Memorials

Page of Testimony for Commemoration of the Jews Who Perished During the Shoah

You can search for family members who were killed during The Holocaust and are listed in the central database of Yad Vashem

If you wish to submit the name of a family member who was a Holocaust victim, you can submit Pages of Testimony, along with any available photos of the victims so they can be forever memorialized.

New Montefiore Cemetery

The Kieltzer Society of N.Y. has some most striking and poignant monuments residing at its large burial plot in the New Montefiore Cemetery in Pinelawn, New York. Upon walking through its portals, one immediately sees the tall monument erected in 1957 by the Kieltzer Society. It memorializes 28,000 Jewish martyrs who were killed in Kielce, Poland within the span of a week (August 20th – 28th, 1942).

On one side of this monument is an inscription referring to the survivors of the Nazi death camps who returned to Kielce upon liberation, only to be brutally murdered by their former neighbors on July 4, 1946 — one and a half years after liberation.

At one corner of the Kieltzer plot is the most chilling monument one can imagine. This monument, erected by the Kieltzer Society of New York is dedicated to the last 45 Jewish children who were brutally murdered by the Nazis at the Jewish cemetery in Kielce on one day (May 23, 1943). The ages of the children range from 15 months to 13 years and are inscribed on the right side of the monument.

This monument also memorializes the one and a half million Jewish children who were killed during the Holocaust.

The inscription in the cold marble will forever send horrifying chills to all who pass by and are drawn in by the large word "Zachor" — remember — etched deeply into the marble.

THIS MONUMENT IS IN MEMORY
OF THE LAST 45 JEWISH CHILDREN
WHO WERE MURDERED BY THE
GERMAN NAZIS AT THE
JEWISH CEMETARY IN OUR
HOMETOWN KIELCE, POLAND
THE 23RD OF MAY 1943.
THE YOUNG MARTYRS RANGED IN AGE
FROM 15 MONTHS TO 13 YEARS

WE ALSO REMEMBER ALL
OF THE JEWISH CHILDREN WHO
PERISHED IN THE HOLOCAUST
FROM 1939 TO 1945.

A History of the Pakosz Cemetery (Jewish cemetery in Kielce)

Who was buried there? What took place there during the German occupation? What transformations occurred?

One can read a very informative history of the Jewish cemetery in Kielce, which has undergone so many changes and has finally been restored. Be sure to see the images of the recent commemoration held there on July 5, 2010, at the bottom of the page.

Two of many articles published about Poland's Kielce Pogrom

» Poland Marks 60th Anniversary of Massacre

» Painful memories resurface as Poles mark Kielce massacre

Poland Marks 60th Anniversary of Massacre

By VANESSA GERA
The Associated Press

Tuesday, July 4, 2006; 7:34 PM

KIELCE, Poland -- Sirens wailed and a rabbi led prayers in a Jewish cemetery Tuesday while Poland unveiled a monument to dozens killed by angry mobs in a rampage 60 years ago known as Europe's last pogrom.

President Lech Kaczynski marked the anniversary of the Kielce massacre, which left 42 people dead, by declaring in a statement that in Poland there is "no room for racism and anti-Semitism."

Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, led the Hebrew prayers little more than a month after he was attacked, though not injured, by a man linked to neo-Nazi groups who punched him the chest and sprayed him with pepper spray.

Police arrested the attacker last week, and the rabbi praised the president's stance. "He said exactly what he needed to say, that there is no place in Poland for anti-Semitism," Schudrich said.

The anniversary comes at a sensitive time politically for Poland _ two months after the governing Law and Justice party formed a coalition with two small parties, including the League of Polish Families, a right-wing group rooted in a prewar anti-Semitic party.

That coalition deal sparked concerns within Poland's Jewish community that the new conservative government could encourage anti-Semitism, and the European Union also has criticized Poland for an alleged rise in intolerance.

"As the president of Poland, I want to say it loud and clear: what happened in Kielce 60 years ago was a crime," the president said in his statement. "This is a great shame and tragedy for the Poles and the Jews, so few of whom survived Hitler's Holocaust."

An aide read Kaczynski's remarks at the monument's unveiling, saying the president was ill and could not attend.

Kaczynski said Poland today puts a high priority on good relations with Jews and Israel. In a sharply worded passage, though, he said Poles should not be called anti-Jewish and said he "deplored" statements intended "to strengthen the stereotype of the Polish anti-Semite."

"We have numerous examples of Poles risking their lives in an attempt to save their Jewish fellow citizens from Nazi annihilation," Kaczynski said.

The massacre in Kielce came on July 4, 1946, when townspeople and police attacked the Jews of Kielce with guns and clubs little more than a year after the defeat of Nazi Germany.

The mob killed 42 people, mostly Jews, while about 30 more also were killed in a violent frenzy that spread across the area. The massacre set off a mass emigration of many of Poland's estimated 250,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors _ those left from a prewar Jewish population of 3.5 million.

The violence broke out after a false report spread that a Christian boy had been kidnapped by Jews living at 7 Planty St. _ the spot where the concrete monument was erected for the anniversary. It was unveiled at the end of the tree-lined street where most of the killings occurred.

The monument, about six feet high and 10 feet long, has the form of a toppled 7 _ a reference to the address that was a center of the violence and the fact that the massacre fell in July, the seventh month of the year.

