CHAPTER 14

The Military Men

In a report printed in the Dziennik ludowy (People’s Daily) in September 1945, we read that Kielce is “a far-flung village” with several dozen kamienice (apartment blocks) in the center, twelve churches, a monastery, and some barracks lost in the forest.1 “All of this is located on hills among winding little streets. Nobel prizewinning author Henryk Sienkiewicz is the only one who has a rather long promenade named after him.”2

One particularly difficult aspect of life in the Kielce region was connected with collecting agricultural quotas, something the Polish Army (Wojsko Polskie, WP) helped with, albeit ineffectively. Of the 58,230 tons of provisions expected by August 1946, the army barely managed to extract 159. Since soldiers from the Red Army initially assisted in this collection process, people assumed that the crops were being sent to the Soviet Union. The situation didn’t change until a collector in Iłża County publicly swore on the Bible that the food products were allocated for Polish workers. Even priests exhorted from their pulpits. The main collector later stated that “if anything can be obtained at all [from the Kielce region], then it can only happen by way of connections with those authorities controlling the area.”3 He thus implied that real power or authority remained in the hands of those who belonged to a previous (prewar) community structure. For this, he was fired from his job.

There was an enormous uproar when the Soviet-backed Lublin Committee4 announced a draft of several cohorts into the Polish Army. As part of the protest, the WP acquired a derogatory nickname referring to a female communist leader, namely “Wanda Wasilewska’s effeminate army.” Zygmunt Broński, a commander of a former WiNunit, wrote that “an army with Jewish officers and Soviets in Polish uniforms” could not fight for the Polish cause, and that’s why the conscripts rightly dodged service.5

Indeed, a plague of desertion forced the authorities to tighten regulations and to start bringing in people by force. They conducted another draft and ruthlessly tracked down those who resisted. And the number of draft-resisters was huge. In the 2nd Warsaw Infantry Division in Kielce, in May 1946 alone, eight unconditional death sentences were issued. According to the Ministry of Public Security (MBP) information on wanted persons, it appears that in late 1945 and early 1946, the UB was pursuing 6,249 deserters from the Polish Army, as well as 871 absent policemen, 394 absent railwaymen, and 347 robbers—but only 30 “conspirators” (oppositionists).

Rather than throwing themselves into the fray, the Polish Army units designated to track down the “forest partisans” in the Kielce region sought a modus vivendi. They gladly joined in agricultural work and cooperated in guarding transports carrying international aid from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). Reports of collaboration between military officers and the underground proliferated as well. In one instance in late May and early June 1946, Second Lieutenant Tadeusz Terczyński of the 4th regiment of the 2nd Infantry Division was exposed for having “joined a band” during the so-called Dęblin operation of May 28, 1946, and for having killed a soldier from his subunit beforehand.6 This incident had an effect on the unit: at least five of its soldiers were tried for their participation in the pogrom. In September 1946 a military prosecutor found that the division’s leadership was responsible for the fact that the division was foremost in violations of discipline.

The underground knew very well where the 2nd Infantry Division outposts were located in Kielce, as evidenced by the successful March 1946 operation to free the commander of an underground group from the Kielce headquarters of the military intelligence office.7

If we are to believe a report from the Radom PPR, entire Polish Army units were sometimes swept up in rebellion: “The military unit stationed in Kozienice—the leadership of this unit, the officers—they are of the most reactionary element possible. The same goes for the soldiers. These are people who during the Sanacja period [the authoritarian Piłsudski regime after 1926] owned estates in Ukraine, [and] now they no longer have them.” They sow antigovernment propaganda; they want to fight “Russia”; they search for a chance to brawl with members of the PPR. “Most likely, officers are in contact with a band.”8

The Internal Security Corps (Korpus Bezpieczeńśtwa Wewnętrznego, KBW), formed by the Communist authorities immediately after the war and subordinated to the Ministry of Public Security, faced similar issues. Masses of its soldiers crossed over to the opponent’s side or only feigned battle. As a measure to counteract this situation, Colonel Henryk Toruńczyk ordered a “quarantine,” or in other words a ban on contact with the local population. He did not issue passes or grant leave, and he threatened violators with summary courts and the possibility of immediate execution by firing squad.

It is probably because of this tendency for desertion from the KBW that WiN officers were so keenly interested in reorganizing the WiN formation in the fall of 1945. According to a report on an attack on Radomsko that occurred on April 19, 1946, it appears that despite signals they received indicating an impending attack, the leadership of the Internal Security Troops (Wojska Bezpieczeństwa Wewnętrznego, WBW) Łódź did not employ “means of resistance,” and a forty-person unit surrendered without a fight. There were also situations in which a unit would come across soldiers impersonating the Internal Security Corps (KBW) in stolen uniforms and vehicles. They would call out, “Don’t shoot, we’re on the same side [my swoi],” and when the units mixed together, they would kill the commander and disarm the troops—who in any case put up no resistance. In another instance, when the partisans outnumbered the other side, they persuaded the commander: “If you want, sir, we can start a battle. But we can also disperse to our homes. It’s Easter today. [And] there are many more of us.”9

In 1946 there are inspection reports coming in from the field that despite rallies, meetings, placards, and “other types of propaganda work,” the population is still negatively disposed toward the KBW. The author of one such report was hopeful that a free concert and dance would help bridge the divide.10 Lieutenant Minkiewicz of the political-education board also reports on widespread fear of the KBW. He reproaches the KBW for arresting three hundred people in the Białystok region suspected of contact with bands, of whom two hundred people are then released, but in a terrible state (“battered”). Apparently, KBW officers excel in beatings. The locals begin to be afraid of the KBW forces, and “as soon as they hear the hum of a car engine, all the men escape into the forest.” From other reports it appears that the KBW officers not only beat peasants, but they also attack and hurl vulgarities at drafted soldiers. At train stations incidents occur between KBW and WP posts. The KBW considers itself to be more important than the regular army, and its young soldiers didn’t show respect for the “old, decorated servicemen.”11 They spread propaganda that the WP is a “reactionary band,” while at the same time there is a proliferation of reports about the exploits of KBW soldiers raping German women12 and murdering Jewish families.13

The Polish military’s top leader is Michał Rola-Żymierski, a former NKVD collaborator and high-ranking member of the Communist regime, who was promoted by Stalin to the rank of marshal. Even before the war ended, he was tasked with transforming the Polish armed forces and combating Polish nationalist underground movements. Above all, “Żymierski’s army,” as it has come to be known, does not like the security organs (bezpieka) and competes with them from the very beginning. The rivalry comes to a head in March 1946 when the state security commission tries to bring Żymierski’s army under the control of the UB in its attempt to battle against the anti-Communist underground. It is true that the head of the security commission for the Kielce region was Stanisław Kupsza, the commander of the 2nd Infantry Division of the Polish Army, but since he had come up through the Soviet military and was de facto a Red Army soldier, this was an even greater humiliation.

