ZNAK: The Destruction of the House of the Trinchers

For many decades I have waited for the moment when all the people involved in this crime would be gone to relate the tragic account of the Jews of Gniewczyna. And to show their point of view. I want to raise the mirror for the people to look into it. I am calling in the name of the helpless.

Tadeusz Markiel

It's hard to argue the facts. One can either live in a lie, or embrace the truth and face it. The story of the Jewish compatriots who had been dying among their own, we must tell to the last detail.

(Jan T. Gross, The Fear)

The Destruction of the House of the Trinchers

by Tadeusz Markiel

Bad news came for the few Polish families of the Jewish tradition living Gniewczyna. It was a village of about few thousand people in Tryncza district, what was then the Lwow voivodship. At the war break an elder farmer (expressing the emotion shared by many) said: "And now the Germans will come and make some order with the Jews". It was an announcement of terrible fate awaiting the 1% of the population in Gniewczyna: the Trinchers, the Semks, the Mayers, the Jankiels, the Kielmonts, the Fajbs, the Leyzors, the Leybs, the Mayerka.

Some background about Gniewczyna

In those times the people in Gnewczyna were not educated. Only after 1920 (from the years of liberation) the kids and the young had the obligation to educate. In the generation of grand parents only few could read and in the generation of fathers only one out of two. Though all the youngsters could already write only a few of them – one out of ten – were prepared to continue education in higher schools. After graduating from fourth grade most of the young people dropped out and finished education. They were needed to take care of the younger siblings and to work in the fields. So, the kids starting education were divided in two groups and only about three out of the entire class reached the seventh grade - these were the boys from rich families.

Most of the people in the village suffered poverty, they ate from one plate, some scuthed hemp and produced fabric for their clothes, one of the farmers took manure to the field bear foot in the winter time. Poor women went to the woods to collect branches and carried heavy loads of this fuel on their backs. I remember their red faces covered with sweat from the heat of the sun.

The farmers who owned small parts of land had to pay for horse rent with their labor. This way they had to work equally lot as the richer ones who had more land and a horse. Owning a horse would put a farmer into so called middle class, and owning two would make them rich. There was one poor farmer who worked all his life and saved money to buy a horse. He has managed to buy a cart and harness and he kept a swine ear to grease the leather harness but before he bought the dreamt of horse he got old, sick and died.

The city people, the officials, the policemen, railway workers and teachers were treated with envy and dislike. Well, there’s a reason: The peasants working all day in the manor earned one zloty while the officials and alike made hundreds of zlotys a month. On top of that the peasant in the manor and a private in the army were mistreated, beaten. My father in the army in Tarnopol when he came back to his unit one day too late before he had a chance to explain, got a huge slap on the face from the sergeant. 

The village had only two family owned workshops: a big, built of brick, and equipped with a gas engine grain mill belonging to the Jagiello family and a simple, man operated oil mill from the Ficks. Some families moved East looking for ways to earn money for their bread because the veterans of the 1920 war were offered rich land there.

As to the general opinion about the Gniewczyna parish the pungent statement came from the rector of the church, Jan Biega, who complained about “the filthy habit of stupidity, savagery and anger among the people”. “In every matter, however heavenly, good, simple, the members of this community, almost always the same ones, not heaving the enlightened minds, not willing to take any advice from anyone, spread anger - this is their element, their goal. This is the evidence and the proof for the righteous name of our village: Gniewczyna” (in Polish Gniew means anger).

This complaining did not reach the simple peasant and his wife who were enslaved by hard labor, burdened by a bunch of always hungry kids, with no clothes, often sick and covered in mucus, cooped up with their parents and grand parents in one room of a rotten house. I remember our neighbors, the family of Czerwonka. They had twelve children. During the winter they slept four in one bed, most of the time ill, on a stove, or on a pile of grain, the grandparents on benches, the older children on the floor on a coat of hey. None of them had a job, pension or annuity. They drank coffee made of burned grains of barley. They had no lamps so they lit the place with splinters of wood stuck between the bricks of the stove. And finally they burned the place down. The village was not organized and could not help them. They had to go begging from village to village with a letter from the church rector. The poverty, hard labor, the living conditions and no views for a better tomorrow were the reasons why most people felt aggrieved and defrauded by their fate. They were angry and willing to blame the others for their misfortune. Having no ways to change that they had no bonds with their country because they had no reasons to be proud of the liberated Poland. Their homeland - just like during the occupation - was the Polish language and the piece of land inherited from their fathers.

There were only a few Jewish families in Gniewczyna. At a first glance the Jews were no different from the others: after years of living here they looked like the rest of the peasants, dressed alike, did the same things and spoke the same language as their Catholic neighbors. So, if there was any dislike towards the Jews it didn’t come from any differences in language, looks or material state. The Jews of Gniewczyna were poor. The Poles and the Jews had a lot of trade going on between them. The Christians sold their Jewish neighbors milk, cheese, butter, poultry, grain and potatoes. They bought wool head scarfs called 'the properties', and fat kerchiefs with fringes to cover shoulders. They also commissioned other parts of wardrobe and items of small house appliance. The Jews fetched them from Rzeszow half of the way traveling on foot to make it more economic. None of the Jewish families had a horse with a cart. But you could never see a Jew going begging or stealing.