"It's on its side to signify the tragedy of the pogrom," said the artist, Jack Sal, a 52-year-old New Yorker.

Trailed by hundreds of people, dignitaries including Israel's ambassador and a representative from the U.S. Embassy walked along the street to lay wreaths in front of the three-story house. Next, they walked to the Jewish cemetery, where Schudrich prayed for the victims and read out their names in Hebrew at a plaque remembering them.

The Kielce massacre was largely a taboo subject during the communist era in Poland, but since the fall of communism in 1989, leaders have shown a willingness to grapple with it. The government issued an apology for the massacre a decade ago.

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Painful memories resurface as Poles mark Kielce massacre

By RUTH E. GRUBER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Friday July 12, 1996

KIELCE, Poland -- "The heavens are weeping on our ceremony," New York Rabbi David Blumenfeld told about 2,000 people gathered this week outside a white building in the center of this southern Polish city.

As rain fell, Blumenfeld lit a memorial candle and held it before the crowd.

Fifty years ago, on July 4, 1946, a Polish mob, inflamed by anti-Semitism and rumors that Jews had kidnapped a Christian child, stormed the building and slaughtered 42 Jewish Holocaust survivors.

Sunday's emotional ceremonies were held at the site where the pogrom took place, as well as at the Kielce Jewish cemetery and at the former Kielce synagogue, now used to house city archives.

The commemorations marked Poland's official atonement for the pogrom and its request for forgiveness.

Attended by Polish, Catholic and Jewish leaders, local dignitaries and townspeople, and Holocaust survivors from Kielce and their children, the commemoration was marked by solemn speeches as the ceremonies -- and crowd -- moved from site to site.

Among those in the crowd was a Polish Auschwitz survivor who wore concentration camp garb and bore a sign calling Kielce the Polish Roman Catholics' shame.

Alongside a Chassidic man in a frock coat was a group of local teenagers wearing tank tops.

A survivors' group from the United States distributed yarmulkes specially imprinted with the commemoration date.

According to Polish Prime Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, the ceremonies represented a hoped-for stepping stone toward better Polish-Jewish relations as well as toward a more honest Polish re-examination of Polish behavior during and after the war.

"Half a century after the tragic Kielce events, which have left a bloody imprint on Polish-Jewish relations, we owe ourselves words of truth and moral evaluation," Cimoszewicz told the crowd.

The Kielce pogrom, the worst of a series of Polish attacks on Jewish survivors returning to their homes after the Holocaust, became a landmark in Polish anti-Semitism, sparking the mass emigration of some 100,000 Polish Holocaust survivors.

Although nine people were hastily tried and executed for the Kielce murders by Poland's Communist authorities, the pogrom has been a festering and divisive memory over the years.

Many Poles refused to accept that ordinary people could have carried out such carnage and blamed the attack on provocation by Soviet-backed secret police.

Public discussion of the affair during the Communist era was virtually taboo.

In January, Polish Foreign Minister Dariusz Rosati wrote a letter of apology to the World Jewish Congress for the pogrom.

His letter elicited anger from Polish rightists as well as a highly critical open letter from Edward Moskal, head of the Polish American Congress, who called Rosati's apology "unfortunate and unnecessary" and accused the Polish government of catering to the Jews.

On Sunday, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel thanked Cimoszewicz for what he called his courageous words and praised the current Polish government for its efforts toward better relations with Jews.

But he raised questions that have blighted the memory of Kielce for half a century -- and that still, despite recent official investigations into the pogrom, remain largely unanswered.

"True, the killing was perpetuated by hoodlums," he said. "But what about the soldiers who reportedly took part in them? And what about the others, the onlookers, the bystanders?"

"The history of the Polish people is filled with suffering and glory," Wiesel added. "Be worthy of that history, citizens of Poland. And face the recent past which is also yours. To forget is to choose dishonor."

Kalman Sultanik, vice president of the World Jewish Congress and president of the Federation of Polish Jews in America, echoed Wiesel's call for an examination of the past. He also cited his own experiences.

"From 1945 to 1946, more than a thousand Jews were killed in various places by Poles; taken off trains, they were hunted down in small towns and killed," he said at the Jewish cemetery.

"I was one of those Jews on a train from Kielce to Ostrowiec when the train stopped and hooligans entered to hunt for Jews -- and I hid my face, so therefore I speak to you today -- and I remember that I was frightened to death."

Jews who attended the ceremonies expressed appreciation for the efforts by the Polish government and local Kielce officials to be open about the past.

Blumenfeld said in an interview that he was gratified at the number of local Poles, particularly young people, who attended the ceremonies.

"What was disturbing, though, was that I could see that behind the crowd at the ceremony, in the park, were people who were just there having fun. It was testimony that they didn't care."

Some Jews expressed disappointment with some facets of the occasion.

Polish Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek, secretary general of the Polish Episcopate, was faulted for giving a bland speech in which he cited church statements condemning anti-Semitism without talking of the ambivalence demonstrated by some senior church figures.

"He said the right things, but clearly he was not trying to face the totality of the church's attitude at the time," Stanislaw Krajewski, Polish consultant to the American Jewish Committee, said.

During the ceremonies, monuments were dedicated at the former synagogue to commemorate the 27,000 Jews deported to Treblinka from Kielce and to remember a number of local Righteous Gentiles who saved Jews during the war.

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