New frictions arose constantly between the WP and the UB. A 1945 WiN report reveals that on November 11, during a celebration commemorating the restoration of Poland’s independence in 1918, sappers from Dębica “crashed” a dance organized by the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), where they tore off attendees’ red ties and beat up those who resisted.14 A week later this same group of drunken sappers from the Polish Army dragged a Jewish woman from her home and harassed her, shooting over her head. “Seeing this while passing by was Captain Gołodow [Golodov] [of] the NKVD, who stood up for the Jewish woman and intervened on her behalf. He was beaten up by the soldiers. He summoned the County Office of Public Security (PUBP), which arrested four soldiers. In response to the news about the arrest of their friends, men from their unit came to the building of the UB, in close order and armed, demanding that the arrestees be released. The soldiers threw a couple of grenades onto the pavement and shot at the building, shouting, ‘You Soviet lackeys, Polish NKVD, servants of Moscow.’ After extended bargaining with the head of the UB, the soldiers were released.”15

In a WiN report we read that the atmosphere in the Polish Army in 1945 is dominated by “a vehement hatred of the Soviets, among officers as well as soldiers. Likewise, soldiers treat Jews and politruks [political officers responsible for indoctrination] with contempt.” WiN assessed the general attitude of the army after the national referendum as good: “80 percent of the soldiers voted ‘no.’” Soldiers don’t believe the propaganda. They shout, “Instead of this chatter, give us something to eat!”16

The example of a soldier-deserter sentenced to eighteen months in prison illustrates the atmosphere. After pronouncing the sentence, the judge emphasized that after the sentence is served, the soldier-deserter will still have to perform mandatory military service. To this the soldier replied, “With all due respect, Lieutenant, sir, in eighteen months you won’t be a judge, and I won’t be in prison because within this year there will be an end to this [Communist] democracy.”17

Because the armed forces that had reached an understanding with the underground forces frequently refused to carry out orders during pacification operations, the authorities introduced a regulation that punished the very act of allowing such negotiations to take place.18 From that moment the underground took even more care to appeal to the masses of fighting men. They wrote about the army in a flattering tone, avoided conflicts, and released captured soldiers. Sometimes they didn’t even disarm them, unless—of course—they were Jews. The underground instructed the army that in turn, during an encounter, the soldiers should shoot above their heads, allow themselves to be disarmed, and turn in “politicals.”19

Such situations, however, must have had an effect on the atmosphere within the units, however—an atmosphere that underground reports describe as one of increasing demoralization: “The army’s discipline and morale are low. As a result of theft and corruption, the food is bad. Horses are dying. Sanitary conditions are poor—lice. Lack of equipment.”20 The level of training is described as catastrophic. The soldiers supposedly were routinely drunk. All this created a situation in which, according to WiN, the army completely lost its military value, becoming instead a sort of “paramilitary organization for keeping order.”21

This was not in keeping with the inspections that the Polish Army itself was ordering. A May 1946 report on a Radom unit of sappers by the Regional Recruiting Command evaluates discipline as “generally good,” as were the level of order in the barracks and the condition of the equipment. The report is less positive only with regard to soldiers’ cleanliness: “Of ten inspected, two of the sappers had lice.”22

WiN reports describe the attitude of the army toward the civilian population, particularly the rural segment, as strange. On the one hand, soldiers protect them from attacks; on the other, they themselves plunder, taking not only food but also clothing and money. The reason for this state of affairs is demoralization and hunger in units that do not receive food in sufficient quantities and on time. “As a result of this, the population is generally hostile to the soldiers of the Polish Army.”23

Various types of people made up the units described in the WiN reports. They included “officers-legionnaires from the years 1914 to 1918, officers from the years 1918 to 1939, wartime officers, Russians in Polish uniforms and their own; [and] there are Jews, Ukrainians, Polish Communists and Polish patriots serving in the current army out of necessity.”24

The Communist army won soldiers over by giving promotions. While there were 18,000 officers in the Polish Army in 1939, by February 1946 there were as many as 60,000. Rank-and-file soldiers reacted to this depreciation of the officer rank by showing greater trust in noncommissioned officers than in officers of higher ranks.25

Stanisław Kupsza, Kazimierz Konieczny, and Antoni Frankowski

Stanisław Kupsza stood at the head of the Henryk Dąbrowski 2nd Warsaw Infantry Division in Kielce. Two years after the war, a rather easy linguistic gesture of defiance was to call such men pops, which was short for pełniący obowiązki Polaka (fulfilling the responsibilities of a Pole, meaning, “acting like a Pole”). Kupsza’s unit absorbed the most pops; according to the numbers from September 28, 1943, as many as seventy-six percent of the cadres in his unit were former officers of the Red Army.

Beginning in 1923 Kupsza’s entire career unfolded in this army. He was stationed in Kharkiv in 1940 and assigned to the Polish Army in June 1944. In a performance review we read that he works very little on his Polish language skills. Despite receiving less than stellar evaluations he becomes the commander of the 2nd Infantry Division in Kielce beginning in January 1946.

A typical scene from the period preceding his appointment can be found in his file. Per Kupsza’s orders, a requisition is carried out in the post office building in Sulęcin. Desks, armchairs, couches, chairs, tables, chandeliers, a safe—Polish soldiers load all this onto a vehicle and transport it to division headquarters. Someone summons a postal worker who then calls and alerts the mayor; the mayor calls the police; the police call the military commander of the city; and the military command of the city comes to the conclusion that everything is being done in accordance with the law.

There is an interesting tendency in assessments of Kupsza: critical evaluations are written exclusively in Russian, beginning with the harshest one given by General Karol Świerczewski who in December 1945 suggests that Kupsza is not qualified to serve as a commander. His Polish comrades are significantly kinder in their assessments, and Kupsza is appointed as the commander of the 2nd Infantry Division. A month before the pogrom, he is even awarded the Wartime Order of Virtuti Militari (Class V: Silver Cross), Poland’s highest military decoration.

