prof. JERZY ROBERT NOWAK
Lesław Kawalec
Jedwabne and the atrocities in East Poland 1939-1941 (part II)
And the Jews kissed Soviet tanks.....
In the beginning let me apologise to the Głos readers for the inadequate information about the series of articles I am writing to Niedziela . They won't be about just 60 but as many as100 Gross' lies. On closer examination I have found many more than a hundred lies in his works. However, for the reason of space available I will focus on one hundred lies.
Both in Ghastly Decade, published 1999, and Neighbors of 2000 he turns the picture of Jewish quislingism upside down and has stubborn disregard for facts. In Neighbors ( p. 104 ) he writes that the enthusiastic reception of the Red Army was by no means commonplace, and one can't tell why the Jewish collaboration with the Soviets in 1939-1941 should be seen as exceptional. In Ghastly Decade ( p. 66 ) he contends that even the few genuinely happy individuals must have stood out in the overall air of fear and dejection. His most ridiculous allegation ( Ghastly Decade p. 66 ) is one that the Jews did put up triumphal arches ( which was commonplace - J.R.N.) to honour the Soviet invaders but they usually did so out of fear. Strangely enough, the other nations in East Poland were not overcome with fear with anything near this degree of jubilation. There are virtually thousands of testimonies which prove this, including the many accounts by Jews, apparently much more honest than Gross. Let us recall that the leader of the Underground Polish State himself - general Stefan Rowecki "Grot" - wrote 25 Sep. 1941: ''It became manifest that the Jewish masses all over the place, and in Wołyń, Polesie and Podlasie in particular (...) upon the encroachment of the Bolsheviks assaulted with all their fury local Polish offices, massively lynching functionaries of the Polish State, Polish activists (...) ( in A. Żbikowski, Żydzi Polscy Pod Okupacją Sowiecką / The Polish Jews under the Soviet Occupation 1939-1941 in Studies on the History of Jewry in Poland published by the Żydowski Instytut Historyczny / the Jewish Historical Institute /, Warsaw 1995, vol. 2 p. 63 ).
Let this immense pro-Soviet Jewish enthusiasm be illustrated by the fact, which Gross himself admitted ( in Revolution from Abroad , Princeton 1988 ) that it was only the Jews in East Poland who were in a very peculiar habit of kissing the Soviet tanks. No sources give any account of any other nations tarnishing their reputation by such pro-Soviet servility. In Gross' words ( Revolution...., op. cit. p. 29 ) '' even tanks were kissed. The Jews seemed to have a particular predilection for kissing tanks, and there is no mention of the Ukrainians or Belorussians sharing this fondness. A peculiar 'tank perversion'.
Anti-Polish sabotage
Can the alleged fear of the Soviets explain the collective participation of red Jews in East Poland in armed sabotage levelled against the Polish army in 1939. Let us not forget that it was the only army at that time that resisted the German Nazis. In the book published in 1999 titled Przemilczane Zbrodnie. Żydzi i Polacy Na Kresach 1939-1941 / The Concealed Genocide. The Jews and the Poles in East Poland 1939-1941 / I elaborated on the extent of this Jewish sabotage ( e.g. in Grodno, Skidel, Różyszcza, Skałat, Kołomyja, Izbica, Luboml ). Recently the Jewish armed treason was condemned by prof. Tomasz Strzembosz in Przemilczana Kolaboracja / Held-back Quislingism ( Rzeczpospolita of 27-28 Jan. 2000 ) who stressed that their occupation of towns and villages, setting up revolutionary committees there, arresting and executing Polish state officials, assaults on small and big army units ( as in Grodno ) were acts of rebellion against the Polish state. Prof. Strzembosz referred to the recent findings of another historian Marek Wierzbicki, who includes in his text an account of the armed struggle for Skidel, and of the Jewish rebellion in Jeziory, Łunna, Wiercieliszki, Wielka Brzostowica, Ostryn, Dubno, Dereczyn, Zelwa, Motol, Wołpa, Janów Poleski, Wołkowysk, Horodel, Drohiczyn Poleski ( here and elsewhere all in Polish transcription - L.K. ). No one saw a single German there, these armed operations were all directed against the Polish state. This was armed quislingism, siding with the enemy, treason in the days of defeat. In my book, about to come out, titled Polacy i Żydzi na Kresach / Poles and Jews in East Poland I will report more examples of Jewish armed sabotage against Poland elsewhere. It affected large territories of East Poland and truly stabbed the Polish army. Why does Jan Tomasz Gross holds all that back ? Apparently, the historical truth is meaningless for this whitewasher of Jews. What does matter is polonophobic prejudice and slanderous brainwashing.