So where was this dislike towards the Jews coming from? The answer is simple: it was coming from the religion. This reluctance came from the pulpit, the church paintings, the custom... Once to the home of my grandma, Maria Kulpa, came Christmas chanters. Among them was the character of Judas, hunched, with sidelocks, caricature of a person, with a pilgrim stick and a bag for money - well, you know - the Jew. I recall my angel like aunt Stasia who pealed a birch twig off a broom and giving it to me, a seven year old boy, she said: “Hit the Jew with it! It will be a good deed for Jesus!” I was scared because who has seen a boy hitting a grown-up who additionally has a stick in his hand. But my aunt encouraged me: “Go on, hit him, he won’t do you no harm”. So finally I got the courage to hit him and to my surprise the Jew was not angry, he didn’t hit back. Well, for the people in the village everyone was a God’s creature except for a Jew. 

The kids had fun throwing dung at the Jewish windows. And if only that! The women who carried the heavy wood from the forest once told me an 'adventure' of some old Jew who did the same thing. The teenagers grazing cows in the field approached him from behind quietly and set his burden on fire. The Jew started to panic because he couldn’t free himself off the burning branches. His hair burned, he had blisters and the ones guilty for it had not been punished in any way. 

Neither in school nor at home or church we were told that we ought to respect also the Jewish neighbors. And they behaved as if they were constantly apologizing for their presence. So people were taking it on them, laughing at them, and the words “Jew” and “Jewish brat” were used as insults. It was considered a good joke to treat a Jewish kid with a piece of kielbasa (pork sausage) or some black pudding being well aware of the fact that their Jewish parents are keeping the kosher. “Mame - a child coming back from their neighbors would say - Mr. Konik treated me with some sausage, aj vaj, it was delicious!” To annoy the Jews people would greet them with: “Praise the Lord, Jesus Christ!” The Jews were not annoyed though. They replied: “Praise the Lord Almighty”. They had the pride of the Bible and their history in them and their were faithful to their God. They had the faith unknown to us, Christians, that they are the Chosen Nation who were shown the path by the Lord Himself. Today I came to think it was this faith that protected them from the mob. The faithful Jews even when threatened with their lives did not renounce their religion. The only exceptions were infatuations and love.

The two beautiful daughters of Mayers had two Christian boys falling for them. They were Jan Strama, the technician, and Jan Shozda, the railway worker. The first girl, Rachel/Teresa Strama, had three wonderful children with the Christian man. She has remained in the village but went through hell because she was blackmailed by one of the local mobsters who until the last days of war threatened her and her children to give them into the hands of the Germans. The other, Bronia, married Jan Shozda only after the war ended, in 1944. During the occupation with the help of her fiance she was hiding in many different places. Mostly in the house of Baya, next to the bridge on the other side of the river. After the war they both could finally rest from the nightmare of fear they received from their neighbors and the Nazis. Bronia did not have to change her religion. She got the right for a civil marriage with Jan Shozda. They moved to Lancut, far away from the personally acquainted antisemits of Gniewczyna. 

Under the roof in the house of my grandma, Maria Kulpa, I had found an old Catholic magazine (issued in 1926). This magazine was Catholic only in title. In reality it was antisemitic. Very antisemitic. I read a kind of prayer in it:

“Lord! You have defended Poland from the Swedes, the Turks, the Tatar. You have rescued it from the German occupation. And you have destroyed the kaizer and the Tsar. Now we are calling to you: please save this land from the Jew! The Jew has conquered our cities and villages, the trade and the factories he has stolen. Even the schools. And the country is falling into poverty and suffering. We are bringing this to Thee... The Jew brings shame and makes people drink. The brothels and saloons he opens. He spreads bolshevism. He takes the wealth, the minds, the health. We are bringing this to Thee... The Lord Almighty and You, Holy Virgin, the Queen of the Polish Crown! Poland wants to break off these awful chains. It wants to be free. We are bringing this lament to you... please save Poland from the awful Jew. 

Also there I found this:

[The Jew] has abandoned his own land and started rambling the world feeding off the others. Like a louse, a bedbug, locust, typhus, germ of cholera or plague... The Jew demands equality of rights and  tolerance, in other words he demands the Christianity to bow to him. Abdicate Christian! Renounce your faith, your nationality, your land, your sky... give away what you have gathered. Burn the Holy Bible, abolish the papacy, remodel the churches and turn them into synagogues, grow your sidelocks, put on Jewish clothes and go to work for him. There are legions of traitors to their country, who sold their souls and minds to judaism, for decades have been committing the crime of treason! This whole mob of thugs of the worst kind have pressed their mark on the Nation...” 

Only sixteen years have passed from the publication of this paper when on the 12th of February 1942 the twelve years old Jewish boy of Kraina, David Rubinowitz, read a German poster just nailed to the walls of his village:

A Jew is a cheater and your only enemy. Stop and read, dear friend, how you got surrounded by the Jews. He pours dirty water to your milk. Eats a rat instead of meat. Mixes his dough with warms and kneads it with his feet... 

In the spring of next year, when the Germans started the so called “final solution of the Jewish problem” (the extermination of the entire nation) also the locals got down to the “final hunt” on the Jewish families. They didn’t have to do it. For the local people it wasn’t hard to track the Jews down because they were under a close watch. The extortions and robberies commited on Jews became more frequent. When the Jews started barricading doors of their houses the locals came to their houses and poured water through the chimneys long enough to have the Jews open the doors for them. They took ransom for alcohol and disappeared before the village would wake up for work. They did the same in other villages like Jagiella, five kilometers away. There, close to the two ponds, a few Jewish families lived. At a break of dawn the bandits connected fire hose to the pond, climbed the roofs and put the other end of the hose into chimneys of these terrified people who could only expect the worse. Now the Jews lived convinced of the hostility of the Catholic society. They were endangered from both sides: not only from the German aggressor but also from the neighbors. They regarded it as the Polish and neighborly treason. The parents could not hide their anguish, despair, pain and helplessness from their children who were stiffened and silenced by fear. 