A year later, division general Stanisław Zarako-Zarakowski, the commander of the 6th Military District, gives Kupsza a downright enthusiastic performance review. Zarako-Zarakowski is a prewar noncommissioned officer, a lawyer from a landowning family and a far-right korporant, meaning, a member of an antisemitic, fraternity-style organization. At present he has a stunning career in Żymierski’s army. We will have to wait until 1948 for critical evaluations to appear in Kupsza’s file, resulting in his return to the USSR as part of General Michał Rola-Żymierski’s popular operation to “re-Polonize” the Polish Army.26

There are at least three “pops” on Kupsza’s staff: Kazimierz Konieczny, Antoni Frankowski, and Wasyl Markiewicz. Knowing more about them is essential to getting a full picture of the role of the army in the pogrom. In the future Kupsza and Markiewicz will be sent back to the Soviet Union. Konieczny and Frankowski will declare Polish nationality.27

Major Kazimierz Konieczny is a teacher from Drohomyśl who is sent to the Soviet construction battalions after the Soviets enter Lwów in 1939; he escapes from these battalions to join the Polish Army. He completes officer candidate school in Moscow and is next sent to Lublin. After the war he serves in various units. He ends up in Kielce as the deputy head for political-educational matters in the 2nd Infantry Division and as the deputy commander of the garrison in Kielce.28 His superiors praise him for being the one who managed to make “even Colonel Kupsza” more politically engaged.29 He has a reputation for being tough and ambitious. Reportedly he likes to give orders.

FIGURE 48. Mourners bearing wreaths and banners grieve at the funeral of victims of the Kielce pogrom. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Leah Lahav.

Colonel Antoni Frankowski is an experienced warrior but also a mythomaniac and a trickster. He is a member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks); a soldier in the Red Army starting in 1927 and then in the Polish Army beginning in 1943, who is wounded at the Battle of Lenino; and an artillery commander in the 2nd Infantry Division. He is most likely the one who noticed something happening on Planty Street, as well as the one who informed Kupsza about the pogrom as he was going to work before 8:00 a.m.30

Counteracting the pogrom was within the scope of Kupsza’s responsibility as head of the Provincial Security Committee (Wojewódzki Komitet Bezpieczeństwa), which was supposed to coordinate the various armed forces throughout the city in the event of unexpected threats or attacks from the underground. At first, however, Kupsza made light of the pogrom (“I went, I saw a few tradesmen there, and they’re causing trouble”). Only later—if we are to believe Frankowski—did he send ten gendarmes (military police) to Planty Street,31 as well as Markiewicz, head of the engineering service for the division.

Major Markiewicz

Wasyl Markiewicz is the fourth Soviet officer in Polish uniform in the 2nd Infantry Division.32 He is also the one whose Polish is the worst. In addition to serving in the division, he acts as the head of the command for the Kielce city garrison. As it seems, it is precisely his wavering that has an impact on the fatal development of the events on Planty Street.

Based on Prosecutor Szpądrowski’s 1946 report, it seems that the gendarmes sent by Kupsza went to the Jewish Committee under the leadership of Warrant Officer Henry Wójcik of the 4th Infantry Regiment. The unit was supposed to stand near Sienkiewicza Street and prevent people from coming close to the building. Wójcik, however, left his unit and went to observe the events himself. Prosecutor Szpądrowski writes that Markiewicz found him and asked, “Where are your people?” to which Wójcik replied, “I don’t have anything.”33

Witness accounts relate that when the army clashed with the crowd, Markiewicz—“tall, slim, slightly stooped”34—was almost “torn to pieces” and retreated to headquarters. Neither Prosecutor Szpądrowski (in his report) nor Major Jerzy Siedlecki of the Ministry of Public Security reproaches him for this.35 Antoni Frankowski, who was on duty that day, claims that as Markiewicz was leaving, Markiewicz was hit in the back with a brick or stone.36 According to the opinion of the trusted Kielce curia, in as much as that opinion concerns itself with Markiewicz, the situation was even more dangerous.

Though only speculation, it seems that the crowd’s attack was caused by the indecisiveness of an officer who didn’t know Polish well, who didn’t appreciate the seriousness of the situation, and who made things worse with his passivity. What also becomes apparent here is the ambivalent attitude of the army—which had a duty to obey the commander but at the same time shared the views of the crowd.

In their testimony, County Office of Public Security (PUBP) functionaries Zbigniew Niewiadomski and Jan Rokicki37 relate that when the crowd raised hostile shouts addressed to the army (“If you let us in, we’ll take care of them”; “Down with the Jewish lackeys”; “Away with the Russki security service that protects Jews”), Markiewicz passively hung around the yard, unable to make a decision. All around him scenes were playing out that undermined his authority. UB functionary Henryk Rybak’s testimony reveals that it appeared that just as he walked away from the entrance to the committee, one of the gendarmes38 hit a Jew who was standing there, and this triggered a storm of applause and shouts of “Long live our army!”39

People crowded around the door, accusing Jews of murdering Polish children. Among them, surely, were Henio Błaszczyk and his father, as well as Maria Binkowska, who was looking for her son. Others, including Jan Jeszke and Maria Studzińska, shouted that the army was protecting Jews, so the crowd should attack the army and kill off the Jews because they “murdered Polish children.”40 Wanting to defuse the situation, Markiewicz proposed to the people laying siege, “Go in and convince yourselves [that there aren’t any children there].”41 Seeing this, the crowd knocked down the fence and forced their way into the building.

Some maintain that Markiewicz decided at that point to take the initiative and carry out a search independently. This was no doubt the moment when the Jewish residents, now surrounded, locked themselves in Goldwaser’s room on the first floor and in the kibbutz on the second. When another army unit drove up, the major issued a command to take over the building (again, according to Niewiadomski’s account). The command “Boys, fire!” was probably intended as a call for the soldiers to fire a warning salvo to scare off the crowd, but as a result the soldiers began to shoot at the building, as well as at the windows. When the soldiers inside heard the shots, they responded by shooting at the Jews. It is probably at that point that Private Kołpacki could no longer contain himself, and “right in front of the crowd he pierced one of the Jews with a bayonet.”42

Henry Rybak, a functionary of the Municipal Office of Public Security, states that an additional incentive to attack was the fact that an unidentified civilian with a gunshot wound to the hand came out of the entryway shouting that he had been shot by Jews. That’s when the people surrounding the building forced their way in and started to drag out its residents. Niewiadomski points out that “while all this was happening, Major Markiewicz calmly went out to the street.”43

At this point Major Markiewicz disappears from the documents of the 2nd Infantry Division. Although his name appears again in various reports prepared by Prosecutor Szpądrowski, the security operatives Jurkowski and Gutowski, and Major Siedlecki of the Municipal Office of Public Security, it will be omitted from Konieczny’s official report. We do not know whether there was some informal agreement here or whether there is any truth to the persistent rumors that the Soviet military authorities conducted an investigation into this case.

