This naturally gave rise to panic among the local Jewish population, some
of whom fled towards Warsaw together with the refugees from other towns.
The panic on the part of the fugitives was so great that they discarded the
most valuable and necessary items on the way in order to make flight easier.
The whole road was strewn with bedclothes, clothing, and household items,
even silver candlesticks and other silver objects.
The Polish population, headed by Mayor Krzesiński⁹⁰⁰ and the director
of the town’s primary school Mr Jedyński,⁹⁰¹ took advantage of the war
situation to settle scores with the local Volksdeutsche. Armed with clubs
and spades, they killed around 30 Volksdeutsche in a matter of minutes.
Several days later, the roles were reversed. The Germans entered the
shtetl, and their first job was to arrest all the Poles involved in the murder
of the Volksdeutsche.
Bloody vengeance followed. Those arrested were brutally tortured, then
killed. Their dead bodies were tied to carts and dragged through the whole
town. The school director, Jedyński, seeing what was happening, went to his
family grave in the Christian cemetery and put a revolver bullet in his heart.
[2] After finishing with the Poles, they turned to the Jews. They gathered
all the Jews in one place in order to select a few victims.
They chose the following three men and extracted them from the ranks:
Yankev Lorek, aged 23, Yankev Obarzanek, aged 29, and Eliahu Kowalski.
The first two were shot in front of everyone. When they were about to shoot the
third man, Kowalski, one of the officers exclaimed, “It’s shame to shoot such
a good-looking Jew.” Kowalski was indeed very handsome and well-built. And
thus he was saved from certain death.
Then they began cutting off beards, seizing Jews for work, and confiscating
Jewish property.
One day they entered the synagogue, desecrated the Torah scrolls, and
then set fire to it along with the Torah scrolls.
The situation in the shtetl quietened down, all the Germans left, and life
almost returned to normal.
Suddenly, in the winter of 1939, a large number of gendarmes arrived and
ordered all the Jews to leave the shtetl within 8 hours and move to the nearby
900 In 1939 Zygmunt Krzesiński was the mayor of Rychwał.
901 Wacław Jedyński (1885–1939), director of the public primary school in Rychwał.
