Murderers who take pride in their crime

[Gość: Hans]

Murderers who take pride in their crime

Partisans or bandits?
On February 12, 2001, the Canadian Polish Congress wrote to Poland's Institute
of National
Remembrance/Memory (Instytut Pamieci Narodowej-IPN) to initiate an
investigation into a
mass murder perpetrated in the village of Koniuchy (now Kaniukai, Lithuania)
during World
War II.

According to the count of the perpetrators themselves, some 300 defenceless
Poles-mostly women and children-were massacred in that bloody orgy.
Professor Witold Kulesza, the director of the IPN's Commission for the
Prosecution of
Crimes against the Polish Nation, announced on February 22, that there would be
a formal
investigation into this matter, thus bringing to fruition an undertaking
commenced by the
Congress' Information Services in 1996.

One of the most tragic aspects of any war is the murder of the civilian
population which,
most often innocently, gets caught up in sweeping events that unfold around
them and over
which they have little or no control. As extensive documentary evidence shows,
Jews hiding
in the forests were most often killed during German raids, by Soviet partisans,
and by
marauding bands of various descriptions. A much smaller number of Jews?
partisans and
forest people?were killed by Polish partisans for taking part in incessant
raids for
provisions against the Polish population. There are abundant descriptions
authored by
Jewish partisans attesting to how cruel and violent these robberies could be.

The Jewish partisans in Rudniki forest, who had subordinated themselves to the
Soviet
partisan command, consisted of four divisions: "Death to Fascism," led by Jacob
(Yaakov)
Prenner; "Struggle," led by Avrasha Rasel; "To Victory," led by Shmuel
Kaplinsky; and
"Avenger," led by Abba Kovner.

There were fifty partisans in each division, and the four divisions together
formed the
so-called Jewish Brigade, of which Abba Kovner was the commander. See Rich
Cohen, The
Avengers (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 110.

Subsequently, the Jewish Brigade was disbanded and the Jewish partisans were
merged into
the Lithuanian Brigade which, despite its name, contained few ethnic
Lithuanians; its
make-up was said to be 20 percent Jewish. Ibid., 112, 121.

We also learn that after the city of Wilno was taken and the Red Army advanced
into East
Prussia, because of the intervention of a Jew who worked for the Soviet high
command
Jewish partisans were excused from engaging in battle; they remained in Wilno
were they
were presented with Medals of Valour, the highest honour in the Red Army.
Ibid., 154.
According to Isaac Kowalski, the partisans of the almost exclusively
Jewish "Nekamah" unit
were appointed to various important economic posts in the city. Isaac Kowalski,
A Secret
Press in Nazi Europe: The Story of a Jewish United Partisan Organization (New
York:
Central Guide Publishers, 1969), 386.

In northeastern Poland, the peasants were close to starvation after they "met"
both the
German and Soviet "requisitions." In some cases, they defended their property
and resisted
these raids, only to see their homes and villages "pacified." Soviet-Jewish
partisans
obliterated the village of Koniuchy in the Rudniki forest, near Wilno, in April
1944.

According to Jewish participants who took part in this bloodbath, some three
hundred
inhabitants?mostly women and children?were slaughtered. Peasants attempting to
escape from
the inferno were shot. Even an infant found by two Jewish women partisans near
the body of
his murdered mother was picked up and hurled into a blazing hut. The following
account is
by a Jewish participant of that inferno:
"The Brigade Headquarters decided to raze Koniuchy to the ground to set an
example to
others. One evening a hundred and twenty of the best partisans from all the
camps, armed
with the best weapons they had, set out in the direction of the village. There
were about
50 Jews among them, headed by Yaakov Prenner. At midnight they came to the
vicinity of the
village and assumed their proper positions. The order was not to leave any one
alive. Even
livestock was to be killed and all property was to be destroyed. ?

The signal was given just before dawn. Within minutes, the village was
surrounded on three
sides. On the fourth side was the river and the only bridge over it was in the
hands of
the partisans. With torches prepared in advance, the partisans burned down the
houses,
stables, and granaries, while opening heavy fire on the houses. ? Half-naked
peasants
jumped out of windows and sought escape. But everywhere fatal bullets awaited
them. Many
jumped into the river and swam towards the other side, but they too, met the
same end. The
mission was completed within a short while. Sixty households, numbering about
300 people,
were destroyed, with no survivors."

See Chaim Lazar, Destruction and Resistance (New York: Shengold Publishers,
1985), 174-75
"Konyuchi [sic] was a village of dusty streets and squat, unpainted houses. ?
The
partisans - Russians, Lithuanians and Jews - attacked Konyuchi from the fields,
the sun at
their backs. The partisans-Russians, Lithuanians and Jews-attacked Konyuchi
[sic] from the
fields, the sun at their backs. There was gunfire from the guard towers.
Partisans
returned the fire.

The peasants ducked into houses. Partisans threw grenades onto roofs and the
houses
exploded into flame. Other houses were torched. Peasants ran from their front
doors and
raced down the streets. The partisans chased them, shooting men, women and
children. Many
peasants ran in the direction of the German garrison, which took them through a
cemetery
on the edge of town.

The partisan commander, anticipating this move, had stationed several men
behind the
gravestones. When these partisans opened fire, the peasants turned back, only
to be met by
the soldiers coming up from behind. Caught in a cross fire, hundreds of
peasants were
killed."

See Rich Cohen, The Avengers (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 145.
"The entire village [of Koniuchy] was laid in ashes and its inhabitants were
killed,"
according to Zalman Wylozny who served in the "Death to Fascists" detachment.
See Golota, "Losy Zydow ostroleckich w czasie II wojny swiatowej," Biuletyn
Zydowskiego
Instytutu Historycznego, no. 187 (1998): 32.
Kowalski, A Secret Press in Nazi Europe, 333-34; also reproduced in Isaac
Kowalski, comp.
and ed., Anthology on Armed Jewish Resistance, 1939-1945, volume 4 (Brooklyn,
New York:
Jewish Combatants Publishers House, 1991), 390-91.

According to Kowalski, Koniuchy was located about ten kilometres from the
periphery of the
partisan base, but there is no mention by him that the residents were going out
of their
way to hunt down Jewish or Soviet partisans. (Indeed, such conduct would have
been
suicidal.) Rather, whenever the partisans "crossed" or "passed" the village on
their way
to "important and dangerous missions" of an unspecified nature, they "were met
by sniper
fire." Since there was no compelling reason for the partisans having to pass
repeatedly
through a village ten kilometres from their base, it is apparent that these
confrontations
occurred during "economic" actions, i.e., raids on this village.

Polish historian, Kazimierz Krajewski, disputes the Jewish versions. The
village was not
the "fortress" it is made out to be and its entire "arsenal" consisted of
several rusted
rifles. The sole cause of the villagers' misfortune was that they attempted to
fend off
relentless and increasingly violent partisan raids. Krajewski also mentions
that, on April
27, 1944, shortly before the assault on Koniuchy, Soviet partisans attacked the
hamlet of
Niewoniance, which also supported the Home Army. Two families of Home Army
members
consisti