“They did not need to burn the house. They could have led the Jews out and killed them off”

Abstract

The author visited the villages and towns where the murders of Jews hiding in the Kielce region after the liquidation of the ghettos took place (the deeds were described in Jerzy Mazurek and Alina Skibińska’s text published in this volume). Only a few of the inhabitants, who were there during the war, remain, but the memory of the murdered Jews is still present. Both the memory of those killed by the passing Home Army detachment (and who were buried by the locals who were ordered to do so) and the memory of those denounced by the locals, killed on the spot or escorted to a German police station. Memory does not always entail compassion. The article proves that ϐield research, even when conducted so many years after the Holocaust, can bring additional knowledge to historical research.