The Crime and the Silence (66 page)

Antoni K. told me, “There were five Germans and a driver. White caps, white gloves. A lot of people gathered there, I was there, too. A German got out and said, ‘Take all the Jews first to weed the grass in the marketplace. We're going to the market in Jedwabne, then we'll come back to see what you've done. If you don't you're finished.'”

Antoni K., when asked how the people gathered there knew what the German was saying, answered after a pause that he'd spoken Polish. That may be right—we know Schaper knew Polish. The herding of Jews into the marketplace—an action probably coordinated by the self-appointed authorities according to the instructions of the visiting Gestapo—was well organized. All adults and youth were rounded up. A part of the Polish population was tasked with guarding the roads so the Jews didn't escape. Stanisław Ramotowski saw a German on a balcony over the marketplace, taking photographs of the roundup of Jews.

Halina Zalewska told me, “They went by the cottages saying, ‘Jews, our Polish marketplace is very overgrown, go and weed it.' Oy, oy, they went happily, the Jews, they brought scrapers, it could have been worse. And in the market our people selected the worst Communists. When someone had a grudge against anyone, he found his man in the market and settled scores with him. The Jews were hiding in the chimneys, and the Poles pulled them out. One, a Communist, was so scared of dying that he cut his own throat with tailor's scissors.”

Henryk Dziekoński (1953 interrogation): “We began to drive all the Jews residing in the Radziłów municipal area into the marketplace regardless of sex and age, and I took active part in this. One of the Gestapo officers appointed me the head of a group that was tasked with liquidating Jews and specified that we were allowed to cut Jews up with knives and do them in them with axes. One of our group who also took part in the slaughter of Jews said that this would lead to a reciprocal shedding of blood, and then one of the Gestapo officers told Aleksander Godlewski (who is now in prison): ‘You've got a barn, you can burn them all.' After the Gestapo officers had spoken the aforementioned words, I started to gather the Jews into groups of four with all my friends. When we'd formed them into ranks I stood at the head of the column and led them from the market toward the barn.”

It took several hours to round up all the Jews. They were beaten into singing the Soviet song “My Moscow.”

Chaja Finkelsztejn describes how Jan Walewski, nicknamed “the American” (because he'd returned from America after many years), beat a Jew standing near her son until he collapsed with blood pouring from his throat and ears. She saw a woman friend of hers holding a three-month-old infant naked in her arms—someone had torn away the blanket it had been wrapped in. The Gestapo took wine and snacks from their cars. After enjoying a meal in view of the rounded-up crowd they set about beating Jews. A German tied a stone around one Jew's neck, beat him with a stick, and made him run around in a circle. At some point the Gestapo left. Then the Poles ordered the Jews to move down Piękna Street. By the time they were driven to the barn there were no Germans around.

Andrzej R. told me, “I ran home to tell my mother something was going on. I fed the rabbits, ate lunch, and when I got back to the marketplace the Jews were forming a column. I saw friends from school playing in the courtyard.”

Halina Zalewska told me, “They were driven down Piękna Street, past our windows, and a Jewish woman who was our neighbor said, ‘Mr. Zalewski, you are such a respected, decent person, please take our things and save us.' But the young people had switchblades in their hands. The Jewish woman was carrying her little son, another was hanging on to her legs, and one of the Poles—he must have come in from another town because I never saw him before or after—drove her on, lashed her with a stick, and the child's head was split open. Daddy just watched from behind the curtains and cried.”

Henryk Dziekoński (1949 interrogation): “The Jews didn't try to escape, at least I didn't see them try. They went like sheep. One Jew started to run away. Feliks Mordasiewicz caught up with him, hit him on the head with a pole he had in his hand, hard enough to draw blood, and the Jew turned back toward the barn.”

3.

The walls were made of stone, the doors of wood. To keep the Jews from escaping, poles were propped against the doors and boulders were dragged up to the barn to hold them shut.

