CHAPTER 2

Physical Evidence

Photographs

Julia Pirotte, a photographer for the Military Photographic Agency and former member of the French resistance movement, left Warsaw for Kielce at midnight on the night of July 4–5. Since traveling by train that day posed a significant risk for a Jewish person, the editorial office of the weekly Żołnierz Wolności (Soldier of Freedom) assigned her an armed assistant.1 They reached the city early in the morning.

“The platforms and waiting rooms were deserted. There were railwaymen here and there. ‘What’s going on here?’ ‘I don’t know anything, I didn’t see anything.’”2 They walked from the station along a desolate Sienkiewicza Street to number 64, the location of the Provincial Committee of the Polish Workers’ Party (Polska Partia Robotnicza, PPR). Secretary Józef Kalinowski was not in, but one of the workers told them about the incidents.

It seems that, before heading toward Planty Street, the crowd had considered coming here. According to the account of a former commander in the People’s Army (Armia Ludowa, AL), Tadeusz Maj, the local office of the Committee of the PPR was sealed up and bolted shut during the pogrom.3 Sandbags had been placed in the windows and machine-gun positions were set up.4 The outbreak of violence had completely paralyzed the local authorities. PPR instructors who had been sent by the Central Committee of the Polish Workers’ Party (KC PPR) to Kielce that day on business noted, “Upon Comrade Buczyński and Comrade Chełchowski’s arrival in Kielce, things were in such a state at the Provincial Committee [of the PPR], that it seemed as if they were packing up and getting ready to escape.”5 They were afraid that an uprising would break out.

Order was restored by the next day. Tanks and armored vehicles appeared at the city limits. Armed patrols cruised the streets. Near the city park at the end of Staszica Street, machine-gun positions were set up next to crates filled with ammunition. Machine guns loaded with ammunition belts were even positioned in the meadows on either side of the road leading to the area of Kielce called Białogon.6

Julia Pirotte found the building located at 7/9 Planty Street empty and officially sealed shut. The guards keeping watch over the premises were sunning themselves.7 Feathers from bedding that had been torn open—the most recognizable sign of a pogrom—were everywhere, as were scattered papers, broken dishes, and trampled linens.

Pirotte took the first photographs in the schoolyard: a man’s cap, a brick, blood stains, a door shattered by a grenade, some rods and a crowbar, radiator pipes. These would be submitted as physical evidence at the trials.

In Kielce the photographer used a total of three rolls of film with thirty-six exposures each. Of these, she kept nineteen negatives for herself. She gave the rest of the negatives for safekeeping to the head of the Socio-Cultural Society of Jews in Poland (TSKŻ), who subsequently forgot they existed.8

The Highest Military Court in Warsaw received the first batch of evidence for formal deposit at the beginning of July. These items included two pistol bullets, two keys and a comb, a piece of iron wire, a woman’s gold ring with a small, white stone (diamond), a letter, documents from the Soviet-Polish repatriation commission, Baruch Dajcz’s birth certificate, a postcard, a twenty-złoty banknote (in old currency), a piece of gold with three opals colored pale green (a fragment of a bracelet), an amber necklace, and two court summonses.

A few items on this list belonged to thirty-two-year-old Baruch Dajcz, whose body was described in an external postmortem examination report conducted on July 5. His head was smashed “with a hard-edged instrument.”

The first item is his birth certificate.

The second, a letter from his sister Fela, dated 1940.

The third, a postcard addressed to Dajcz (found on the floor in the morgue).

There is also an envelope with summonses for Judka Mosze Ajzenberg, born in 1910, for a trial in the Kielce Municipal Court to “take possession” of his own home in Chmielnik.9 Judka is most likely the tall man in a vest or coat whose death in the Silnica River many people witnessed.10

Low-Tech Massacre

The Kielce pogrom was, to a large degree, a “low-tech” massacre. Tools that until then had been used only in a factory, a sawmill, in farming or construction, now became tools of murder. According to researchers of genocide, this attests to the vehemence of emotions and to action without premeditation.

On July 6, 1946, Prosecutor Wilkoszyński examined the second batch of objects found on Planty Street. These included “a part from a radiator—an element with two corners, around 60 cm in length, traces of blood widespread on both sides and dark hair stuck to one side. A piece of metal [in the shape of the letter] T, 20 x 3 mm, around 50 cm in length, a trace of dried blood 6 cm long on one end. Six cobblestones with large bloodstains on them, dark hair dried onto the smallest one. Two bricks—large bloodstains on both sides. Six wooden pickets—on the picket with two bent nails there are widespread traces of blood halfway along its length on both sides, coming from the nail side, especially on the edges. To a greater or lesser degree, other pickets have large bloodstains of various sizes ranging from 5 to 20 cm in length, usually halfway along their length.”11

The day after the pogrom, Wilkoszyński examined the scene of the crime.

He carefully examined the unfenced yard that bordered St. Kinga’s Middle School. Right in front of the stairwell—that is, on the southern side—he noted “traces of large, congealed bloodstains, 19 in number, at regular intervals from one another, over an area of around 150 m2.” Nearby lay tools of the crime “in the form of a metal crowbar around 60 cm in length, a part detached from a radiator and covered in blood, stones and bricks of various sizes, and broken pickets pulled from a fence and used to injure Jews.”

The door to stairwell no. 2 (the left wing of the building) was spattered with blood at the height of around forty centimeters. Another large bloodstain and a piece of bloodied brick were located on the first floor of this same stairwell. On the second floor the prosecutor discovered two cartridge cases shot from a Russian KBK (carbine) and one cartridge case shot from a PPSh (Soviet-made submachine gun).12 He found another cartridge case shot from an MP-series submachine gun in the courtyard on the east side. Notices with the official stamp of the police (Citizens’ Militia, MO) in Kielce were hanging inside the building in all the apartments. Signs of damage to household appliances were visible everywhere. Windowpanes were smashed. In the corridor that led onto Planty Street, a wardrobe, shoes, and linens were strewn about.13

Concrete Evidence

The day after the pogrom, Niusia Borensztajn stated that the first two shots fired through the door of the kibbutz mortally wounded Abram Wajnryb and Chil Sokołowski, while Rafael Blumenfeld would add Naftali Tajtelbaum, sixteen years old, to the list of the first victims.

From the external postmortem examination report on Second Lieutenant Abram Wajnryb, around thirty years old, height 166 cm, hazel eyes: “Shattered lower half of the right jaw with teeth knocked out, as well as the upper half of the left jaw. . . . Bullet removed from the area of the left parietal bone.” Expert witnesses will specify that this is a bullet from an automatic weapon, which means that PPSh submachine guns were fired in the kibbutz, where Wajnryb perished.14 Prosecutor Wilkoszyński found cartridge cases fired from this weapon at the site.

But Chil Sokołowski, 152 cm tall, whom Niusia identified as the second victim of the shooting, was probably not shot to death, but rather bludgeoned: on the right parietal bone there is an injury in the shape of a letter T, a complete break of the cranial vault, a fracture at its base, the nose is crushed, the teeth are knocked out of the gums. The weapon: a hard, heavy, blunt instrument.15

However, it is possible that Niusia was not referring to Chil but rather to his brother, Symcha (“One of our boys was sitting on the floor and had a revolver. And he says, ‘I will defend you’”). In the report of the medical examination, we read, “The patient is pale, no pulse, the dressing is soaked with blood, heart sounds hollow, 100 beats per minute. A gunshot wound in the area of the inferior angle of the scapula the size of a 2-grosz coin, blood flows through the wound, and air enters and escapes [through it].”16 In fewer than twenty days, Symcha will die in the hospital in Łódź.