The black despair seized the hearts of the Jews in spring, 1942. The Jews were no longer safe to stay in their houses. They dispersed, hid where they could. They were hiding with the help of the people they trusted somewhere on the outskirts of the villages like Poreba and Zavislotze. Others, who did not have small children, slept in barns of the people they trusted and in the daytime they were hiding in the woods or in the wicker on river banks or in old barns. Two families of Semka and Leyzor took refuge in the old mill close to the forester's lodge. The peasants searching for them got hundreds of fleas - these were the conditions the Jews had to look for shelter in. Two young girls were taken in by the Skiba family living over the bridge at the roads crossing. The Layzor’s wife fled with their son to her sister in Chodatzow. There they were shot. A woman in Gnewczyna Tryniecka tried to hide three persons but her relative brought the German gendarme and they were all shot to death on the road to Wolka. The Trinchers, Leyba and Shangla, agreed to give their daughter away, a girl of blond hair and blue eyes (she got that from her father, Leyba) to the childless couple, Labuza. The child has been there for some time until the locals, on a red-letter day in may 1942, in a gesture of “bringing the families together”, decided to bring the girl back to their parents imprisoned in their own home.

(this part of the text was translated by Rafal Betlejewski)

At the Trinczers’ house

(from this point on translation by Robert Sieradzki)

In May 1942 the locals – let us call them a partnership of the local “elite” – among them chief of the volunteer fire brigade (from before the war, a social mandate), activists of the fire brigade and at the same time closest neighbours of the Trinczer family, village heads and their helpers (from the German mandate), from both parts of the village – Lancut and Tryniec – and a rather nondescript wing of the resistance movement organized a manhunt for local Jewish families, catching most of the adults and children. Then they put these poor people on carts, like pigs or calves and transported them to the marketplace, and took them to the house of Lejba and Szangla Trinczer – in the middle of the village, in the near vicinity of the church and presbytery, nearby the school. All they became imprisoned in a dark chamber without a window, just with a pane. The imprisonment could only mean the worst. Just like the SS-men in Auschwitz, the guards promised the prisoners will save their life if they give away their money, gold, clothes, shoes and other belongings deposited with trusted people, provided heir children will not cry and adults will not resist the actions. This manipulation made these poor people go from imprisonment shock to hope that the Almighty will change their fate. They did not know that they were already sentenced; that after rape and torture they will be looking at the death of their children.

The locals, a venture of the local “elite” whom we would call mafia today, recruited from the rural middle-class of the times. They represented administrational authority and had physical power at their disposal, including illegal weapons. Their functions complemented each other. They had a wide opportunity for corruption (for instance they were setting levy for all the inhabitants and they were creating lists for transports to slave labor in Germany) and had a great desire of good time.

The most active and most demoralized and cruel was the leader of the local volunteer fire brigade, which numbered somewhere under twenty people. He also took part in the pogrom of ten Jewish families in the nearby village of Jagiella.

The poor, even if they wanted, had no access to the mafia venture. Members of the rich and respected families did not want to belong out of self-respect.

No one in the village stood up against the gangsters; people feared repressions, like increase of levy, transportation to slave labor in Germany, or even death. Unfortunately, the local wing of Armia Krajowa (the underground Home Army) represented by the local students did not take on the role of the defenders of their Jewish neighbours. Between the mafia venture and AK a certain state of balance was achieved, with an unwritten principle of not crossing each other’s paths.

In May 1942 at the Trinczers house, the dark emotions of cruel peasants – inspired by the Nazi program of annihilation of the Jewish nation and by the climate of religious antisemitism and social approval for humiliation of the Jews - reached the climax. During the day the peasants moved their victims from the chamber to a room and kept them there guarded with weapons; the windowless chamber was needed for rape and torture. The imprisoned had their self-respect broken. Their humanity was destroyed. The women were taken to the chamber while the husbands were pacified that this is for interrogation only. In reality they were raped, singularly and in groups. The men were tortured, forced to indicate where have they stored their clothes and money. Kitchen between these compartments was a place where the locals gathered, made plans and drank vodka. Several bosses of the mafia venture decided about the tortures and rapes – who, when and whom – and when should these families be handed over to the Nazis for death, so they will not become witnesses of the prosecution in the future.

For the time being the locals were mostly interested in the victims being quiet so that other women, the mafias’ wives especially, would not hear the cries. The interested and compassionate were informed that all is happening according to Gestapo orders. Imprisonment of parents together with children guaranteed the silence of the victims. Raped women did not want to shout, so as not to terrify their own children. The men could not shout; during torture they were bent backwards into a bridge position over a stool, their mouth was gagged and they had water poured into the nose. There could be about ten torturers from both parts of Gniewczyna – the Lancut and the Tryniec. Until today I do not understand why they have chosen the Trinczers house in the middle of the village, right by the road, in the neighborhood of all the church buildings and the church itself, in the vicinity of the school, instead of a place in the outskirts of the village far from the road. Perhaps the availability helped the decision, also a feeling of impunity and the fact that two or three out of the ten bandits were neighbours of this house.

