Memorial to the Victims of the Kielce Pogrom

Upamiętnienie ofiar pogromu kieleckiego

The Kielce pogrom was the most violent anti-Semitic excess in post-war Poland. Most Jews took it as a signal that there was no future for them in Poland and shortly afterwards left the country.

History

Kielce is a major city halfway between Warsaw and Cracow. Prior to the First World War the city was part of the Russian Empire. Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, 25,000 of the 71,500 inhabitants were Jews, a share of almost 35%. During the German occupation almost all Jewish inhabitants of Kielce were murdered, most of them in August 1942 in the Treblinka extermination camp, after having been confined to a ghetto for more than a year.
After the war approximately 200 Holocaust survivors resided in Kielce, some of them had their roots in other regions. A number of Jews lived in a building in Ulica Planty 7, where several Jewish organisations were housed. On July 4, 1946 the lingering anti-Semitism of large parts of the Polish erupted in violence. When the allegation – which was made up out of thin air – made the rounds that the Jews held Christian children captive, a furious crowd gathered in front of the building in ul. Planty. After uniformed services (militia and army) arrived on site, the situation escalated. Instead of helping the Jews or maintaining law and order they surrendered many Jews to the crowd which lynched them. Many Jews died of bullet wounds proving they were murdered by members of the militia or the army. The excesses lasted for hours, among the dead were women and children. Towards the evening more security forces arrived on site and ended the pogrom. About 100 perpetrators were arrested, including dozens of members of the militia and the army.
The violence was not confined to the city of Kielce but spread to the whole area. Especially on trains and in train stations at least 30 Jews were lynched.

Kielce, undated, Historic postcard, public domain

Kielce, 2006, House in the ul. Planty, the main site of the pogrom, Gregorz Pietrzak

Victims

During the anti-semitic excesses in Kielce 42 persons were murdered – children, women and men. Among the victims were three Poles, they were probably killed because they tried to protect the Jews. Another 30 Jews were killed along the railway line in the surroundings of Kielce. More than 30 Jews survived the pogrom injured, some of them seriously. The injured were evacuated the next day to Warsaw when it became clear that they did not receive proper treatment in the city hospital.

The Second World War began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland and the occupation of the west of the country by German troops and the east of the country by the Red Army. Persecution and terror directly followed the invasion in both parts of the country. German units massacred members of the intelligentsia, Jewish and non-Jewish civilians as well as hospital patients. At the end of 1939 the German administration established ghettos where the Jewish population was forced to live in cramped and horrendous conditions. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, eastern Poland also fell under German control. SS Einsatzgruppen started to systematically murder Jewish men, later also women and children. In autumn 1941, local German authorities in the former west of the country began to prepare for the mass murder of Jewish ghetto prisoners using poison gas. By 1945, some three million Polish Jews had been murdered in the extermination camps at Chelmno, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek or Auschwitz, starved to death in the ghettos or shot dead. In 1943 the Jews living in the Warsaw ghetto staged an uprising, which was brutally crushed by the SS. Polish soldiers fought with the Allies on all fronts during the Second World War. Polish partisan groups, including the patriotic »Armia Krajowa« (Home Army), formed the largest resistance movement in occupied Europe. August 1, 1944 saw the start of the Warsaw Uprising, the most extensive civilian campaign against the Germans in occupied Europe. It failed also because the Red Army, already standing on the opposite side of the Vistula River, chose not to intervene. It is estimated that up to 250,000 people lost their lives in the uprising. A total of around three million non-Jewish Poles met a violent death during the German occupation. Once the Red Army had arrived on (East) Polish soil in January 1944, the troops of the Armia Krajowa were stripped of their weapons by the Soviet secret service and the officers were either shot or deported. The millions of deaths during the occupation, the permanent Soviet annexation of eastern Poland, the incorporation of former eastern German territories and the ensuing population transfers all left a traumatic political and social legacy in Poland. Remembrance of the murder of European Jews in German extermination camps was initially marginalised in the Polish culture of memory. Although Auschwitz soon became an international symbol of the Holocaust, in Poland it was viewed for decades above all as a »site of Polish martyrdom«. However, the start of the 21st century brought about changes in this respect, due in part to the fierce debates over the Jedwabne massacre in eastern Poland. The massacre of around 340 Jews on July 10, 1941 was originally attributed to the »Gestapo and Hitler police« but had in fact been carried out by Polish »neighbours« without orders from the Germans. Debates in Poland and abroad on Polish perpetration resulted in the Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski (*1954) issuing an apology to the victims in 2001. There were increasing calls from experts, such as those from Poland’s Institute for National Remembrance, for the country to confront the most difficult chapters in its history, which also include the anti-Jewish pogroms in 1946-47 and state anti-semitism in communist Poland during the post-war period. The Polish invests extensively in memorial culture, including grand projects with international ambition. The Warsaw Rising Museum was opened already in 2004. The POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews was opened in 2013 on the territory of the former Warsaw Ghetto, a new museum dedicated specifically to the Warsaw Ghetto will follow suit in 2024. Since 2017, there is a major Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk. Since the turn of the millennium, the sites of the former German extermination camps have also been converted into modern memorial sites. An ever-growing preoccupation with Poland’s Jewish and multicultural heritage can be observed in the field of culture as well.

