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Kielce pogrom
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Kielce pogrom
The Kielce pogrom was an outbreak of anti-Jewish violence that took place on 4 July 1946 in the city of Kielce, Poland. Polish soldiers, police officers, and civilians attacked a building at 7 Planty Street that housed around 150–160 Jewish Holocaust survivors, killing 42 Jews and wounding more than 40. The violence was sparked by a false accusation of child kidnapping, a revival of the antisemitic blood libel myth. Despite the rapid collapse of the kidnapping claim, rumors were circulated by state forces, prompting the gathering of a hostile crowd and the subsequent assault on the building and its inhabitants. Several Jews not residing at Planty Street were also killed elsewhere in the city that day, and at least two Jews were later murdered in transit through Kielce's train station.
The pogrom occurred less than a year after the end of World War II and is considered the deadliest act of violence against Jews in postwar Poland. It had a profound impact on the Jewish community, prompting a mass exodus of Holocaust survivors from the country. The incident also drew international condemnation and remains a subject of historical investigation and public debate. In the immediate aftermath, the Polish authorities held a series of trials, resulting in multiple death sentences and prison terms. However, high-ranking security officials faced limited consequences, and the communist government initially sought to deflect blame by attributing the violence to political opponents.
Relations between Jewish and non-Jewish Poles were already strained before the war, as antisemitic propaganda was spread by members of parliament and clergy. According to Alina Skibińska and Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, during the 1930s "the relations between the communities ... began to increasingly resemble apartheid."
During the German occupation of Poland, Kielce and the villages around it were completely ethnically cleansed by the Nazis of its pre-war Jewish community, most of whom perished in The Holocaust. By the summer of 1946, some 200 Jews, many of them former residents of Kielce, had returned from the Nazi concentration camps or refuge in the Soviet Union. About 150–160 of them were quartered in a single building administered by the Jewish Committee of Kielce Voivodeship at Planty, a small street in the centre of the town.
On 1 July 1946, an eight-year-old non-Jewish Polish boy, Henryk Błaszczyk, was reported missing by his father Walenty Błaszczyk. According to the father, upon his return two days later the boy claimed he had been kidnapped by an unknown man, allegedly a Jew or a gypsy. Two days later, the boy, his father and the neighbour went to a local Citizens' Militia (state police) station. While passing the "Jewish house" at 7 Planty Street, Henryk pointed at a man nearby who, he said, had allegedly imprisoned him in the house's cellar. At the police station, Henryk repeated his story that he had been kidnapped and specified the Jews and their house as involved in his disappearance. A Civic Militia patrol of more than a dozen men was then dispatched on foot by the station commander Edmund Zagórski to search the house at 7 Planty Street for the place where Henryk had allegedly been kept.
Although the kidnapping claim was quickly withdrawn, Henryk Błaszczyk remained publicly silent about the events until 1998, when, in an interview to a Polish journalist he admitted he was never kidnapped but was living with an "unknown family" in a nearby village and was treated well. He perceived his disappearance as happening with his father's awareness and concerted by the communist security service. After returning home he was categorically commanded by his father not to discuss anything that happened and reaffirm only the story of "Jewish abduction" if ever asked. He was threatened to keep quiet long after 1946, which he did out of fear until the end of communist rule in Poland.
Civic Militia publicised the rumours of the kidnapping and further announced that they were planning to search for the bodies of non-Jewish Polish children supposedly ritually murdered and kept in the house, resulting in the gathering of civilian spectators. A confrontation ensued between the militia forces and officers of the Ministry of Public Security of Poland (UBP), which had been called in on the suspicion that the incident was a Jewish "provocation" to stir up unrest.[citation needed]
During the morning, the case came to the attention of other local state and military organs, including the Polish People's Army (LWP – communist controlled regular army), the Internal Security Corps (KBW, interior ministry paramilitary), and the Main Directorate of Information of the Polish Army (GZI WP, military intelligence and counterintelligence). About 100 soldiers and five officers were dispatched to the location at about 10 am. The soldiers were unfamiliar with the circumstances, but soon picked up rumors from the people in the street, who at this time commenced pelting the building with stones.
