and he confiscates bricks on behalf of the town. He tolerates only one Jew, the
contractor Balas.¹⁰⁴⁴ When the war with the Soviets broke out, fearing for his
own neck, he ordered Balas to organise a team of Jewish labourers and return
to ungrateful Sochaczew. And this is the source of these two gentlemen’s
profits. And if the municipality car could speak, it would tell us about the
large-scale fraudulent smuggling conducted by these two gentlemen for their
own profit.
That such affairs cannot last, the graves of two partners, Marienfeld
and Szmelc, recently dug in the Jewish cemetery, are proof. These two men
maintained broad trade and smuggling contacts with the Sochaczew SS-men.
In the end, those choice members of Hitler’s guard became tired of meeting
and doing business with the Jews. Moreover, the Jews knew too much about
their ignoble machinations. Therefore, the Germans decided to kill them.
They summoned Marienfeld and Szmelc from a party to the county hospital
and murdered them in an inhuman way. Kreishauptmann’s announcements
were posted on all the walls in the county to inform that the two biggest smugglers
in the county had been caught red-handed and shot during an escape
attempt. The announcement referred to Marienfeld and Szmelc.
Near the road leading into Sochaczew, on the side of Boryszewska (now
Traugutta) Street, approximately 70 metres from the road leading to Wiskitki,
there is the cemetery on a high bank of the River Bzura and very close to the
Catholic cemetery. Racial differences do not stop the Polish citizens from resting
peacefully together, at least after death, even though some of them are
Jews, while others are ethnic Poles, Mazurians. Once upon a time, some of the
land for the old Jewish cemetery as well as for the synagogue, bathhouse, and
slaughterhouse were leased to the Jewish community for a period of one hundred
years by a Mazovian prince. After the limitation period the land became
property of the Jewish community. After the space had been exhausted, the
owner of the neighbouring landed estate Czerwonka¹⁰⁴⁵ was asked to sell his
land for the purpose of enlarging the cemetery. The owner refused as he
was known for his anti-Semitic views. His son would not allow groups of
Jewish children to use the road going by his palace. Jewish and PPS municipality
jurors forced him to sell his land, saying that otherwise they would not
1044 Judel Balas was a member of the Judenrat in Sochaczew. See Doc. 138.
1045 Czerwonka (Sochaczew-Błonie County).
