Pogrom of Kielce

The Pogrom of Kielce refers to the events of July 4th 1946, in the Polish city of Kielce, when forty Polish whose 37 Jews were massacred and eighty wounded among approximately two hundred survivors of the Holocauste who had returned on their premises after the Second world war. The importance of this pogrom in the Jewish history of post-war period comes especially owing to the fact that this attack occurred 14 month after the end of the Second world war, well after the Nazis had been overcome.

The pogrom

During the Second world war, Kielce had been entirely emptied of its Jewish population. About the summer 1946, approximately 200 Jews, especially from the former inhabitants, returned on their premises since the camps of died or their hiding-places.

The referendum in 1946 showed that the communist projects met support only at less than one third of the Polish population. Only the electoral fraud could ensure a majority in narrowly supervised elections to them.

One supported that it is the secret police (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa) which had organized this Pogrom to divert the attention of the Western Média S on the faked referendum.

July 1st 1946, a Christian little boy disappeared from the city during several days. On its return, he stated to be removed by Juif S. Inter alia horrors, he showed the Jews to kill out of the children and to keep the bodies under grounds of the kibbutz of the street Planty.

July 4th 1946, a slandering Anti-semite showing the Jews to practice bloody Rites on Christian children was followed by demonstrations in front of the Jewish residences; and of the members of the police force of State of the Communist government, of the Police force of the Polish People and the secret police entered the buildings and started to shoot at the Jews and to plunder their houses. The Jews which fled were attacked in the street by crowd, and two Polish police officers were killed whereas the Jews tried to defend themselves.

Consequences

The brutality of the pogrom of Kielce put an end to the hope of many Jews to be able to reinstall itself in Poland after the end of the occupation Nazi. Bożena Szaynok, historian with the University of Wrocław, thus wrote:

Until July 4th 1946, the Polish Jews gave what had occurred like primary reason for them to emigrate… After the pogrom of Kielce, the situation changed radically. Reports/ratios as well Jewish as Polish spoke about an atmosphere of panic among the Jewish company in the summer 1946. The Jews did not believe any more that they could be in safety in Poland. In spite of an important militia and a military presence in the town of Kielce, of the Jews coolnesses had been assassinated there, in public, and during more than five hours. One whispered that the militia and the army had taken share with the pogrom. July 1945 at June 1946, approximately fifty thousand Jews spent the Polish border illegally. In July 1946, almost twenty thousand decided to leave the Poland. In August 1946 the number accepted thirty thousand. In September 1946, twelve thousand Juif S left the Poland.

Many of these Jews had left clandestinely and illegally thanks to the organization Berihah.

The official reaction to the pogrom is told by Anita J. Prazmowska in Histoire of the Cold war , vol. 2, No 2:

Last nine participants in the Pogrom were condemned to died and three to very longsufferings of prison. The policemen, the soldiers and the civils servant of political police (UBP) were judged separately and then, in an amazing way, all were discharged charge “not to have taken no measurement to prevent crowd from committing crimes”; only Wiktor Kuznicki, Ordering of the civic militia (MO), was condemned to one year of prison. It is clear that, as of the period when the first investigations were launched and during the lawsuit, a decision had been made, for obviously political reasons, not to proceed to disciplinary actions. The facts were however clear but it is what is released from the declarations which preceded the judgment. It is conceived well that instructions had been given not to punish the chiefs of the civic Militia and the political Militia because of the politically significant nature of the facts. The declarations of the military prosecutor reveal weaknesses in the organization of these two security services…

September 14th 1946, the pope Pie XII gave the audience to the Rabbin Phillip Bernstein which had replaced judge Simon Rifkind like advising American for the Jewish businesses on the European theater of operations. Bernstein required of the pope to condemn the Pogrom S, but this last objected that the Iron curtain made difficult the communications with the Church of Poland.

Modern research and reconciliation

The pogrom of Kielce was an delicate subject in the Polish history during many years and there is always confusion. One supported that it belonged to an action much broader organized by the KGB in the countries controlled by the Soviet Union and that organizations dominated by it, like the Urząd Bezpieczeństwa, played a part in the preparation of the pogrom. But that can also seem doubtful since the policy of the Soviet Union was not anti-semite to the countryside against the “cosmopolitanism without roots” started after 1948. During last years, the pogrom of Kielce and the role of the Poles in the massacre are discussed in Poland with more frankness.

External bonds (in English)

The Jewish Pogrom in Kielce, July 1946 - New Obviousness by Bozena Szaynok
Kielce pogrom with
The Pogrom in Kielce (with maps)
The Truth Kielce butt by Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski, makes take the responsibility to the Soviets

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