Niepołomice Memorial

Niepołomice was a suburb of Kraków. A mass execution occurred in the Niepołomice National Forest on August 27, 1942. Several people murdered during that event are memorialized on a gravestone there that records thirty-eight of the victims.

The massacre is described in testimony given to Yad Vashem (Testimony #03/3571 Archives #3172/197-R, Feb 1971) given by Eliyahu Richter, who was born in Niepołomice. A New York class-action lawsuit in 1996 found on-line in the Court TV library against three Swiss banks alleging that the banks conspired to launder and conceal Nazi assets. Within that legal brief, the following was found:

"In 1945, a friend of Bernard Salamon wrote to Lewis Salton in New York and told him that his entire family, including his mother and father, had been killed by the Nazi Regime. The letter stated that his family had been shipped in a cattle car to a concentration camp called Belzec where they were stripped naked and gassed. He was later informed by a German legal official, and provided a court paper documenting the death of some 612 Jews, including his father, in the Polish National Forest of Niepołomice in 1942. Mr. Salamon had been separated from his wife, daughter, and other relatives, and was transported by truck to the forest where, the day before, Poles had been ordered to dig large trenches. The Nazi Regime SS commanders murdered the 612, ten people at a time, by lining them up naked on the ground in front of the trenches and shooting them to death."

The following names appear on the mass grave memorial gravestone at NIEPOŁOMICE, POLAND that is located within the PUSZCZE-NIEPOŁOMSKIE [PRIMEVAL NIEPOŁOMICE], memorializing those killed by the Nazis on 14 Elul 5702 [August 27, 1942].

(From pictures dated 8-24-1990 transcribed by Steven Blumenfrucht)

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