Type of place

Information about the crime

Władysława W.: “A Jewish woman with a child escaped from the convoy and was shot while fleeing. I heard that she jumped from the train, trying to escape with her little child. The train slowed down before the semaphore, and she managed to get away. She managed to pass under the bridge through the bushes and come out on the other side to make her way to the village. Someone saw her, and they opened fire. She crawled across the road to the other side. As she was running, the tracks were here, the crossing was here, and the road was here. She got to the road and tried to make it to the village, which wasn’t far. But since they saw her, she crawled across the road to the meadows and died there. There’s just a little mound there. […] I had an incident back when the trains were still running. I was coming from Siedlce. It was foggy, you couldn’t see anything. It was as if someone had spilled milk. As I got closer, there was someone standing in front of the bridge. I came closer; it seemed like she wasn’t sure where to go. I caught up with her and said, ‘Are you going far?’ And she said, ‘No. I’m going to my people.’ ‘All right,’ I said, ‘then we’ll go together. You must be coming from far away.’ ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘from far away.’ And then I hear a child crying. Am I imagining things or what? But I hear it. I say, ‘Here you go, I’ve got a bread roll, a croissant. Here you go, give it to your child to eat.’ And I saw a hand, taking the croissant, giving it to the child. A pheasant flew by somewhere. I turned around, and everything was gone. I immediately ran home.”

On 2 February 2023, we conducted a site inspection of the place where a Jewish woman and her child were buried. The woman was supposed to jump off a train travelling from Łochów and Siedlce to Treblinka. It is not known how long she wandered along the road. A resident of the Kosów Lacki shared her knowledge about this place with us:

Zapomniane: So she must have been buried by locals, then?

– I don’t know who it was or what exactly happened. I only know roughly where it was, as my uncle described it. If you want, I’ll show you the place. […] He’s no longer alive, my uncle, but he said it really happened. I asked if it was true because my uncle was nearly an adult then. He was mature, really smart. I said, ‘You know, uncle, I heard this one legend. And I’m even embarrassed to tell you, you’ll probably think I’m silly. I was walking to the station, and I met her there.’ ‘Where exactly?’ I told him where. And my uncle said it’s true. I said: ‘Really? I saw it, that’s the impression I got. And you say it’s true?’ He came with me on his bicycle. I said: ‘Here, I walked from this old crossing,’ there was a gully with reeds. You weren’t there, were you?

Zapomniane: I was there.

– She was walking, that woman with the child, here, by the new crossing. There was an overgrown pond and a drainage pipe. So she squeezed in and wanted to cross, because there were fields here, some bushes in this ditch that’s here, and she wanted to get across. There was a traitor, as I say, to the Polish nation, who collaborated with the Germans. Historians might call it differently, but I say he was a traitor. Was he a Bolshevik or not, no one knows. They saw her, fired a burst, and killed her. She had the child, thinking she could save him, but she had her back turned to them. When they buried her on that little hill, she had maybe ten wounds on her back. And the child supposedly had one, right in the heart. […] She escaped from the convoy and could have been killed that same day.

Zapomniane: Did the train slow down there so that she could jump off?

– Yes, apparently, there were some weak planks, since those were cattle wagons. And from Siedlce, from Łochów, from that area, the transports went to Treblinka.

Zapomniane: On these tracks?

– The ones that are no longer there.

Zapomniane: Only the embankment remained.

– Yes, and they are levelling that embankment now.” (Tosie, August 26, 2024)

IDENTIFICATION OF THE GRAVE BASED ON NON INVASIVE RESEARCH

On 2 February 2023, an on-site inspection was carried out at the location (GPS: N 52°34.752′ E 022°08.765′) indicated as the location of the grave of two victims (Trzciniec Mały, photos 1 and 2). This place is located in a clearing on Źródlana Street. The indicated area is currently flooded, making it impossible to conduct accurate research to precisely locate the grave.

The LiDAR survey is not helpful in this case.

Aerial photography query for this area wasn’t ordered.

Contact and cooperation

We are still looking for information on the identity of the victims and the location of Jewish graves in Trzciniec Mały. If you know something more, write to us at the following address: kontakt@zapomniane.org.

Bibliography

Recording of the Zapomniane Foundation (audio file), W. couple, interviewed by Agnieszka Nieradko and Aleksander Schwarz, Tosie, February 2, 2022.

Recording of the Zapomniane Foundation (audio file), Władysława W., interviewed by Agnieszka Nieradko, Tosie, August 26, 2024.

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