CHAPTER 10

Trains

Butterflies of the Kielce Region

The train that Anszel Pinkusiewicz took from Wrocław to Kielce pulled into railway sidings throughout the night to let freight trains traveling in the opposite direction go by. That’s when the man dreamed that he was once again in Russia. But when the sun finally rose, he saw only Polish landscapes all around, for kilometers in every direction.

Pinkusiewicz, an administrator in the Teatr Polski in Kielce, was an avid entomologist before the war. It wasn’t a prayer book that accompanied him while in Siberia, but rather a little book entitled Motyle okolic Kielc (Butterflies of Kielce and Environs), published in 1923. He survived many a night imagining the tributaries of the Czarna Nida River: the Silnica, the Trupieniec, the Bobrza, the Biała, the Chotcza, the Morawka. The Latin names of firs, beeches, pines, oaks, birches, and hornbeams had an extraordinarily soothing effect on his nerves. But most important of all were the names of butterflies. There was the papilio podalirius that could be seen flitting about the lilacs in Pakosz and city gardens. The pyrameis, which kept to the highest spots of Karczówka, Kadzielnia, Sosnówka, and Wietrznia and warmed itself until sunset on the limestone that protruded here and there. There was the aporia craetegi, common in gardens and orchards, and the colias hyale that resided in dry meadows, fallow hillocks, as well as in fields sown with clover. Of the less poetic, there was the nymphalinae that frequented Ogrodowa Street where, on sunny days, lured by the beer waste from the brewery, it alighted along the gutters. And finally, there was the dicranura, attracted to horse dung and seen on the poplar trees of Planty Street.

FIGURE 38. The Kielce railway station during World War II. AIPN BU_2_8_35_3.

At 8:30 a.m. the train pulls into the station. “Częstochowa!” shouts the conductor. People throng, argue, jostle one another with their bundles. After a twenty-minute stop, the final leg of the journey commences.

Fifty kilometers outside Częstochowa, after the new conductor started his shift, a ticket inspector, around fifty years old, entered the train car and began to check tickets.1 When my turn came, says Pinkusiewicz. He looked at me intently and at the nearest station ordered me to leave the train car. Apparently, it belonged exclusively to railway workers, and civilians could not travel in it. I answered that there were a lot of civilians here, and since I had a valid ticket, I was not going anywhere. Then he cracked down on four of my acquaintances, took their tickets, and also ordered them to get the hell out of there. I assured them that in Kielce, where I had connections, I would go with them to the train dispatcher immediately.

Finally, the train rolled jerkily into the Piekoszów station eight kilometers from Kielce. At that moment, from the opposite direction, the Lublin-Warsaw train pulled in from Kielce. It stopped right alongside, and some sort of shouts were coming from it. I look and can’t believe my eyes: a Jewish officer, who stepped off this train just a moment ago, suddenly falls, shot. We ask what’s going on, and we’re told that in Kielce, Jews murdered some number of Polish children, and—in addition—they knocked off a captain.

It doesn’t look good, so several people, among them a woman maybe sixty years old, get off and try to run away into the field. They’re caught; rifle butts and stones are set in motion. Someone orders the boys who are selling lemonade on the train to search the train cars for Jews. And soon, indeed, a twelve-year-old looks in on us.

Fortunately, he doesn’t notice my four acquaintances hidden behind the door, and my Christian woman from Wrocław shielded me.

The train moved only when two Russian officers, whose revolvers were pulled out of their holsters, went up to the engineer.

When we arrived in Kielce, I was in a quandary. I was advised not to get out. At first, I even intended to travel on to Chełm, but I suddenly changed my mind. I simply asked my four companions to let my wife and son know if something happened.

Right away on the platform I ran into an armed sokista [member of the Straż Ochrony Kolei, or Railroad Guards]. It didn’t look good. When I asked him to arrest me to keep me safe and take me to the police, he took off his rifle and shouted loudly, “You lousy Jew, fifteen Polish children were killed today, and you want me to save you? I’ll shoot you here like a dog!”

That’s when I turned to a soldier standing near the exit with the same request. I offered him cigarettes and promised another 200 złotys for vodka. The soldier agreed and led me through the city at gun point. Along the way, passersby accosted us, but he didn’t pay attention, he just led me to some apartment not far from the station. In the meantime, my acquaintance, Lejchter, who was all covered in blood, joined us. He too pushed him to take money. In the apartment the soldier ordered us to lie down under the table and not to open the door to anyone.