And now the injuries suffered by Niusia, age nineteen: “Contusions to the head in the area of the occipital, 2 cm in length. Bruising of upper and lower left eyelids and subconjunctival hemorrhage. . . . The above injuries are the result of blows from a blunt object.”17 Niusia will survive.

Borys Dorfman, “a handsome young man,” will also survive. “Contusion of the nasal bridge with nasal bones smashed in. . . . Edema and bruising of all eyelids. Subconjunctival hemorrhage in the left eyeball, right eyeball is damaged. Edema of the nose, double fracture of the mandible.”18

Rafael Blumenfeld, age twenty-five: “Five contusions to the head, from .5 to 1 cm in length, a .5 cm stab wound to the back surface of the thorax at the medial border of the left scapula at the height of the fifth rib. Bruising of both upper and lower lids of the right eye. . . . The above injuries were the result of blows from an instrument that was both blunt and sharp.”19

Józef Fajngold, age twenty-three, a violinist and hammerman: contusions to the head, one in the left temporal region, 3 cm in length, another in the left parietal area, 1.5 cm in length, a wound in the right parietal area, 1 cm in length. Edema and bruising of both eyes.20 A fracture of the occipital bone was diagnosed in the hospital in Łódź.

And now the deceased.

Belka Gertner, age seventeen, height 154 cm, thrown out of a window: fractures of the skull bones with displacement, numerous lacerations to the head, teeth 1 and 2 on the right side of the upper jaw are knocked out, injuries inflicted with a hard, blunt instrument.21 Tattoo of camp number A-16910.22

Geologist Fania Szumacher, that is, Fania from Pinsk, who was dating Borys Dorfman: age nineteen, height 160 cm, contusion to the left occipital bone, jagged edges, fracture of the cranial vault. Injuries “in the area of the thighs, knee joints, the front surface of the right lower leg is heavily bruised . . ., [also] the upper extremities in the area of the shoulders exhibit signs of cyanosis with small scratches.”23

Nurse Estera Hinda Proszowska, who went to get bandages, age forty-three, height 158 cm, tattooed camp number A-16416: twenty-cm wound on the occipital, crushed skull bones with extrusion of the brain, numerous bruises and scratches of the epidermis on the fourth finger of the right hand (ring was torn off), “left [breast] with hematomas of the entire exterior surface,” injuries possibly from a stick, blow inflicted with great force.24

Mr. and Mrs. Kersz (Kiersz), who perished in their own apartment on Piotrkowska Street, later 71 First of May Street: Hersz Kersz, age thirty-five, height 156 cm, light-blue eyes, right temporal and occipital bones fractured, inward indentation.25 Mania Kersz, same birth year and height as her husband, numerous fractures of the skull bone; tattoo 21,558.26 At the base of the third segment of the second finger on the dorsal side there is a laceration with bruising (ring brutally pulled off).27

Sergeant Karp, age thirty, height 155 cm: half of skull shattered, bayonet wounds to the thorax and buttock.28

Second Lieutenant Izaak Prajs, age forty, height 170 cm, son of the owner of the Hotel Polski, perished at street level at 71 Sienkiewicza Street: indentation above the right orbit, crack in the occipital bone on the left side. “Injuries to the head were inflicted with a hard, blunt object, possibly a piece of metal.”29

Seweryn Kahane, chairman of the committee, age thirty-seven, supposedly shot by an unidentified officer of the Polish Army (Wojsko Polskie, WP): “In the back, at the level of the right scapula angle, there is a round opening the size of a pea . . . caused by a shot from a handgun.”30

Rywka Fisz, age twenty-four, a nursing mother, killed by police officer Stefan Mazur: gunshot wound to the head in the area of the left ear. The dorsal part of the left hand has numerous gunshot residue burns (she shielded herself against a shot from a distance shorter than one meter). Rywka’s month-old son, Abram Hersz:31 gunshot wound to the frontal bone.

Jan Jaworski, a guard at the office of the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR) at 64 Sienkiewicza, one of two Christian Poles killed on Planty: gunshot wound to the skull, entry point above the right ear.32 Handgun. Eyes—green.

Stanisław Niewiarski, the Polish custodian of the building on Planty Street, height 165 cm: gunshot, “entry point 4 cm above the navel, exit point above the costal margin.”33 He died after three hours in the hospital as a result of internal hemorrhaging. In the description his age is recorded as being around twenty-five years old; however, witnesses (Miriam Machtynger, Julian Chorążak, and officers of the security service) state that Niewiarski was a gray-haired old man.34 There is also a discrepancy regarding the type of injuries he sustained. Julian Chorążak admitted to beating the custodian in the head with a stick, and officers of the WUBP, Szott and Woźniak, witnessed this.35 In the meantime, the corpse identified as Niewiarski’s does not have any traces of being bludgeoned; according to the report, death was caused by a gunshot.

There must have been a mistake, and the body of the custodian is probably among those who remain unidentified.36 Mistakes were likely made in haste. The experts were working in sweltering heat. They began the external examinations on July 5, and they had to finish them before the funeral on July 8. In any case, estimating ages of the victims is the weakest part of the reports.

Another questionable identification concerns Lejzor Harendorf, age forty-seven. In the description of the corpse, his age is estimated at between thirty-five and forty years. In an account filed at the Shoah Foundation, his acquaintance Carl Langer says that Harendorf was his father’s business partner in Częstochowa and that he set out to Kielce to see whether anyone from his family had survived the war.37 Harendorf had been a prisoner in Auschwitz and lost his toes while there; the extremities of the corpse identified as Harendorf, however, are not damaged in this way.

Unknowns

On July 5 Doctor Latałło of the City Hospital in Kielce sent a telegram delivered by phone to the Military Prosecutor’s Office in which he reported that “in connection with the disturbance on July 4, 1946, in Kielce at 7 Planty Street, 43 wounded were brought to the local hospital, among them are 42 Jews and 1 Pole.38 The corpses of 36 people have been delivered; among them are 34 Jews, 2 Poles. Due to high temperatures, Hospital Management requests a decision regarding the burial of the bodies as soon as possible.”39

As many as eighteen people are in the group of unidentified pogrom victims. This may be explained by the fact that they were out-of-town victims of the so-called railway action and nobody in Kielce knew them.40

Jechiel Alpert explains it differently: “I walk into the morgue and see who is lying there, the faces were so massacred that I couldn’t recognize anyone. One girl, I think she was fourteen years old, Rachela, was lying there. I also forgot to mention that my wife had called Busko, it was a spa town, because one of our friends was there for treatment, and this Rachela was visiting her. And my wife called them in Busko to

FIGURE 12. Rachela Zander/Sondberg, 14, pogrom victim. Nowiny Kurier no. 154 (July 2, 1976). Courtesy of Michał Jaskulski.

FIGURE 13. Belka Gernter, 17, pogrom victim. Nowiny Kurier no. 154 (July 2, 1976). Courtesy of Michał Jaskulski.

