The Crime and the Silence

by Anna Bikont

  Chaja Finkelsztejn: “The peasants wouldn’t sell any food to Jews and took their cows away from them. Those who rented rooms to Jews told them to move out, because they were having their windows broken.”

  On June 27, the German command left Radziłów, but the violence only grew. The spontaneously formed city authority was in charge, but groups of Germans would come by the town every now and then. From Chaja Finkelsztejn’s testimony it emerges that on the same day the Wehrmacht left town, a large group arrived late in the evening—they are described as “Hitler’s dogs”—in khaki clothing, on wagons with camouflage tarpaulins drawn by four horses. They forced their way into her home, beating everyone there badly, including the children, and ransacking the house. There were locals around, and the previously mentioned Henryk Dziekoński “showed them around” the house. The next day the peasants took the Jews’ cows, herded them into the marketplace, and when the Germans came by again—with trucks this time—they were taken away. A sign that even if there was no German unit stationed in town, there must have been a post somewhere nearby. Because Jews could no longer buy food, the removal of their cows meant condemning them to starvation.

  The scenes of homes being invaded, residents being beaten, dwellings being destroyed and looted took place every night. Numerous accounts allow us to reconstruct who belonged to those gangs.1

  Antoni Olszewski told me, “Thugs tied Jews to the bottom of Czesio Bagiński’s wagon and hitched up his horses. He told me this himself once when I brought a sick horse to him. He said no one asked Bagiński for permission, he was a young man, they just pushed him off the wagon and did as they liked with the Jews. There wasn’t a lot of water, just a muddy pool, but it was enough to drown them. I never heard of any German being there.”

  Chaja Finkelsztejn wrote, “The nights were terrible. Poles young and old were running around. They dragged clothes, linen, quilts, pillows out of our neighbors’ homes. They took sheepskins from our neighbor, a furrier, and we heard the smashing of windows and wild cries. Every night we heard terrible screams and pleas for help. Jews hid in attic hideouts and in cellars, in rooms where you could move a wardrobe and hide a door. From many houses they took the fathers, beat them until they lost consciousness, brought them round and beat them again, dropping them off back home covered in blood. When women wept to see their husbands beaten like that, they said: ‘Shut up or we’ll do the same to you.’ That torture went on for two weeks.”

  Halina Zalewska told me, “There was something going on every night. My mother said to the thugs, ‘Get it over now, one way or the other, I can’t sleep with all this screaming and howling all the time.’”

  Menachem and his father, Izrael Finkelsztejn, testified that the pillaging was frequently accompanied by rape. When Jan Skrodzki quoted an excerpt from Menachem’s testimony about Jewish women being raped to his cousin Halina Zalewska, she protested vigorously, without noticing that she was actually confirming the testimony: “Those Jewish cows. What man would want them. Only the Kosmaczewski brothers raped, Leon and Antoni, and the Mordasiewicz from the other side of the garden plots. Kaziuk Mordasiewicz took Estera, the tailor Szymon’s wife who did our laundry, and did with her what he liked. He led her into the muddy bank of the Matlak river, took her behind the weir and made her roll around. She begged us to intervene on her behalf. My father was even going to, but the thugs banged on the door and shouted: ‘If you speak up for Jews you’ll be the first to be burned.’ Well, they burned Estera with the rest of them.”

  On Sunday, July 6, the horrifying news came that Poles had killed all the Jews in nearby Wąsosz. At noon, as described by Menachem Finkelsztejn, a lot of Poles from Wąsosz came to Radziłów. The locals didn’t let them in, but they also didn’t allow the Jews out.

  “There were a lot of peasants, men and women, at all the roads leading out of town, watching every move made by the Jews,” Chaja Finkelsztejn wrote. “We heard peasants shout that they were trampling the grain so no wretch could hide in it.” Chaja’s brother went to Father Dołęgowski to ask him to intercede: “My brother pleaded and wept and the priest did nothing but chide and scold.”

  2.

  On July 7 trucks drove into Radziłów from early morning carrying men from the surrounding villages armed with poles.

  Stanisław Ramotowski: “It was still dark, in the night of July 6 to 7, when they started coming into Radziłów on trucks to crack down on the Jews.”

  At about 7:00 a.m. two or three cars appeared in the marketplace. This was surely a group of officials from the security police and the security service led by Hermann Schaper, one of the small German units that aided in the “pacification” of these areas, and that were involved in (among other things) the local populations’ “cleansing themselves” of Jews. Schaper was a Gestapo officer from Ciechanów. The Institute of National Remembrance managed to find the ninety-one-year-old Schaper, and prosecutor Ignatiew tried to interrogate him in April 2002. But he wouldn’t say anything, offering his poor health as an excuse.

  When was the murder of the Radziłów Jews planned? And who planned it? That they were gearing up for a pogrom that day was known beforehand. We can assume that the arrangements were made the day before between Schaper and the temporary authorities in Radziłów, though none of the witnesses remembers any meeting or earlier visit from the Germans. Of course, it’s possible that no one remembered a visit of one or two Germans in a private car. We don’t know how the deals were made. Did Schaper order the killing of the Jews, did he encourage it, or did he merely express his consent?

  At dawn, when the peasants were heading for the pogrom, individual murders were already taking place. Mojżesz Perkal was beaten to death. One of Perkal’s daughters, sixteen, half-alive, squatted down beside her dead father’s body. The peasants dug a grave and threw her into it along with her father. Chaja Finkelsztejn heard about it at 7:00 a.m. from their former driver. “He was very upset,” she said. “He cursed the murderers: ‘Sons of bitches! To bury a girl alive!’”

  Andrzej R. told me, “Three Germans arrived in an open car. I was standing nearby. They said, ‘It stinks of Jews here. When we come back in a few days make sure it doesn’t smell like this.’ They pointed to Feliks Mordasiewicz, who was standing nearby—it was his responsibility. ‘How am I supposed to do that?’ he asked. Then they got five rifles out of the car, the long ones with a single shot.”

  Halina Zalewska told me, “Four Germans arrived in the marketplace in two Jeeps, they wore caps with skulls on them, they’d brought rifles to be handed out. The young people especially went to listen to the Germans. The Germans told them, ‘You have Jews here whose fault it is that your families are freezing to death in Russia. Gather them all in the marketplace under the pretext of weeding the pavement.’”

  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 fou
nd 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 thei
r 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.”