Remembrance

The victims were buried four days after the pogrom in a common grave on the Jewish cemetery. The funeral, attended also by government officials from Warsaw, resembled a political demonstration.
Most of the about 100 arrested participants of the pogrom were released shortly afterwards. 12 perpetrators were brought before a military tribunal, three were sentenced to long prison terms, nine were sentenced to death. The death sentences were executed already on July 12, 1946.
Despite the seemingly severe reaction of the communist government the pogrom had enormous consequences regarding the further development of Jewish life in Poland. Most of the Jews took it as a signal that there was no future for them in Poland and did their utmost to emigrate. It is estimated that only some tens of thousands stayed in the country.
In the following decades the Kielce pogrom was cloaked in silence, only after the breakdown of communism books and documentaries on this subject were published. In 2006 the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) presented an investigative report on the subject. The same year »Fear«, a book by the Polish-American historian Jan T. Gross that dealt with the Kielce pogrom in great length was published, causing heated discussions in Poland. Many Poles thought their nation was generally discredited as being anti-Semitic.
In Kielce there are several places where the victims of the pogrom are remembered. Since 1990 there is a memorial plaque on the building in ul. Planty that was initiated by Lech Wałesa, leader of the Solidarity movement. Since around 2015, there are large portaits of victims mounted on the building.
Not very far from the house there is a memorial which was erected in 2006 on the initiative of an American organisation. In 2010 a new memorial was erected next to the victims' grave on the Jewish cemetery. It consists of a broken granite slab, its lines of fracture forming a Star of David. Responsible for the realisation of the memorial and the care for the cemetery is the local Jan Karski Society (Polish: Stowarzyszenie im. Jana Karskiego).
The 70th anniversary of the pogrom was commemorated in 2016 with a ceremony attended by Polish President Andrzej Duda.

Kielce, 2006, Memorial plaque at the house in the ul. Planty, Halibutt

Kielce, 2010, New gravestone for the victims of the pogrom in the Jewish cemetery, http://en.jankarski.org.pl/

Possibilities

Guided tours of the Jewish cemetery

Open

The memorials in the municipal area are accessible at all times. A visit to the Jewish cemetery can be organised by the Jan Karski Association (Polish: Stowarzyszenie im. Jana Karskiego). Further information at www.jankarski.org.pl/kontakt

Contact

http://en.jankarski.org.pl/

bogdan.bialek@charaktery.com.pl

+48 (0) 41 343 28 40

ul. Planty 7
25-508 Kielce

Kielce, 2009, Gravestone erected in 1946 for the victims of the pogrom, Ely1

Kielce, 2015, Portraits of victims on the house in the ul. Planty, Stiftung Denkmal

Kielce, 2015, Entrance gate to the Jewish Cemetery, Stiftung Denkmal

Kielce, 2015, Jewish Cemetery, Stiftung Denkmal

Kielce, 2015, Headstone at the mass grave of the pogrom's victims on the Jewish Cemetery, Stiftung Denkmal

Kielce, 1946, Wounded Jews after the pogrom, Yad Vashem

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