After some time, I heard knocking. With great fear I looked out, but fortunately it was the same soldier, accompanied by an older officer. Before they loaded us into a Willys [Jeep], they again threateningly waved their weapons about because a rather decent-sized little crowd had gathered in front of the building. In the vehicle, we again had to lie down on the floor.

The Public Security on Focha was guarded by automatic weapons. A partisan fighter I knew was standing in the gate, Mietek Kwaśniewski from Chmielnik. Our officer asked him what was happening on Planty. He said there were thirty-odd victims. It was approaching 2:00 p.m.

Gitelis and Sztarkman

“I’m starting to forget a bit,” says Henryk Gitelis,2 but after a moment you can see that he doesn’t forget some things as quickly as he would like. My brother-in-law Sztarkman and I were traveling on the same train as Anszel Pinkusiewicz. That young man in battle dress with a badge sewn on to the left shoulder that said Poland had caught my eye in Wrocław. We all walked around in such uniforms, but this short blond without luggage, sideburns halfway down his jaw, long face, blue eyes, was somehow different, wound up. He was tormenting people with conversation, when people just wanted to sleep.

When our train stopped in Piekoszów to make way for a train coming from the direction of Kielce, and shouts resounded “Beat the Jew, Jews in Kielce murdered twelve children and a Polish lieutenant,” he immediately ran over there. I, in the meantime, twisted around as much as I could so that I wouldn’t be identified, but nevertheless I heard those groans and screams and shots. When two military men without the military uniform chest band and with bottles in their hands looked into our train car, people told them there weren’t any Jews there. Then the Kielce train pulled away and I saw them leading this older woman in the direction of the field. One hit her in the back with a stone, she fell with her arms outspread. The one in battle dress was standing next to her.

He then returned to our train car and declared that it was necessary to wipe out all the Jews. When the train was approaching Szczukowski Górek, before Kielce, he again disappeared from my sight and I again heard shouts. This was repeated at the Herby station. When we got out in Kielce and approached the railwayman, who collects tickets at the platform exit, I heard him talking with someone about those children who were killed. “We’re giving ’em life now,” he announced. My brother-in-law and I waited until he left, and then we separated: I went to the security service on Focha, and he went to the military headquarters of the city, to Colonel Andrei Kuprii.

On the Train from Piekoszów to Kielce, at the Kielce-Herby Station

My name is Czesław Nowak,3 fourteen years old. I completed five grades of elementary school, single, living with my parents. I was a witness to the murder of two Jews at the Herby-Kielce train station and regarding this matter I state the following: on July 4, 1946, in the morning, I been [sic] fishing at the pond in the city park on Staszica. I was there until 11:00 a.m.; from there I went home. On the way home some stranger stopped me, asking, “What’s happening in Kielce, is it true that they’re beating Jews?” I answered that I don’t know and went. At home, I took a bag of lemonade and gone [sic] to the station because I sell lemonade.

In Kielce I got on the train and went to Piekoszów, selling lemonade along the way. Coming back, as the train stood at the Herby station, I noticed two Jews running away. Railway workers set off in pursuit. They caught them and were bringing them closer to the station. When they led them up to the spot where the tracks go straight into the station, two individuals who I know by sight came up to them. They are residents of Herby, and one’s name is Witek—tall, brown hair, around twenty years old. He was dressed in a black jacket, green pants, and had a hair net on his head. I could determine his last name if I asked my friends from Herby, since everyone there knows them. When they walked up to these Jews, this above-mentioned Witek hit one Jew in the head with a sharp iron bent at a right angle, the Jew fell, and he pulled the iron out of the dying man and repeated the same story with the other Jew.

While the still-warm corpses of the murdered Jews were lying next to the tracks, people who were watching this massacre started to leave the train cars. Then two officers from the Soviet army appeared and, brandishing their weapons, ordered people to get back in the train cars. The people got on and the train pulled into Kielce as usual. However, those who murdered the Jews, upon seeing the Soviet officers, ran away. I arrived in Kielce, left the lemonade at home, and went in the direction of Planty to see what was going on there. I didn’t get to Planty because at 5:30 p.m. the army wasn’t letting anyone approach. So I turned around and gone [sic] home.

