Kosina | Subcarpathian

"In the autumn of 1942, members of the SS, the Gestapo and the gendarmerie shot 40 Jews (men, women, children). The bodies of the victims were buried in mass graves. Some names of the victims have been established: the Augenbraun family, the Kostecher family, the Kutscher family, the Lejzor family, the Mordke family, the Pachciarz family, the Peszel family, the Szlam family, the Wojsztak family, the Wałwys family, the Zeller family.

In the spring of 1943, the Nazis shot 9 Jews (Kestecher Ilona, his two daughters and his son, Zeller-Muhlard and 4 members of his family). Bodies of the victims were buried on the estate’s fields." [Register of places and facts of crimes polled by the Nazi occupation in Poland in 1939-1945, Rzeszow Voivodeship]

Kosina is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Łańcut, within Łańcut County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship, in southeastern Poland. The village is situated approximately 6 km (4 mi) east of Łańcut and 23 km (14 mi) east of the regional capital Rzeszów. Very little is known about the pre-war Jewish community from Kosina. According to Yahad witness testimonies, about ten Jewish families lived in Kosina before the outbreak of war. The witnesses cited the following names of Jewish families: Mordka, Wałowicz, Szlama, Cały, Peszel, Srul, Kostecher, Pachciarz, Lejzor. Most of them were merchants and craftsmen. Jewish and non-Jewish children went to the same local school. Jews had a house of prayer in the village located in one of the Jewish private buildings.

The German army arrived in Łańcut, the capital of the municipality, on September 9, 1939. Shortly after, the entire region found itself under German occupation. The Germans established a navy-blue police post office in Kosina, with five polish policemen and one member of the Gestapo at the head of the office. The Jews from Kosina and neighboring villages were often taken to the police post, where a temporary prison was set up. The prisoners were either shot or transported to the Pełkinie camp on requisitioned carts. According to Yahad witness testimonies, many individual and mass shootings of Jews from Kosina and the surrounding area were perpetrated near the local school building. After the executions, the bodies of the victims were transported on a cart by a requisitioned villager to the field in the grounds of the local manor, where they were buried in a mass grave that had previously been used as a cattle pit. Today, the site is commemorated with a memorial. The available archival sources seem to confirm this information. The book “German Nazi Crimes Against the Jews who Escaped from the Ghettos” by Szymon Datner mentions a shooting that took place in Kosina in the autumn of 1942, during which SS officers and gendarmes executed 22 local Jews (including women and children) by firing squad, “for hiding to avoid deportation” for extermination purposes. Three families were identified among the victims: the Zellers (Hersz, Dawid), the Augenbrauens (Ita, Chaim, Klara), and the Kutschers (Sara, Ita). All the bodies were buried at a site used for animal interment at the Kosina farm in a collective grave. Gendarme Weber was identified as one of the perpetrators of the shooting. In this book, as well as in the available archives, we can find an information about another execution, during which 9 Jews found in hiding in the underground bunker in the nearby field were killed. In the spring of 1943, a navy-blue officer, Józef Tomczak, shot the group of 9 Jews, which included women and children. The victims were Kutscher, Chana, her 2 daughters and son, 4 members of the Muehlbrad family, and Zeller, Chana. They were all buried together at the crime scene, in the bunker they had been hiding in. Yahad - In Unum managed to find an eyewitness to this execution. That day, Mieczysław U., born in 1924, was working at the manor, when he heard that a shooting of Jews was about to take place in the nearby field: “I heard people saying that they were looking for Jews in the field. So, with another young man, we went to see what was going on. It was at noon, we had an hour and a half lunch break. When we arrived, several Jews had already been shot by a navy-blue policeman from the Kosina post office.” Thanks to Mieczysław’s testimony, Yahad - In Unum managed not only to establish many interesting details regarding this execution, but also to locate the execution site and the burial place of the murdered victims. Today, the mass grave containing the 9 victims is completely invisible, located somewhere in the middle of the field. The is no memorial at the site.

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