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Kielce pogrom
The Kielce pogrom was an outbreak of anti-Jewish violence that took place on 4 July 1946 in the city of Kielce, Poland. Polish soldiers, police officers, and civilians attacked a building at 7 Planty Street that housed around 150–160 Jewish Holocaust survivors, killing 42 Jews and wounding more than 40. The violence was sparked by a false accusation of child kidnapping, a revival of the antisemitic blood libel myth. Despite the rapid collapse of the kidnapping claim, rumors were circulated by state forces, prompting the gathering of a hostile crowd and the subsequent assault on the building and its inhabitants. Several Jews not residing at Planty Street were also killed elsewhere in the city that day, and at least two Jews were later murdered in transit through Kielce's train station.
The pogrom occurred less than a year after the end of World War II and is considered the deadliest act of violence against Jews in postwar Poland. It had a profound impact on the Jewish community, prompting a mass exodus of Holocaust survivors from the country. The incident also drew international condemnation and remains a subject of historical investigation and public debate. In the immediate aftermath, the Polish authorities held a series of trials, resulting in multiple death sentences and prison terms. However, high-ranking security officials faced limited consequences, and the communist government initially sought to deflect blame by attributing the violence to political opponents.
Relations between Jewish and non-Jewish Poles were already strained before the war, as antisemitic propaganda was spread by members of parliament and clergy. According to Alina Skibińska and Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, during the 1930s "the relations between the communities ... began to increasingly resemble apartheid."
During the German occupation of Poland, Kielce and the villages around it were completely ethnically cleansed by the Nazis of its pre-war Jewish community, most of whom perished in The Holocaust. By the summer of 1946, some 200 Jews, many of them former residents of Kielce, had returned from the Nazi concentration camps or refuge in the Soviet Union. About 150–160 of them were quartered in a single building administered by the Jewish Committee of Kielce Voivodeship at Planty, a small street in the centre of the town.
On 1 July 1946, an eight-year-old non-Jewish Polish boy, Henryk Błaszczyk, was reported missing by his father Walenty Błaszczyk. According to the father, upon his return two days later the boy claimed he had been kidnapped by an unknown man, allegedly a Jew or a gypsy. Two days later, the boy, his father and the neighbour went to a local Citizens' Militia (state police) station. While passing the "Jewish house" at 7 Planty Street, Henryk pointed at a man nearby who, he said, had allegedly imprisoned him in the house's cellar. At the police station, Henryk repeated his story that he had been kidnapped and specified the Jews and their house as involved in his disappearance. A Civic Militia patrol of more than a dozen men was then dispatched on foot by the station commander Edmund Zagórski to search the house at 7 Planty Street for the place where Henryk had allegedly been kept.
Although the kidnapping claim was quickly withdrawn, Henryk Błaszczyk remained publicly silent about the events until 1998, when, in an interview to a Polish journalist he admitted he was never kidnapped but was living with an "unknown family" in a nearby village and was treated well. He perceived his disappearance as happening with his father's awareness and concerted by the communist security service. After returning home he was categorically commanded by his father not to discuss anything that happened and reaffirm only the story of "Jewish abduction" if ever asked. He was threatened to keep quiet long after 1946, which he did out of fear until the end of communist rule in Poland.
Civic Militia publicised the rumours of the kidnapping and further announced that they were planning to search for the bodies of non-Jewish Polish children supposedly ritually murdered and kept in the house, resulting in the gathering of civilian spectators. A confrontation ensued between the militia forces and officers of the Ministry of Public Security of Poland (UBP), which had been called in on the suspicion that the incident was a Jewish "provocation" to stir up unrest.[citation needed]
During the morning, the case came to the attention of other local state and military organs, including the Polish People's Army (LWP – communist controlled regular army), the Internal Security Corps (KBW, interior ministry paramilitary), and the Main Directorate of Information of the Polish Army (GZI WP, military intelligence and counterintelligence). About 100 soldiers and five officers were dispatched to the location at about 10 am. The soldiers were unfamiliar with the circumstances, but soon picked up rumors from the people in the street, who at this time commenced pelting the building with stones.
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