Konieczny’s Report: The 2nd Infantry Division Enters the Fray

The military documentation signed by Kazimierz Konieczny, the deputy head of the 2nd Infantry Division,44 describes in extremely general terms the events of July 4 and the army’s participation in them. As mentioned in Józef Różański’s report, this might be connected with the attempts by one Major Lityagin from the military intelligence department of the 2nd Infantry Division, to cover up a scandal.45 Another Soviet, head of the military intelligence department of the Internal Security Corps (KBW), Anatolii Pavlovich Khrenov, also made such attempts. According to a statement by Captain Józef Lewartowski, an officer of this unit,46 when some plundered items from Planty Street were found on the premises of the KBW, Khrenov himself threw them into the stove and burned them, explaining that someone could pay with their head for the theft of “these stockings.” It is also worth remembering that during the first trial after the pogrom, public opinion was shocked by Prosecutor Kazimierz Golczewski’s position, which did not allow for an examination of the soldiers’ attitudes, suggesting that this would be the subject of separate proceedings.

In this context we should ask why Konieczny’s report passes over in silence Major Markiewicz’s actions, as well as the fact that the Jews’ weapons were taken away from them before the massacre. These two factors were key to the pogrom and for this reason almost immediately elicited a wave of rumors that it was caused by a UB provocation.47

In trying to clear up these rumors today, we have at our disposal three tangled, complicated accounts provided by Konieczny: the report from 1946 and the two statements he gave in 1994 and 1997.48 They are full of internal contradictions and are, in turn, undermined by other witnesses (Bednarz, Niewiadomski, Rybak) and those reporting from “the center” (Szpądrowski, Siedlecki, Różański). In all three of Konieczny’s accounts, we see a tendency to exclude any mention of violence on the part of the army and to antedate his own actions so that they appear to end before there are any victims. In relation to the timeline presented in Różański’s report, Konieczny thus tries to take, to some extent, the position of Markiewicz, who disappears from Planty Street before the pogrom is in full swing.

Konieczny’s report begins—as do all the reports from this day—with the matter of the missing Henio. It then focuses on the role of the patrol from the MO, the rivalry between the MO and the UB, and finally on the exploits of the policemen who “robbed and broke down the doors behind which the Jews had locked themselves.” There is nothing in this report about the reprehensible conduct of the soldiers of the 2nd Infantry Division or the KBW troops, even though it resulted in the arrests of as many as fifty-four soldiers and officers.49

In his 1994 testimony Konieczny stated that he wrote the report together with two men who accompanied him that day to Planty Street: Captain Bronisław Bednarz and Lieutenant Izaak Goldberg, who was tasked with collecting reports and statements from individual officers. At the time Bednarz was also questioned; however he flatly denied that he had participated in writing this report.50 Goldberg’s archival trail goes cold in 1957, after he left for Israel with his family.

The earliest fact described in the 1946 report concerns Kupsza’s dispatch (though we don’t know at what time) of a thirty-strong group of military police and soldiers from the city headquarters, as well as thirty people from the 4th Infantry Regiment and five from military intelligence. We learn that Konieczny himself and Captain Bednarz together led a group, though we don’t know which one. Prosecutor Szpądrowski’s report and Antoni Frankowski’s testimonies seem to indicate that this is when Markiewicz, who left the unit to its own fate, was dispatched.

Not until his 1994 testimony does Konieczny identify Markiewicz as the commander of the thirty-person unit from headquarters security that was sent to Planty Street to retake the building from the crowd (which, Konieczny says, happened after he himself had already returned to division headquarters).

In the 1946 report he presents himself and Bednarz as the only commanders present on Planty Street that day. He claims that they effectively dispersed the crowd.51 Although seven Jews had already fallen victim to the pogrom and twelve wounded had been transported to the hospital, Konieczny does not describe them in any detail.52 Following a report that people were beginning to gather on Aleksandra Street, he himself will go to the hospital with a relief force. As he returns, he will once again be forced to deal with the gawkers standing at the Jewish Committee building, this time on the side facing First of May Street.

Workers from Ludwików and Sawmill no. 1 are now on Planty Street. The division’s chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Artur Pollak (about whom we will hear more in a moment), is trying to manage them. This very general account ends with a note that the “rally” in the courtyard of the Jewish Committee building was dispersed and that the author of the report next went to a meeting at division headquarters.

The First Confiscation of Weapons: Konieczny

The report Kazimierz Konieczny wrote just after the pogrom completely omits the confiscation of the Jewish residents’ weapons. The report’s author won’t admit that he played a role in this episode until 1994, fifty years later.53 In the course of being questioned a second time, he will describe the course of events—albeit while modifying the facts.

He will clarify that at 9:00 a.m., on orders from Colonel Kupsza, Major Markiewicz called him and suggested that he should ascertain what was happening on Planty Street. Considering that Markiewicz, who was in charge of the Kielce city garrison’s headquarters, was to some extent Konieczny’s superior, it is difficult to believe that Konieczny could have suggested that Markiewicz turn to the command for further orders. We may also doubt Konieczny’s claim that after returning from Planty Street, and before the group of thirty soldiers under Markiewicz’s command left, he instructed Markiewicz to “use weapons, but only for salvos shot upwards.” Both of these questionable statements appear in Konieczny’s 1994 testimony.

Konieczny says that he himself arrived on Planty Street in a Willys jeep with Bednarz and Goldberg, as well as five soldiers from headquarters security. He found on Planty a crowd of about one hundred people complaining that “Jews [were] shooting from the windows.”54 Konieczny supposedly tried to persuade the crowd that the rumor about children being kidnapped for matzo was “complete nonsense.” His attempt was unsuccessful.

Next, several soldiers from the headquarters security team helped him vacate the lobby of the committee building, which was filled with policemen and civilians. Among them was, supposedly, the policeman with the red-and-white armband who had sifted through the coal with a shovel looking for children’s corpses (we already know him as the drunken policeman, Ludwik Pustuła).55 When only a few men in civilian clothing remained on the ground floor, Konieczny, Bednarz, and Goldberg went up a floor, “where until then none of those present had entered.” Konieczny claimed that he asked the Jews there if anyone had in fact shot from the windows. When they denied it, he asked them to hand over their weapons. After disarming the Jews and moving the crowd away from the building, he determined that he had fulfilled his assignment and therefore, leaving guards on site, went to headquarters. He claims that the situation had been brought under control, and that at the time there were no victims on Planty Street. Next, he supposedly also drove around town (to the hospital), but he didn’t go back to the Silnica River.