The good people of the village were not organized, they did not invest their energy in the community affairs. Their opinions they expressed only behind closed door. They had enough problems with providing food for their children, with illnesses, with lack of clothes, wood and light. For centuries they were used to the fact that the power in the village was in the hands of the landlord, the local administration and the priest. Their thinking was the thinking of the slaves. Many still remembered the times when the landlord had the power to imprison them, the steward could beat them freely and the priest could throw a curse on them from the pulpit. The village administrator could independently decide which young men will be drafted. People did not want to engage in social life. They closed their eyes and ears to the evil, which did not have a direct impact on them.

At the Trinczers house which became a prison now, two young and pretty women were most often raped: Szangla, the wife of Lejba the house owner, a mother of three small children and the daughter of Lejzor from Tryniecka, a wife of an inhabitant of Jaroslaw – her name was Szangla too, a mother of two small children. And this second Szangla managed to escape from the hands of the locals in the moment when she was moved to the chamber for her time of rape.

She passed the fence and ran to the other side of the road, then through the valley to a bridge on Mleczka river. Behind the bridge she ran up the river, along a rarely used path, passing sparsely standing houses. She ran like mad hoping that she can escape the hunt. She managed to get to the nearest barn belonging to the Musial family and then hid in the outhouse. But her persecutor did not lose his victim. He dragged her out by her hair. She tried to bribe him with a gold chain hidden in her clothes. She cried and begged him; they knew each other like all people in the village – he was her peer. But the dismal fellow did not listen. He dragged her back. People pretended not to see this...

Szangla had hope to bring rescue to her two children. Perhaps she intended to kneel in front of the parish priest or curate and ask for help? We will never know that. We can only assume she wanted to do what her grandmother Semkowa tried a day later when at dawn she came to the church before the first mass and waited for the priest and first elderly to start entering the church. She stretched out her hands crying, asking for help for their daughter and grandchildren. With no result... and soon she had to hide, as the village was waking up to life. The church she could not enter fearing that she would be accused of profanation of the Host.

When among the houses the message spread that the locals have imprisoned Jewish families in the house of Lejba Trinczer, I ran there immediately. Out of curiosity and compassion. I was twelve years old.

The entrance door was half-closed. This did not surprise me. I entered without hesitation, as I used to be here often as a courier in trade matters. The little kitchen in front was open. In my naivete I sat at the bench next to the open main door and the kitchen door. This is what I used to do waiting for the owner. Suddenly I heard moaning - women’s moaning; quiet, full of tears. Again and again I heard it. I could vaguely understand what the women had moaned. The more she repeated her moan, the more I feared. Is somebody dying in the chamber on the left? These sounds were so subdued that they could not have been heard in the compartment on the right where all the others were kept, including children. At the time I could not have been aware of the fact that armed men guarded the terrified victims in the compartment, while others were raping the woman in the chamber. Suddenly, a tall and well-built man appeared in front of me. He was not a local, but an ally of the locals who has just left the kitchen, went to the outhouse and returned now. He jumped to me, hissed with anger “what are you doing here?”, grabbed me by the collar, tugged to the exit and kicked out of the house.

I was completely stunned and frightened by the abrupt reaction and the subdued hiss of this guard of the “house of the dead”. Where did this aggression come from? Why did he care so much about silence? Because silence ruled here, like in the last circle of Dante’s hell. The mothers, raped, tried to keep their crying and moaning low in order to protect their children; this is what the rapists wanted while they fulfilled the dark order of Hitler before the attack on Poland: “...be ruthless, our advantage gives us this right.”

In the meantime, the helpers of the village heads, from Lancut and Tryniec parts of Gniewczyna were roaming the village reclaiming winter clothes left by the Jewish families with trusted people. When they were meeting resistance, they threatened the people with a Gestapo visit. This is how it was at the compassionate Maria from Kulp family:

-       Praise the Lord, is Jantek home?

-       Forever and ever, will be back in a minute.

-       I am in a hurry...

-       What is the matter?

-       Nothing, just to collect this Jewish rubbish...

-       What rubbish? Nothing here to collect...

-       You better remember, Marynka, better remember...

-       I told you all that I know, there is nothing here!

-       Lejba said that he left stuff with you...

-       Let Lejba come himself and get it!

-       Give the winter coat and the hat back!

-       You have no conscience or what!

-       I am on duty here, better watch it, the Gestapo may pay you a visit...

-       Wait... wait... and what with the children of Lejba?

-       I know nothing.

-       No conscience, no conscience at all...

When the locals, the fathers of families and the religious Catholics fulfilled themselves with raping of women, when they robbed everything, and put their victims – children, mothers and fathers, weakened by crying, pain, panic anxiety, darkness, lack of sleep, thirst and hunger – at the very bottom of inhuman despair, they gave them away to the Nazis in order to get rid of them. The second day, late in the evening, somebody called the German police in the district city of Jaroslaw from a railroad phone booth, saying that “many Jews were gathered in once place, eighteen of them”...

On the third day before noon four soldiers came, with helmets and weapons. Two of them spoke German, two Russian. First they sat to a hearty meal; aromatic sausage, freshly baked bread and alcohol. Then they wrote down personal details of the victims necessary for the report and then ordered the Jews to be led to the front of the house. The soldiers placed themselves in a half-circle, like a pack of wolves, inside the courtyard, and the locals were pushing the victims from the chamber outside. The Trinczers, Lejb, Szangla and the three children were pushed out first. They did not understand yet that in a moment their house would become a place of murder. They placed themselves in the corner of the courtyard, from the side close to the road, and were hugging the children close to themselves. Lejba was covering them with his own body, and he was tall, well built.