Among the most atrocious tokens of this pro-Soviet collaboration on the part of a number of Jews in East Poland were the assassinations of both Polish officers and the rank and file as well as ordinary civilians which they committed. These facts have been mentioned by Prof. Strzembosz and I also reported these in Przemilczane Zbrodnie / Concealed Genocide in a separate chapter a year and a half ago. Thus I will not give account of the murders described there such as the killing of the Polish student leaders at the Lwów University of Technology for their alleged anti-Semitism or slaughtering the Dominican friars of the Czortków monastery, brutally murdered by the Jews of NKVD. Here I will concentrate on some of the recently revealed instances of massacres of Poles committed by red Jews. I have collected these for the publication of Polacy i Żydzi na Kresach 1939-1941 / Poles and Jews in East Poland 1939-1941,which is about to come out.
After 17 September: murdered officers
Ryszard Pedowski, brother-in-law of Tadeusz Piotrowski - the author of Poland's Holocaust, a valuable work on Poland during WWII - reported on the assassination of 12 Polish officers by the Jews in Grabowiec ( Hrubieszów county, province of Lublin ). In his account the Polish officers were murdered in the bakery of a well-to-do Grabowiec Jew called Pergamen. Then, another Jew, locally known as 'Kuka' ( water supplier ) transported the corpses to the cemetery and left them there in a ditch. When found, the dead bodies were dressed in nothing but underwear. The locals secured a Christian burial for them. "Kuka' was later poisoned - he knew too much.. According to Pedowski both the officers and the water supplier were murdered by the poor local Jews -
sympathisers of the communists ( based on Piotrowski T., Poland's Holocaust, Jefferson, North Carolina, 1998, p. 55 )
Prof. Piotrowski stressed that the Grabowiec murder of the Polish officers ought to be subjected to investigation. Let us ask then if it has been or when it will be brought to the attention of IPN ( the Institute for National Remembrance ) ?
The Grabowiec case was also a subject of the correspondence I got from Bolesław Boratyński of Grabowiec. He emphasised that the reason why 'Kuka' was killed was that he was too talkative about the massacre and complained he had not been paid enough for his service ( Boratyński's account of 30 Dec. 1999, in my possession ) It was accentuated that these facts are well-known and still remembered by the people of Grabowiec.
There are many scattered pieces of information about the atrocious treatment the Polish rank and file and officers received ( including murder ) from communist Jews. Julian Grzesik wrote in Alija o Martyrologii Żydów Europejskich / Alija on the Martyrology of Europe's Jews, published in Lublin in 1989, that instances of Jews apprehending, disarming and sometimes killing Polish soldiers were reported. The author of this text has a first hand account of the murdering, in 1939, of a sergeant who had refused to hand his gun over to a Jew. J.K. Kuncewicz recalled in Tygodnik Kulturalny of 7 May 1989: ''On 23 September we were surrounded by the Soviet tanks and rushed to a mill in Hrubieszów. We were handled by the local Jewish militia, who demonstrated in a very vulgar fashion who was in power ( ... ) Most of those who did not risk escaping are on the Katyn list. Numerous Jews, not only communists, soon filled the vacancies in the Soviet administration assisting the NKVD in seizing Polish officers and administrative officials. A shocking account requiring further documentation was sent to me in 1999 by Rev. Paweł Piotrowski from Curitiba, Brasil. He wrote: ''Working for a dozen years in Rio de Janeiro I was the chaplain of the 9th Cavalry Regiment's retired combatants there. Their long-time president was Janusz Pawełkiewicz. In 1939 he commanded the rear guard of one of the Polish units retreating to the south-east. Unfortunately, I cannot report any more detailed data but I know they are available in the London archive which has throughout the years been composed from the testimonies of the Polish soldiers fighting on the various fronts of WWII.