In his testimony, Konieczny seems to be departing from the truth because at around 1:00 p.m. Albert Grynbaum, who was just leaving the committee building in the company of his friends, bumped into him. At the time Major Konieczny was standing with Szczepanik, the deputy provincial commander of the MO, and the Soviet advisor Shpilevoi, doing nothing about the crowd that was beginning to press around the building. “The people gathered there were shouting, agitating for killing all the Jews. The commanders on site didn’t react to the above,” said Grynbaum.56 It also appears from Grynbaum’s testimony that when he walked out of the committee, there was at least one corpse lying in front of the building: “A man was thrown from the second floor onto the street. A soldier walked up to the corpse lying there and kicked him in the head in the presence of the entire crowd.”57

Another officer of the Provincial Office of Public Security (WUBP), Jan Mucha, confirms this description: “About five officers were standing near the building, Major Konieczny and Lieutenant Colonel Pollak. Colonel Shpilevoi and I approached Major Konieczny and told him to take all the military men who were in the courtyard and disperse this crowd, which was standing at a distance of 150 meters from the building. They did not react, they ignored each other, which led to another incident.”58

Adolf Berman gives a short description of the above officers on Planty Street, including Konieczny, labeling them “complete buffoons.” Mentioning Konieczny by name, he writes, “A changeable attitude, previously passive, he became disconcerted, then he defended [the Jews].”59 We don’t know to what extent we can believe Edka Ajzenman’s testimony in which she states that he “ran around and called out non-stop, whistling ‘cease fire,’ but no one listened to him.”60

During the second Kielce investigation in the nineties, the aforementioned Captain Bednarz also disputes many facts in Konieczny’s account. He denies that he went to Planty Street with his supervisor at the head of a forty-man unit. He does not recall arriving at the Jewish Committee building by car with Konieczny and Lieutenant Goldberg. He does not remember entering the building or reporting to Major Konieczny about the first fatalities among the Jews.61

But the words of one worker, Stanisław Lipiński, incriminate either Konieczny or Markiewicz. On the day of the pogrom, Lipiński testified that none of the military commanders, which included “one at the rank of lieutenant colonel, another at the rank of major, the third at the rank of captain,” nor anyone from the gendarmerie, “ordered their subordinates to prevent the crowd from forcing their way into the building inhabited by Jews. As a result, soldiers entered the building, dragged out its residents, and handed them over to the civilian population.”62

A report written by UB functionary Leopold Arendarski provides details, telling of the downright “insolent behavior of the soldiers and officers of the WP and the 4th regiment of the infantry,” many of whom engaged in the murder of Jews. He mentions “an older gendarme” and “two officers of the WP,” and next to this reference there is a handwritten note “4th regiment of the infantry.” Arendarski testifies that he also witnessed “an officer of the Polish Army [shooting] from a pistol at one of the Jews,” and that the crowd on Planty Street rewarded him for this by lifting him up to shouts of “Long live the Polish Army!”63

The Second Confiscation of Weapons: Rypyst and Jędrzejczyk

Unfortunately, the prosecutors who questioned Kazimierz Konieczny during the second Kielce investigation in the nineties didn’t ask him why he omitted Wasyl Markiewicz from his report dated July 7, 1946. Nor did they ask him about the confiscation of weapons from the Jews—a matter that was presented completely differently in, for example, the testimony of Colonel Frankowski.64 These contradictions are all the more puzzling since Konieczny’s name does not come up in a report of the Ministry of Public Security where we find a description of the Jewish residents being disarmed. There is mention, however, of “some second lieutenant” who took “6–7 revolvers” from the Jews.65

The name of this second lieutenant comes to light in Prosecutor Szpądrowski’s report, where there is a discussion of the military intelligence department’s case against Second Lieutenant Marian Rypyst of the 2nd Infantry Division. (It is possible that Rypyst was confused with Second Lieutenant Piotr Jędrzejczyk, who was accompanying him at the time.) The accusations against Rypyst were also confirmed by Jechiel Alpert, who was himself disarmed by Rypyst. Henryk Kamrat and Juliusz Bertinger testified that Rypyst threatened the Jews with the words, “Don’t worry, we’ll deal with you.”66 Szpądrowski warns that these same accusations could also be made against Jędrzejczyk, an alum of Jagiellonian University’s prewar philosophy department who disappeared right after the pogrom. But these accusations were never made and in 1947 Jędrzejczyk reappeared and was hired as the commander of the paramilitary Volunteer Reserves of the Citizens’ Militia (Ochotnicza Rezerwa Milicji Obywatelskiej, ORMO) in the provincial headquarters of the MO in Kielce.67

Piotr Jędrzejczyk’s name also emerges in the sensational account given by Zdzisław Domagała to colleagues from the Democratic Alliance even as the pogrom was still unfolding not far away. As mentioned in a previous chapter, Domagała declared that “in the Jewish community [gmina] building he saw corpses in a room with closed shutters, and that he could not say if they were the corpses of children or adults. When he was looking at the aforementioned corpses, Lieutenant Jędrzejczyk was also there.”68 At this point, the narrative thread breaks off.

Thanks to Mojżesz Jura’s account, we can imagine what the search in the Jewish Committee building looked like from the perspective of those who were besieged. “Suddenly a lieutenant with one star entered my flat and with him one soldier.69 After entering the flat, the second lieutenant shouted at us: ‘Whoever has weapons, turn them over.’70 One among us, i.e., Szejon Frydm, legally had a pistol, which he immediately handed to the second lieutenant, but the second lieutenant didn’t take the weapon. This second lieutenant was of average height, a long face, wearing a field cap, with a handgun. The soldier who was with the second lieutenant was shorter, dark face and thin, I didn’t see any weapon on him.”71 Since we only have access to Rypyst’s registration card, we cannot compare him to the description above; however, a photograph of Piotr Jędrzejczyk seems to correspond to Mojżesz Jura’s description.