Now everything started to happen faster. Full of anxiety and emotions, I see a gesture of a murderer pointing with his gun, not hand, at the Trinczers, and then at the center of the courtyard. I can hear him barking something, it could have been “face to the ground”, not loud and explicit, rather subdued, perhaps due to a feeling of shame how the war is being led in Poland, or out of caution, not to start a premature panic among the victims. Lejba went first, as if in hope that with a sacrifice from his own life he will soften the hearts of the murderers, he will save the family. He was barefoot, in an old shirt and patched long johns). This is what the Gniewczyna neighbours left him and other victims. The shoes and the clothes will not be needed by the Jews anymore, the neighbours explained to each other. Lejba was trying to hold his long johns in place. Undone ties dangled at the legs. He made a step towards the middle of the yard and bowed when the Nazi murderer turned him away with the butt of his gun, and pointed the gun barrel at the children, Even today I cannot fathom how it could happen that the older boy made a few steps without any objection, knelt and bowed, supporting himself with his little hands and then lay his face on the courtyard soil in the place pointed by the barrel of the gun. Quietly, as if he was taking the First Communion...

A shot came from the left side of the boy, where stood the Russian or Ukrainian-speaking soldiers. The child’s head shot up as if he wanted to oppose vehemently to something and the hair turned red in colour. I still see the petrified faces of the mother and the father, changed with terror, their eyes still and wide open, staring at their child.

After the shot there was a dead silence, as if some paws of a terrible monster grabbed the throats and deprived the parents and children of their groan of despair. No shout, no cry for help could be heard. Even the murderers speech was taken away; they just indicated the next child with the barrel of the gun and the place to lie down. Now the younger one follows the gun movement. He lies down with his face towards the soil, next to his brother. He didn’t even manage to rest his hands well next to his face when the shot could be heard.

And for the third time the gun barrel points to the youngest child, a fair-haired girl with blue eyes, and then points to a place on the yard. (this girl was supposed to be taken as a daughter by a childless couple living across the road from Trinczers’ house; the point is that the childless man belonged to the mafia. No one knows why, was it from fright, or obedience, or to do something against the wife, he gave the child back to the imprisoned parents. Or maybe out of goodwill, because after the murder he complained to somebody that working on one of the Jews he had to fill his stomach with five litres of water before the Jew admitted where his belongings were hidden). The Germans like order, so even before their own death the children have to lie down evenly, like clothes before sleep. And again: the child’s head shoots up and the girl’s fair hair turn red with blood. Suddenly her brother, as if awaken with the sound of the shot, raised his head and managed to lift himself a little on his hands when a second, more precise shot was fired at him. His little head jumped up, half of the skull fell off; a red and white mixture of blood and brain gushed to all sides.

This is when panic flooded my mind. A wave of compassion for the children that I knew and deep disappointment with the world for this crime seemed to be throwing me into an abyss of despair and helplessness. I did not take this pressure, I got up from the earth, from between the nettles, from the corner of an adjacent little barn and ran away like mad with a feeling that by not giving them any help I am betraying them, my friends, and myself – I left them on their own with their dying, with their death.

I do not know if their parents’ hearts burst before they laid down on the ground next to their dead children themselves. I have not seen the death of the remaining fifteen people among which were also the children of Szangla, Lejzor’s daughter, the one that tried to escape earlier on.

Until today I cannot stop thinking that the Trinczers could not even say goodbye to their children waiting in line for their death.

After the pogrom in Trinczers’ house only few remained alive: those who ran to relatives in the nearby village, like Lejzor’s wife with their youngest son Hersz and those who managed to get away from the hands of the local mafia, like Nuchym, Lejzors’ son, and then father of the family Lejba “the second” whose name I do not remember. And also little Abramek with his father Fajba, and finally Golda, the only person, not counting two daughters of the Majerks’, saved thanks to the help of a few men interested in her beauty.

Nuchym's fate.
(from this point on translation by Zuzanna Bluszcz)

It was a different story with the Leyzors (I don't remember if it's a last or a first name). They lived with adult sons, Chaim and Nuchym, with daughter Shangla (married to a man from Jarosław) and her two kids and with young son Hersh in the outskirts of the village, from the side of Mleczka and Wisłoka rivers. The tragic fate of Shangle and her children was fulfilled in may 1942 in the Trincher's house of Murdert. It was her, who made the unsuccessful attempt to escape. Leyzor's wife (I can't remember her name) run away with Hersh to her sister, to the next village Chodaczow, where three Jewish families of Szloms, Kopels and Mordkóws were living.

The father of the last family saved his life by running away to the other side of San river. Their juvenile son Szmulek went to neighbouring village Wólka Młkowa to the house of his friends. Someone informed the police about him and he was stopped by the German police that was stationed nearby the train bridge over the Wisłok river. His mother with a little daughter Ryfka, came to his rescue and she begged on her knees for mercy. Executioners took all three to the nearby ground holes and shot them. Before that, mother was forced to dig the grave.

Unfortunate Leyzor's wife, who with Hersh tried to survive some time at her sister's in Chodaczów - certainly at Szlom's - was "discovered" by the locals and exposed to the same police department. Leyzor's wife was shot with young Hersz, with her sister's family except for Szlom who was classified as capable of hard work and send to the camp located near Werk Stalowa Wola. There in 1942 1160 Jew were concentrated. Around one thousand died because of exhaustion (one of those who survived was Henryk Vogler, who became a famous writer after war). Loss of his family, hard work in steel plant, hunger and beating dispirited Szloma. He committed suicide by jumping into the enormous tub with molten iron.

