Type of place

Information about the crime

The crime against Jews from Radlin was meant to be committed in 1941. A ditch was dug behind a barn in the north-western part of the village and in the presence of the land administrator 40 Jews from Chodel were murdered. Currently the place is located on a private property. The only identified victim was a daughter of  Kasiarz, a buckwheat merchant from Chodel who was killed with her baby in her arms. The reason of the murder was the land administrator’s failure to comply with formalities required to employ Jews.

An account of Stefania (born in 1924): “Later Jews worked here [in the manor in Radlin]. I remember that it was just before the All Saints’ Day when a Jewish woman from Chodel came. We knew her because we used to go to Chodel and there was a lot of Jews there. Her father traded in buckwheat, he was called Kasiarz. Jews were working in the field till noon and she came to this block where Jews were trading. They have nothing to live on. She sat in a shade with a small child. The little Jew was four months old but he was so pretty. I asked her if she would have given him away if someone wanted to take him. ‘Straight away’, she replied. ‘If someone wanted him.’

After lunch I went to milk the cows and I saw two Germans coming. One Jew started running away, they shot him in the chin but he escaped to the forest. But someone brought him back later and they killed him. I said [to myself]: They are shooting Jews. When the Germans left, I went to milk the cow. I went behind the barn and saw the Jews killed. And I saw the child held by the Jewish woman. Apparently she was killed and  fell over, and he kicked the child in the head so hard that blood went through his eyes and nose and mouth. I went back home and couldn’t stop thinking – what was the child guilty of? They killed all of them. There must have been 40 Jews but the squire had 30 of them registered and was meant to report them before the All Saints’ Day. But he didn’t because he didn’t want to send them to their death and then he had to stand there and watch the Germans killing the Jews. He was called Kazimierz Boduszyński. When I went there and saw those people killed… I was sorry the most for the child… They were lying like hay stacks. They were being thrown into the ditch. There were many Jews because many people came from Warsaw. One of them was a tailor, there were two children and their parents. They weren’t registered but he [the tailor] was sewing here. They killed this Jewish woman but they didn’t kill the child properly. The child was thrown into the ditch because they [Germans] ordered to do so. The soil was still moving, I saw it with my own eyes. I went home and couldn’t sleep all night – how can you kill people like that?” (Radlin, the account recorded in 2014.)

The location of the grave of 40 Jews from the Radlin manor murdered on that day has not been established as yet.

Contact and cooperation

We are still looking for information on the identity of the victims and the location of Jewish graves in Radlin. If you know something more, write to us at the following address: fundacjazapomniane@gmail.com.

Bibliography

Recording of the Zapomniane Foundation (audio file), name: Stefania [eyewitness], b. 1924, place of residence: Radlin, subject and keywords: Jewish graves in Radlin, interviewed by Agnieszka Nieradko [Radlin, report from 2014].