1 Killing site(s)
Ryszard G., born 1931: "I saw a Jewish woman with a small child, crying because she knew she was about to die. She was shot along with her child. I was a curious kid, hiding and watching from a distance. From the bushes, I could see the ditches being dug and how they fell into the pits. I only witnessed it once, but it has stayed with me to this day. It happened near the jail, about 100 meters away, in a meadow surrounded by bushes. The Jews were ordered by the Germans to dig their own pit.” (Testimony N°YIU526P, interviewed in Zegrze Południowe, on September 29, 2015)
"Around 54 Jews shot in 1943 and 1944." [Court Inquiries about executions and mass graves in districts, provinces, camps and ghettos = Ankieta Sadow Grodzkich, 1945 Reel 13 File 45]
Zegrze Południowe is a village in Poland, located in the Mazowieckie Voivodeship, Legionowo County, within the Nieporęt Municipality. It lies directly on Zegrzyński Lake, approximately 25 km from the center of Warsaw. According to accounts from local witnesses, on the eve of the Second World War, only a small number of Jews lived in Zegrze Południowe. Among them were a tailor and an ice-cream vendor.
After the outbreak of the Second World War, a local auxiliary police unit, known as the Blue Police, was established in Zegrze Południowe. During the early occupation, some local Jews managed to flee, but others were executed in the town by German gendarmes.
In 1943 and 1944, Jews caught hiding in the surrounding areas, including women and children, were gradually rounded up and detained in Zegrze Południowe. They were held under the supervision of local policemen in the basement of the pre-war Polish police station, which had been repurposed as a makeshift prison. The prisoners were crammed into a small space with a barred window. According to a witness interviewed by Yahad, a Jewish woman imprisoned there attempted to trade her valuables for food to feed her three-year-old child, but fear of punishment deterred local residents from helping.
Once a certain number of detainees had been gathered, they were taken—either individually or in small groups—to a nearby meadow. There, they were forced to dig their own pit before being shot, still fully clothed, by German gendarmes from Legionowo. A witness reported that the gendarmes responsible for the executions wore metal plates on their chests, suggesting they were likely members of the Feldgendarmerie. Local policemen were then tasked with burying the bodies after each execution.
Archival records reveal that a total of 54 Jews were killed in Zegrze Południowe during 1943 and 1944. To this day, the execution site remains unprotected. In the post-war period, an artificial lake was created at the site.
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