The Crime and the Silence

by Anna Bikont

  When she was reunited with her family, it turned out her worried husband had gone looking for her. He returned shaken. He had barely escaped a peasant who had come at him with a knife crying, “It’s because of you Jews they’re going to send me to Siberia.” He owed his escape to a ruse: he had intentionally dropped his jacket, knowing the peasant would stop to pick it up to see if there was any money in it …

  They heard the Poles had given the order that no goods were to be sold to Jews, and no one was to give them shelter. And that everything had calmed down in town, so the Finkelsztejns could go home. Their house was already occupied by German officers, but the Germans gave back part of the house. In Der Stürmer, the German rag they found lying about the house, they read that Britain had proposed to create two states in the territory of Palestine: Israel for the Jews, and Arabia for the Arabs. For a moment they felt happy.

  On June 27, the Germans stationed at the Finkelsztejns’ left Radziłów along with the rest of the troops. Chaja writes: “I realized that it was almost Shabbat and I needed to get something ready for Saturday. I had a goose hidden away, the rest of the poultry had been stolen. I brought it to the shokhet through the back lanes. He was sick in bed, he hadn’t recovered from the profanation of the holy books from the temple. His own place had been looted and trashed by Christians he knew. His daughter, who was a friend of mine, told me in tears that she’d tried to resist them but they’d hit her, yelling: ‘Stupid Jewish cow, what’s the difference, who’s going to keep it safe for you?’”

  That was the second day in a row that the Poles of Radziłów and the German soldiers had preyed on the Jews, beating them up, making them burn holy Torah scrolls. Four-horse carts draped with camouflage nets drew up right by the Finkelsztejns’ house. From the window Chaja saw some Germans in camouflage jumping off them. “The peasants and their wives, young and old, ran out to greet the Germans, happy they were driving the Soviets out. The Poles pointed out to the Germans which houses in town belonged to Jews.”

  Dozens of them burst in, both Germans and Poles. Henryk Dziekoński led the way. “I called out to him by name,” wrote Chaja. “I knew him, he’d been at our house many times. His father was a policeman before the war, and he himself worked at the post office at the time of the Soviet occupation. I asked him what he had against us. He replied that all Jews were the same: ‘No one took pity on us when we were deported to Siberia, and nobody’s going to pity you, either.’”

  They threw everything from the shelves and sideboards on the floor, trampled things with their boots, broke china, poured food out and sprinkled gasoline on it, broke windows. “In a sadistic frenzy they smashed the chandelier with rubber clubs. They ran around the house, searching the rooms. They carried out the loot to the mob of peasants standing in front of the house. Their wild cries of ‘Jude’ were deafening,” we learn from reading Chaja, who threw herself at the attackers to help her husband get away. She heard them shoot at him, and she didn’t know if he’d been hit, if he’d made it through alive.

  They beat the children, and Chaja defended them like a lioness, kicking and biting the attackers, taking most of the blows herself. She broke through to the cellar, where one of the intruders was trying to rape her daughter Szejna, and tore her from his grasp. By the time midnight struck, the house had emptied out, but Chaja, the most heavily wounded of the family, was covered in blood. She stood at the window, waiting for dawn to go look for her husband. She fell asleep on her feet and it was then that she had the dream about all the Radziłów Jews being herded into one place.

  “I understood that this was a sign and that we had to find a place to hide,” she wrote. “My body was black and blue all over, my head was covered with open wounds, but my brain worked coldly, trying to find a solution. I had no faith in the priest’s human feelings. Yet, perhaps in spite of everything, we should look for help there, at the source of all the poison and the most bitter venom?” Izrael returned unhurt at dawn, and with her energy renewed, Chaja, ignoring her wounds, went around, trying to find some guarantee of safety for her family amid a hostile community.

  Chaja decided to take the bull by the horns and go straight to those responsible for the pogrom. She wanted to ask them: “Why?” Ask them to restrain the locals from tormenting Jews, ask them not to help the Germans. She started with Mordasiewicz, both of whose sons had been taking part in the harassment of Jews. He told her they only did what they were ordered to do from higher up, and that he couldn’t help her.