He recalled his outrage on seeing banners welcoming the saviours from the East, who have not yet encroached on these territories. The unit Pawełkiewicz headed strayed from the main forces, stayed behind so that a gap was created between him and the main group. Apparently that made the residents of Chełm think there were no Polish troops any more, that all have escaped. On entering the town his unit made for a local school where the soldiers saw an appalling sight: on the floor of a classroom lay 12 dead bodies of Polish officers nailed down through the eyes and heads. The soldiers found a janitor and asked who had done that. He answered ''the Jews''. Questioned about the whereabouts of the murderers he said: ''Only Jews live in this street.''
It should be added that Janusz Pawełkiewicz spoke about it in public, and more detailed accounts are to be found in the London archive I have mentioned. (... ) ( the text of the account by Rev. Paweł Piotrowski has been published in a Nasza Polska's column "Polish Holocaust' of 15 Sep. 1999 )
Ryszard Jasiński, president of the Towarzystwo przyjaciół Frampola / Friends of Frampol Association /, reported in his story of the Frampol September 1939 some passages from Jerzy Carwieniec Czerwiński's memoirs that give an account of the tragic events of end 1939: ''29 September two Jews of the 'Red Militia' brought to their station, based in a local school, an officer cadet - platoon commander - heading West across the Vistula on his way back from the East via Frampol . There the militants, with their leader A.R. 'Nuchym', when questioning him demanded that he remove the eagle from his cap and tear off his shoulder straps with platoon commander rank insignia. The cadet refused and when A.R. wanted to do it by force he reportedly hit 'Nuchym' on the face. The infuriated militia men skewered the Pole with bayonets, "Nuchym' himself excelling in sadism. This is how - not from enemy bluets but murdered by a Cain - died Wincenty Panasiuk, born 1912 in Opatów, student of the Warsaw University (...) In the night, afraid of the locals, they dragged the dead body to the so called 'priest field', dug a pit there in its north-eastern part behind what is now a water pump, cast him there, put a horse carcass on top and buried to cover up. The student Wincenty Panasiuk of Opatów was to have been a teacher and ironically he was murdered in a school. When the dead body of the soldier was dug out of the pit where he was to have been hid 'for ever' by the assassins, his uniform betrayed numerous stab wounds ( in Jasiński R., Frampolski Wrzesień 1939 / Frampol September 1939 - continued in a regional monthly Wokół Frampola issued by Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Frampola / Friends of Frampol Association, July 1998, vol. 3, pp 20-22 ).
Mr Michał Ławacz in an account he sent me 29 July 1999 described an appalling incident of murdering, before his very eyes, of a young Polish soldier by a group of Jewish militia men in Chełm. Ławacz recalls: '' ...arrival of Soviet tanks in Chełm through flowered arches that the Jews had prepared, cordial welcoming of tankmen and soldiers.... The Jews go wild with jubilation... Suddenly all Jews from teenagers to forty-somethings have red bands on their arms. Instantly they rule the streets as militia, almost all of them armed with guns, clubs, bayonets and knives, craving for blood and murder. Their aim is conspicuous - looking for a victim. It was in the afternoon, about 6 p.m. We saw a band of a dozen or so Jewish teens attack with knives, clubs and bayonets a young soldier in the street we were going along. Each of the Jews wanted to have his share in the murder. They attacked him all when he was all alone. It was about 50 - 100 metres before us. We were walking in the same direction as the soldier. On seeing that and hearing the cries of the butchered soldier and the voices of the Jews I fainted. My father lugged me to a gateway in a house (...) and then onto the staircase where I came to (...) I still have this picture in my memory.''
You could go on and on with similar stories of Poles murdered by communist Jews. Krzysztof Jasiewicz, in his precious Lista Strat Ziemiaństwa Polskiego 1939 - 1956 / Losses of Polish Landed Gentry 1939-1956, mentions Witold Rozwadowski ( 1912 - 1939 ) arrested alongside his father, most probably in September 1939. According to Jasiewicz, Rozwadowski was murdered in the Oszmian prison by his Jewish friend - a militia man in Oszmian ( cf Jasiewicz K., Lista Strat Ziemiaństwa Polskiego 1939 - 1956, Warszawa 1995, p.887 )
Felicja Starosielec, in an account of 21 August 1999 she has sent me, reports that her brother was taken out of his junior secondary school, arrested, accused and shot by the Jewish militia.