The story of the two searches—the first conducted by Konieczny and the second by Rypyst and Jędrzejczyk—can be clarified by the account of Jechiel Alpert, who remembered the visit “of some major” who wanted to disarm the Jews at around 11:00 a.m., and then again the visit of “some young second lieutenant” when shots had already been fired on the second floor. This second lieutenant turned to him and said, “‘Well, thank God everything has settled down, you can be calm, sir, . . . hand over those weapons.’ I say to him, ‘I won’t hand them over.’ And he says, ‘I advise you, sir, to hand over the weapons because this could turn into a provocation, what do you need that for, sir? After all, everything is fine.’. . . That’s when we handed over the weapons.”72

Izrael Terkieltaub’s Account of the Death of Seweryn Kahane

The role of Rypyst and Jędrzejczyk—the only officers from the Polish Army whom we know by name and who were present in the building of the Jewish Committee at around 1:00 p.m.—would not be so important if it were not tied to the death of Chairman Seweryn Kahane.73 Adolf Berman suggested this connection in his report when he described how, shortly after noon, two officers of the County Office of Public Security (PUBP) attempted to remove Kahane from the building on Planty Street: “Gajewski and Arendarski from the UB come in for Chairman Doctor Kahane. Two military men call out to Gajewski, ‘You Jewish lackey!’—they push both of them away, they force their way to Kahane, shots are fired, Kahane is killed.”74

In the 1980s Michał Chęciński published the previously unknown account of pogrom survivor Izrael Terkieltaub.75 There we read, “Shortly after the pogrom began, three lieutenants entered the building of the Jewish Committee. At the time I was in the room of Doctor Kahane, the chairman of the congregation. When the officers entered the room, Doctor Kahane was holding the receiver and trying to get a connection with the city [administration], but telephone communications had been cut off. The officers said they had come to take away weapons. . . . One of them went up to Doctor Kahane, ordered him to calm down, because soon it would all be over. Then he went up to him from behind and shot him in the head at close range. This could have been at around 11:00 a.m.”76

It would seem that this account by an eyewitness would clarify everything, but there are inconsistencies in it. The death of the chairman could not have occurred at 11:00 a.m.; it occurred only after Albert Grynbaum had been taken away from the building at around 1:00 p.m.77 Also, Mieczysław Kwaśniewski reports that Kahane was killed during a telephone conversation they were having sometime around noon.78 Terkieltaub’s description of the type of shot that killed Kahane also does not add up. Based on the external postmortem report, Kahane was shot from behind through the heart, not in the head. All the other circumstances of this death are confirmed by witnesses Arendarski, Hersz Gutman, Borys Wajntraub, Ewa Szuchman, and through second-hand information by Adolf Berman.

Meeting over the Coffin

The search for Doctor Kahane’s murderers began on the day after the pogrom. The events that took place during the funeral service at the Pakosz cemetery have become the stuff of legend. We know of them from the accounts of four people: Jan Gutowski, Anczel Pinkusiewicz, and two direct witnesses, namely Edka Ajzenman, secretary in the department for functionaries’ affairs in the WUBP, and Colonel Antoni Frankowski.

During the funeral ceremony a survivor of the pogrom by the name of Dębski identified the lieutenant who had confiscated weapons from the Jews. Seeing that he had been exposed, this officer went off to the side on the pretext of wanting to smoke a cigarette and then disappeared. (According to Szpądrowski’s report, it seems that Colonel Jędrzejczyk suddenly departed, which looks mysterious in the context of the investigation that was being conducted in the unit.) “Dębski came up to me and said, ‘Edzia, that colonel was standing next to you, he’s the one who took our weapons,’” says Ajzenman, who passed the information on to Antoni Frankowski, who was standing next to her. “A lieutenant who was smoking a cigarette was here with you, sir, he asked you to stand in front of him.” Ajzenman later saw this lieutenant in prison in Kielce. She assumed that he took advantage of the amnesty after the elections.79

Frankowski confirmed Ajzenman’s account in the 1990s. He stated that the officers who were identified at the time were (Second) Lieutenant Jędrzejczyk and Warrant Officer Rypyst. He stated that on the evening of the day of the funeral, he was summoned to headquarters. In the lecture hall he saw the deputy minister of national defense, General Marian Spychalski, surrounded by several officers, among whom he recognized the chief military prosecutor. Spychalski asked Frankowski if he knew the officers who had been identified as the ones who confiscated the Jews’ weapons. “I answered yes and stated that they were Lieutenant Jędrzejczyk and Warrant Office Rypyst.” They were brought in, and both admitted to the act of which they were accused. “With a raised voice, Spychalski ordered them both to be arrested.”80

It is difficult to know what to think about this account. Kazimierz Konieczny decidedly denies it, but he himself often departs from the truth. In turn, Frankowski’s performance reviews emphasize his dissembling nature, his tendency to argue, and his lack of self-criticism. This officer supposedly “is untruthful, exaggerates inconsequential things, and is not respected.” His poor memory, and even “some signs of memory loss,”81 are highlighted. Thus it’s surprising that he gave such a detailed account when he was already over ninety years old.

In the scant documentation of the military prosecutor’s office of the 2nd Infantry Division, a single note can be found that testifies to the fact that as late as October 1946, the military intelligence department of the 2nd Infantry Division conducted “several more serious cases involving officers, namely that of Warrant Office Rypyst.”82 Unfortunately, we do not know precisely what these cases were about or how they ended.

Artur Pollak

It would seem that these crumbs and confusing clues bring us to the end of the definitive history of the pogrom, which begins to slowly burn out after 2:00 p.m. on July 4, 1946. However, among the general powerlessness, incompetence, dodging, and prevarication on Planty Street, there appears at this moment an officer who finally manages to accomplish something. First, he drives away the crowd from narrow Planty Street and sets up posts at its entrances. Next, along with army units that arrive from Zgórsk and later from Góra Kalwaria, he first enters the school yard next to 7 Planty Street and ultimately enters the building from which he gradually leads away the Jews.

Until now, Lieutenant Colonel Artur Pollak was known to historians only by name. No attention was paid to him because he didn’t fit any patterns. How would it have looked if a prewar officer who had been decorated with the Virtuti Militari medal for his role in the Polish-Soviet War (1919–20) had brought the pogrom under control, while the distinguished Soviet military men were unable to accomplish this?

Pollak appears at the moment when a debate is taking place in the Kielce flat of Józef Kalinowski, the secretary of the Polish Workers’ Party (PRP). It is a debate about who should go to the school yard and make a speech to the workers. Head of the WUBP Sobczyński is there, and he sneers, putting forward one Jew after the next as candidates. Vice-president Urbanowicz explains that he cannot go because even though he is not a Jew, he has a Semitic appearance. Józef Kalinowski, a Jew and the host of the gathering, doesn’t want to be accused of favoring Jews. Becoming impatient, Sobczyński’s deputy Jan Mucha goes to the division headquarters and demands a military unit. Only then does Kupsza, the commander of the 2nd Infantry Division, assign the task to Pollak. Pollak takes fifty people with him, goes to Planty, and drives the crowd away from the building. “In the meantime, [WUBP functionaries from Zgórsk] arrived, and we had them surround the entire building, while the army dispersed the entire crowd.”83

Prosecutor Szpądrowski, a man of similar background and age, devotes a lengthy paragraph to Pollak in his report. He writes that “the situation of the military men with Lieutenant Colonel Pollak at the helm was difficult and dangerous in view of the crowd’s attitude toward the army as ‘defenders of Jews.’ Pollak was threatened, insulted, and actively blocked, and he had no help from either the police or the security service. And even the younger officers of the Polish Army—who were inexperienced and too young (and even, as the commander of the division, Lieutenant Colonel Pollak, described them, ‘unintelligent,’)—did not know how to deal with the crowd, lacked initiative, and were helpless.”84

A survivor of the pogrom, Borys Wajntraub, remembers Pollak well. Wajntraub was sitting upstairs when suddenly he heard through a megaphone that the “Russki army” had arrived. This was a bluff because if they had been told that the Polish Army had arrived, the Jews would not have come out.