  “If that’s the case, Mr. Mordasiewicz,” Chaja replied, “please advise me who I should see.” He mentioned the prewar village head Stanisław Grzymkowski. Chaja went to see him immediately. “He covered over his scowl at seeing me with a polite smile,” she related. “He was pacing the room. Every time he passed the sideboard he’d cut a little slice of bread, put slabs of pork fat on it, and calmly eat it. He listened to my story without a shadow of compassion. He must have known about the attack, maybe he’d even given the order. I asked him: ‘Why was this done to us? Can anyone reproach us with being friends of the Communists? Do you know how we have suffered at their hands, more than our Polish neighbors?’”

  After hearing that remark he softened a bit and sent her to the medic Mazurek, because—as he claimed—“his rank is higher, his word has more weight.”

  Mazurek, whose son was one of those attacking Jews at night, complained about all the work he had dressing the wounds of Jews. He couldn’t see any way to help, and suggested she go to the priest. So she went where her dream told her to go.

  In the presbytery she saw the copper pots Jews used for laundry, which must have arrived there as loot. She showed the priest her head injuries, her swollen face, the bruises showing from under her neckline, and said her whole body looked like that. She explained, “As their spiritual father, you should tell them from the pulpit that they shouldn’t help the Germans because it besmirches the good name of Poles, and the Germans alone do plenty of harm to the Jews.” The priest responded nervously that he wouldn’t say a good word about the Jews: “Though I’m a big man”—he was tall and fat—“I would become small to my congregation. I’m not sure they wouldn’t kill me on the spot. They might regret it later, but in the heat of the moment they could kill me, that’s how great their hatred is of the Jews. Every Jew between twelve and sixty years old is a Communist.” Chaja tried to explain that those among the Jews who were rotten had run away with the Red Army and the Jews who had stayed behind were innocent, but the priest insisted that all Jews were Communists.

  Chaja had an extraordinary instinct for negotiation and great intuition about people. “You may not accept my guarantee for all the Jewish people, but you have to accept it for my family,” she told the priest. “I’m positive there aren’t any Communists with us.” And the priest admitted the Finkelsztejns were decent people and praised their children for refusing to wear Communist red scarves in school. He advised her to sit out the worst of what was to come in the countryside. He promised, “I can’t help you directly, but I will help indirectly.” Her memoir tells us that the priest’s promise did in fact ensure them a few days of safety.

  Chaja also goes to see a friendly Zionist, Wolf Szlapak. “Szlapak was in touch with the leader of the local group of nationalists, who assured us we didn’t have to worry about our house or belongings. He didn’t know we’d been attacked the night before. He was surprised I’d gone to the priest for help. ‘He’s an anti-Semite. We think he was leading the killers.’ ‘That’s why I went there,’ I replied.”

  The idea came up that Szlapak might try to negotiate in the name of the whole Jewish community and organize a collection of money and valuables to buy their security.

  That Saturday the woman housekeeper who worked at the Finkelsztejns’ didn’t turn up for work, and for the first time in her life, Chaja broke the Sabbath and lit the fire herself to warm up soup for her children’s Shabbat dinner. She went to see her sister-in-law to get a meal to warm up. “Wh
en she found out I’d lit the fire myself, her jaw dropped. She began accusing me of being one of those who brought all these misfortunes on the Jews. I replied that a threat to one’s life supercedes the sanctity of the Sabbath. And that if I had to I’d light the fire in the kitchen every Saturday. I still see her face, full of anger. She couldn’t forgive me. But the children were pleased to have had a hot meal. I was sure I’d acted for the best.”

  In the evening she sent her son Menachem to Szlapak. It turned out the thugs had got into his house, too, had dragged out the women who were hiding there and beat them, and warned Szlapak that only he and his family were under protection. The Jews nevertheless decided to continue gathering money and jewelry. “It wasn’t easy, because it was dangerous even to cross the street,” Chaja commented. “But the news that we’d talked to the gang leaders got around fast and people believed it offered some hope.”

