Maybe you remember the story I shared back in June? Jewish family hiding during the war on the outskirts of Brzeźnica village, was discovered and shot in the forest.
In May I visited that place together
with Mr. Marian Put, a local history enthusiast who – although not a direct
witness to those events – discovered many details and described everything in
his book. Shortly after the war, father showed Mr. Marian a place in the forest
where the Jewish family was shot, but it was difficult to determine the exact
location of the grave after all these years.
In June, we visited this place again, this time together with Mr. Alexander
Schwarz from the Foundation “Forgotten”, who explored the area using
a GPR (as you know, according to the principles of Judaism, it is not allowed
to exhumate bodies or do any invasive tests). After exploring a larger area,
Mr. Schwarz located two places of similar size in which the grave of this Jewish
family could be located. For some time we were stuck – it seemed impossible to
choose between these 2 locations. However, recenty we’ve learned that there
exists another witness, elder cousin of Mr. Marian Put. On August 6 we were in
the forest again, this time five of us: Mr. Schwarz and myself were accompanied
by Mr. Marian Put, Mr. Józef Put and the owner of the plot on which this grave
is almost certainly located.
I recorded the testimonies of Mr. Józef on video, so the photos are not of good quality (I cut them out of the video). But here is the transcription from that recording:
– Here we all came together and said a prayer for the dead. There were probably five of us, I was the oldest. Myself, my brothers and 2 kids of our neighbours, the same age as me. We came by ourselves. News spread around the village that Jews who had been hiding with Cichoński family, were shot. We heard shots. People worked in the fields, and there were several rifle shots. And the next day my mother sent us into the field: “Go, look where these graves are.” Back then there were fields here, there was no forest. At that time I was the oldest among them, and I found it. This grave was as wide as my two shoes, so narrow (according to the testimony of Mr. Józef, the grave was in a ditch at the plot border, probably because of it it was so narrow. AB) And this grave was quite long, maybe 2 meters. And so I thought that in this narrow grave the bodies could not be stacked side by side, only in layers. This grave must have been deep. So that they were thrown in, one on top of the other …
– It was more or less here. If we dug here, we would find remains. This grave was here. Along this shaft. And it had been visible for a long time before it was completely covered with leaves …
Mr. Put was very moved when talking
about it, he was almost crying.
In September Mr. Schwarz will come to this place once again with a GPR. I hope
that we will be able to mark the exact boundaries of the grave and commemorate
it properly. Maybe then, after over 75 years, these executed parents with two
young children will find some peace. May their memory be an eternal blessing.