“There was one military man there,” says Wajntraub. “It was really something wonderful, I don’t know, maybe he was a Jew? He said, ‘Before I take you, take all your things, because you won’t be coming back here again.’ We were afraid that the pogrom would start up again. But he said, ‘Don’t be afraid, it’s the Soviet army. We are taking you to the barracks.’ We started to walk down. We got into vehicles—there were two trucks with high wooden sideboards—and we drove away.”

Jechiel Alpert was also taken by Pollak’s melodious accent. The commander of the team that rescued us, he said, was a Russian, he had a typical Russian accent. But Artur Pollak, the son of Rajmund and Maria Adamus, simply spoke in the singsongy accent of the Lwów region. He was born in Borynicze (today Borynychi, Ukraine) near Lwów four years before the end of the nineteenth century. He always wanted to be a soldier. He completed two schools in his quest to become one: the military secondary school in Fischau and the cadet school in Lwów. And finally he was accepted into the military academy in Wiener-Neustadt, Austria, but wasn’t able to study there because of the outbreak of World War I.

FIGURE 49. Soldiers in funeral cortege for the victims of the Kielce pogrom. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Leah Lahav.

Pollak was an officer in the Austrian army, and beginning in November 1918, an officer in the Polish Army. He fought well. He was seriously wounded three times, and lightly wounded seven. He collected an armful of medals and orders, the Virtuti Militari among them. Following the September campaign in 1939, during which Pollak commanded a regiment, he was interned in a camp in Hungary, where he spent the entire war. In 1944 the Soviets transported the camp all the way to Ryazan. He returned in May 1945 and three months later joined the Polish Army as a volunteer. At the moment of the pogrom, he had been serving as the chief of staff in the 2nd Infantry Division for only a week,85 but he was already respected among the soldiers. In his file the signatures of all the main characters in this chapter appear at the bottom of Pollak’s performance reviews: Kupsza, Konieczny, Frankowski, and even General Karol Świerczewski.

After the pogrom Pollak was promoted to general. This idyll didn’t last long, however. In February 1947 Kupsza put forward a motion to demobilize the old soldier, who was “a bit too saturated with the pre-1939 spirit” and could not come to terms with Soviet officers in the Polish Army. A year later comments of the following type begin to appear in his performance reviews: “an element that is absolutely foreign to us—a cadet.” In 1948 he was transferred to the reserves.

Notes

1. This description of Kielce is based on text concerning the 1945 harvest festival in Kielce entitled “Darkness of the Middle Ages among the Świętokrzyskie Mountains” and paraphrased in the WiN Archives (ANKr, WiN 42, 213).

2. Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846–1916) was a Polish author of the late nineteenth century. He is known for the novels With Fire and Sword (1884) and Quo Vadis (1895). Sienkiewicz was awarded the 1905 Nobel Prize for Literature.

3. ANKr, WiN 42, k. 225. “Authorities” here refers to priests and other prewar community leaders.

4. “Lublin Committee” was an informal name for the Polish Committee of National Liberation (Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego, PKWN).

5. AIPN BU_0187_1_1, k. 58.

6. See Anna G. Kister, “Wojsko wobec polskiego niepodległościowego podziemia zbroj nego 1944–1949,” Zeszyty Historyczne WiN-u (2003) nos. 19–20.

7. 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: 40.

8. See also Ryszard Śmietanka-Kruszelnicki, Podziemie poakowskie na Kielecczyźnie w latach 1945–1948 (Kraków: IPN, 2002), 243. More on the subject can be found in the collection of reports for 1945–1946 in AIPN BU_2386_18937.

9. Śmietanka-Kruszelnicki, Podziemie poakowskie, 254.

10. See KBW inspection reports in AIPN BU_635_9, k. 11–15.

11. See KBW inspection reports in AIPN BU_635_9, k. 6.

12. See KBW inspection reports in AIPN BU_635_9, k. 138.

13. See the report regarding Ensign Antoni Grabski, Corporal Stefan Walczak, and Gunner Antoni Gomulak of the 4th Operational Battalion, Internal Security Troops (WBW), all of whom on April 23, 1946, in Gdańsk murdered the Jew Nasibilski (or Nasibirski, first name unknown) and his twenty-year-old daughter (first name unknown) (AIPN BU_635_9, k. 44–46).

14. ANKr, WiN 7, 115.

15. ANKr, WiN 7, 115–16.

16. ANKr, WiN 39, k. 23.

17. ANKr, WiN 42, k. 281.

18. Kister, Wojsko, 57.

19. Kister, Wojsko, 58.

20. ANKr, WiN 38, 366.

21. ANKr, WiN 39, k. 19.

22. See the report on the lustration of the 2nd Mazovian Regiment of Sappers in Radom, dated May 13, 1946 (AIPN Ld_409_9, k. 39).

23. ANKr, WiN 39, k. 23.

24. ANKr, WiN 39, k. 23.

25. ANKr, WiN 39, k. 23.

26. See the performance reviews written by Colonel Sława (October 6, 1948) and General Popławski (November 19, 1948), both written in Russian (CAW [WBH], sygn. 497/58/7242).

27. Frankowski suggested that he had been persecuted in the army from the moment he began to emphasize his Polish nationality (CAW [WBH], sygn. 1507/72/93, p. 71). This dispute, recorded in his personnel file, is relevant as a testament to the language of relations between Poles and Soviets in the late 1940s. Its background was a proposal, allegedly made to Frankowski by Marshal Rola-Żymierski, to apply for Polish citizenship. Frankowski agreed and applied to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR for resignation of Soviet citizenship. Then the pressure began, together with accusations such as “he has become Polo-nized”; that he exchanged a great state for the “Polish goat”; and that he “put on Piłsudski’s uniform.” See CAW (WBH), sygn. 1507/72/93, k. 48, 57.

28. His latter function is revealed through his signature on a document addressed to the people of Kielce. See the document “Do ogółu ludności miasta Kielce i województwa kieleckiego” z 11/7/1946 (APK, UWK/II, sygn. 1242).

