Allotments in today’s Złotniki village were picked as
the grounds for the new Jewish cemetery. The burial site itself was built in
the year 1938. Unfortunately, no documents survived that would confirm any
burials at this location before the war. This seems odd, however. According to
Jewish tradition, the headstones (matzevot) are erected a year after death of
the buried. Perhaps there was no time as the war began?
There is no doubt that the Jewish people murdered and
shot between 1939 and 1942 would be laid to rest there.
In the central part of the site there is a small hill,
on which a small monument is situated. The inscription on it says the following,
both in Polish and Hebrew:
“In memory of 300 Jewish people, the victims of the
barbarism of the Hitler’s regime in the years 1939-1942. The cemetery has been
established by the Jewish community in Mielec, destroyed in the years 1938-1945
by the Nazis.”
At the feet of the monument there are four concrete
gravestones. Inscriptions as follows:
Cerla and her 12-year old son as well as her sister were hiding in Chrząstów
village at Korczak’s. Alongside them Debora Ostro and her two daughters: Lea
and Mindel. The hideout was located in a long, stone building in which horses
and cows were kept. On the cows’ side a wooden trough was attached to the wall
with metal latches. Korczak made space there for a hideout through cutting off
roughly 75 centimetres from the end of the building. Later on, the trough for
the cattle was disassembled and then reattached to the newly created wall. Hay
and manure camouflaged the entrance.
Korczak placed two rows of
plank beds on both sides of this narrow corridor. In between walls he placed a
bench and a bucket used as a toilet.
At some point in time Debora
Ostro died of natural causes. She was buried in the garden. It seemed thus far
as if the rest of those hiding would be rescued, given that the Eastern Front
was quickly moving closer and closer to the Mielec area. Yet, on 31st
May 1944 at around 10pm Mr Korczak entered the hideout and told the hiding Jews
to go outside, as the Polish partisans wanted to see them.
The family members were
first thoroughly searched (the partisans were mainly looking for valuables) and
then escorted to the forest, where they were eventually murdered; information
based on Andrzej Krempa’s work “Zagłada Żydów Mieleckich (Holocaust of the Jews
of Mielec), p. 93-208.
Based on
the Paris hearing of Mark Verstandig, who miraculously survived the heist, it
was established that a Mrs Brenner was indeed hiding there (she was also
mentioned by a Mr Marcin Walas). Most likely they both meant Sara Brenner,
sister of Cerla Kleinman.
With the
birth dates in the Judenrat documentation taken into account, Cerla was 39
years of age when murdered. Dawid was 12 years of age and Sara Brenner was 36.
“Here lies
Rachela Buchen murdered by the the Nazis in 1942.”
The allotment on which the cemetery
was once built belonged to a Moses Buchen. Buchen survived the war and left
Mielec afterwards. He was most likely related to the Rachela in question,
especially given that her gravestone was already at the cemetery. It is safe to
assume that in general if gravestones with names inscribed appeared on the
site, then there must have been due to a family member’s initiative.
On the JRI Poland website she is
most likely listed as Rachel Buchen. Furthermore, the following has been
retrieved about her life in a Rzeszów archive:
“Rachela Buchen (née Kampf) was
62 years of age when deceased. She died either on 11th or 15th
of December 1941”
It is not 100 per cent certain,
however, that it is in fact the Rachel Buchen. The note found in the archive
might also not be entirely correct as far as the dates are concerned, as such
documents were more often than not written down for the succession purposes in
courts.
This information has also been
reviewed by Tomasz Frydel, the co-author of a publication “Dalej jest noc” (The
Night Lingers On). Upon discussing we have reached the conclusion that the date
in the archives might indeed be incorrect, given that such executions as the
one of Mrs Buchen rarely took place in 1941. Therefore, the date on the
gravestone, 1942, is the most probable one.
„ Matylda
Braun, daughter of Samuel and Blima died a tragic death on 1st of
August 1942, lived 27 years”
About Matylda Braun (only in polish)
https://maynshtetelemielec.blogspot.com/2022/06/matylda-braun-dziewczyna-ktora-dugo.html
“Here lie
Sara Horn, daughter Rachela and son Dawid, died a tragic death killed by the
Nazi barbarians in the years 1942-43”
Andrzej
Krempa in his book “Zagłada Żydów Mieleckich (Holocaust of the Jews of Mielec)
states: the four Jews hiding near the Ostrówek village did not survive the Nazi
occupation. Around November 1943 one of the villagers informed the local Blue Police
station that Jews were hiding in the area. The lieutenant Pielach, arrived at
the place with two other officers. A manhunt was organised with the help of the
local population. As a result the siblings Sara, Rachela and Dawid Horn as well
as their uncle Leszkiewicz were shot and a couple of the Polish locals stripped
them of their clothing after the shooting (p. 102).
Moses
Horn, the surviving member of the family, also remained in hiding in Ostrówek,
at Jan Perla’s house. Afterwards he testified against the perpetrators at
the Court of Appeals in Rzeszow. In his
testimony, he stressed that he still feared for his saviour’s life (source:
AIPN Rz. Team SAR, sign. IPN Rz. 353/3, old sign. GK225/3).
According
to the information I was able to retrieve from the national archives in Rzeszów,
it can be said with certainty that the following perished during the
aforementioned manhunt: Sara Beila Horn (née Leszkowicz), aged 48, her daughter Rachela aged 22, son Dawid aged 9 and
Sara’s brother Aron Leszkowicz. The court accepted 21st October 1942
as the date of all the deaths.
The
exhumation of the victims of Ostrówek manhunt was presided over by Moses Horn,
Sara’s son, who survived the Holocaust. After the war he lived briefly in
Mielec as well as Krakow and later on migrated to the Israel (through a DP camp).
The grounds on which the cemetery
has been built, formally belong to the municipality of Mielec. Currently there
are regulatory proceedings taking place.
The inscription at the monument is
not precise, and most likely is related to all the shootings that took place on
9th March 1942, that is, on the day of the mass deportation of all
Jewish people of Mielec.
The gravestones have been placed
most likely after the war. The monument, as stated in the documents from 1985
was “new”. Thus it has been, most likely, made a few decades after the war.
The cemetery is built on an
allotment number 181101-1.0001.648/3. The approximate size of the site is 6411
square metres.
An article by Agnieszka Grzelak in
Yad Vashem’s collections shows that in 1990s the previous owners of the plots
in the vicinity of the monument transferred them to the municipality of Mielec.
The keys to the cemetery gate are
kept in the local Photography Museum “Jadernówka”, at Jadernych Street.
Based on the journal of Moshe Borger, a resident of
Mielec who survived the Holocaust (currently kept in Yad Vashem), we can assume
that a rabbi Pfafer visited Poland in the 60s. The purpose of his visit was to
help Jewish children emigrate from Poland. He also took photographs of the
cemeteries on Traugutt and Wspólna Street. We can find him on the oldest
remaining photographs of the cemetery.
In this post I used the following
sources: the text by Mr Krempa, the co-author (alongside Mr Janusz Halisz) of
the book “Mielec 1939-1945- Military Secrets and War Stories”- the chapter
“Jewish cemeteries during the war”, Agnieszka Grzelak’s article, Yad Vashem’s
collection as well as my own findings in the state archives in Rzeszów
iskabelamalecka@gmail.com
