Type of place

Information about the crime

We visited Poniatów in the summer of 2021. Mr. Jakub, who was told the story of the place by a resident of Wlodzimierzów, showed us the approximate location of the grave. The man was a child during the war, and his father hid Jews at home for money. According to his account, their neighbors collaborated with the Germans, so the venture was fraught with great risk. One day, his father went outside in the backyard and saw a neighbor hastily riding away on a bicycle. When they met each other’s eyes, his father deduced by the neighbor’s expression that he was on his way to inform the Germans about everything. At that time, three Jewish women were in the house: the mother and her two daughters. The father decided to evacuate them and ordered them to hide in the woods. However, after a few hours, in the absence of any information about the oncoming Germans, everyone returned home except the girls’ mother. Unfortunately, in the evening, policemen from the Schutzpolizei and a neighbor showed up at the house. A terrible night followed when the Germans held an all-night “party” with the girls. The witness heard their screams, which gave him no peace for the rest of his life. In the morning, the girls begged the German to spare their lives. In an “act of mercy”, he issued them a “certificate”. It said in German that the girls had escaped from the ghetto and, on that account, the officer checking their documents is ordered to shoot them. They walked along the main road in the direction of Piotrków Trybunalski. A narrow-gauge railroad ran along the road. Near the railroad, in Poniatów/Uszczyn, in a booth next to the forest, stood a guard who asked for documents and read the “certificate”. He led the girls into the forest and shot them.

The Register of Killing Sites and Crimes for the piotrkowskie voivodeship does not record the above-described crime.

Commemoration

The place of the grave was marked with a wooden matzevah in 2022 as part of the project “Reference points – marking 25 Jewish war graves with wooden matzevot”. The project is an attempt to find a way of marking these places before they can be commemorated. Marking forgotten Jewish war graves with wooden matzevot is a subtle intervention in the landscape reminding about what remains invisible, yet 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 initiate a permanent commemoration.

You can read more about the project here:   https://tinyurl.com/2p9ar52f

The project was implemented thanks to the funding from The Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland (Stowarzyszenie Żydowski Instytut Historyczny) and The Matzevah Foundation.

Contact and cooperation

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

Bibliography

Recording of the Zapomniane Foundation (audio recording), Jakub. C., size: Andrzej Jankowski and Agnieszka Nieradko, Włodzimierzów, July 23, 2021