29. CAW (WBH), sygn. 1642/79/251.

30. Frankowski speaks about this in his testimony during the second Kielce investigation. See SL 3.26.

31. This is according to Frankowski. However, Sobczyński (SL 4.3A) and Jan Mucha (SL 4.4) recall that there were only seven gendarmes.

32. CAW (WBH) sygn. 534/44/53 or 5551, k. 91.

33. SL 1.1. Markiewicz’s interrogation has not been found. Wójcik, sentenced to eight years in prison, is mentioned by an anonymous informant interviewed by Krzysztof Kąkolewski. See Umarły cmentarz: Wstęp do studiów nad wyjaśnieniem przyczyn i przebiegu morderstwa na Żydach w Kielcach dnia 4 lipca 1946 roku (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo von Borowiecky, 1996), 167.

34. See Henry Rybak’s testimony (SL 4.11A).

35. See SL 1.1 (Szpądrowski’s report), SL 1.15 (Siedlecki’s testimony) and SL 3.25 (Frankowski’s testimony). Szpądrowski writes that when Markiewicz retreated from Planty Street for understandable reasons, he left “a deputy, warrant officer Dobkowski, with orders to guard the Jewish building and set up posts. Officer Dobkowski set up posts in front of this building but immediately left the square, leaving his subordinates without command, and went to lunch. . . . The crowd broke up the posts” (SL 1.1).

36. SL 3.25.

37. SL 4.9.

38. SL 1.1.

39. SL 4.11.

40. See documents in the case of Maria Studzińska (APK, 1040 Sąd Okręgowy w Kielcach, sygn.1876). See also documents in the case of Jan Jeszke (APK, 1040 Sąd Okręgowy w Kielcach, sygn.1872).

41. Rybak confirms this in his testimony, as do MBP functionaries Jan Jurkowski and Henryk Gutowski. See SL 1.8.

42. See Jan Rokicki’s testimony (SL 4.8).

43. See Zbigniew Niewiadomski’s testimony (SL 4.9). This is contradicted, however, in the testimony of Tadeusz Lis on the attempt to storm the Jewish Committee building by an unknown lieutenant (SL 4.14).

44. SL 1.13.

45. SL 1.14.

46. See SL 3.28.

47. It appears that such rumors were circulating around the country in 1946. For example, Hugo Steinhaus reports a rumor that the police had searched the building where the Jews lived and confiscated their weapons the day before the pogrom. See Hugo Steinhaus, Wspomnienia i zapiski (London: Aneks, 1992), 359.

48. SL 3.26A and 3.26B.

49. See Józef Różański report (SL 1.14).

50. SL 3.27.

51. See Stefan Przeździecki’s testimony (SL 3.32B).

52. Among those killed before noon were Abram Wajnryb, Chil Sokołowski, Berl Frydman, Bajla Gertner, Fania Szumacher, Rachela Zander, and Estera Proszowska. Symcha Sokołowski and Naftali Tajtelbaum were wounded, and both would later die in the hospital. Other witnesses placed the number of those killed higher. Police officer Antonkiewicz, for example, testified that upon his arrival on Planty Street at about 10:30, he saw “about 20 Jewish corpses lying there.” See SL 5.9A.

53. SL 3.26B.

54. The motif that residents of 7 Planty Street used weapons (a motif which the residents themselves adamantly reject; see Ewa Szuchman [SL 2.1.1.4A]) appears in an MO report (SL 1.4) and Father Zelek’s claims as recorded in Bishop Kaczmarek’s report (SL 1.2). Witness Franciszek Jonkisz contradicts this in two testimonies (SL 7.3).

55. See Ludwik Pustuła’s testimony (SL 5.13B). See also the section “Pustuła and His Children” in chapter 3.

56. SL 1.8. See also Zenon Jamczyk’s testimony: “At the intersection of Planty and Sienkiewicza, I saw a Polish Army major. I went up to him and said, ‘Mr. Major, sir, they’re beating some corporal there on the square,’ but the major pushed me away and said, ‘Let them beat him’” (SL 5.24K).

57. SL 1.8.

58. SL 4.4.

59. SL 1.26.

60. SL 12.1.

61. AG-PK, t. 2, k. 43–48 (k. 236–39).

62. SL 3.12.

63. SL 1.12.

64. Compare Konieczny’s report (SL 1.13) with that of Frankowski (SL 3.25).

65. See Major Siedlecki’s report (SL 1.15).

66. SL 1.1.

67. CAW (WBH), sygn. 1570/75/461. The ORMO became known for its role in suppressing dissent under the Communist regime, notably during the 1968 student protests.

68. SL 1.16. On Jędrzejczyk, see Jerzy Jerzmanowski, W starych Kielcach (Łódź: Wydawnictwo Łódzkie, 1984), 180.

69. A single star on the shoulder board was worn by warrant officers, so this is perhaps a reference to Rypyst.

70. No last name is mentioned, but this may have been Jędrzejczyk.

71. SL 2.1.1.11.

72. SL 1.1.1.2B.

73. Based on transcripts from Michał Chęciński’s archive, Chęciński asked Edka Ajzenman: “Did you know that an officer shot the secretary? In the back of his head?” (SL 12.1).

74. SL 1.27. Arendarski wrote in his report: “I saw an officer of the WP shoot one of the Jews with a pistol. And later the people lifted him up in the air for this act, shouting ‘Long live the WP’ and that every soldier should get a bottle of vodka for such an action” (SL 1.12).

75. See Izrael Terkieltaub’s testimonies in SL 2.1.1.8A and B.

76. The testimony continues: “At the hospital I was questioned by a man from the UB. I testified . . . that Dr. Kahane had been shot by a lieutenant in the WP. The interrogating officer was supposed to return in three days to continue the conversation, but he did not. I have never been called to testify to a prosecutor or to a court about the death of Dr. Kahane or to identify the murderer.” Cited according to Michael Chęciński, Poland: Communism, Nationalism, Anti-semitism, trans. Tadeusz Szafar (New York: Karz-Cohl, 1982), 23–33. These points do not appear in Terkieltaub’s 1946 testimonies.

77. SL 1.8.

78. SL 4.12.

79. SL 13.1.

80. SL 3.26.

81. CAW (WBH), sygn. 1507/72/93, k. 51.

82. See the report of the military prosecutor from September 1946 filed as “Sprawozdanie z czynności Prokuratury Wojskowej 2DP za miesiąc wrzesień 1946” (Ld_409_13, k. 29).

83. SL 4.4.

84. SL 1.1.

85. CAW (WBH) 742/611439.