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2 Execution site(s)
Jozefa A., born in 1932: “Some local Germans informed the German soldiers that the Jews had been hiding in the forest. I remember this man. At this moment, my sister and I were in the forest gathering mushrooms. He said to us (at that moment the German soldiers hadn’t arrived yet): “Go away! The Germans are coming for the Jews who have been hiding in the forest!” He marked a tree in the direction of the hiding place of the Jews. We ran to the cemetery. The Germans arrived, but I didn’t see them as we were running away from the site. I remember they caught a little Jewish girl. First, they brought her to the village, but then they took her back to the forest. When they came back from the forest she wasn’t with them anymore. One of the Germans was carrying her coat, which I saw later on his daughter.” (Witness °557, interviewed in Nawarzyce on April 4, 2016).
“1/ Date and place of execution: November, 18 – 28, 1943.
2/ Type of execution: shooting.
3/ Data concerning killed people: Poles
How many people were killed: 10.
Where were the victims from: from the village Wrocieryz and Przezwody.” [Questionnaire on mass executions and mass graves n°181 (Mijescowosc = Gmina : Nawarzyce, Powiat = Jedrzejow, Wojewodztwo : Kielce); RG-15.019: IPN]
Nawarzyce is located 60km south-west of Kielce. Little is known about the Jewish community of Nawarzyce. The first Jews might have settled there in the 17th century. Through the years the community grew but they remained in the minority to the Poles who lived in the village. Jozefa A., interview by Yahad, mentioned the Herschla family, who were traders. They had their own shop. Other Jews were craftsmen. A much bigger Jewish community lived in the nearby town of Wodzisław, located 7km east. At the end of 18th century, almost half of the Wodzislaw population was Jewish and by 1909, the Jews made 71% of the total population. The majority of Jews was either craftsmen, like tailors, shoemakers, blacksmiths, or were in the poultry trade, food, iron, tobacco and among others. The Jews from Nawarzyce did not have their own synagogue, nor cemetery. They went to the synagogue located in the town of Wodzisław.
The village was occupied by Germans in September 1939. There is no information about the shooting of Jews in historical archives as all the Nawarzyce Jews were believed to have been relocated to Jędrzejów. The only execution mentioned in the archives is the execution of 10 Poles, murdered over the course of ten days in November 1943. However, as a result of field research, Yahad - In Unum is able to identify two execution sites of three Jews, two adults and one child, who stayed in hiding in the nearby forest. After having been denounced, the Jews were shot on the spot, in the Chlopski forest. There is no exact date of the executions, but they were most probably murdered in the fall of 1942. Today there is no memorial for the murdered Jews.
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