But let's come back to the history of the Lejzor family that Nuchym was the only member who survived. He was changing his hiding place. Someone friendly must have helped him if he managed to survive so long - until autumn of 1942 or maybe even spring or summer of 1943. However, he couldn't bear it, he broke down... We went out on the road, lightly dressed with his head uncovered. He was visibly emaciated. He didn't look around, he walked slowly, with dignity like he just made an important decision. He just threw dice with God and his life was a stake, he just wanted someone to save him or kill him, he couldn't take this inhuman world any more. He set off from the Hyczuwek area and walked in the direction of the Trinczer's house, where his relatives died recently. He lost this bet with God! When he approached the "house of the dead" a man form the mafia company, not young but also not old, a village jester, trifler and hyena, came out on the road from the next house. He scented a man who gave up. He came up to him, grabbed his sleeve to take over the rights to him, to his inheritance, and went with him in the same direction, to the building of the nearest school, where the headquarters of the German military unit were situated. They went by the presbytery and the vicarage and turned left to school.

A German soldier stood guard at the school's porch. The human hyena pointed to Nuchym and said: Jude. Collaborator was sent back with nothing because Nuchym didn't have anything with him and there was no sense to rib him off his last rags and shoes.

Nuchym was kept arrested in the classroom on the right side of first floor. The classroom was empty at that time, without any desks or furniture. I knew this building well from the times before the war, and even after that time I took a look inside from time to time. The
soldiers didn't chase away minors like me. One time, a year before, when the school was filled with soldiers who were being concentrated before the attack on the Soviet Union, I came in, out of curiosity, to the school corridor  and stopped in front of the open doors to the classroom on the left side of the first floor. There were 30 mattresses on the floor, lying in the regular rows and  the walls were covered with the colourful paintings of laughing, half-naked dancers to the level of the upper window line. And so, also at that time, despite the soldier on guard, I came up to the window, stood on my toes and I saw Nuchym. He was walking, straight as a soldier, there and back again along the wall opposite to the windows. It was strange that he didn't try to approach the window. He could open it, even during the day, he could jump out and escape. But he did nothing except clasping his hands, like he wanted to warm them, and moving his lips rhythmically and slowly like he was repeating one world again and again. Maybe it was the name of his lover? Maybe it was Jentl? He didn't look around, he was staring at one wall or another. His posture, movement and his eyes fixed on something in front of him suggested that he reconciled himself with his fate, that he's not expecting anything form the world, any help or even compassion. Only his hands clasped nervously showed that he can not find a place for himself in this  world mad with hatred. Because he was completely alone, without his relatives, without his beloved, without his mother, father, sister, brothers and friends. This view was so thrilling, this quietness so screaming with despair, that my heart was bleeding. I went away with my  head down, full of depression and helplessness. I didn't grow up to nothing except having compassion. I was sure that world belongs to evil and strong people who can destroy weak and good people like Nuchym. He won't sleep during that night, maybe the last one in his short life. He will walk until evening, and then all night, hundreds or maybe even thousands of times he will wander his last path from wall to wall, lonely in the empty room and lonely among people, paralysed  with fear that the last thing he posses, the memories of his relatives, will be taken away from him.

And he won't pray like his ancestors who in the time of their death said: "Even though I shall walk through the valley of shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me." He know already that God is not here, that right now, he is walking alone through the valley of the shadow of death and he does fear evil because there is  nobody by his side. Maybe he will collect some pebbles of the light and cheerful moments in his short life and evoke once again the dearest name, his most beloved name: Jentl. With hope that this name is going to save Their World, when he will stand in front of the murderer. Next morning I saw a German soldier wearing a helmet, riding a bike from school in the direction of Przeworsk with a machine gun on his back and Nuchym running before him.

Schneller, schneller...  - repeated the German benignly. Stalwart and fat blond on the bike rushed haggard, young man into faster run. They passed very close by me. Uncovered head, grey face, absent eyes. He didn't look at me, he wasn't looking for compassion, he was staring in front of himself in a silent despair, just like yesterday, when he was inprisoned in school. He was running rhythmically but with an effort, with his eyes fixed on something inside of him like he didn't want to lose any piece of the memories form the world of his relatives. He could suddenly jump to the side, get to the nearest barn at the other side of the road, run away before the German could get off his bike and take his gun. But he wasn't interested in that, he thought about it thousand times since he was staying away from home and later, when he was alone. He knew that if it was not a German soldier it would be local collaborates who would get him. I let them pass me by and then followed them. Nuchym's hopeless situation moved me deeply and indifference of the people who we were passing, people who were usually curious and nosey, was inconceivable for me. When I was following them I was worrying if Nuchym who was starved, tired and somehow absent, was able to run seven kilometres to Przeorsk like that. Behind the last houses of the village there were  fields. I stopped. Before the next village road was circuiting a curve of the Mleczka riverbed full of bushes. That's where the German soldier shot him. Christian, like all Germans, shot an innocent Pole, confessor of the Jewish religion brought to death by the another Pole, a neighbour, confessor of the Catholic religion.

The murder of Leiba “the second”

(from this point on translation by Monika Sznajder)

The family of Leiba “the second” lived on the borderline of the Tryniec and Łańcut part of the village, in the so-called Hyczuwki. They had two sons, one of them was called Moniek. Out of the four persons in the family only the father, Leiba, the most pious of the Gniewczyna Jews, survived the May pogrom. His house was also the house of prayer for other Jewish families in the village. Leiba “the second” was tracked by one of the three bosses of the local mafia in the right-hand-side corner of the Mleczka and Wisłok rivers, and shot from an illegal gun near two or maybe three poplars, which are still there to remember the crime.  