22 Aug. 1999 Tadeusz Kalinowski of Skierbieszów, Zamość county ( powiat ), sent me a testimony signed by Józef Chudzik of Majdan Sitaniecki which sheds light on the circumstances of murdering two young Polish soldiers about 17 Sep. When walking unarmed in uniforms they were killed by a group of armed Jews in Wierzba near Zamość. Mr Chudzik who witnessed the murder also refers to other witnesses by their names.
Janina Długosz-Adamowska in her account of 15 August describing the tragedy of her family from East Poland recalls her cousin Maria (maiden name Zborowski ) deported to Siberia and her husband Rudolf - killed by Jews in his home in Lwów ( a doctor; professional competition to Jewish doctors and an 'oppressor' since he came from an aristocratic family ).
Wacław Zańczuk, in the account he sent me 26 August 1999, described an atrocious murder ,which must have been perpetrated for robbery, on a Polish woman and her child by a Ukrainian-Jewish patrol in the vicinity of Wołynka in October 1939. Zańczuk, in September a defender of the Brześć fortress, managed to get out of Soviet captivity with his friend Władysław Schlichtyn and was following the railway track leading to Włodawa. He writes: '' Going along the railway track near Wołynka we saw a patrol of two people with guns at hand ( before he wrote it was a Ukrainian-Jewish patrol - J.R.N. ) following a path that led to the rail track (..). From the opposite direction came a woman with a little girl holding a loaf of bread in her arms. We estimated the distance at about 120 - 150 metres. We thought the patrol would first meet the woman. Still, we feel a bit worried - we decide to slow down. We see the patrol stop the woman, we hear no voices but in a while there are two shots ( ... ) The woman and her little girl died because she was Polish and had a fur coat. (...) Although it was so long ago I remember everything as if it had happened today - they were no more than 18-20 years old, one was a Jew the other Ukrainian.''
Massacres of prisoners
Among the most gruesome atrocities that communist Jews perpetrated on Poles during the war was their active share in massacring Polish prisoners after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Those were large scale massacres. The authors of a documentary monograph on the subject - Krzysztof Popiński, Aleksander Kokurin and Aleksander Gurjanow estimate that in the course of the hasty 'evacuation' of prisoners 20-30 000 Polish citizens, mostly Poles and Ukrainians, died. They were murdered both in prisons and during the evacuation itself. According to Stanisław Kalbarczyk, during the June 'evacuation' as many as 50-100 000 people died. E.g. only 90 out of 2000 survived the massacre in Łuck prison.
On account of the massive character of murdering the Polish prisoners ( and Ukrainians too ) in prisons and during evacuation in June 1941 it is all the more important to investigate what those communist Jews were specifically responsible for in those massacres. And their role was deplorably significant. In the words of Mark Paul referring to the felonies of 1941: ''There are a number of authentic accounts that report on the local Jews in the Soviet service who participated in executions of the prisoners, repeatedly committed on a large scale by Soviet security forces in that period of time ( cf Mark Paul: Jewish-Polish relations in the Soviet-occupied Poland 1939-1941published in The Story of Two Shtetls, Brańsk and Ejszyszki, Toronto-Chicago 1998, part 2, p. 218 ).
In Zbrodnicza Ewakuacja Więzień i Aresztów NKWD Na Kresach Wschodnich II Rzeczpospolitej w Czerwcu-Lipcu 1941 / Criminal Evacuation of the NKVD Prisons and Arrests in the Easernt Parts of the Second Republic in June-July 1941 you read accounts of bolshevik Jews murdering prisoners in Łuck, Oszmian and Wołżyn. Names - settled during investigations - have been published of some of the Jews who were on duty in the prisons where the massacres took place. Among others, there were Szloma Szlut, Karp - a Jewish woman, Mohylow - a Jewish driver, and a Krelensztejn, also of Jewish descent. Two Jewish women from Łuck excelled in brutality: Blumenkranz, aged 20, daughter of a shoe shop owner in ul. Jagiellońska, and Spigel ( of whom little is known ). They shot prisoners in the prison yard.
Apart from the massacres in Łuck, Oszmian and Wołżyn, other places where Jews have been reported to have murdered Poles include Czortków, Tarnopol and around Brańsk.