FIGURE 14. Rachela Sondberg, standing, second from right, with prewar Ichud youth group. Courtesy of Avi Borenstein.

tell them they shouldn’t dare come right now, they should wait until all this passes.

“When [Rachela] was called and told not to come, she was so upset she said she could not stay put. She came back and she perished. And I saw this Rachela, I recognized her [in the morgue], and I say, ‘But that’s impossible. Hania called them and told her not to come.’ So I think it’s impossible for that to be her. And so, I didn’t give them her last name.”41

The unidentified persons have, for the most part, gaunt physiques. Their bodies betray signs of wartime hardships. The first number on the list of unknowns is mistakenly assigned to Abram Wajnryb, who will later be identified.

Deprived of a number, however, is an “unconscious man whose name has not been established” with “contusion of the left auricle with bleeding from the left ear. Contusion in the area of the right parietal bone, 4 cm. Edema and bruising of both eyes, large edema of the neck—left side. The patient is unconscious; pulse is 60 beats per minute, high tension.” There is no death certificate. This is possibly Józef Fajngold’s comrade, Wolf Zylbersztajn, who was initially unconscious, but who recovered; by August 1 he was already participating in the meeting of the Kielce Landsmanshaft in Łódź.42

And now those whose identities were not established:

Unknown 2, female, around twenty-two years old, height 160 cm, damage to the skull and stab wounds, hazel eyes;

Unknown 3, female, age fifteen or sixteen, height 153 cm, a dent in the occipital from a strike with a bayonet, blue eyes;

Unknown 4, male, around thirty-five years old, height 165 cm, no mention of circumcision, indentation of the skull, fracture of both jaws, teeth knocked out, gunshot wounds, hazel eyes;

Unknown 5, male, around thirty years old, height not reported, circumcised, damage to the skull and gunshot to the abdomen, hazel eyes;

Unknown 6, male, between thirty and thirty-five years old, height 163 cm, circumcised, skull shot through, hazel eyes;

Unknown 7, male, around thirty-five years old, height 168 cm, circumcised, crushed skull bones, dark brown eyes;

Unknown 8, male, around thirty years old, height not reported, circumcised, trauma to the head from a bayonet, gray-blue eyes;

Unknown 9, male, around thirty years old, height 179 cm, circumcised, crushed temporal bone, gunshot wounds, hazel eyes;

Unknown 10, male, between thirty-five and forty years old, height 157 cm, circumcised, face battered beyond recognition, stab wounds, hazel eyes;

Unknown 11, male, age not reported, height 164 cm, circumcised, trauma to the head caused by, for example, a large rock, gunshot wounds, eye color not reported;

Unknown 12, male, around thirty years old, height not reported, circumcised, head crushed and wounds from a bayonet, gray-blue eyes;

Unknown 13, male, age not reported, height 176 cm, circumcised, trauma caused by, for example, a metal bar; gunshot wounds to both hands; hazel eyes;

Unknown 14, male, around twenty-four years old, height 155 cm, circumcised, crushed skull bones, blue eyes;

Unknown 15, female, between twenty and twenty-five years old, height 146 cm, crushed skull bones, gray-blue eyes;

Unknown 16, male, around thirty-five years old, height 160 cm, circumcised, damage to the skull bones, hazel eyes (he shielded himself with his arm, because the bullet entry point is at his armpit);

Unknown 17, female with light hazel eyes, thirty-five years old, height 153 cm, six months pregnant, base of skull broken by blows to the head;

Unknown 18, female, around thirty-five years old, height 154 cm, death from injuries to the skull, blue eyes.

Among those unidentified are the aforementioned Rachela Sander (Zander, Sonberg), most likely Unknown 3, and Dawid Fajnkuchen, most likely Unknown 13. Their bodies were seen on Planty Street, but they were not identified in the hospital.

FIGURE 15. Berl Frydman and his wife. Estera Mappen Archive/Michał Jaskulski.

It is possible that Menasze Tajtelbaum, whose family has been searching for him until today, was among this same group, provided that he was not the man whom Estusia Mappen and her mother took care of during the pogrom after Estera Proszowska was shot. Menasze, born in 1909, was sixteen-year-old Naftali’s cousin, yet another victim of the pogrom. Another cousin, Zelig Tajtelbaum, was in Kielce that day. He miraculously escaped death while visiting his family home on 10/13 Targowa Street.

The body of tinsmith Berl Frydman—according to some, the first victim of the pogrom—must also be among this group of unknowns.43 There is a poignant photograph of Frydman and his wife in Estera Mappen’s archive.

The transport list of those who arrived in Łódź from Kielce on July 7, 1946, reveals that the list from the medical-forensic examinations in Kielce is incomplete. Missing from the list, for example, are Mr. and Mrs. Sachar. Based on other documents, it appears that more than forty wounded persons were in Łódź, while press reports speak of twenty-seven.44 From hospital records it is possible to identify the last names of twenty-two people and to learn that Symcha Sokołowski died on July 26.45 Prosecutor Zbigniew Mielecki, who led the second Kielce investigation, managed to establish the last names of the remaining five who were wounded. But Mr. and Mrs. Sachar, who were on the list prepared by the CKŻP were not among them.

The names Natan and Motel Grynewidze; Eliasz, Hinda, and Jankiel Średni (later Sarid); Nela Fiszel; Chaja (Anna) Bańszczyk; Lodzia Micmacher; and Izrael Terkieltaub appear on the list compiled at the first organizational meeting of the Jewish Committee in Kielce that took place in Łódź on August 1, 1946.

The Expert Witnesses

The Inspector of the Provincial Department of Health, Doctor Józef Ocepa, testified at the July trial.

Besides me, he said, Doctor Janowski (a city doctor), Doctor Majewski, and Doctor Bawor were present at the autopsies in the morgue of St. Aleksander’s Hospital.46 The bodies were examined. First those that had been identified, and later those that remained unidentified. Crushed skulls and gunshot wounds were found on the bodies. I found gunshot wounds on the body of Seweryn Kahane, he said. It was determined that the wounds were caused by a blow from a hard object. Some of the skulls were seriously deformed. Among the bodies, there was the corpse of a woman in her sixth month of pregnancy. Altogether, I examined sixteen corpses, both men and women. There were no children among them.

The body of four-week-old Abram Fisz was examined by Doctor Janowski. He examined twenty bodies in two stages. Many of the skulls were completely shattered. Only two people had been killed by shooting. In addition, I determined that some of them had stab wounds caused by a knife or other instrument. These wounds, however, could not have been fatal. On one body, a sliver had pierced through the neck. The injuries must have been inflicted with great strength. I found a gunshot wound through the head of one woman’s body, that of Rywka Fisz.

The expert witness Majewski, a doctor at the City Hospital in Kielce, testified that he completed examinations on forty-two people, ten of whom were women. I found gunshot wounds on five; stab wounds on two; the rest had serious wounds from being bludgeoned with hard objects. A few people were very seriously injured, including two or three people whose chances of survival were uncertain, despite the superficial nature of their wounds. On one woman I noted blotches, bloodstains, and bruises on her breasts. One pregnant woman was stabbed in the abdomen (Gienia Samborska, aka Płótno); she had a triangular-shaped wound. The uterus was punctured, it was necessary to operate. The child died; the woman is doing well after surgery.

