Type of place

Information about the crime

We were informed about the unmarked Jewish graves in Nowiny Brdowskie by the Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Ziemi Brdowskiej in 2022. The brochure published by the society contains all the accumulated knowledge about the history of the rural ghetto in Nowiny Brdowskie and the people murdered there. Excerpts from the brochure are quoted below:

“According to the 1921 census, Nowiny Brdowskie was inhabited by 252 inhabitants. It is very possible that by 1939 this number had increased to about 300 people. The German occupation dealt a terrible blow to the inhabitants of the village. The name of the village was changed to Neuhagen and the population was resettled. After the war, only one third of the former residents returned to their previous place of residence.

On September 1, 1940, the Germans established a Jewish ghetto in Nowiny Brdowskie, from which the inhabitants were displaced, as well as in the village of Bugaj. Both villages previously had 165 households inhabited by Polish peasants. The area of the ghetto was 300 hectares.

In the area of the then Lubotyń commune, which included Nowiny Brdowskie, the main centre of Jewish population was Babiak, with 812 inhabitants, 237 of whom were Jews. Some Jews also lived in smaller villages.

Historical sources say that on October 2, 1940, 240 Jews from Babiak and about 720 Jews from Koło were held in the ghetto in Nowiny Brdowskie. The number of all ghetto prisoners at that time was probably about 1,000 people. They were forced to work in the fields and forests, they were starved and treated as subhuman. Many people were murdered. Not even the children were spared. To this day, the exact number of victims of the ghetto in Nowiny Brdowskie is not known. The statement of the inhabitants that Nowiny Brdowskie stands on human remains seems to be accurate. 

At the turn of December 1941 and January 1942, the 600 surviving Jews began to be transported in trucks to the Kulmhof extermination camp in Chełmno nad Nerem. They were murdered by gassing together with other Jews and Gypsies from the kolski district. The ghetto in Nowiny Brdowskie was liquidated in January 1942.

We visited Nowiny Brdowskie twice in the second half of 2022. The main purpose of our visits was to determine the burial place of the ghetto victims and to meet the last living witnesses of those events.

“I moved here in 1981. There was fallow land here, there were pines, self-sown trees, and oaks. This was supposed to be an orchard. And here only apple trees grew. And the forester says I have to cultivate it. So I took it, cleared it out. I didn’t finish it, I had no strength. A friend of mine came, he worked in the forest, he came and picked them up. And later I plowed it up, only later I found out that Jews were buried here during the occupation. Later, when I was growing here, I didn’t cultivate this part at all. In the place where the graves were, there was a large, green grass growing there. It could have dried up anywhere, but it was growing there, in this place. I know this from people who lived here during the occupation. Everything was displaced here, only Jews were brought here from Babiak, from Izbica, from Kłodawa, from everywhere. They gathered them and guarded them here. They worked in the forest, they worked in winter. Those who died in the meantime had to be buried somewhere, so they were buried here. This is where they were hiding. I thought there were four or five graves here. There was more here. As I found out, there were more of these graves. There was supposed to be a mound here, a dome, it was supposed to be quite large and built later. The A. who lived here, was from Łódź. He came here for the summer and he didn’t do it at all. On February 10, they took everyone, took them from here to the Bugaj, to the barn, owned by C., and these cars came and took them to Chelmno to be killed. It was freezing. People were carrying bundles, but he ran a short distance and left them behind because it was heavy and they were running fast. But those who died earlier were buried here. There are maybe a few, maybe even a dozen or so here. They don’t even know. Also, someone must have desecrated these graves a bit, because there were three such pits dug. When I came here in 1981, there were holes. There were three holes like that, I had them closed to make it even, why leave them like that… I thought they were digging gravel or something. Only later did I learn that there were graves here. And then I didn’t do it either.

– Who told you these were graves?

A judge lived here. Here he supervised all the Jews at work, his father was a forester under the Germans and he also supervised, as a son, the entire forest district, he looked after them. To do this or that, to plant or trim some trees. He lived here, and his house was not demolished later, because generally when the Germans evicted everyone from here, they [demolished] all the buildings and plowed up the entire Nowiny. They were supposed to plant a forest here, but since a fire apparently broke out and a lot of the forest burned down, they had to replant it, but there were no seedlings and they didn’t plant them. Well, now it is planted.” (Nowiny Brdowskie, 2022 r.)

IDENTIFICATION OF THE GRAVE BASED ON NON INVASIVE RESEARCH

On August 2, 2022, a site inspection was carried out in the presence of a witness to locate mass graves

This place was plowed to plant trees. Due to earthworks in this area, the original traces of the grave excavations were blurred.

Landform measurement (LiDAR) is not helpful in this case.

There was no aerial photo query for this area.

On April 20, 2023, research was carried out using GPR (MALA X3M/Ramac 500 Mhz) in two selected locations (GPS: 1. 52 19’31.1557” 18 43’34.7645” 2. 52 19’31.4366” 18 43’34.7645”) located in the area indicated by local residents as the place where the mass graves of the victims are located.

During the research in the first location, 5 GPR profiles were collected with the names: NOW10001, NOW10002, NOW10003, NOW10004, NOW10005. On the profiles: NOW10001-NOW10005, the place of disturbance of soil layers of approx. 3.0 m – approx. 9.0 m, depth of approx. 1.2 m below ground level is marked (attached: nowiny brdowskie, list of echograms – red arrows).The area containing changes in the arrangement of soil layers is approx. 4.0 m x approx. 2.0 m.

During the research of the second location, 8 GPR profiles were collected with the names: NOW20001, NOW20002, NOW20003, NOW20004, NOW20005, NOW20006, NOW20007, NOW20008. On the profiles: NOW20001-NOW20008, the place of disturbance of soil layers is marked (annex: nowiny brdowskie, list of echograms NOW1, NOW2 – red arrows), approx. 1.1 m – approx. 7.3 m, depth approx. 1.0 m below ground level. The area containing changes in the arrangement of soil layers is approx. 6.2 m x approx. 2.4 m.
The results of GPR research suggest that the recorded anomalies are most likely the remains of collective burials disturbed by plowing.

Contact and cooperation

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

Bibliography

Zachować pamięć… Getto w Nowinach Brdowskich, brochure published by the Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Ziemi Brdowskiej, Brdów 2019, resources of the Zapomniane Foundation

We have collected the materials about this village thanks to the funding provided by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance as part of the project “The rural Holocaust. Collecting and safeguarding the never recorded testimonies 100 forgotten Jewish graves 2021-2022”. The materials for this website were developed, digitized and made available as part of the project “Development of a digital archive of Jewish war graves outside the extermination camps and educational use of archive resources” thanks to funding from the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from the Cultural Promotion Fund.