The murderer searched the victim, took his money and personal belongings, took off his high boots, dragged the body to the bank of the Wisłok river and pushed into the water.  

The story of Abramek and his father

Here is what happened to Faiba and his young son Abramek. They had lived in the village opposite the mill of the Jagieła family, or perhaps in a wooden multi-family house in the so-called Błonie? I don’t know what became of the wife.  I met Faiba and Abramek by accident in the autumn of 1942 . They were hiding in the valley of the old channel of the Mleczka river, in a millet mill covered with boards, adjoined to the barn wall on the outside of the farm belonging to the Drzystek family, good people of means. The place was concealed behind a huge orchard of the Woś family, far even from a secondary sand road running along the village. It offered a chance to run in any direction and hide among the trees, bushes or corners of barns and cowsheds.  

The same old river bed, 200 metres away, half-surrounded the church. It led to the church and the parish house, which before the war and during the Nazi occupation, when Father Stanisław Kułak was the parish priest, was rich in food. They had two horses, four cows, several pigs and sheep, turkeys, geese, ducks and chickens.  

Every day the little Abramek and his father would hear the church bells calling the faithful to attend the morning mass and the evening vespers. On Sundays and church holidays they also heard the singing, particularly during processions. They did not hear the readings from the Jewish Bible or the rosary said to worship the Mother of Jesus, a Jew born and bread, just like Abramek and his father. The faithful would disperse from the church, dedicated to Saint Matthew – a Jew – to have their breakfast, lunch or dinner, and another Jew, Abramek, with his half-blind father, waited for the evening milking of a thin cow belonging to the merciful Maria, nee Kulpa. She had no children, but she was a true nurse in her heart.  Jews trusted her – it was Maria that Leiba entrusted his winter clothes to. Later, for a year or maybe longer, she fed Abramek and his father twice a day.  

On an autumn evening I came to get a litre of milk from the evening yield. There was no-one in the open house, so I thought Aunt Maria was milking her cow. When I looked, she was just opening the door to the cowshed and next to her some two poor souls were lurking. They were motionless, did not look me in the eye. They looked like hunted animals.  

The father was small, tiny, unshaven. The boy was also tiny, haggard, still a child. They were both gaunt, with dark skin, with regular features and oval faces. They had huge eyes with circles around them, humble and begging, just like their faces and the whole postures. Even though it was dark, the light of the lamp I carried helped me remember their faces. They looked up but once or rather they slowly moved their heads up, timidly touched me with their looks and then would only look at each other with those sad eyes. The father could not see very well, maybe it was because of an illness or maybe because of the so-called night blindness, a result of malnutrition, I don’t know. We were all surprised by the chance meeting. Aunt Maria quickly explained to me how things were and we went into the cowshed. Behind the door, in the corner, there was a heap of manure, two feet high, covered with a layer of ruffled straw. It was there, as I guessed, that the two were to sleep half-lying,  those two innocent people, implicitly devoted to each other. The place was to be concealed with a huge, tightly bound sheaf of straw, put in a vertical position. In winter they were to go straight from the cowshed to the attic through a hole in the ceiling and pull the ladder up behind them. Every morning meant a mug of milk, a piece of bread and going to the other side of the valley, under the so-called half-roof near the millet mill, at the mercy of the mob.  

I lost sight of them for a long time. They survived until May 1943 or maybe even 1944. Maybe because Abramek’s father, haunted by the misery and starvation, looked like the boy’s grandfather. The boy was fearful and humble.  They had clothes like beggars, no personal belongings… They should have made it until the liberation, but… Maybe what turned against them was the house they had, poor, but still a house, someone among the locals might have decided they could use it… It was early June, the grass in the meadows was high as never before. I was standing near the house of the merciful Maria nee Kulpa, when rumour broke that the Germans had taken Abramek and his father – or his blind grandfather, as the rumour had it.  I immediately ran down a back road to peek into the valley from behind a fence. They had gone several metres from the hovel of the millet mill. They were not going to the road nearby, but down a meadow towards Przeworsk. Two gendarmes with rifles on their shoulders, and Abramek and his father several steps in front of them, holding each other’s hands, looking at the bumps on the ground and the high grass, impeding their march. The Germans were going as if for a stroll, relaxed and chatting, smoking, as if nothing unusual was happening, as if they had no bad intentions. I was naïve enough to wonder why they were not going to the nearest road instead of moving behind buildings on the meadow. But the father of the little Abramek had his reasons to panic. In five minutes or so they would reach the valley left by the primary channel of the river, with many trees growing in it. I followed them as long as I could hide behind trees. I stopped at the edge of the open meadow. I kept following them with my eyes, certain that the good-natured behaviour of the gendarmes was by no means an ominous sign, in the worst case they would take them to some distant ghetto, I thought.  

When they were reaching a group of trees in the lower part of the ground, Abramek was still holding his father’s hand. The father must have been aware that they were reaching the edge and that the abyss of death was opening under their feet. When the father’s heart was growing numb with fear, maybe he managed to hold his child’s hand a bit tighter, to give the last message of love here, in this inhumane soil, at the end of time. It was then when the Germans took the rifles off their shoulders without even stopping, aimed them, nodded at each other meaningfully and almost simultaneously shoot Abramek and his father in the back of their heads.  

It was the neighbours who had sealed their terrible fate. Even a hundred German policemen could not find their hideaway. One of the locals must have brought the Nazis to the blind corner and shown exactly where the two had been hiding. They were given away to face a certain death after three years of inhumane life on a heap of manure, starvation, cold, incessant fear and despair...