At the time, Doctor Ocepa was a medical inspector for the province. “As a doctor I saw many who had been killed and massacred during the war, for example, by the Gestapo. But I had never seen heads crushed so gruesomely or bodies torn to shreds like that. Even the bodies of those who were shot showed signs of posthumous violence.”

One phrase that is overused in the reports: “death occurred immediately.”

Julia Pirotte took quite a few photographs in the hospital and the morgue. It’s almost impossible to look at some of them. One photograph looks like it could have been taken in Auschwitz; it shows a tangle of corpses haphazardly thrown from stretchers and trucks. In another photograph three bodies stripped of clothing (some of the clothing was stolen) are lying on the black-and-white mosaic tile floor of the hospital, the same kind of floor that was in the Jewish community building on Planty Street. The body in the foreground of the photograph belongs to an older man, perhaps Doctor Kahane, chairman of the Jewish Committee in Kielce. Or it may be the aforementioned Berl Frydman.

The bodies of Rywka Fisz and her son, dressed in an old-fashioned romper, are on the same black-and-white mosaic tile floor. You can clearly see the floral pattern on Rywka’s dress and her modern hair style.

St. Aleksander’s Hospital

The Jewish medical emergency service “Jutrzenka” closed its doors in 1939, handing over its ambulances to the Jewish hospital located on Aleksandra Street. Four years earlier the Jewish hospital, built with funds from the Jewish community, had merged with the Kielce City Hospital. So, we can say without exaggerating, that those who were wounded in the Kielce pogrom were brought by Jewish ambulances to a Jewish hospital. Furthermore, the Central Committee of Polish Jews (CKŻP) covered the hospitalization and funeral costs.47

Rafael Blumenfeld recounts that they were taken to the hospital, but that this was not the end of their tribulations. In the hospital we were afraid of the nurses; we suspected that someone had just dressed up like the sisters of mercy and simply wanted to finish us off. Someone’s jewelry disappeared. Someone else complained that when he was being washed, boiling water was poured over him. A barber shaved one person bald and pulled someone else’s hair out while combing it. In the wound dressing unit you could hear, “You’re still alive, son-of-a-bitch?”48 We were afraid that they would poison us. We began to rebel, to demand that they take us away from there. That’s why they transferred us to Łódź.

Jechiel Alpert: On Sunday, a certain Mr. Gertler comes to see me in my room; he’s a big millionaire from Germany, one of the richest Jews. And he says to me, “Listen, they’ve declared a hunger strike at the hospital, they don’t want to eat, because when they look at the policemen guarding them, they’re reminded of the uniforms of those who murdered them in the kibbutz.”49 Gertler contributed to the cost of transporting the wounded to Łódź. Along the way the armored train transferring them was shot at.50

Alpert recalls that earlier, while still in Kielce, when they wanted to transfer the wounded to the UB clinic, they couldn’t find any nurses who would take care of them. And from among the Jewish doctors, there was only one, Doctor Bałanowski. They went to get help in Częstochowa, where there was a large Jewish community. But they all had excuses: one had a sick mother, another had something else, not a single one agreed to help.

Only one nurse agreed: Helena Majtlis.

Nurse Helena Majtlis

I was well liked in Częstochowa. We had a large house in the city center, the Majtlis House, that’s what they called it. After the war I never again walked into that house because that’s where my entire family perished. I had a small room elsewhere. People came; they brought me a blanket, they brought me a pillow. I was met with such great kindness.51

One day there’s a knock at my door. I open it, and there’s a soldier standing there. “Helena Majtlis?” he asks. “I’m here from Kielce. Antek Cukierman sent for you, Ma’am.” “What’s happened?” “There’s a pogrom in Kielce, a nurse is needed.”

We drove in a truck. I sat next to the driver, and the soldier sat next to me with a PPSh, while another [soldier] sat in the back with a PPSh, with grenades. This Kielce road was terrible. As we were driving, they also threw a grenade. We were very afraid, we looked around on all sides.

We arrived in Kielce, and there all the streets were covered in blood. I couldn’t imagine how this could be possible. I was completely shocked by this sight. Where was all this blood from? Whose blood was it? I still didn’t understand that this was only Jewish blood.

First and foremost, I was told to transfer the patients from the city hospital to the clinic of the UB because the staff of the city hospital was treating the patients badly. They were not complaining about the doctors, but about those nurses.52 For example, one Jewish patient had a cut literally across the entire top of his head, so that you could see his skull, and he was bleeding heavily. A nurse was removing his dressing. It was really painful for him when she was tearing it off; he screamed, so she hit him in the face. I am repeating what this patient told me. While I was changing this dressing for him, tears are running down his face, and he says, “Ma’am, now I believe that you’re a Jew.” It was a terrible wound, it could no longer be sewn up, because it had already been a few days. He was an old Jew.

One of the patients told me that a priest walked in and said, “Well, yes, yes, you are wounded, but how many of our children were murdered?” And so those little sisters took revenge on the sick people.

I didn’t know Yiddish. At first those who were wounded didn’t know I was Jewish, so they pushed me away. I had to finally convince them that I wanted to help them. There were only two of us there, Jewish professionals: I was the only nurse, and Doctor Bałanowski. There was no other staff, though there were also orderlies, servicemen, who helped.

It is difficult for me to say how many were wounded and how many were killed. I only know that, of those brought there, six people died.53 We took care of the sick in shifts. You can’t even imagine how tired we were.

I have to say that the Red Cross acted extraordinarily well. They put at our disposal all the penicillin they had in stock. And also juices—the patients were calling out: “Drink, drink!” It was July, the heat was terrible. And so we asked for doctors, and specialists were needed there, a neurologist was needed, and a surgeon. So Polish doctors came, they behaved very decently and with great care. I have to say in their defense that these were true doctors.

I had been in a camp; I was worn out, and so I was simply fainting from exhaustion. I was simply losing consciousness. I was starved after those years, and here I simply didn’t have time to eat. I think I was there for two weeks.

FIGURE 16. A man wounded in the pogrom lies in hospital. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Julia Pirotte.

The condition of those wounded was very serious. Many of them were unconscious because most had injuries to their heads—for the most part their heads had been bludgeoned. They were so seriously ill, so frightened, that at the beginning when I would go up to them, I almost had to pull them out from under the beds. It wasn’t possible to connect at all with many of those who were sick. For example, there was a young boy lying there; he was paralyzed because of being bludgeoned in the head. The boy was, generally speaking, young, twenty-something, very handsome.

But I was asking those soldiers, “So many wounded. Who did this? Who did this?” They told me, “The crowds, Ma’am, all the factories went out.” Well, that’s difficult to imagine. So, the folks there beat them, workers, not workers, anyone who could, bludgeoned them. Anyone who possibly could. Everyone, everyone. And usually in the head. So there was ice, ice, and ice, and one more time ice on the job—we were constantly putting ice on their heads.

All of Kielce, along with the workers who had taken part in the pogrom, was at the funeral. The same ones, all the factories. Why did they do it? Well, they did it because that Biskupska woman went into the street and yelled that her child had been murdered, murdered. But Biskupska herself hid that child.54 That was, after all, the cause of the pogrom.