Rev. Wacław Szetelnicki has written that 21 June 1941 at the outbreak of the German-Soviet war the retreating Soviets murdered the imprisoned Poles and Ukrainians. In the Tarnopol prison three Jews from Trembowla were identified to have been involved in genocide: Kramer -a horse cabby, Dawid Kuemmel, and Dawid Rozenberg ( cf Rev. Szetelnicki W., Trembowla. Kresowy Bastion Wiary i Polskości / Trembowla. A Stronghold of Faith and Polish Spirit., Wrocław 1992, p. 213 ). The names of the murderers are well-known. One can't help wondering whether the IPN ( the Institute for National Remembrance ) has launched an investigation of this case and, if it has, why does the general public know little about it ?
Some shocking information about a murder that has been perpetrated on 40 Poles is to be found in a last year's text by Zbigniew Romaniuk. He is widely known for his systematic efforts to preserve the Jewish past of Brańsk and for preparing the ground for a true dialogue between Poles and Jews. Deeply concerned about these aims he put too much trust a few years ago in the intentions of Marian Marzyński who was making the film Shtetl, which a couple of years later turned out to be slanderously polonophobic. All the more trustworthy then are the remarks made by Romaniuk, who when doing research on Brańsk in 1939 said: '' Główna Komisja Badania Zbrodni Przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu / Chief Commission for the Investigation of the Genocide Committed on the Polish Nation / is now investigating the shocking murder of 40 people of Ciechanowiec, Brańsk, and the surrounding areas. In June 1941 the NKVD accompanied by two Jewish policemen from Brańsk were escorting the group to the Białystok prison. On their way they encountered military operations and had to retreat. Near Folwarki Tylwickie some prisoners were shot while others, for the lack of bullets, were skewered down with bayonets and battered to death with butts'' ( the text of W. Wierzewski's interview with Z. Romaniuk published in The story...op.cit, part I, p. 26 )
In a separate text Romaniuk reported some names of the people murdered then. They were: Helena Zaziemska, a Szlezinger ( maiden name Klukowska ) - both teachers, and a businessman Ignacy Płoński.
Formerly resident in East Poland Maria Antonowicz wrote to me in the account of 15 Aug. 1999 about the part Jewish militants played in murdering Polish prisoners in Berezwecz: '' almost all men in our group ( including my father ) were transported to the prison in Berezwecz ( in what used to be a monastery ) near Głębokie and that was where the ( in vain )crying-for-vengeance torture started. We know all that from my mother, now dead like most of my parents' generation, who would have had so much to say but had to keep silent for half of the century and in the end took most of the important facts concerning the 'white spots' to their graves. When Germans took Berezwecz over the local Poles looked for the near and the dear ones. In the prison they found mutilated corpses tied by wire and cast into pits. Some of them had no limbs, ears or tongues. In all probability they were atrociously tortured before death. As reported by witnesses the massacre was perpetrated by the NKVD and the Jewish militants. The ones who had not been murdered for the lack of time ( reportedly 2000 people ) were rushed east. (...) On the road next to the village Nikołajewo the NKVD murdered the whole column of prisoners (...) I do not know of a single instance of a Pole saved by a Jew, and there were opportunities to do so during the Soviet occupation or the years of the People's Republic. Nobody has even apologised to us for the Polish Holocaust ( except Germans ). Not only did We - East Poles - lose our relatives but also lands, homes, remembrances of our family, all our assets and even graves, now covered by the dust of time so that any trace we left will be completely forgotten. (...) The Polish people know of the Jewish Holocaust, of Action Vistula ( 'akcja Wisła' ) but know nothing about Action Siberia. Poles are familiar with the Kielce massacre but do not know how many Polish kids died in Siberia of hunger and cold, or the blood bath that the victims of deportations, prisons and gulag went through. And yet the Jews working for and collaborating with the NKVD and the communist security in post-war Polish People's Republic did largely contribute to this death toll and sea of suffering. The information reported by Mrs Antonowicz about the extremely brutal extermination of the Polish prisoners of Berezwecz have been confirmed in other sources, e.g. Prof. Ryszard Szawłowski's monograph on the Polish-Soviet war of 1939, where he writes about the Soviets perpetrating atrocious tortures on the Polish prisoners before murdering them including mangling them, picking eyes out and severing limbs.
Those examples are the tip of the iceberg of what communist Jews did to Poles in 1939 - 1941. These matters need to be further researched, investigated and verified. There are numerous accounts of felonies committed on Poles that need both verification and exposure of their true perpetrators. Below are some examples of such cases that call for close scrutiny, which I have selected from books, press articles and testimonies sent to me.