  When Chaja had put her children to bed at night, she sat by the window with her husband to watch for any thugs approaching. There was no point in bolting the door, as the windows had already been broken. All night they heard screams from the neighboring houses. In the morning Dziekoński turned up. “He’d come to apologize. He said he’d been drunk. We could see someone had sent him to humble himself before us.” The following night, when they sat listening to the screaming again, some thug came up to the window and shouted, “Go to bed! Nothing bad will happen to you!”

  Meanwhile, people carried household equipment, bedclothes, clothing, silver, and china over to Szlapak’s house, and the room designated for the ransom was almost completely full. Then thugs broke in, stole everything, and beat up Szlapak. “His wife said he was bleeding, his lungs were injured. She asked me to look at him. I didn’t feel I had it in me but I couldn’t refuse. I pulled myself together and went in to see a man who’d believed the killers would respect him enough to make a deal with him. I went through the dining room where his children and the children of refugees and neighbors were sitting, all of them sweet as flowers and so sad. Szlapak lay all bandaged up, his blackened face looking out from under the compresses. I left in silence, for I could find no words of solace.”

  Days and nights passed, and the thugs went from house to house beating, looting, raping, but they stayed away from the Finkelsztejns’ house. Chaja and her husband fought off sleep, keeping vigil by the beds of their sleeping children.

  One time Chaja dozed off for a minute and dreamed that the killers had burst into the house and stolen everything. In her dream she was angry she hadn’t poured out the bottle of cognac, she’d only buried it, and now it might fall into the hands of the murderers. “I ran to the cellar, and there was a broken bottle, and forget-me-nots, blue with yellow hearts, had sprung up in the place where the cognac had spilled.” Chaja told a Jewish neighbor about the dream and heard from her that flowers were a good omen. On the other hand, it wasn’t good that the flowers were all growing in the same spot. She decided to be vigilant and prepared to flee the town.

  On Sunday, July 6, the Polish caretaker who had looked after their mill before the war came to see them. She informed them that a lot of peasants had come from Wąsosz to help the Radziłówians kill their Jews. She wanted to take the Finkelsztejns’ belongings before others turned up (“It’s better if I have them than if others do,” she explained). A moment later the wife of a Jewish accountant from Wąsosz who’d worked for them before the war burst in with a small child. “Her face was wild. She asked for a piece of bread. The killers had told her that her whole family in Wąsosz had been slaughtered like calves. They mentioned the names of her murdered sisters and brothers. In a wild voice she cried: ‘Run! Run away!’”

  Chaja dressed the children, and they sneaked off to the Rogowskis in Trzaski, who were afraid to let them in the house. They allowed them to sleep in their field. At dawn the Finkelsztejns returned home. But soon the news reached them that the Gestapo had arrived and ordered the Jews to weed the marketplace, and the Finkelsztejns were driven from their home by their Polish neighbors. It was the morning of July 7, 1941.

  The order didn’t include children but some zealots rounded up whole families. Chaja’s memoir allows us not only to reconstruct in detail the course of the atrocity, but also to see it through her eyes.

  They stood in the heat of the sun, surrounded by a thick wall of neighbors who were making sure no one escaped. Some Jews were beaten and bleeding: the ones who wouldn’t go to the marketplace voluntarily. Mothers stood holding their children, others worried what would happen to the little ones they had left at home. All were worn out by two weeks of nightmares and hunger, for the boycott was effective and they were unable to buy anything from Poles, while the food they’d stored up was looted by the gangs rampaging in the night. The Gestapo and Poles beat whomever they pleased, they tortured people, tore out the beards of old Jews. Many Jews quietly prayed—one heard the soft murmur of the prayer Sh’ma Israel.

  “What’s going to happen now, Chaja?” a woman friend asked her.

  “Death is certain,” she answered. “Only how will it come?”

  And suddenly, unexpectedly, hope returned. The Gestapo got into their cars and drove off.

  A minute later a peasant whom the Finkelsztejns had hired as a thresher before the war led the family out of the marketplace, where they were weeding along with the other Jews, and let them get away. Chaja doesn’t mention how it came to be that he saved them and protected them from the other Poles. The priest’s safe conduct was certainly not enough; she must have paid the peasant off. On the way they were stopped by the living wall of people, but it parted when someone shouted, “Let them through. They go free.”

