English
Polish
“I swear to fight for a free and mighty Poland, carry out the orders of my superiors, so help me God.”Jews in the Home Army. An Episode from Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski
Dariusz Libionka
libion@wp.pl Biohistorian, lecturer at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, head of the research department of the State Museum at Majdanek. Member of the Polish Centre for Holocaust Research of the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Recent publications: ZWZ-AK i Delegatura Rządu RP wobec eksterminacji Żydów Polskich, in: Polacy i Żydzi pod okupacją niemiecką 1939–1945, ed., A. Żbikowski, Warsaw 2006, p. 15–207.
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0180-6463
Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences
Alina Skibińska
askibinskapl@gmail.com Biohistorian, representative of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C. in Poland, works at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, International Archival Programs Division of the Museum. member of the Polish Centre for Holocaust Research of the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1267-3926
Polish Center for Holocaust Research, Polish Academy of Sciences
Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały, 2008: Holocaust Studies and Materials, pages: 235-269
Publication date: 2008-12-01
Abstract
The article presents a selection of documents from a 1949 trial, which concluded with the sentence of three ZWZ-AK members, Opatów district, by the Court of Appeals in Kielce – Józef Mularski, Leon Nowak and Edward Perzyński – for complicity in the murder of 12 Jews from the Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski ghetto in a forest near Kunów. Two of them, severely wounded, returned to the ghetto; one of them survived the war (Szloma Icek Zweigman), and after emigration submitted a detailed and extensive testimony regarding the incident. Zweigman’s testimony was the foundation of the investigation and the indictment. Mularski and Nowak, sentenced to death, were subsequently pardoned and released from prison after 1956, as was the third convict. The case was closed as follows: sentence of 1957 to pardon Józef Mularski, followed by another verdict of 2000 that provided for a high compensation. The presented materials are not only proof that members of the Polish underground committed crimes against Jews, but also demonstrate how the Polish judiciary and the Main Commission to Investigate Nazi Crimes in Poland operated. The latter clearly conducted a policy of papering over those criminal cases in which Poles were the perpetrators. The issues raised in the article are inadequately researched, not only in Polish historiography.
The presented trial materials come from the Archives of the Institute of National Remembrance
Keywords
Ostrowies Swietokrzyski, Polish-Jewish relations, partisans, Home Army, August Decree trials
License
Copyright (c) 2008 Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
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