A former resident of war-time Lwów Zbigniew Schultz wrote to me in a letter of 28 March 1996 about the anti-Polish activities of the owner of the house where he lived - a young married Jew whose name was Schechter ( it was a tenament house in Lwów at 10 ul. Św. Kingi ). According to Schultz, Schechter, co-owner of the house, had a big grocery shop he shared with his mother and brother. Following the arrival of the Soviets in the city he joined the NKVD. His maid, a Jewish girl called Tinka, visited us those days and told us her master would come back home in blood-stained shirts. She argued that he was murdering political prisoners in the Lwów prison.
Władysław Pobóg-Malinowski recalls that several officers and soldiers were assaulted at dawn and tormented to death by communists - Ukrainians and Jews ( cf Pobóg-Malinowski W., Na Rumuńskim Rozdrożu / At Cross-road in Romania ( some memories ), Warszawa 1990, p.9 ) Pobóg-Malinowski just gives information about the fact of the murder, while it is necessary that we discover the names of both the victims and the perpetrators.
Another case in need of close scrutiny is one reported to me in a letter I got in 1999 from Tadeusz Maciejewski and describing the murder committed by the Jews on 4 Poles in Raduń. Among the victims was Maciejewski's neighbour Bierecewicz.
A murder in Brzostowica Mała
More new facts about communist Jews murdering Poles in East Poland have come to light thanks to the historian Marek Wierzbicki in Polacy i Białorusini w Zaborze Sowieckim / Poles and Belorussians under Societ Occuppation / published in 2000 in Warsaw.
Wierzbicki focused on the Belorussian collaboration with the Soviets but he also mentioned instances of some communist Jews murdering Polish officers, administrative officials etc. in the aftermath to 17 September 1939. He writes on p. 116 of his book that Gołdacki, a Jewish shoemaker from Sokółka, shot three policemen. The same kind of murder was committed in Bogusze by Abel Łabędych on 24 September.
Particularly appalling were the descriptions of murders of Poles committed by communist Belarussian ana Jewish marauders. On pages 70-72 he gives an account of an atrocious murder in Mała Brzostowica perpetrated by a communist band of Jews and Belorussians led by a Jewish trader called Ajzik. The communists of both nationalities murdered count Wołkowicki with his wife, their son-in-law and the mayor, the secretary of the local council's office, a cashier, a postman and a local teacher. The victims were first made to drink lime whitewash and then thrown into a lime pit and buried while most of them were still alive. After that the communist felons trod on the site to press it smooth since the soil kept cracking. They did so until all the cracks disappeared.
According to Wierzbicki, the murder of the Wołkowickis must have taken place after the arrival of the Soviets in the district of Indura i.e. on 19-20 September. But in Kraysztof Jasiewicz's version the Wołkowickis and the others were murdered in the night of 17 to 18 September. The NKVD not only did not punish the felons but rewarded some of them by taking them on to the militia ( ... ) Ajzik himself became the head of the co-operative, which even more strengthened his social position.
Daniłki, Świsłocz, Tomaszówka
Poles have also been murdered in the villages of Daniłki, Aminowce, Massalany, Szydłowicze, Zajkowszczyzna. The murdered included Sadowniczy - the administrator of Daniłki - his son and brother, Witold Beretti ( an Italian by birth ), the wife and the sister-in-law of Antoni Kozłowski - the lessee of the Golnie estate, then Kozłowski himself, two forest administrators of the Bispinga estate, and the administrator of the Zajkowszczyzna estate Apolinary Jaźwiński. As Wierzbicki put it in his book: ''the actions of those dregs are said to have been directed by a revolutionary committee of Wielka Brzostowica.'' Wierzbicki describes the operations of this committee, which was lead, by the way, by a Jew called Żak Motyl ( or perhaps was it a nickname ? - J.R.N ) and consisted of Jews, Belorussians and one Pole. ( Wierzbicki M., op.cit., p. 76 )
On pages 86-87 Wierzbicki mentions criminal activities of a 'revolutionary committee' in a small town called Zelwa, organised after the armed rebellion by the local Belorussian and Jewish population which resulted in 12 Poles shot on 21 September 1939. According to Wierzbicki it maight have been then that the aristocrat Jerzy Bołądź, ex-parliamentarian, and Rev. Jan Kryński - the parish priest of Zelwa - were assassinated.
