw: IPN, 2006), 1:412.

34. SL 4.13.

35. See AIPN BU_0_1413_2, k.158 (signed by Capt. Edward Leśniewski).

36. See SL 1.10.

37. AIPN BU_0_1413_2, k. 167.

38. See the report of Capt. Mieczysław Kwaśniewski to Director of Personnel Office of the MBP, Lt. Col. Orechwa, dated November 25, 1946 (AIPN Ki 103_1834, k. 35, SL 1.10).

39. SL 4.12.

40. See AIPN BU_00294_45_45, k. 179, 184, 207, 286, 295. See also Ryszard Śmietanka Kruszelnicki, Podziemie poakowskie na Kielecczyźnie w latach 1945–1948 (Kraków: IPN, 2002), 177–78, 369.

41. SL 12.1.

42. SL 1.8.

43. Dorothy Riseman (née Lukawitz), Interview 16432, USC Shoah (June 19, 1996).

44. SL 12.1.

45. Paraphrase of Stanisław Klimczak’s biographical CV (AIPN BU_2174_651, k. 20–22).

46. AIPN BU_2174_651, k. 66.

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

48. See chapter 5, “The Middle Ground.”

49. See of report written by Bronisław Garczyński (cleark) dated September 25, 1945 (AIPN Ki_103_944).

50. Quotation from SL 1.12.

51. SL 5.25.

52. Jerzy Morawski and Piotr Pytlakowski, “Mroczne stany,” Przegląd Tygodniowy 228, no. 32 (1986).

53. SL 6.9.

54. SL 1.26.

55. Szczepanik, deputy chief of the WUBP, died of advanced tuberculosis in 1950. The next person to be caught in the alleged Kielce “curse of the Pharaohs” will be Kazimierz Gwiazdowicz, who, having gone on a military mission, will drown in the Mekong River.

56. Adam Kornecki was released from his position as chief of the Kielce WUBP on October 15, 1945. See AIPN BU_0193_6975, k. 52.

57. AIPN BU_703_1132, k. 3.

58. AIPN BU_703_1132, k. 26, 29.

59. Quotation from AIPN BU_703_1132, k. 52–54.