APPENDIX A

List of Victims

The preserved documentation includes thirty-six external postmortem examinations conducted on July 4 and 5, 1946, of the bodies brought to St. Aleksander Hospital in Kielce. This group of victims consisted of thirty-five Jews, male and female, and a non-Jew, Jan Jaworski (listed in row no. 18 on the list of victims below). Hospital records for this two-day period also include reports of medical examinations of more than forty wounded (see appendix B, column 4). The wounded included eight unconscious people: a second Pole from Planty Street, Niewiarski (Niewiarowski, identification uncertain, no. 27 in appendix A), who died that same day three hours later; Izer Bruk (no. 5); Róża Rajzman (no. 32); Naftali Tajtelbaum (no. 41), who died two days later; and four other people who recovered.

The bodies of Rywka Fisz (no. 11) and her child (no. 10) were not brought to the hospital mortuary from Cedzyna until July 8, 1946, shortly before the funeral of the victims. Dr. Bałanowski conducted the postmortem examination on Fisz and her child before the funeral; however, the hospital register must have already been closed out for the day by the time he submitted his report. Thus, his notes can be found at the end of the AIPN collection containing the postmortem reports (Ki_41_420, t. 1, part 2).

On July 7, 1946, Rózia Kolersztajn “recognized the deformed corpse” of Kiwa Liberbaum (no. 24) “by his clothes” among eighteen unidentified bodies. Since this identification occurred after the hospital register was closed out, his name does not appear on any of the compiled lists of pogrom victims. When we add Liberbaum to the list, the number of victims totals forty-nine. The last victim to die was Symcha Sokołowski (no. 37). He died in the hospital in Łódź on July 26, 1946.

Uncertain is also the fate of Gienia Samborska (appendix B, no. 91), who definitely lost her child in the pogrom (see Samborski, no. 35). Samborska is sometimes identified as Gienia Płótno (see, for example, Esthera Montag’s interview with USC Shoah, interview no. 12966). Some sources say that Samborska survived the pogrom, while one source lists her date of death as between July 6 and 12, 1946 (Wokół 2, p. 179).

The names of Dawid Józef Gruszka (no. 15) and Szmul Rembak (no. 34), who were both killed in Koniecpol during the train action and buried in Częstochowa, do not appear on any extant lists of victims. Nevertheless, they should be counted among the victims of the Kielce pogrom and are included as such below.

There are at least five lists of pogrom victims. When collated, the overall list totals forty-nine names. The external postmortem examination reports of victims concern thirty-three of those mentioned by name, while eighteen of these reports describe unidentified bodies. In total, the number of names on all lists is equal to roughly the number of postmortem reports, although there remains some doubt as to whether or not some of the bodies were correctly identified.

Because the documentation is incomplete and the identifications uncertain in some cases, it is impossible to definitively determine the number of pogrom victims. The table below is not intended to present a definitive number. Rather, it allows us to compile, compare, and preserve the available information before it fades into oblivion. It juxtaposes the data available on various CKŻP lists (people repatriated from the USSR; residents living at 7 Planty Street before the pogrom; survivors who were transported from Kielce to Łódź; and people admitted to the Łódź hospital), with information from the Bad Arolsen database, witness testimonies, and other sources (“Pogrom accounts” and “Source(s)” in column 6).

The first column in the table, consisting of thirty-two names plus seven unknowns, is based on a list prepared by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee from July 1946 (AŻIH, JOINT, reference number 350/54, p. 44). The last entry from the JOINT list, “B-2969,” is incorporated into the entry for Harendorf (no. 17), whose postmortem report mentions this camp number.

The second column is based on the list prepared in 2016 by the Israeli Kielce Society, or Kielce Landsmanshaft. This list was used as the basis for a new inscription on the tombstone of the pogrom victims in the Pakosz cemetery.

The third column, which is analogous to the JOINT list in column 1, is based on the Ichud funeral program. A photographed copy of the original one-page leaflet can be found in the archive of the Main Records of the Public Prosecutor regarding the Kielce pogrom (Akta główne prokuratora w sprawie “Pogromu kieleckiego” or AG-PK). Again, the entry “B-2969” from the Ichud funeral program is incorporated into the entry for Harendorf (no. 17) whose postmortem report mentions this camp number.

The fourth column is based on two lists published on July 12 and 19, 1946, in the Yiddish-language weekly Dos Naye Lebn.

The fifth column contains data from the above-discussed external postmortem examination reports (AIPN Ki 41_520, t. 1, cz. 2).