On July 23, 1946, on behalf of the task force charged with wrapping up the activity of the Jewish Committee in Kielce, Julian Goldwaser, Jechiel Alpert, and Doctor Bałanowski expressed their thanks to Helena Majtlis in the form of a decorative certificate that read, “Gratitude flows from the depths of our hearts for your sacrificial, selfless help, full of care and dedication, provided to the seriously wounded victims of the Kielce pogrom from July 8th through the 23rd of this year . . . on behalf of the convalescents and the surviving Jewish community.”

Captain Semyon Melnik

Semyon Melnik, a Soviet soldier who by chance found himself in Kielce a few hours after the pogrom, is the next to speak.55

They sent me to Kielce in 1946. They asked, “Do you speak Polish?” “I do.”

The commander of the division summons me and says, “Semyon, you’re going to Kielce to get provisions for the troops.” There were huge warehouses there that belonged to our army and the Polish one. We arrive in Kielce, but a Polish soldier is standing at the entry point to the city and isn’t letting us in. Other than myself, there were eight others in the vehicle—an American one. This soldier firmly says, “No entry.” A general goes up to him and explains that we’re from the commission and that we have to enter the city to get to the warehouses.

I walk up to him, and he says in Russian “Forbidden!” and I ask “Why?” And he says “Because there was a pogrom in the city. I was ordered not to let anyone in.” But he let us in because we had a pass. The city was surrounded by troops; a soldier stood every ten meters. The commander said, “Go and find out what’s going on.”

I went, and the entire city was covered in blood. It was horrible. It was [July 4], 1946. They killed all the Jews who came to Kielce from various ghettos. To me, a soldier and an officer who himself had been in a ghetto, it was unbelievable, beyond belief. Corpses stripped of clothing, dead women. I walked through an empty city. There was no one on the streets. Only corpses were lying there, still warm. It happened five or six hours before our arrival.

I stop by the hospital. People had awful wounds, awful. A little girl, her hand almost cut off. They take me to the head doctor. He’s sitting with a small group of doctors, they’re drinking. I ask where the head doctor is. “That’s me,” he says. “What can I do for you, Captain?” “What’s going on in your city?” And he answers, “We did what the Germans didn’t finish.” “But why?” “The Jews invaded us here like locusts. . . .”56

I grab my holster and want to shoot this doctor. The commander of our group is standing behind me, a general. He grabs me by the hand, “What are you doing, Semyon? Calm down!”

I walked out of the hospital, sick.

The Funeral

As soon as the postmortem examinations were completed, on Monday, July 8, the funeral took place in the Pakosz neighborhood of Kielce. The Jewish victims of the pogrom were buried there.57

“I looked into the faces of the people gathered along both sides of the street through which the funeral passed, and tried to read something in them,” recalls the chief rabbi of the Polish Army, Dawid Kahane. “It is difficult to say that these faces showed regret or sorrow. On the contrary, a hidden, sly smile would peep out at me from the crowd, and that is what accompanied me to the cemetery.”58

The funeral procession went from the Bazary neighborhood and the City Hospital along Słowackiego Street, then down Marchlewskiego and Marmurowa streets, and to Pakosz where the cemetery is located. In Pirotte’s photographs we see that behind representatives of the state and military authorities, there were trucks with one or two coffins each. The coffin of Chairman Seweryn Kahane, covered with a blue and white flag, was at the front of the funeral procession. Next walked workers, four abreast, from the Ludwików steelworks, the Granat metalworks, the sawmills, and the Kadzielnia industrial plants. And after them, people from all the government offices and schools.

“Just as the funeral procession was about to start, a group of terrified people, escorted by soldiers, suddenly came out from a side street. These were the Jews of Kielce who had survived the pogrom and were being housed in the buildings of the security service.”59

Pirotte documented the funeral, and that’s how we know what was written on the ribbons of the funeral wreath: “To the Kielce victims. The American Joint Distribution Committee.” Miriam Rozenkranc is holding the sash; next to her is Niusia Borensztajn, whose married name will be Nester-Nestl, holding the wreath. “To the victims of the slaughter. The Municipal National Council.” The chairman is in the foreground.

Next we see a group of officers clustered around commanding officer Colonel Stanisław Kupsza, who is presenting a wreath from the army. Only one end of the message is visible: “In a bestial way by Fascist thugs. . . .”

FIGURE 17. Funeral procession for the victims of the Kielce pogrom. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy Leah Lahav.

In one of Pirotte’s photos, six soldiers from various units walk separately, without flowers. The first from the right, with a bandaged head, is Polish Army gunner Corporal Maks Erlbaum, who was wounded on Planty Street. Next is Lieutenant Zygmunt Majewski of the Provincial Office of Public Security (WUBP), who rescued the Średni (Sarid) siblings (see chapter 11). The third is Lieutenant Albert Grynbaum from the County Office of Public Security (PUBP), who by noon on the day of the pogrom was organizing the defense at 7 Planty Street. The next, in a light-colored uniform with medals, is Major Adam Kornecki, Sobczyński’s predecessor in the Kielce UB, called to Kielce for the purpose of the investigation. The fifth is Sobczyński’s replacement in the WUBP, Captain Mieczysław Kwaśniewski. The row ends with Lieutenant Sylwester Klimczak from the WUBP, who rescued Ewa and Estusia Mappen.

There is no mention of representatives from the Catholic clergy participating in the funeral. Rafael Blumenfeld recalls, however, that when the funeral procession was “near the Jewish cemetery, an unexpected procession of Polish children and youth appeared, singing Catholic hymns and carrying crosses and church banners. The children did not stop the singing and didn’t even look in the direction of the funeral procession, which was approaching from the opposite direction.”60

The Jewish cemetery was guarded like a fort; soldiers standing along the high wooden fence were armed with rifles and submachine guns.

FIGURE 18. Soldiers walk in the funeral procession. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Julia Pirotte.

FIGURE 19. Pallbearers carry two small coffins to the burial site in the Jewish cemetery. At front is Marian Fisz (Fisch), who lost his wife, Rywka, and baby son, Abram, in the pogrom. Photograph by Julia Pirotte; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Leah Lahav.

FIGURE 20. A coffin is carried by Polish soldiers, among others. Hersz Kotlicki is at right in civilian clothing; the first bearer at left, in military uniform, is Lieutenant Albert Grynbaum. Marek Edelman is in the center of the scene, standing just above the scene and facing right. He is the tallest of the group, without a hat, in light trousers and a darker suit coat. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Leah Lahav.

At the cemetery a grave had been dug parallel to Pakosz Street, large enough to hold more than forty coffins.

The soldiers took the coffins off the trucks without haste and arranged them on the edge of the pit. Standing on the bed of the truck, one of them pushed a coffin to the edge, another approached and took it on his shoulder and lifted it up, making room for the next one; each coffin was carried in this way by four men. Their faces are clearly visible in Pirotte’s photographs: Albert Grynbaum and Mieczysław Kwaśniewski, and civilians Zygmunt Majewski and Herszel Kotlicki. In one photograph there is a familiar face: Marek Edelman, a leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, is standing close by at the top of the pit.61

Abram Fisz’s father, Marian, carried his son’s little coffin.

The coffins were arranged in the pit to the sound of a funeral march, and the speeches began. The minister of public security, Stanisław Radkiewicz, declared that the pogrom was the work of emissaries from the Polish government-in-exile and General Anders.62 He announced a trial that would punish the guilty. The minister of reconstruction, Professor Michał Kaczorowski, spoke in the name of the government, while Doctor Adolf Berman spoke in the name of the Central Committee of Polish Jews (CKŻP).

