Type of place

Information about the crime

In May 2017, the Rabbinical Commission received the report about the possibility of a desecreation of an unmarked grave of the Holocaust victims in the borough of Orońsko in the Mazowieckie voivodeship. Intensive groundworks on the extension of the national road no. 7 were a threat to human remains. The gathered information showed that in the village of Krogulcza Sucha there is a grave of about 40 Jewish women and children murdered in the early 1940s and buried in a mass grave in the Kąty forest. Local residents commemorated the supposed grave site by hanging a cross on a tree. In July 2017 the site inspection was carried out by the representatives of the Rabbinical Commission and the GDDAKiA in Kielce during which three anomalies were found directly next to the tree on which the cross was hanging.

The query at the Institute of National Remembrance for the town of Krogulcza Sucha gave a negative result. Nevertheless, we carried out another query for the village of Młodocin, both the first report and the subsequent findings concern the area between the villages of Krogulcza Sucha and Młodocin. As a result, we found out that 12 Jews from Szydłowiec were murdered in Młodocin in May 1943. The victims were buried in the place of the execution. According to the questionnaire on executions and mass graves of October 8, 1945, the grave of 12 people was to be located in a forest belonging to the former property of Orońsko and it specifies that among the murdered there were 4 people catched in the forest and 8 people brought from Szydłowiec. They were also buried this way, in two separate graves. Neither the inquiries at the Institute of National Remembrance nor the State Archives in Radom confirmed the murder and burial of 40 women and chidren in the area of the grave.

Commemoration

The alleged place of the grave was marked with field stones by the contractor of construction works and with a wooden matzevah by the Zapomniane Foundation. A cross that was placed there by locals still hangs on the tree.

The place of the grave was marked with a wooden matzevah in 2020 as part of the project  “Reference points  – marking 24 Jewish war graves with wooden matzevot ” . The project is an attempt to find a way to mark these places before they can be commemorated. The action was aimed as an intervention in the landscape of these places, which would remind about what remains invisible, even if present in the memory of local communities.Being only a temporary commemoration, wooden matzevot invite local communities to discuss and take action, to discover the places, and perhaps to start their own memory practice related to them or to permanently commemorate them.

You can read more about the project here (English below):

https://zapomniane.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/MACEWY_punkty-odniesienia_folder.pdf

The project was implemented thanks to funding from the Stowarzyszenie Żydowski Instytut Historyczny and The Matzevah Foundation.

IDENTIFICATION OF THE GRAVE BASED ON NON INVASIVE RESEARCH

On June 13, 2017 a site inspection was carried out to determine the location of the grave of 20-40 victims. A precise indication was not possible due to the lack of witnesses. The area where the grave may be located has been marked out (GPS:N 51°19.940′ E 021°01.075′). The designated area is close to a newly built roundabout which may interfere with the grave.

The LIDAR survey shows many disturbed places that could potentially be a mass grave.

Contact and cooperation

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