Mirocin | Subcarpathian Voivodeship

Mirocin is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Przeworsk, Przeworsk County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship, in southeastern Poland. It lies approximately 5 km (3 mi) southeast of Przeworsk and 38 km (24 mi) east of the regional capital Rzeszów. Until 1947, Mirocin was a Polish-Ukrainian village. In 1939, it had 1370 inhabitants: 10 Ukrainians, 1090 Poles, 250 Ukrainian-speaking Catholics and 20 Jews. Not much is known about the pre-war Jewish community of Mirocin. According to Yahad witness Władysław O., born in 1927, there were about five Jewish families living in the village before the war. There was no synagogue in Mirocin, local Jews would attend the synagogue in Przeworsk, which at the time was the closest of the region’s biggest Jewish community centers and brought together Jews from nearby towns and villages, including Mirocin. In 1939, 1432 Jews lived in Przeworsk, which represented more than 20% of the town’s total population. The Jewish cemetery was in Przeworsk as well. Jews from Mirocin were mainly small merchants and craftsmen. According to Stanisława M., born in 1930, Jewish and non-Jewish children from Mirocin went to the same local school.

During the Second World War, as a result of the German-Soviet Pact, the county of Przeworsk was in the German occupation zone, but only 15 km from the Soviet occupation zone. The fate of the Jewish community from Mirocin under the German occupation remains unclear. No available archival documents give us any information about the course of the Holocaust in Mirocin. According to Yahad witnesses, at least one Jewish man was driven by cart by requisitioned local firefighters to the Sieniawa ghetto, located about 20 km from Mirocin. After the war, three requisitioned men were sentenced to four years of imprisonment for taking the Jewish man to the ghetto. Władysław O., born in 1927 told the Yahad team about the shooting of seven Jews that took place in Mirocin during the German occupation. According to Władysław, seven Germans from Przeworsk arrived in Mirocin in the summer of 1941. They encircled the village and started to go from house to house to gather the Jews. They were helped by two brothers, Stefan and Stanisław J. The latter showed them where the Jewish houses were. Seven Jews were rounded up and taken to the property next to Władysław’s family house. They were shot and buried in a mass grave that had been dug at the same property. After the war, the bodies of the victims were exhumed, which is confirmed by the protocols of the exhumations carried out in the Przeworsk district in 1947-1948, according to which seven bodies were exhumed on October 23, 1947, from the garden of Jozef M. in Mirocin. According to these protocols, the victims were: the couple Tojba and Jozef Rozenberg, Leja Frenc (Jankiel’s wife) and Chana Frenc, Estera Trynczer and two other unidentified women. Thanks’ to Władysław, the Yahad team managed to locate the first place of burial, that is, the garden of one of the villagers mentioned above. The place of reburial of the victims remains unknown. According to some sources, another shooting of 5 Jews might have been conducted in Mirocin in 1940 by the Gestapo officers. It remains unknown where the two members from the Jankiel family, age 21 and 23, and three people from the Szal family aged 25, 28 and 54, were buried. Yahad - In Unum was unable to find any more information about the shooting or to locate the mass grave.