When the religious burial began, it started to rain. Władysław Dzikowski writes, “I stayed to see the exotic rituals. The chief rabbi of the Polish Army (WP), Col. Kahane, who was from Kielce, led the prayers. Those praying wore death robes.63 A choir that was brought in from Warsaw sang terribly sad songs, ram’s horns were also blown.” Dzikowski quotes two fragments of Rabbi Kahane’s speech: “In the Old Testament, when a man was found killed, he was supposed to be buried, and then—standing above the grave—the living said, ‘Lord, we are not guilty of this man’s death.’64 How many in this large funeral crowd would be able to repeat this sentence? Graves of the fallen are scattered across Poland’s territory after the horrible days of the Nazis. Of course, for the most part, they are [the graves] of Poles, but also of Jews. How differently they are treated. A passerby—when he sees the grave of a partisan or of murdered Poles—will stop, take off his cap, and pray or honor this place with silence. But if it is the grave of a Jew, he will say, ‘Mangy Jew.’ And then he’ll spit on the grave and move on.”

Go Forth

In the Book of Genesis, the Lord says to Abraham: “Go forth from your land and from your birthplace and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you” (Genesis 12:1).” This verse took on a new meaning the day after the pogrom.65

The ebb tide began—the largest emigration wave in postwar Polish history. Earlier, around a thousand Jews had illegally crossed the border of the state each month; this number rose sixtyfold after the pogrom (estimate for July, August, and September).66 After the end of the repatriation from the USSR, just before the Kielce pogrom, there were more than 210,000 Jews in Poland; a year later this number had fallen by 100,000.67 This wave of emigration peaked in August 1946, when 33,346 people left.68

However, before this wave swelled, it was necessary to take care of the Holocaust survivors. In a Joint Distribution Committee report for the period July 6 to July 14, 1946, woven from old-fashioned ablatives, we read that of the more than six hundred who were in Kielce before the pogrom,

168 Jews remained . . . after the pogrom. Of these, 11 wounded were placed in the City Hospital and 27 wounded were evacuated to Łódź. The majority of the remaining Jews (around 100 persons) have been housed in the building of the UB; the rest have been housed in two adjacent buildings, 18 and 20 Focha Street, where they are staying under the protection of the security authorities.

The living conditions in the security service building are not satisfactory: people are crowded into three rooms, though admittedly there is a rather large community room; they sleep on the floor, on tables and chairs. A longer stay under such conditions would be unacceptable, but for now, in the face of a still-uncertain situation, there is no other way. These people are not allowed into the city for safety reasons. . . .

It seems that the security authorities have the situation in Kielce completely under control and numerous patrols from the army and police are circulating through the city, as are armored vehicles. Numerous arrests are being made of persons suspected of participating in the pogrom. However, disturbing news is coming from nearby towns such as Skarżysko, Ostrowiec, and others.

[The authorities organized] rallies against the pogrom in the Skarżysko factories, but the workers did not allow the speakers to say a word, and they seriously beat them up. A pogrom atmosphere has developed in the city.69

Then came the decision of the central authorities: “All Jews from the Kielce region were forcibly dispersed across the entire country.”70 They considered the problem solved. This was a strategy that had already been applied a year earlier, after five murders were committed in Radom in August 1945. The head of the delegation from the Central Committee of the Polish Workers’ Party wrote at the time, “Because the departure of the Jews from Radom resulted in a serious alleviation [of tensions], issuing a special appeal to the general public calling on them to fight against racism did [not] seem advisable to me and that is why it was not issued.”71

FIGURE 21. Shmuel Leib Shneiderman, an American journalist who attended the funeral of the Kielce pogrom victims, marches at right in the front row. His report on the pogrom, entitled “I Saw Kielce,” appeared in the National Jewish Monthly (December 1946). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy Leah Lahav.

Pogrom prevention was also considered. This headline in Gazeta Ludowa (The People’s Newspaper) dated August 11, 1946, was typical for the time: “Jews Are To Be Directed Toward Productive Labor.”72

Notes

1. The chief editor of Żołnierz Wolności, Major D. Płoński, commissioned Julia Pirotte to take the photographs. Eight of her photographs were published in issue no. 27 (July 19–25, 1946). The published photographs included the following: four photographs of the victims’ funeral; the building on Planty Street; the victims in shrouds; a custodian; and the coffins. See also Marta Koszowy-Krajewska, “Fotografie pogromów. Julii Pirotte reportaż z Kielc,” in Pogromy Żydów na ziemiach polskich w XIX i XX wieku, vol. 1: Literatura i sztuka, ed. S. Buryła (Warsaw: Instytut Historii: PAN, 2018), 371.

2. Julia Pirotte, “Kielce 1946,” Polityka, June 22, 1991.

3. See Tadeusz Maj’s testimony dated June 4, 1951 (AIPN Ki_53_4753, k. 1867).

4. See Ryszard Śmietanka-Kruszelnicki, “Pogrom w Kielcach: Podziemie w roli oskarżonego,” in Wokół pogromu kieleckiego, ed. Jan Żaryn and Łukasz Kamiński (Warsaw: IPN, 2006), 1: 29.

5. The report written by Polish Workers’ Party emissaries Hilary Chełchowski and Władysław Buczyński about their official trip to Kielce in connection with the events of July 4, 1946, is cited according to Bożena Szaynok and Zenon Wrona, “Pogrom kielecki w dokumentach,” Dzieje Najnowsze 33, no. 3 (1991): 85.

6. See Władysław Dzikowski’s report in AG-PK, t. 3, k. 400–12.

7. See Rafael Blumenfeld’s memoirs from his private family collection, dated 1968, translated from Hebrew to Polish by Anna Piątek; henceforth “Blumenfeld memoirs.”

8. According to one source, Jakub Berman himself looked at the photographs and immediately marked them as classified.; Julia Pirotte, however, kept some prints for herself. See the letter from Mirosław Kiersznowski among the documents of the second Kielce investigation (AIPN Ki_53_4744, k. 111). Over time the photographs began to appear in private family archives and collections. In addition, some photographs are archived in the Jewish Historical Institute (ŻIH) in Warsaw and the archive of the Polska Agencja Prasowa (Polish Press Agency, PAP); others have been donated by victims’ families to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM).

9. AIPN BU_0_1_1453_4, t. 2, k. 407.

10. AIPN Ki_41_520, t. 1, cz. 2, k. 18–19. Other accounts suggest that the person killed in the Silnica River was a man named Fajnkuchen. See chapter 7.

11. AIPN Ki_53_5445, k. 5 (pagination uncertain).

12. Testimony of Officer Rogoziński of the MO at his trial on July 24, 1950, AIPN Ki_41_2_43, k. 227.

13. Description based on a photograph found in AIPN Ki_53_5145.

14. AIPN Ki_41_520, t. 1, cz. 2, k. 38, 40, 256.

15. AIPN Ki_41_520, t. 1, cz. 2, k. 96. Based on the external examination report, Chil Sokołowski died from a blow to the head; however, because a full autopsy was not performed, we cannot definitively exclude the possibility that he was also shot. Chil was one of three Sokołowski brothers at Planty. Estera Mappen remembers that on the evening before the pogrom, Chil taught her to dance.