Ukrainian and Jewish militants are reported to have murdered a teacher, resident near Świsłocz, and the station-master of Świsłocz train station, previously kidnapped.
Wierzbicki ( op. cit., p. 98 ) referred to the account by a Jewish wood merchant Jachiel Szlechter of Tomaszówka, Brzeg county, which describes murders committed by bands of marauders ravaging the counties of Brzeg and Luboml, inflicting terror and violence on the refugees from the territories occupied by Germany. Szlachter writes that those marauders of Jewish, Belorussian and Ukrainian origin exterminated great numbers of the Polish inteligentsia that had managed to get across the border and whose bodies lie buried in the pine forest by the road leading from Tomaszówka to Poleniec and in Szack, 2000 metres away from the cemetery.
Are the murderers of Polish people ever going to be convicted ?
The examples given above indicate that in the years 1939-1941 there were numerous instances of communist Jews murdering Poles. The truth about that ought to be revealed now that there are so many defamatory attempts to show the Polish people as alleged accomplices of Hitler in the genocide of the Jews. One can't help being outraged at the passivity with regard to this issue after 1989 demonstrated first by the Główna Komisja Badania Zbrodni Przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu / Chief Commission for the Investigation of the Genocide Committed on the Polish Nation and recently by the IPN / Institute for National Remembrance/. Are the requirements of the pro-Jewish political correctness to be an obstacle to exposing and persecuting the Jewish murderers of Polish people ? Why should we avoid revealing the truth about the atrocious murders which communist Jews perpetrated on their Polish neighbours just because we should be particularly cautious about the sensitivity of the Jews - the victims of the Holocaust. We, as a nation, underwent Holocaust too - I lost my father then but nobody, and large sections of Jewish communities in particular, reckons with our sensitivity or remembers about our sufferings. Not only is the truth about our martyrdom being held back from the general public but an increasing number of revolting defamatory charges are being put forward against us. I have always been and I always will be in favour of investigating all instances of infamous behaviour on the part of individual Poles whether towards their fellow countrymen or people of other nations. All extortionists, all accomplices in genocide in the service of either of the atrocious totalitarianisms ought to be condemned. However, the remembrance of the Polish victims calls upon us to adequately demonstrate the genocide of the Poles as perpetrated by people of other nations, without any differentiation into the 'better' or the 'worse' ones, the more or less 'elect'. There can not be two different measures by which to judge. Let us remember and honour the memory of the Jewish officers and the rabbi Baruch Steinberg - the victims of Katyń. But do not let us fail to expose the responsibility of Jewish prosecutors from Kozielsk or Starobielsk ( all three town names being the most prominent symbols of the Soviet extermination of the Polish elite - L.K. ) zealously denouncing the Polish officers for their 'counterrevolutionary chauvinism'. ( see the reports by H.A. Eljman ).
It is high time we set out to systematically compile statements by the last surviving witnesses of the Polish Holocaust - the most concealed, Soviet genocide carried out by communist Jews.
After more than 60 years following the beginning of the dark series of atrocities inflicted on the Polish Nation it is all the more necessary to launch an appeal for stepping up the process of exposing the felonies committed then, investigating the clues leading to their perpetrators. Each piece of information ought to be examined rather than neglected now that there is still some possibility of reaching the witnesses of those tragic events. Many witnesses of the genocide of the Polish people have died and some are well in years, like Tadeusz Maciejewski now 87, who has sent me the information about the 4 murdered Poles in Raduń. It is high time we speeded up investigating those felonies.
The Koniuchy massacre - many accounts, no-one guilty ?
It is astonishing that the chairman of the IPN Prof. Leon Kieres, who has enough time for trans-Atlantic travels and issuing hasty and untimely declarations before the investigation is over, has not yet brought up the issues of mass murders of Polish people in any public forum. I mean not only the tens of thousands of Poles massacred by Ukrainian chauvinists but also the mass murder of 1944 staged in the village of Koniuchy where communist Jewish marauders exterminated a whole Polish village. Well, identifying the perpetrators is of no particular difficulty - some of them have bragged about their atrocious 'deeds'.