The table includes all information available in the above-described sources, but the resulting data is at times contradictory. Upon closer scrutiny, it turns out that the sources contain numerous clerical and factual errors. On occasion, they present us with unresolvable contradictions. A good example of this is the case of Niewiarski (Niewiarowski, no. 27) as discussed in chapter 2. According to the testimony of survivors, he was an old man reported to have received a blow to the head during the pogrom. In the postmortem, however, he was “assigned” the body of a thirty-year-old man who had been shot. A similar error occurred in the identification of the body supposedly belonging to Naftali Tajtelbaum (no. 41), who was sixteen years old at the time. The corpse described as Tajtelbaum’s in the report belonged to a man twice his age.

Another enigma is Pola Gutwurcel (listed alphabetically between nos. 16 and 17), who seems to have been mistakenly added to several lists of victims. Her death seems unlikely, since a few days after the pogrom she told the WUBP on Focha Street about the circumstances of her rescue. Also, there is no mention of her among the postmortem examination reports or medical reports of the wounded. On the contrary, Gutwurcel’s name appears on a list of the Kielce Society (ziomkostwo kieleckie) in the late 1940s, when she registered in Rychbach (Dzierżoniów) after the pogrom. This could be seen as conclusive evidence that Gutwurcel survived. It is for these reasons that she is included in the list below, but not numbered as a victim. Another person who may have been mistakenly included on the list of victims is Apolonia Sowińska (listed alphabetically between nos. 37 and 38, without a row number). Sowińska was baptized, spent the war “on the Aryan side,” and never lived in the building on Planty Street. Unfortunately, many other, similar errors were made on these lists, which is understandable considering that after the pogrom the community was in shock, people were desperate to leave, and everyone was rushing because of the need to hold the funeral quickly.

The number of children who lived at 7 Planty Street also remains an unresolved issue. There were about half a dozen children living in the kibbutz. There were also at least three pregnant women living there; two of them lost their children as a result of the violence. Róża Opolska, present on Planty Street (see appendix B, no. 81), was six months pregnant on the day of the pogrom. She gave birth to Renata Lewkowicz in September 1946 in Łódź. Renata (René), whom we could consider to be the youngest survivor of the pogrom, today lives in Ottawa, Canada.

Also living in the kibbutz at the time of the pogrom were Izia Dajbog, three years old (appendix B, no. 21); Estusia Mappen, seventeen (appendix B, no. 75); Lodzia Mincmacher, fourteen (appendix B, no. 77); and the teenage brothers Eliasz and Jakub Średni and their sister Hinda (appendix B, nos. 95, 97, and 96, respectively). All the survivors are listed in appendix B. However, two teenagers died during the pogrom: Bejla Gertner (no. 13 on the list of victims) and Rachela Zander (no. 48). Both were members of the Ichud kibbutz, as was a young, talented woman by the name of Fania Szumacher (no. 40). Rachela Zander’s body was not initially identified, because Jechiel Alpert simply could not believe that, despite the warnings she received by telephone, she had returned to the Jewish Committee building and thus to certain death. The description of Rachela’s body corresponds to Unknown 3, a fifteen- to sixteen-year-old, blue-eyed girl, 153 cm tall.

There are two children’s coffins in Julia Pirotte’s photo of coffins in the hospital courtyard. One is probably that of Abram (no. 10), Rywka Fisz’s four-week-old son. But who is in the other? Could it be Duczka Flora (no. 8), the eight-month-old child whose mother’s maiden name was Gotlib and whose grandparents owned an apartment on Planty Street before the war? Or is it the child of Gienia Samborska, sometimes identified as Gienia Płótno? While we may never know for certain, it is imperative to continue searching for the answer.

List of Victims

The table below collates and cross-references the names of the Kielce pogrom victims from a number of sources. Columns 1–5 contain names and other personal data of victims from the sources as outlined below. Column 6 includes additional data found in other archival documents, pogrom accounts, or important secondary sources. Spelling variations, alternate dates of birth, and other information are included to shed light on the complexities of creating a definitive list of pogrom victims.

Column 1: JOINT list, 1946 (AŻIH, CKŻP, 350/54)

Column 2: Kielce Landsmanshaft, 2016 (list according to the Kielce pogrom memorial monument at Pakosz Cemetery in Kielce)

Column 3: Ichud funeral program, 1946 (based on the photograph of the funeral program as included in AG–PK, t. 1, k. 78.)

Column 4: Dos Naye Lebn lists, 1946 (Dos Naye Lebn [weekly published in Yiddish in Łódź], July 12, 1946 (no. 23) and July 19, 1946 (no. 24); see also audio recording by Symcha Weiss (APIN Ki 53_624)

Column 5: Summary of external postmortem examination reports (AIPN Ki 41_520, t. 1)

Column 6: Other collated data (“Data”), relevant pogrom accounts in which the victim is mentioned or described (“Pogrom accounts”), and other sources not used in columns 1–5 (“Source(s)”).

Kielce pogrom victims