3 Killing site(s)
Jadwiga K. born 1930: "A young boy remains vividly in my memory. My friends and I were walking to school—we must have been in the 6th or 7th grade, though I can’t recall exactly. Along the way, a little boy joined us. He told us he was Jewish and spoke perfect Polish. He shared that he had escaped from Pilawa after the Jews there were massacred. He survived the mass shooting because his father’s body had fallen over him, concealing him. When we asked where he was heading, he said he was going to Sobolew, where he had heard there was still a ghetto. That moment stayed with me deeply. We were just young girls on our way to school; there was nothing we could do. He said he crawled out from under his father’s body after the Germans left. That child has been etched in my memory for life." (Testimony N°YIU530P, interviewed in Leokadia, on September 30, 2015)
"21 Jews shot in October 1943." [Court Inquiries about executions and mass graves in districts, provinces, camps and ghettosRG-15.019 Reel # 12 Reel #12]
Leokadia is a village in Poland, located in the Masovian Voivodeship, Garwolin County, within the administrative district of Gmina Łaskarzew. From 1975 to 1998, the village was part of the Siedlce Voivodeship. Situated approximately 90 km (56 miles) from Warsaw, there is no available information about Jews living in Leokadia itself. However, a significant Jewish community thrived in the surrounding area, particularly in the nearby towns of Łaskarzew and Sobolew.
After the outbreak of the Second World War, Leokadia fell under the jurisdiction of the Gendarmerie post in Sobolew, as no German forces were directly stationed in the village. Ghettos for Jews from the region were established in nearby towns, such as Sobolew and Łaskarzew.
In 1942, a Jewish man who managed to escape from a train passing near Leokadia was caught and executed by the gendarmes. His body was buried on the spot, near the railroad tracks.
In October 1943, Jews working at a forced labor camp in Wilga, where they reinforced levees along the Vistula River, were released. However, by that time, according to a witness interviewed by Yahad, the gendarmes were actively hunting Jews in the area, resulting in the murder of many of those who had been freed.
A group of nine Jews returning from Wilga was spotted by German gendarmes and executed in a meadow in Leokadia. Under threat of death, local Poles were ordered to bury the victims’ bodies. Later that same day, the gendarmes shot an additional group of 12 Jews, who, according to a Yahad witness, were also returning from Wilga to Sobolew. Both executions occurred in October 1943.
Isolated killings of Jews continued in Leokadia throughout the German occupation. In 2014, three monuments were erected to honor and preserve the memory of the Jewish victims murdered in Leokadia.
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