Janina Staniurska, Jan Skrodzki's cousin, who lives in Gdynia: “I was twelve years old at that time. A few people were hiding in the grain and vicious thugs were searching the fields with sticks. I was coming back from the meadows on the other side of the Matlak, I'd brought food to a boy who was grazing our cow there. It was late afternoon. I looked and saw a man running toward me with a stick, yelling, ‘You're a Jewess.' He took me to the barn. And there, O Lord, they were burning people alive, they were trying to escape, climbing onto the roof, jumping. Two neighbors who lived near us stuck up for me: ‘She's not Jewish. What do you want from the chauffeur's girl?' They called me that because my father was a driver. Then they explained that peasants had come in from Wąsosz, that's why they didn't know us. After that I was always afraid of passing by that place.”

We know beyond any doubt who set fire to the barn: Józef Ekstowicz (or Klimas or Klimaszewski). Many witnesses remember it. Tin canisters of gas were most certainly used. Those who tried to escape were shot at.

Halina Zalewska told me, “Józef Klimas was fat, short, so his friends had to give him a leg up.”

Andrzej R. told me, “I saw with my own eyes how Józef poured gas on the barn. Then he chased a girl who'd managed to jump out of the barn. He caught her and killed her.”

Józef Ekstowicz, a.k.a. Klimaszewski (1948 interrogation): “The initiators and main executors of the atrocity were: Dziekoński, Godlewski, and the Kosmaczewski brothers. They were armed with rifles and made me pour gas on the barn. They gave us a leg up—the other arsonist was a boy who'd come in from the nearby village of Karwowo—we climbed onto the roof and we poured the gas all over the roof.”

Henryk Dziekoński (1949 interrogation): “It is not true that Klimaszewski, then a minor, was forced to set fire to the barn, as he did it of his own free will. When gas had been poured on the roof and lit with a match the roof caught fire like a lightning flash. A moment later some man fell out from under the burning thatch with his clothes on fire. Mieczysław Strzelecki, who was standing near me, shot at him with his rifle. When the shots were fired the man threw himself down or jumped, in convulsions.”

There were many people at the barn—killers and gawkers.

Bolesław Ciszewski told me, “I saw them being herded there, I saw the fire being lit. What a wail! Most of them were small children and old people. The babies were thrown on top.”

“Why did you go there?”

“I was curious. A whole lot of people came from curiosity, mostly young people, some women. Some of them had weapons, poles and sticks they were. One Jew-boy ran away across the peat bog. One guy, drunk as a skunk, who had a Mauser, aimed at him and you won't believe it, miss, drunk as he was, he got him.”

Halina Zalewska told me, “I snuck out of the house and saw them being burned. I heard about Rachela Wasersztejn—she was the most beautiful girl in the village next to my sister Zosia—that her baby was thrown in over the top. I'd seen her a minute before. She had recently given birth, and they took her and her baby from the bed where she had given birth. She passed by our windows. She was walking along with her baby and crying.”

Rachela's husband, Berek Wasersztejn of Radziłów, who was not in Radziłów that day, got to Białystok and managed to survive until the end of the war, joining a group of Soviet partisans. He testified at the trial that a Polish woman he knew had told him about the death of his wife, Rachela: “My wife was hiding. When they found her, they took her to the barn. Leon Kosmaczewski told her to go in with her child and because the flames were so high they set a ladder up for her. My wife began to beg them to at least take the baby, who was ten days old. Kosmaczewski took the child by its legs and threw it over the roof and he stabbed my wife with a bayonet and threw her in as well.”

Wolf Szlapak, who had been beaten up, lay at home, unable to move, with his small son and sick mother.

Halina Zalewska told me, “Mieczysław Strzelecki first took all of Szlapak's jewelry from him, and then shot him in his own bed.”

Chaja Finkelsztejn wrote, “Szlapak and his seven-year-old son were murdered in their beds by Mieczysław Strzelecki, who worked for Szlapak as a driver.”

Finkelsztejn heard about a number of cases of old people who hadn't been able to make it to the marketplace—one of them had returned from America in his old age because he wanted to be buried in the country of his birth—being killed in their beds. Also about neighbors who agreed to hide a family but who, after having robbed them, gave them up to the killers or even killed them themselves.

Those who escaped from the column and hid in the grain were hunted down.

Andrzej R. told me, “By nightfall there wasn't a single Jewish house unoccupied. So much running around there was, so many quarrels about who would take what. There wasn't so much stuff in the houses anymore because the Jews had given their goods to neighbors they trusted, for safekeeping. Sawicki, the butcher, who had a cheap slaughterhouse on Kościelna Street, had loaded all his most valuable things on a hay cart in June and removed them, and later I saw him driven to the barn with his wife and eldest daughter.”

