The 19th episode of film miniatures from the “Not just the Ulmas” series is now available on the IPNtv channel. “Even the Baby was Killed” shows the story of five Polish families who aided Jews.
On 6 December 1942, the Germans killed the neighbouring families – the Kowalskis (5 children), the Obuchiewiczes (4 children), two related Kosior families (10 children) and the Skoczylases (1 child) from Stary Ciepielów and Rekówka, south of Radom for aiding Jews.
The German occupiers in Poland announced that any form of help offered to Jews, for hiding them or even for giving them a slice of bread, would be punishable by death. On 10 October 1942, they even introduced a ban on baptising Jews, while the German orders of 28 October and 10 November 1942 introduced an obligation to denounce and turn Jews in to the occupation authorities. The Death penalty or deportation to a concentration camp could be imposed on anyone who did not report known cases of Poles hiding their Jewish compatriots. How many Poles risked their lives to protect them in various ways? Many say 300,000, but some claim that even a million. Those Polish heroes include 5 Polish families who were murdered by the Germans in the villages of Stary Ciepielów and Rekówka, in the vicinity of Radom, in the morning of 6 December. What makes this crime even more tragic is the fact that the Polish families were most likely denounced by persons of Jewish descent who had previously received help from them. When they were arrested, the Germans used torture and promises to keep them alive to force them to reveal which Poles had been aiding them. However, it is obvious that it was the Germans who were responsible for the crime.
Emanuel Ringelblum (1900-1944), a Polish and Jewish historian and a social activist, who initiated the construction of the archives of the Warsaw Ghetto, the so-called Ringelblum Archive, wrote about the Masovian peasants helping the Jews as follows: On the first day [after closure of the Ghetto on 15 November 1940] many Christians brought bread to their Jewish friends; this was a mass phenomenon. [...] Today, on 19 November 1940, a Christian was shot dead for threwing a sack of bread over the ghetto wall […] I heard from Jews from Głowno that the farmers had supplied them with food for the entire winter. There was never a case of a Jew going to the village and not returning with a bag of potatoes (quote from: Jan Żaryn, Poland in the face of the Holocaust, Oficyna Wydawnicza Volumen, Warsaw 2019, p. 265).
I do not accuse anyone of failing to hide or help Jews. We cannot expect others to sacrifice their own lives. No one has the right to demand such a risk. – wrote Polish Jew Pola Stein (Poland in the face of the Holocaust, p. 271), but such families as the Kowalskis, the Obuchiewiczes, the Kosiors and the Skoczylases took this risk and were murdered by the Germans together with their children and the Jews they had been hiding.
By the end of World War II, the Germans had exterminated approximately six million Polish citizens, the overwhelming majority of them being ethnic Jews (approx. 3 million) and ethnic Poles. Thanks to the heroic deeds of many inhabitants of the occupied Polish lands, several dozen thousand Polish citizens of Jewish descent were saved. Researchers estimate that the Germans murdered approximately a thousand Poles for providing this aid. Most of the thousands of Poles who helped Jews during the German occupation during World War II have never been honoured and most likely will never be publicly known. We want to commemorate them all with a series of IPN film miniatures entitled “Not only the Ulmas”. We invite you to watch the 19th episode about five Polish families from Stary Ciepielów and Rekówka, which we present in Polish and English versions on the IPNtv YouTube channel and on social media.
Watch previous episodes of the series "Not only about the Ulma's".