16. AIPN Ki_41_520, t. 1, cz. 2, k. 177–78.

17. AIPN Ki_41_520, t. 1, cz. 2, k. 209.

18. AIPN Ki_41_520, t. 1, cz. 2, k. 185–86.

19. AIPN Ki_41_520, t. 1, cz. 2, k. 214.

20. AIPN Ki_41_520, t. 1, cz. 2, k. 175.

21. AIPN Ki_41_520, t. 1, cz. 2, k. 88. The victim’s age provided here is based on data from the Central Committee of Polish Jews (CKŻP). The circumstances of Gertner’s death may be described in the account of Józef Białkowski (SL 3.31) as well as in the testimonies of Ludwików workers Stanisław Adamczyk and Henryk Konat (SL 6.4 and 6.5). Without knowing which dental notation system is being used, it is difficult to know exactly which teeth are referred to here. The author thanks Dr. Caroline Sturdy-Colls for this observation.

22. Most likely from Auschwitz.

23. AIPN Ki_41_520, t. 1, cz. 2, k. 104, 106. Wolf Kuperberg identified the body (see k. 152). The victim’s age given here is based on data from the CKŻP.

24. AIPN Ki_41_520, t. 1, cz. 2, k. 112. The victim’s age given here is based on data from the CKŻP.

25. AIPN Ki_41_520, t. 1, cz. 2, k. 46.

26. The comma in the tattooed camp number is included in the text of the report.

27. AIPN Ki_41_520, t. 1, cz. 2, k. 66.

28. AIPN Ki_41_520, t. 1, cz. 2, k. 6. The victim’s age provided here is based on data from the CKŻP.

29. AIPN Ki_41_520, t. 1, cz. 2, k. 112. The victim’s age provided here is based on data from the CKŻP.

30. AIPN Ki_41_520, t. 1, cz. 2, k. 92.

31. AIPN Ki_41_520, t. 1, cz. 2, k. 245, 247. In the report Abram’s age was recorded as three weeks, while according to death certificate no. 826/1946, Abram was born a month before the pogrom on June 4, 1946, to parents Moszek Szymon Fisz and Rywka Światowa. See documents from the Urząd Stanu Cywilnego (Civil Registry Office) in Kielce in AG-PK, t. 1, k. 42. See also Appendix A: List of Victims.

32. AIPN Ki_41_520, t. 1, cz. 2, k. 82. The statement of Aleksander Fiedotow, a clerk in the Provincial Committee of the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR), reads as follows: “I recognize the identified as the guard who was on duty at the KW PPR [Provincial Committee of the Polish Workers’ Party], Jaworski Jan, of 64 Sienkiewicza” (AIPN Ki_41_520, t. 1, cz. 2, k. 148). According to death certificate no. 557/1946, Jan Jaworski was born on August 18, 1919, in Czyżów. Wacław Ziółek, testifying in the second Kielce investigation, says that one of those killed was the brother-in-law of a worker in the Provincial Office of Public Security (WUBP), Jerzy Lichacz; see AG-PK, t. 4, k. 125. Lichacz’s sister’s name was Adela Tajtelbaum (née Kuraś, daughter of Stefan, born in 1925; see AIPN Ki_103_1485, k. 208–9). She married a Jew whose last name was Tajtelbaum [first name unknown], who hid with her family during the war in Sandomierz or Złota. They eventually emigrated to Sweden.

33. AIPN Ki_41_520, t. 1, cz. 2, k. 79.

34. It is unclear whether this refers to the same person. The birth certificate of Stanisław Niewiarowski (son of Antoni and Julianna, née Sipowicz, born April 18, 1865) was discovered in the Archiwum Państwowe w Kielcach (State Archive in Kielce; henceforth APK). See APK, Akta stanu cywilnego Katedralnej Parafi Rzymsko-katolickiej w Kielcach, sygn. 167, Akta urodzeń za 1865 r. Akt urodzenia nr 222/1865. For more about Niewiarski, see also chapter 7. According to one testimony, the custodian’s last name was actually Grondowski. He supposedly survived the pogrom. In an article from Żołnierz Polski (Polish Soldier) (July 1946) signed “Major D. J. Płoński” and accompanied by one of Julia Pirotte’s photographs, there is mention of a custodian named Grondowski who was severely beaten and who “during a conversation with our photographer plaintively explained that really there was no such basement there [that is, on Planty Street] where any children could be found.” I am grateful to Andrzej Białek for providing me with a copy of this text.

35. SL 5.7A and SL 4.8.

36. The autopsy description of the corpse that was supposedly Stanisław Niewiarski’s suggests that the deceased was not circumcised (“reproductive organs without changes or injury,” AIPN Ki_41_520, t. 1, cz. 2, k. 79). However, the description of Unknown no. 4 (AIPN Ki_41_520, t. 1, cz. 2, k. 116), who had numerous head injuries, also gives no indication that he was circumcised, which means that Unknown no. 4 could also have been Niewiarski.

37. Carl Langner, Interview 27045, USC Shoah (March 13, 1997).

38. This could have been the wounded Stanisław Niewiarski, who died in the hospital. In Jerzy Daniel’s book, Danuta Świtała from Bodzentyn is quoted as saying that her brother, Tadeusz Winiarski, age twenty-one, died on Planty Street. See Jerzy Daniel, Żyd w zielonym kapeluszu: Rzecz o kieleckim pogromie 4 lipca 1946 (Kielce: Scriptum, 1996), 91–92. I have not found any evidence confirming this.

39. AIPN Ki_53_4750, k. 45.

40. See chapter 6.

41. Miłosz (raw footage).

42. Landsmanshaftn were societies organized by Holocaust survivors from a particular town or region for mutual aid.

43. Michael Chęciński, Poland: Communism, Nationalism, Anti-semitism, trans. Tadeusz Szafar (New York: Karz-Cohl, 1982), 23. See also Grajek, Po wojnie, 90. And finally, Szmerke Kaczerginski, “Di levaye fun di keltser kdushim [The Funeral of the Kielce Martyrs],” Dos Naje Lebn [New Life] no. 23 (July 12, 1946). Kaczerginski writes, “The first victim was Berl Frydman, a tinsmith, who was beaten about the head with a wooden post.” My thanks to Sara Arm for translating this text from Yiddish into Polish.

44. “W łódzkim szpitalu,” Rzeczpospolita, July 9, 1946. “On the 7th of this month victims of a barbaric pogrom of fascist bandits were brought to Łódź and admitted to the Lutheran Hospital. The wounded, numbering 27 people, were transported by a special PCK [Polish Red Cross] train.”

45. Main Registry Book of the former hospital of the WUBP in Łódź, 42 Północna Street, entry dated July 7, 1946. Until January 1945 this was called the Lutheran Hospital in Łódź.

46. Five doctors performed the external autopsies. Dr. Ocepa did not list Dr. Natan Józef Bałanowski from the clinic of the WUBP, who also conducted the autopsies on Pelek Zoberman and Stanisław Niewiarski. In addition, the committee that signed the autopsy reports included two district judges—Ludwik Janowski and Mikołaj Górski. Sources for this section can be found in AIPN Ki_41_520, t. 1, cz. 2 and AIPN BU_0_24_130.

47. See Chil Alpert’s statement in D. Shtokfish, ed. About Our House Which Was Devastated: Memorial Book of Kielce (Tel Aviv: Kielce Societies in Israel and in the Diaspora, 1981), 256.