Krasowski’s Impulse

On July 4, 1946, at around 10:00 a.m. I gone [sic] out of my house and went to the Społem factory to earn some money there, since wagons needing unloading often go there, and along with other workers we unload them and earn something. When I come [sic] to Społem, it was about 10:30.4

After the job was done, I went home to eat something. I was home for a couple of minutes and gone [sic] back to Społem to find out if there was anything else to do. On the way I found out from the boys who sell lemonade in the trains that on Planty in Kielce people were murdering Jews. And Nowak Czesław told me that while traveling with lemonade in the direction of Piekoszów, he saw railwaymen together with civilians beating and murdering Jews. Nowak lives in Kielce, 13 Maślana Street, apartment 14.

In Społem I found out there was no work, so I gone [sic] out onto Młynarska Street and when I gone [sic] by the train, the children who sell various things there started to tell me that Jews murdered eleven children and that one boy escaped from the Jews’ basement and told all about it. So, hearing this, I jumped onto a passing vehicle that was going to the city, in order to also take part in murdering Jews. In this vehicle there were iron bars, so I chose one for myself that was 75 cm long and jumped out at Ogrodowa Street, going through the park and along the Silnica River. I took Planty to Sienkiewicza Street. I stopped on Sienkiewicza Street for about three minutes and when people started to move in the direction of the Jewish building on Planty, I wanted to go there too, but at that moment I was detained, so I couldn’t take part in murdering Jews anymore. And before my arrest, I threw the bar into the grass near the river Silnica on Planty.

The Engineer

I was traveling by train from Częstochowa to Kielce.5 In Włoszczowa, my train met a train heading to Częstochowa. Both of these trains stopped at the station. Well, and people on that train traveling from Kielce were shouting that in Kielce Jews were murdering Polish children. There was a commotion, and people who were pointed out as Jews were dragged from the train, and these Jews were beaten. Before my eyes a Jewish woman was killed, an old woman, who ran away from the platform—she was selling orangeade, lemonade from this kind of bag, the sort of bag made from gas masks that people carried around. At that time, the station in Włoszczowa looked somewhat different than today. There weren’t any buildings around, rye was growing—it was July—and she was running away into this rye. She was simply stoned to death there. Also from a certain distance I saw her lift herself up again, covered with blood, and she finally fell there. From the train the traveling soldiers were shooting rifles through the windows at the Jews who were running away. Were they Jews? I wasn’t even certain if they were Jews. It was enough simply to shout, this is a Jew, and the crowd was already pounding.

I remember one scene, when a young man was running across this concrete platform, someone tugged at his arm along the way; he fell, his face flattened against the platform, and a railwayman in a red cap threw a piece of railway track, this meter-long segment, at his head. That head cracked.

I arrived in Kielce; it was already around 12:00 or 12:30 p.m. This thing was really already over. But apparently the authorities already knew about the things that had taken place at the Włoszczowa station, and all the people from this train—including me—were packed behind the kind of barbed-wire loops that were used during the time of the German occupation. In the place where the main post office building is now located, there was a wooden barrack during the war, also postal, and this area was fenced off with barbed wire. The Germans used this area there behind these barriers for all sorts of roundups from the trains. And these wires were still there at the time. So everyone from this train was stuffed back there and then, one by one, for a long time, identity papers were being checked and people were let out. I was let out at around 5:00 p.m.

The Traveler from Gdańsk to Kielce

So, my children were really small. I arrived in Częstochowa from Gdańsk, and then I went on a direct train from Częstochowa to Kielce.6 And while I was sitting in the train car with these children, I saw this kind of strange movement. I noticed it because in general people noticed such things at the time. People were looking through the window and from the corridor, well, and they started to come into the compartment where we were sitting and look through that window, so I also stood up and looked through the window. And I saw every so often—the train was traveling rather quickly—so, every so often there lay a human figure. I was horrified, I looked and asked, “Who is that, what is that? What’s going on here? Who was shot dead? Shot? Yeah, because one person—maybe he fell off the train, but so many?”—“Oh, no, ma’am, there was a pogrom against Jews yesterday in Kielce.” And so that’s how the conversation went.

This is what they told me: “Jews who were dragged out of train cars are lying here.” I said, “What do you mean, dragged out of train cars?” “So you don’t know, ma’am? There was a pogrom in Kielce.” I was very surprised that something like that was possible. Kielce, which, it’s true, had been through so much—and these kinds of things were happening there.

We were focused on helping rather than on any pogroms. And besides, we didn’t know the cause, nobody said anything about it. What does pogrom mean? They’ll tell you: there’s a pogrom here or there, and you won’t believe your eyes. Pogrom by whom against whom?