Chaim Lazar described in his book Destruction and Resistance ( New York, Shengold Publishers, 1985, pp. 174 - 175 ): ''on one occasion 120 guerrillas of all the camps armed with the best weapons made for the village. There were approx. 50 Jews led by Jaakov Prenner. At midnight they arrived at the outskirts of the village and took the right positions. The order demanded that no living soul be spared. All domestic animals were to be put to death and all property destroyed. The go-ahead came shortly before dawn. Within a couple of minutes the village was surrounded form three sides. On the fourth side was a river and a bridge, controlled by the guerrillas. The militants, having prepared torches in advance, set fire to homes, stables and pantries and opened up intensive barrage of homesteads. The half-naked peasants jumped out of the windows trying to run for their lives. All over the place there were only bullets for them, though. Many jumped into the river but the same was to happen to them too. The mission was accomplished in short time. Sixty families numbering about 300 people altogether were mown down; nobody survived.'' ( retranslated from Polish, L.K. )
Let us report another description of the slaughter found in the book by a Jewish writer Izaac Kowalski A Secret Press in Nazi Europe: The Story of a Jewish United Organisation ( New York,Central Guide Publishers, 1969, p.333-334 ) also cited in Anthology of Armed Jewish Resistance, 1939-1945, edited by I. Kowalski et al., ( Brooklyn, NY, Jewish Combatants Publishing House, 1991, vol. IV, pp. 390-391 ): ''The commander of our base ordered all men capable of combat to get ready to carry out the operation within an hour... I saw partisans coming from all directions, from various factions... Our detachment was ordered to destroy all living creatures and burn the village to the ground. At a fixed time the partisans started flooding the village with shotgun and machine gun barrage and also shooting incendiary missiles. This resulted in the thatched roofs catching fire. The villagers and the small German garrison responded with heavy firing but within two hours the village and the fortified bunker were completely destroyed. Our losses amounted to two lightly injured.'' ( retranslated from Polish, L.K. )
Another Jewish writer Rich Cohen gave this account in the book The Avengers ( New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2000, p.145 ): '' The partisans - Russians, Jews and Lithuanians - attacked the village from the fields with the sun behind their backs. The machine guns fired from the guard towers. The partisans replied with firing. The peasants hid in their homes. The partisans threw grenades on rooftops and the houses exploded in flames. Other homes were set aflame by torches. The peasants were escaping through the windows and down the narrow streets. The partisans chased them shooting down men, women and children. Many peasants were making off towards the German garrison by the cemetery, in the outskirts. The commander of the partisans had foreseen this move and had placed some people behind the tombs. When the partisans opened fire the peasants returned, only to encounter the soldiers going from the back. Hundreds of peasants died caught in cross-fire.'' ( retranslated from Polish, L.K. )
The people of the Rudnicka Woods dared to defend themselves.
Some names of the Jewish partisans from the Rudnicka Woods are known from Izaac Kowalski's A Secret Press in Nazi Europe ( op.cit., p. 405-407 ) : Israel Weiss, Schlomo Brand, Chaim Lazar, Jacob Prenner, Izaac Kowalski, Zalman Wolozni.
What caused this gruesome massacre in Koniuchy ? The Polish peasants from the village of Koniuchy near the Rudnicka Woods had organised a self-defence unit whose mission was to protect the village from the constant forage requisitions by the partisan detachments, permanently calling to the town. Therefore, at end-April the village was reported by Jewish sources to have been selected for an act of vengeance. The Jewish author Chaim Lazar ( op. cit., pp. 174-175 ) presents the village as an alleged centre of plotting against the partisans. Kowalski writes that Koniuchy was 10 kilometres away from the partisans' base but nowhere does he mention any instances of its inhabitants spying or chasing any Jewish or Soviet partisans ( In the words of a Polish-Canadian author Mark Paul such activities would have been suicidal for the locals ). Kowalski charges the peasants with shooting at the partisans when on various dangerous, though unspecified, missions. According to Mark Paul there was no compelling reason why the partisans should constantly pass through a village 10 kilometres away from their base other than requisitions of provisions. According to a Polish historian Kazimierz Krajewski ( in Na Ziemi Nowogródzkiej / In the Land of Nowogródek , p. 511-512 ) Koniuchy was no fortress and the whole 'arsenal' of the farmers consisted of a few rusty guns. Krajewski reminds us also that shortly before the assault on Koniuchy the Soviet partisans attacked a small village Niewoniańce, which supported the Home Army ( AK ). Two families - 8 people - of the Polish Resistance soldiers were murdered and their homes were burned to the ground.
JERZY ROBERT NOWAK
an excerpt from a larger text