On 21 October 1948 in Radom, the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Radom, in the person of Deputy Prosecutor T. Skulimowski, heard the person named below as an unsworn witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:
Name and surname | Franciszek Chrobak |
Age | 49 years old |
Parents’ names | Franciszek and Urszula, née Szojda |
Place of residence | Jedlińsk |
Occupation | local government official |
Criminal record | none |
Relationship to the parties | none |
During the German occupation, after the ghetto in Jedlińsk was liquidated in July 1943, about a hundred Jews were left in a barrack in Jedlińsk, and they were used for labor in Kruszyna. In October or November 1943, the gendarmerie from Białobrzegi, led by Szmidt and Faltzgrad, came to Jedlińsk. They gathered all those Jews together and chose eight of them, whom they marched out of Jedlińsk and executed.
On the next day, the same gendarmes – this time accompanied by Klus – came to Jedlińsk and forced the Polish populace to go and watch the execution. The Jews, stripped to their underwear, were led out of Jedlińsk in groups of five and shot dead before the eyes of the gathered Poles – I was an eyewitness to this execution. 57 Jews were shot dead on that day. If anyone still moved after the salvoes were fired, he was finished off with a revolver shot to the back of the head. The Jews screamed horribly and didn’t want to go to the execution site, and the Germans beat them with rifle butts about the head and the whole body. The corpses were buried at the execution site in a common grave. A few months later the bodies of these Jews were burned. The Germans shielded the spot with straw mats, set up sentries and proceeded to burn the corpses. There were also cases of individual executions of Jews.
The report was read out.