We thought we were fighting for peace, so that there would be peace. But there was eternal turmoil.

Police Stations in the Kielce and Koniecpol Train Stations

Lightly covered with limestone dust, the city begins right behind the train station in Kielce. A man who arrived by train is lying in this dust. Perhaps it is Kiwa Liberbaum, who was supposed to take care of some property matters in the mortgage registry office today.

The commander of the police station located at the train station wrote in his report: “I am reporting to cit. Manager [of the city headquarters] that on July 4, 1946, at 3:00 p.m., a male person of Jewish nationality was murdered in front of the train station in Kielce. This person was murdered by a majority of the passengers. Due to a lack of identity papers, the last name of the person has not been not established. The corpse has been taken to the morgue in Kielce.”7

Two days later, Rózia Kolersztajn will identify the body of Kiwa Liberbaum based on his clothing.8

Similar murders took place at the first station past Częstochowa, in Koniecpol, as well as in Włoszczowa. Mindla Rozencwajg, who travelled round trip on July 4, says, “In Koniecpol, the police led out several Jewish passengers. After a moment, I heard shots. Past Włoszczowa such incidents were repeated. On the return route to Częstochowa, passengers were talking about the murders of Jews. It was said that the majority of victims were buried along the road outside of Koniecpol.”9

Among those murdered in this area were Szmul Rembak and Dawid Józef Gruszka from Koniecpol, who had survived World War II by hiding for three years. They were the only ones who had avoided being transported from Koniecpol, but they did not avoid death during the railway action on July 4, 1946.10

A special envoy from the Ministry of Public Security (MBP) who was sent to Częstochowa wrote about the circumstances of this operation as follows:

On the Kielce-Wrocław train, between Kielce and Częstochowa, passengers maltreated around ten Jews, of whom two were severely abused (they were left in Koniecpol to have their wounds dressed). Not wanting to bring about anti-Jewish disturbances within the city limits, the train was sent two stops beyond the very busy and crowded Częstochowa station and only then was the train stopped and an operation conducted that resulted in the arrest of around twenty persons, of whom two were determined to be direct perpetrators of the pogrom on the train. After being bandaged up, the two battered Jews from Koniecpol were sent to Częstochowa on the next train in a wagon reserved for troops. This wagon arrived in Częstochowa empty. The bodies of both Jews were found before Częstochowa; they were horribly massacred and shot from behind with automatic weapons. The perpetrators have not been apprehended. The passengers maintain that the crime was committed by some military men, who were robbing the victims and throwing them out of the moving train while harassing both Jews. Some corporal shot from a PPSh. The investigation is ongoing.11

Kazik Redliński, Scout, Sixteen Years Old

Yes, I admit, that on July 4, 1946, I took part in the anti-Jewish excesses while traveling by train on the Kielce-Częstochowa route, and, in the below matter, I state the following:12 On that day I was traveling west by train to meet my father, who is the leaseholder on a bakery in Jaworzno. I went because I am presently on vacation.

The first incident occurred at the Herby Kieleckie station, where the local railwaymen, along with demobilized soldiers, dragged a Jew out of a rail car, brutally beating him with stones. During this beating, the train started to move, and that’s when a certain sergeant in a stiff cap, in a cloak—he had a Czech automatic with a magazine on the side—knelt down on his knee and shot at the Jew lying there, killing him on the spot. After the killing, he got on the train and continued to travel. The civilian population shouted with pleasure: “Kill the Jews,” “Beat the Jews.”

The second incident took place at the Górki Szczukowskie station; here too they dragged out a Jewish man and a Jewish woman and started to beat [them]. The main perpetrator here was a local railway worker, he got on in Kielce. This railwayman beat these two Jews terribly, taking from them all their money and baggage. I realized that they were mainly concerned here with robbery, since they fought among themselves for the stolen baggage when dividing it. The train started to move; people started to get onto the trains, then, this same sergeant with some other soldier shot a burst from the window of the train car, killing the Jewish man and woman on the spot.

The main instigators of these crimes were railwaymen. They shouted, “Beat the Jews,” “away with the Jews” the most, and they searched for Jews in the train cars, dragging them out onto the platform. They took their money, baggage, watches, and active and demobilized military men beat them with stones and shot them to the shouts and applause of crazed passengers. One military man in particular, who had three medals, shouted and beat the most, saying that Jews had beaten him up. I assert that I did not observe that he had been beaten.