48. See Józef Zaremba’s testimony dated March 28, 1946, about the behavior of Officer Marian Antonkiewicz of the Citizens’ Militia in the (SL 5.9B).

49. SL 2.1.1.2.

50. Based on the diary of Kazimiera Stępień, a nurse from Częstochowa and Henryk Pawelec’s sister. She and Helena Majtlis transported the wounded on a train to Łódź. She writes, “Between Białogon and Słowik, the train was shot at. Whoever could, hid under the beds, and I along with them. Today, I can’t remember how long it lasted and who was shooting. The train increased its speed.” From Stępień’s diary, entry dated July 5, 1946; this diary is part of Henryk Pawelec’s collection, which is in the private archive of the author.

51. Based on transcripts of raw and unused footage for Marcel Łoziński’s documentary Świadkowie (Video-Nova, 1988). Transcriptions of this footage were commissioned by the author and remain in the author’s possession. Henceforth, this material is referred to as Łoziński (raw footage).

52. Based on the testimony of Daniel Nowaczyk, dated January 6, 1998. See Jan Śledzianowski, Pytania nad pogromem kieleckim (Kielce: Jedność, 1998), 140–41.

53. According to available documents, five people died after being transported to the hospital (four died immediately in Kielce, while Symcha Sokołowski died in Łódź). See Appendix A: List of Victims.

54. Here, Helena Majtlis is incorrect. See chapters 3 and 4.

55. This is a paraphrase of the account of Semyon Melnik from Brooklyn. Melnik was born in 1924 in Pińsk. He was in the Pińsk ghetto and escaped in 1941. He then joined the Red Army and participated in the liberation of the Majdanek concentration camp. During the Warsaw uprising in 1944, he was with the Red Army outside Warsaw and watched as the city burned. On May 8, 1945, he was in Berlin. Semen Mel’nik, Interview 43383 (in Russian), USC Shoah (April 16, 1998).

56. Such remarks, reflecting social panic, probably refer to the repatriation of Jews from the Soviet Union. An example of the reaction to this flow of repatriants can be found in an internal report dated May 1946 by a department of the Freedom and Independence (WiN) movement: “We are supposed to get around a million such repatriants. Transports continue to arrive from Russia . . ., so that the Jewification ([zażydzenie] of our cities is increasing.” See Archiwum Narodowe w Krakowie, Zespół Wolność i Niezawisłość [National Archive in Kraków, Freedom and Independence Collection; henceforth ANKr, WiN] 4, k. 381. WiN was an underground anticommunist movement founded in 1945).

57. The Polish victims were buried separately a day earlier. Jan Jaworski was buried in the New Cemetery (Nowy Cmentarz), section 3, row 6, grave 12. His burial was preceded by a mass in the cathedral and took place on July 7, 1946. In the burial registry the cause of death is listed as “gunshot.” I am grateful to Bogdan Białek for the detailed information about Jaworski’s burial place (email correspondence from February 24, 2017). He writes, “The cemetery plot was not renewed after 20 years, so someone else has already been buried there, however, there was no exhumation—the remains were interred lower than the next burial.”

I was unable to find the burial place of Stanisław Niewiarski, whose grave is not mentioned in the registries of the three main cemeteries in Kielce. According to the cemetery administration, many burials from this period were not recorded.

58. Dawid Kahane, Ten Years to the Kielce Riots (http://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/kielce/Kie248.html), 259. Julia Pirotte’s photograph is archived in the Jewish Historical Institute (ŻIH) in Warsaw.

59. See Rafael Blumenfeld’s unpublished memoirs (SL 2.1.1.32B).

60. According to Blumenfeld’s memoirs. I have been unable to verify this.

61. For Marek Edelman’s recollections of this period, see “Powszechna rzecz zabijanie: Z Markiem Edelmanem rozmawia Joanna Szczęsna,” Gazeta Wyborcza, January 19, 2008.

62. In other words, opponents of the communist regime. The Polish government-in-exile, which opposed both German and Soviet domination, continued to operate in London after World War II until 1990. Polish General Władysław Anders was arrested early in the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland and sent to Moscow, where he was tortured in the storied Lubyanka prison. After Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, Anders was released to form a Polish army to fight alongside the Red Army, but tense relations led to the Soviets’ allowing “Anders’ Army” to leave the Soviet Union through Iran. Eventually Anders’ Army played a significant role in Allied victories in Italy.

63. Dzikowski is referring here to kittels, white robes worn on certain holy days and at life-passage ceremonies.

64. See Deuteronomy 21:7, “Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see [this crime].”

65. See Genesis 12:1. According to Rafael Blumenfeld, “In the years 1945–1946, the call ‘go forth’ was at the top of the list of Zionist principles, which is why members of Ichud’s kibbutzim traveled from central Poland across the northwest border of the country in the direction of Germany and Czechoslovakia, all the way to Berlin.” For more on the Bricha (go forth) campaign, see Grajek, Po wojnie, 26, 56, and passim.

66. Bożena Szaynok, “The Jewish Pogrom in Kielce, July 1946: New Evidence,” Intermarium: The First Online Journal of East Central European Postwar History and Politics 1, no. 3 (1997).

67. Estimates based on a report by Ignacy Wrzos, government commissioner for productivization of the Jewish population in Poland to Secretary of the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR) Zambrowski, dated May 15, 1947 (AAN, PPR, 295/VII-149, k. 221nn).

68. Danuta Blus-Węgrowska, “Atmosfera pogromowa,” Karta, no. 18 (1996): 102.

69. Report on the aid campaign for victims of the pogrom in Kielce conducted by representatives of the Joint Distribution Committee and the CKŻP during the period from July 7 to 14, 1946 (AŻIH, American Joint Distribution Committee 1945–1950, sygn. 350/54).

70. As reported in a letter dated August 22, 1946, signed by Benjamin Taub and Izrael Rozenkranc (A ŻIH, CKŻP 303/XIX/7, 1).

71. From a report from the official trip “taken by citizen Śliwiński to the Kielce province in order to conduct an information-propaganda campaign with the goal of preventing antisemitic disturbances” (AAN, MIiP, sygn.79). See also minutes dated January 30, 1946, from the seventh session of the Religion and Nationality Commission of the State National Council (Komisja Wyznaniowa i Narodowościowa, KRN) of the State National Council: “The special law proposed by some Jewish political activists . . . is not necessary, because the problem of battling with antisemitism fits within the framework of the general democratization of Poland.” Quoted according to Stanisław Meducki, ed., Antyżydowskie wydarzenia kieleckie 4 lipca 1946 roku. Dokumenty i materiały (Kielce: Kieleckie Towarzystwo Naukowe, 1994), 2: 63.

72. The term “productivization of labor” was associated with accusations of idleness among Jews who had returned from the camps. It is not by chance that as early as July 24, 1946, the Council of Ministers established a department of the Commissioner for Productivization of the Jewish population in Poland. See Piotr Kendziorek, Program i praktyka produktywizacji Żydów polskich w działalności CKŻP (Warsaw: ŻIH, 2016). See also Helena Datner, Po Zagładzie: Społeczna historia żydowskich domów dziecka, szkół, kół studentów w dokumentach Centralnego Komitetu Żydów w Polsce (Warsaw: ŻIH, 2016).