Sadowne, 12 June 1969
Cit. Irena Kamińska
Res. post office Sadowne
Węgrów district
Warsaw voivodeship
Jewish Historical Institute
in Warsaw
Petition
I kindly ask the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw to issue a formal confirmation of the fact that my parents were killed for saving Jews in Poland, [as was] my brother Stefan Lubkiewicz.
Myself, my brother and my parents were helping the Jews survive the harrowing time of the Hitlerite occupation and for these actions my father, Leon Lubkiewicz, aged 59, mother Maria Lubkiewicz, aged 44, and brother Stefan Lubkiewicz, aged 25, were shot by a Hitlerite punitive expedition on 13 January 1943 at 10 p.m. As a minor I was left alive.
This was submitted to the historical records of the JHI in Warsaw by cit. Karol Litwak, who now lives in Israel.
The tragic death of my parents and brother was mentioned by the speaker of the lower house of the Polish parliament, cit. Czesław Wycech in his book Sadowne i okolice w moich wspomnieniach [My memories from Sadowne and the region], published by the People’s Cooperative Publishing House in 1967. [The news] of the tragic death of my parents and brother for saving Jews in Poland spread far and wide.
Actually, our entire family was supporting Jews even during the Sanation rule. A Jew, Stołowicz, lived in our house with his family until September 1939. During the fighting in Sadowne on 10 September 1939 our house was burned, probably due to the compassion my mother showed the Jewess Całka, who ran out of her burning home across the street with two young children [and came to us]. Ours was a brick house, so it seemed more sturdy and many people from Sadowne found shelter there.
When we opened our door to the distressed Jewess and her children, two Polish soldiers burst into the house – in undergarments only, since it was 4 a.m. and some of the soldiers, tired from the bloody fighting, had a short nap in the barn of our neighbor, Stefan Wodka.
Enraged Hitlerite soldiers barged into our house with screaming and shouting and drove us all outside. We had to escape through the frontline, to the village of Sadoleś. The [Nazi soldiers] threw several incendiary grenades inside the house, so everything burned down and the Polish soldiers were taken captive.
Life during the Hitlerite occupation was very difficult. We always felt resentment and hatred towards the Nazis for burning [the house]. My father and brother baked bread [although] it was no easy task, but we did our best to help the partisans and Jews to act against Nazi Germany.
Late 1942 was very brutal, especially for the Jews, because [the Germans] were deporting them to Treblinka, about ten kilometers away, for mass extermination. Some took cover and lived in the nearby forests of Sadowne, which they would leave in the evenings to search for food. My father was no stranger to hunger because he had quite a difficult childhood. At 12 years old he lost his mother, and [when he was] 16 years old [his] father died. As a family, we were helping the Jews and partisans in difficult, tragic times. Some would pay for the bread, others, more impoverished, would promise to pay if they survived, but that was uncertain. We strove to aid people in need. The Jew Całka, our neighbor, would come from the forest to sleep on our stove, so we were facing various risks.
I also suffered hardships, since I spent my youth during the critical time of the Nazi occupation. I had to perform hard physical labor with my parents and brother, but often thought about getting some education. A few weeks before the tragic death of my parents and brother I got enrolled in grade two of a clandestine middle school with Andrzej Sapielak, Wiesław Boleń and Stanisław Barbasiewicz. A tiny [beacon] of hope was kindled in my heart that maybe at last I would be able to study. However, soon it all ended in a terrible tragedy and since then my life has turned as dark as the night and as hard as a rock.
That tragic day, that is on 13 January 1943 at 5 p.m., I was returning from class with textbooks for middle school clandestine lessons. In winter it’s evening by that time, but it was not completely dark. Near the school several armed gendarmes ran towards me. They were part of the punitive expedition, which arrived to search out Jews and interrogate those who aided them.
Seeing the approaching gendarmes, I turned to the left in terrible fear. “What shall I do?” I asked myself, my head spinning. “I must be tough.” A gendarme quickly blocked my passage, yanked my arm and shouted: “Jude!”. I told him that I was Polish. “Where are you returning from?” – the angry gendarme asked sharply. Shrinking inside, but firmly and without hesitation I replied, “From my friend’s house” and looked straight into the bloodthirsty eyes of the gendarme. “If I look down now things will get really bad,” I thought. “He will order me to lead him back to where I came from and then the clandestine middle school will be compromised.” So I held my gaze and he yelled at me, “Where do you live!”. I gestured to indicate that I lived close by, to which he shouted, “Go home!”
Once I got home I immediately said that the gendarmes had arrived and stopped me. I quickly hid the clandestine middle school textbooks. During that time two Jewesses from Sadowne, Enzel [?] and Czapkiewicz, came to my father’s bakery and left after getting bread. Outside the gate they were stopped by gendarmes from the punitive expedition and asked where they got the bread. They answered that they got it from the Lubkiewiczs; truth be told, they could’ve not disclosed that.
The Jewesses were quickly shot and men were called to dig a pit for their burial; among them was Dutkowski, who has since passed away, and Kazimierz Kamiński, my husband’s elder brother, who served in the Citizens’ Militia [and] was shot in Sadowne just after liberation in 1945 for solidifying the rule of People’s Poland. He left behind four children, one of whom, a girl, was raised by us.
Meanwhile, the gendarmes did not wait for the pit to be dug for the murdered Jewesses and barged into my parents’ house. One of them was called Schulz [Schulze], [he was] a German settler, likely from the Łódź area, very tall, strong, well built, about 30 years old I think.
He leaped towards my mother, shouting, “What, you’ve been giving bread to the Jews!” and fist-punched my mother in the face so hard that she staggered against the wall and her cheek was momentarily bruised to the point of turning black. Schulz [Schulze] then jumped towards me and kicked me hard in the leg with his heavy military boot. Next, he hit me with a pistol on the back and spine so hard that to this day I experience constant pain in that spot, and shouted, “Tell me your mother gave bread to the Jews!”. “Well, I myself was helping the Jews, as was my whole family,” I thought, but I uttered through the pain that I did not know how my mother aided Jews.
Meanwhile, the infuriated Schulz [Schulze] approached my mother and pushed her toward the door to the other part of the house, about three meters away, next to the cupboard, and shouted, “I’m counting to ten, if you don’t confess, I will shoot!”. He held my mother at gunpoint – that was still inside the house – and started the countdown. Despite the strong pain, I quickly thought, “If I stand in front of my mother, this bullet will pierce both myself and her.” My legs and arms went numb and I knelt between my mother and the Nazi criminal Schulz [Schulze], who was holding a pistol.
Schulz [Schulze] stopped the countdown on the order of a senior officer from the punitive expedition, but the investigation didn’t end until 10 p.m. Throughout this time Schulz [Schulze] was tormenting my family terribly. He would make my brother, who was musically talented and played the accordion beautifully, face the wall, and then beat and kicked [him] without mercy. He punched my father in the face, making him stagger against the wall, and pushed and kicked him. He used the same methods of torture as were employed by many other Nazi criminals.
I cannot write anymore about these Nazi crimes against my parents and brother, because I feel a huge lump in my throat.
On 13 January 1943 at 10 p.m., in the yard, gendarmes from the punitive expedition shot my tortured and beaten parents and brother for rescuing Jews in Poland.
They left me alive because I was a minor, but what is it worth, when they took my health and will to live. I was left without any education, even secondary, so it is a tough life. I’m not fit for physical labor and don’t have the education necessary for a white-collar job.