However, the last incident before Częstochowa was at the Koniecpol station. I also took part in it and dragged a Jew from the train car. Because this time there was a Jew traveling with us in this train car, and a woman started to shout, “There’s a Jew here!” Then the railwaymen who were approaching and who were walking around purely to “do in a Jew” asked him for his documents. The Jew didn’t want to show his papers; he said he didn’t know who they were. In response these railway-men immediately lunged at him to beat him, trying to throw him out of the train car. I was standing right at the door; this was a freight wagon, and that’s when I grabbed this Jew by the hair and started to drag him from the train car. And people came to help me and pushed me out of the train car along with this Jew.

Finding himself outside, the Jew started to shout, “Police, police, help!” and bolted to escape. People who were traveling on this train ran after him and threw stones at him. I didn’t run after the Jew then, but I saw Kozłowski Marian, whom I saw a second time in the UB in Częstochowa, also run after him. They killed this Jew, they took his money.

However, I do not admit to having walked from train car to train car in a cap with a chin strap, looking for Jews, and I state that there was an entire train car of scouts from Zawiercie traveling with us and maybe one of them was walking through the train as the duty officer on this outing. Because I assert that the witness Klein Michał hesitated during the confrontation at the UB in Częstochowa and couldn’t quite recognize me.

Sleeves

So where did this train come from, then? From the north, from Skarżysko. I can’t remember what station it was, I think it was from Kraków or from somewhere. I’ll talk about this train, this train was terrible. I will speak, because it sticks very deeply in both my memory and my heart.13

I’ll start once more from the beginning. My name is Aleksandrowicz Jakub. Born in Ostrowiec Kielecki, meaning, not far from Kielce. As I have already said, on July 4, I went to Kielce to take care of some business matters. I was on Sienkiewicza Street; I was staying at the Hotel Polski. I went to Planty. I saw everything.

Then I ran from there to the train station. There was a snack bar there, I remember. I think to myself, I’ll drink half a liter of vodka and I’ll be drunk, because one time when I got drunk, it didn’t hurt when they beat me. That was in Russia. And I drank half a liter of choice vodka and I didn’t even feel this alcohol. And this entire train station, this platform, and this snack bar, it was steeped in this animalistic enthusiasm to beat the Jews. Especially the hags [baby]—the women—they were very cruel. They attacked someone from time to time and what not. They fell into this horrible trance, savage-like. I had never seen anything like it. I didn’t get too close, but it was awful to even hear it. Because people were screaming, people were afraid, people were in pain. I mean, victims, truth be told.

Then I saw two Jews that were hanging around the station, inside, near the snack bar. And for the first time I saw such a thing—people’s, young people’s, hair stood up like a cat’s when it’s being attacked, their hair stood on end. They were scared to death, but what happened to them later, I don’t know, but I heard screams, beatings, and so on. I specially didn’t go near, because I wanted to get out of this Gehenna somehow. Out of this terrible city.

Then I came to a bit. I think to myself, I’ll go see what’s happening at my acquaintance Marysia Pękalska’s—now she is Guterman, née Machtynger. I thought, maybe I could help somehow, so they wouldn’t kill her. I went to her house, but they said she wasn’t there. And I again went into that crowd, horrified, but calmer. I saw all of those, all of those manifestations of that extraordinary, incomprehensible cruelty. Maybe among animals in Africa or somewhere else there’s such rapacity, completely incomprehensible to the human soul.

Finally the train arrived. The train arrived, and I went onto the platform. There was a huge crowd there. Whoever got out and looked like a Jew, they killed. At the end, two women, Semitic in appearance, got out, and right away they realized what was going on there. Two Russian majors were standing to the side. One [of the women] goes up to them and says in Russian, “Rescue us.” And they respond in Russian, “They’ll kill us.” And he goes like this across his neck, then says “Go away. We’re also afraid.” Two shots were fired. They were fired by the military patrol.

At last I managed to get on the train. I got onto the train and thought that I would somehow finally get away. And we rode away for maybe twenty minutes, and suddenly that stationmaster waves a little carbide lamp. And this train starts to go back! I didn’t know what was going on, but I understood that a patrol entered our train car, two young soldiers, and they said, “Prepare your documents, ’cause we have to look for lice.” I think to myself, they’re going to kill me. Because before that they caught someone and these hags, women, beat him terribly. They caught some man from Kraków, and he was screaming, poor man, screaming like a pig being slaughtered.

I think to myself, they will kill me. I opened up a window in the back, and I think, I will jump out of the train.

