photograph of a man killed in the Kielce pogrom

photograph of a man killed in the Kielce pogrom

A photograph of a person killed in the 1946 Kielce pogrom.

The Kielce pogrom was a massacre carried out by Polish residents on Jewish Holocaust survivors, the remnants of the concentration and extermination camps following a blood libel. The pogrom broke out after Henrik Belszczyk, a nine-year-old Polish boy who disappeared and was found two days later, returned to his home and said that Jews had abducted and held him in one of the houses in the city and that he had finally managed to escape through the house window. Police arrested Kalman Singer, a religious guy who survived the concentration camps, brought him to the police station and beat him. At the same time, police began spreading rumors that Jews had abducted the boy and imprisoned him in the basement. Following this in July 1946 a Polish mob broke into the residential building where the boy was allegedly held, and brutally attacked the Jewish tenants. On the same day rioters also attacked a train arriving in the city of Czestochowa; The locomotive driver deliberately slowed down, all the Jews were forcibly removed from the wagons and murdered. The rioters robbed the victims of watches, clothes, shoes and money. The pogrom killed 47 of the 163 Jews who survived the Holocaust in the city, and about 80 were injured. Of the dead, 33 bodies were identified by acquaintances or according to documents found in their clothes. 8 bodies were not identified and were buried anonymously. On one of the tombstones, the inscription B 2969 was written, which was tattooed on her arm.

We did not identify the name of the victim.

9x14 cm. Divided at the back for use as a postcard.