The village leader, living nearby, was ordered by the Germans to bury the dead bodies of the innocent Abramek and his brave father, in unblessed soil, where people from the village buried dead animals.  It did not occur to the village leader or the people who helped him to respect the majesty of death and secretly move the bodies to the cemetery or mark the graves, as the Christian custom would normally require. What they did not forget to do was search the pockets of the two and tread the ground on Abramek and his father to cover up the crime.  

The drama of Golda

There was also the Semka family left. They were related to the Leizors, lived in Hywczuki, near the house of Maria and Mateusz Dałomis, who supported them. The Semkas had two sons, whose names I do not know, and two daughters. One of them, Golda, was exceptionally beautiful. A neighbour living nearby, Jan Ryfa, an older bachelor, was in love with her.  He hid her before the battue hunt started in May 1942 . She agreed, because he treated her respectfully. All the Semkas probably perished, including the sons and the other daughter, during the pogrom in the Trinczer house.  

At some point, for reasons I am not sure about, Golda had to change her hiding place. Maybe the locals suspected Jan and threatened to denounce him if he refused to give away the girl’s hiding place? Luckily something that happened later gave Golda a chance to survive. The daughter of some neighbours, Agnieszka Kozakówna, was picked by the village leader and approved by the Nazis to go to Germany as a forced labourer. The family tried to protect her from it and Jan Ryfa proposed a deal. Golda was to go to Germany if they could have false papers made for her. The papers could be produced by the Home Army section in the Tryńcza commune. The village leader of Tryńcza and his assistant agreed to act as middlemen, but the parents were not rich enough to motivate the middlemen and the Home Army section to help. However, when they saw the beautiful Golda, they agreed, under certain clear conditions. Golda and Jan, who was so much in love with her, could not turn back. Golda survived the war in the western part of Germany. She came back for a short time to sell or transfer the ownership of the house and a piece of land to Jan. She hesitated if she should stay. But the post-war Poland was no country for survivours of the Holocaust. Golda got scared and went away, to the half-desert of Israel, with no money, family or knowledge of the language. She managed to send several parcels with fruit to her saviour. She then grew silent. I don’t know what became of her. Maybe she struggled with recurrent depression, increasingly more difficult, leading to diseases or even suicidal death? Maybe she died in the Israeli war of independence, as one of the two thousand young people who survived the Holocaust and then made another sacrifice and died for the young Israel.  

What is left of Golda is just several stamps from Israel. So little and so much at the same time. Other than that what the murdered Jewish families left behind them was their houses, now inhabited by their neighbours, where walls were tapped and feather quilts, pillows and collars were ripped in search of money, gold rings and chains. Another thing left were the clothes, children’s shoes and toys, they’ll come in handy for our kids, thought the neighbours.

Let your hand ferret out those Jewish things (...) Let them look for jewels and gold. In couches, mattresses, quilts and carpets. Clouds of the ripped eiderdowns and pillows will cling at their hands and turn them to wings; My blood will glue the fresh down with oakum... (Zuzanna Ginczanka, Non omnis moriar)

To save the memory

I waited for several decades for the participants of those events to pass away to be able to tell the tragic story of the Gniewczyno Jews from their perspective – to hold a mirror for people to be able to see themselves in it. The Polish anti-Semitism, stemming from low instincts and prejudice, pains me, just like the lack of solidarity with our Jewish co-citizens and neighbours, lack of sympathy for the neighbours in their affliction. Not even the martyrdom of the innocent children  could shock the villagers. The pain, despair and cruel death did not provoke our sense of guilt. To minimise whatever sense of guilt we did feel, we took away the memory of the victims – there are no graves, even symbolic. We took away their personalities, we do not pronounce the names of their children, Salcia, Aronek or Abramek. We forget the names of the parents, Rachel, Sangla, Leiba or Hersh – we say “Jews”, as if it was a crowd or a mass...

Oblivion is a threat and an offence. To forget the dead is to bury them again. No perpetrator or their accomplice is responsible for their first death, but we are responsible for the second. (Elie Wiesel).

Although years go by, wherever I am, I still see, with all my compassion – the humble little creatures, obediently lying down with their faces to the ground, shot in the presence of the parents, Shangla and Leiba Trinczer, frozen with fear. I see the tiny bodies close to one another and the fair hair of the children stained with blood…  

With my mind’s eyes I see Nuchym, running in front of the cyclist, a simple Wehrmacht soldier, who is soon to murder a helpless young man, the last one of the Leizor family…

At the door of the cowshed I see the begging eyes of Abramek and his father, I see them walking down the meadow in deadly silence, towards the Holocaust… Their Jewish despair and fear are my despair and fear. The burden of the Christian guilt and shame is all mine…  

I blame myself for not asking around about them during the last years of their martyrdom, distrustful and helpless, for not giving them a piece of bread, an apple or a turnip from my field, for failing to support them when they were sitting there, close to each other because of the cold, on the heap of manure in the cowshed heated with the breath of the cow, and when they were walking towards the certain death. I did not atone for what I had failed to do, out of fear I did not go with them on the sunny spring day on the lush grass of the meadow into the trees.

TADEUSZ MARKIEL, born in 1929 in Gniewczyna, a graduate of the Military University of Technology, an engineer, a retired  lieutenant-colonel of the Polish Army.

The text was first published on the website of the Znak publishing house: http://niniwa2.cba.pl/zaglada_domu_trinczerow.htm

I wish to thank the authors of this translation. They did it purly as a gift of heart.

These fine people are:

Zuznanna Bluszcz

Monika Sznajder

Robert Sieradzki

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