They took this train back to the station. Apparently to search for Jews. And then I saw the first human, humanitarian, impulse. A young man in a railway uniform with a little carbide lamp in his hand, blonde, came out. And he shouts to the crowd, “What do you all want from these poor people, how many of them are left after Hitler?” And wooden stanchions and arms started to rise up. “Hand the little Jewish lackey over here! Come here, and we’ll show you, you Jewish lackey!” This young boy ran away back into the stationmaster’s booth, into the railway booth. Besides this one, I didn’t meet a single human being in this huge, enormous crowd. He was the only righteous man in Sodom. There are supposedly ten benefactors, ten good people. I only saw one there.

And again they dragged a few people from the train, and I heard a couple of shots and again the train moved. And this patrol again went from person to person, calling, “Prepare your documents, ’cause we have to look for lice.” I was already prepared for this and moved closer to the window. I put my suitcase in front of me to have a barrier, and I opened the back door. And I jumped out of the train. I slid down from the embankment; I had a coat on, I tore up my hands all over, here. I wiped off the skin on my hands, till this day I still have—oh, here, in this spot, a little piece of coal inside. I tore my ear. And I see, they stopped the train, and two shots were fired in my direction. This was in the area of Zagnańsk.

Then I thought, the entire world wants to finish us off. I didn’t imagine that this could be local or something. I thought this was all centrally organized. I escaped to the forest. There was some sort of shed there, a forester’s shed or something. And I took all the documents that I had with me. I put them there, hid them under the wall. There was something wrong with my leg, but I somehow trudged along to Skarżysko. Along the way I saw two corpses that had been thrown off a train. I walked some fourteen kilometers.

I reached this kind of large road. I saw that the army, a lot of soldiers were going to Kielce along this road. I didn’t go near the army because that day I had already had one very sad encounter with the army. I thought to myself, just in case I’ll go to Skarżysko on foot. In Skarżysko, I ran into a couple of Jews, and they didn’t know anything, they had no idea what had happened in Kielce. This was at around 10:00 p.m.

The next day I arrived in Łódź. I went first to the doctor and they dressed my wounds. There was a Jewish Committee in Łódź. They asked me to testify. I was afraid. I say, I will never go back to Kielce. I don’t want to be a witness. I’m afraid. And after a very short time I took my wife and we left.

Should a man, can a man forget this at all? I returned to Łódź so shaken up that I thought there was something wrong with my mind after what I experienced.

No, I didn’t have nightmares. Of course, every person is built differently.

But then I promised myself that if I survived this horrible pogrom, I would never again set foot in Kielce—meaning in Poland.

I had two thousand woolen sleeves made for sweaters—this was something that had to be prepared for the winter. I sold all those sleeves. Just sleeves.

Notes

1. The rest of this section is a paraphrase of Anszel Pinkusiewicz’s testimony (SL 9.6).

2. The rest of this section is a paraphrase of Henryk Gitelis’s testimony (SL 9.3). Gitelis was born on September 1, 1910, in Lublin. See the CKŻP list of Jews arriving from the USSR (AŻIH, sygn. 303/V/36, k. 6).

3. This section is a paraphrase of Czesław Nowak’s testimony (SL 9.10A–B).

4. This section is a paraphrase of Mieczysław Krasowski ‘s testimony (SL 5.8). Krasowski, age seventeen, was acquitted on November 18, 1946.

5. Paraphrase from transcript of raw and unused footage for Marcel Łoziński’s documentary Świadkowie (Video-Nova, 1988).

6. Paraphrase from Łoziński (raw footage).

7. AIPN Ki_29_117, k. 24.

8. AIPN Ki_58_299, k. 3. Another source on this subject is the correspondence concerning Kiwa Liberbaum in AŻIH, CKŻP, Wydział Prawny, sygn. 303/XVI/119.

9. AAN PPR sygn. 295/VII149, k. 321.

10. Bill Wyman, Interview 16232, USC Shoah (June 15, 1996). Wyman himself survived because when a lantern was shone in his eyes (this happened after sundown), he was able to answer in pure Polish.

11. See the report filed by R. Mankiewicz, acting head of MBP Department III of Division IV, dated July 11, 1946, on the journey to Częstochowa with the task of preventing anti-Jewish incidents and putting the city on alert (AIPN BU_1572_733, k. 12–15).

12. Paraphrase of testimony SL 9.7.

13. Based on Jakub Aleksandrowicz’s testimony in Miłosz (raw footage).