  They saw Jewish children wandering around in search of their parents. The two youngest children they’d left at home, Szejna and Chana, were soothing other weeping kids. Szejna’s schoolmates ran up to the window, shouting, “Do you know what’s happening with the Jews? They’re going to burn them in a barn.” Szejna burst into tears, but her parents wouldn’t believe it. They were just barricading themselves inside the house when a gang of boys burst in, led by their laundress’s son. The boys led them out of the house, and when Chaja wanted to lock the door, they tried to get the keys from her, because “she wouldn’t need them anymore.” She explained that they’d been set free, but they wouldn’t listen. But when they saw the smoke, the attackers told them they were lucky and could go back home.

  Their return startled the neighbors, who were already carrying their belongings out of the house. Chaja told them to take what they wanted and the whole family, including Chaja’s niece, left town. They met a group of peasant women who burst into tears and wrung their hands over their misfortune. Suddenly a peasant they knew and had hired once to dig peat shouted, “Into the wheat! Hide!” A man on horseback was coming down the road. They heard him say that all the Jews had been burned and only the miller had escaped with his family; he was looking for them. He asked the peasant if he’d seen them and the man said he hadn’t. The smell of burned hair and clothing and charred bodies was just reaching them.

  In the village of Konopki, far from the main roads, Izrael saw a peasant woman he knew and called her name. She was terrified, because she’d heard that no Jew had survived, and since she believed the souls of Jews were damned, she thought the miller’s soul had turned up at her doorstep. They went to find the village head Bolesław Zawadzki, who was happy to see them. “I felt so sorry for you,” he said to Izrael. “I was a predsiedatel [chairman] under the Soviets and I’m in a difficult situation, but if you converted to our faith, maybe we could manage to persuade somebody.” He sent for his brother-in-law and neighbors. As they were wondering about how to hide the family, a peasant woman from Radziłów who’d married in Konopki, a sister of the killer Mieczysław Strzelecki, came by. She had been a school friend of Chaja’s niece and Chaja’s brother had given his things to her parents for safekeeping. “Something evil flared up in her eyes,” wrote Chaja. “My niece understood at once,
and said: ‘Zosia, I don’t need those things, I won’t take them from you.’ And the woman said: ‘Yes, why bother? They’ll find you and kill you anyway.’”

  The village head’s brother told them that Jews who had hidden were being dragged out of various shelters, doused with gasoline, and set afire or shot near the barn. He had gone to Radziłów with his cart to salvage something of their belongings, but the townspeople wouldn’t let him in. “As it later turned out he was a good man,” Chaja wrote. “But the hatred of Jews was so great that nothing surprised him. He told us the story matter-of-factly.”

  Marian Kozikowski, who had pulled them out of the marketplace, turned up at the village head’s house. He was furious when he saw Chaja’s niece there. He shouted that only Chaja’s immediate family had the “right” to be saved. “You could see from the fury in his eyes what terrible acts he’d performed,” she wrote. He bragged that he’d cut the throats of thirty Jews and started sharpening a knife in the kitchen, screaming, “I’ll have to cut her throat, too.” Only the village head’s resistance and the women weeping put him off the idea.

  Chaja found out from Poles she knew what had happened to the Szlapak family. The brutalized Wolf Szlapak didn’t go to the marketplace. “Mieczysław Strzelecki, who’d worked for Szlapak as a driver, murdered him and his seven-year-old son in bed. He buried their bodies in a pit by the garbage dump behind their house. His sick mother was dragged out of bed, thrown on a cart, and the horse driven into a gallop. She couldn’t hold on, fell under the wheels, her nightdress got snagged on something, and she was dragged over the paving stones until there was nothing left of her but bloody stumps of legs.”

  On July 10 the Finkelsztejns saw the glow of a fire on the horizon. It was the burning barn in Jedwabne filled with Jews. Later they heard that there was killing going on all over the area, in Grajewo, Stawiski, Łomża, Kolno, Szczuczyn, and anywhere there was a Jew to be found.