Halina Zalewska told me, “The Germans came at sunset, bringing more ammunition, and ordered them to check if the most important sheep had been taken. They meant the rabbi.”

Other witnesses did not remember the German commando unit coming that same day. Chaja Finkelsztejn claims they only appeared three days later.

4.

Many Jews hid in cellars and attics when they heard about the roundup in the marketplace. Thugs dragged them out and killed them on the spot or took them to the ice pit. This was an elongated pit on the way to the barn, a few meters deep, where ice chopped from the river in winter was kept. There they shot them, felled them with axes, or threw them alive into the pit, which was filled with corpses. They drove in barrels of lime and sprinkled it on each layer of victims.

The hunt for survivors and the act of killing them on the spot or at the ice pit went on for the next three days, till July 10. Both Jewish and Polish witness accounts confirm this.

Izrael Finkelsztejn (1945 trial witness): “The manhunt went on after that and whoever was caught was killed. When they ran out of rifle ammunition they started to kill them with spades and things like that.”

Halina Zalewska told me, “Those they didn't burn they killed and threw into pits for butter and cream cheese near the dairy and covered them with lime. I went there once at twilight, the earth was moving, half-dead people were crawling out, reviving, but the lime finished them off.”

Andrzej R. told me, “I saw the Drozdowskis and both Dziekoński brothers, Jan and Henryk, and Władysław Dudziński, shooting Jews at the ice pit. There were lots of people around eager to shoot. When they ran out of bullets they threw them into the pit alive. The earth went on moving for three days. I saw Antoni Kosmaczewski and Heniek Dziekoński taking a whole family to the ice pit—the owner of a coal and ironworks, his wife and two children, who had sat out the burning in a hideout in their own attic.”

Chaja Finkelsztejn wrote, “The Gestapo gave the Poles a free hand for three days. They searched every nook and cranny, every place where a Jew might hide. When on the third day the Gestapo drove up to the pit where those Jews who hid had been killed, an eight-year-old boy emerged from among the corpses. They wouldn't allow him to be killed and he lived on till the liquidation of the rest of the Jews. Then his terrible suffering ended.”

In the testimony of Menachem Finkelsztejn, in the testimonies of the accused and witnesses of former trials, in the conversations I conducted, the same names of the main culprits in the massacre are confirmed: the brothers Jan and Henryk Dziekoński; the brothers Aleksander and Feliks Godlewski; Edmund Korsak; Antoni, Józef, and Leon Kosmaczewski; Mieczysław Strzelecki.

Andrzej R. says that one Jew who hid in a house on the outskirts of town was found by thugs and brought to Radziłów from near Racibór. They tied him to a wagon plank and cut off his head with a tree saw. “I didn't see the act of sawing myself,” he says, “but I saw the headless body in a ditch.”

Antoni Olszewski was three and a half years old at the time. He claims that he has fixed in his memory like a photograph an image of himself stamping on earth covering the body of a Jewish boy not much older than himself, murdered by neighbors. “Some time after the burning I saw a bloody cap in our cabbage patch. They had dragged out a child who was hiding nearby and beaten him to death. Mama screamed at them to bury him deep, otherwise our pigs would pull him out. The elders covered him with earth and I and Józek Szymonów stamped on it to make it firmer. I remember that stamping to this day, I could show you where it was.”

Halina Zalewska told me, “The stench and the fatty smoke—it was human fat—hung in the house for weeks.”

Andrzej R. told me, “Jan Ekstowicz, a World War I veteran who'd lost both his arms, took two children in, he had them baptized right away. But soon someone denounced him and the police took the kids away.”
2

5.

How many Jews were burned in the barn in Radziłów? Menachem Finkelsztejn gave a figure of seventeen hundred Jews driven into the marketplace, and another time he said one thousand. But Jewish testimonies usually give an exaggerated number of victims. In the files on the trials the number most often given is six hundred. How many were murdered in the ice pit or wherever they were caught in town is even harder to say; the number three hundred is repeated, but given the fact that Radziłów probably had no more than six hundred Jews, this number must be too high. It seems plausible that about five hundred people were burned in the barn and about a hundred, maybe two hundred, fell victim to individual murders.