Holocaust & Memorials

On 15 August* of 1941 the Jewish community of Narewka was destroyed - the male population was killed and the women and children were sent away to their ultimate death. A monument - a memorial to the Jewish victims of the Nazis - was later erected on the site of the massacre in the wooded area (near the Christian cemetery) on the north side of the train tracks near the village of Zabłotczyzna (Gmina Narewka), outside of the village of Narewka.

*The date of the Aktion in Narewka varies in different sources. Pinkas Hakehillot says it took place on 15 July; the memorial in Narewka (Zabłotczyzna) has the date of 5 August; the monument in Mt. Hebron Cemetery in Flushing, New York, gives the date of 15 August. The surviving field report (war diary) of Lieutenant Riebel of the German 322 Police Battalion (Radfahrer-Bataillon or "bicycle battalion" - part of the Ordnungspolizei or "Order Police"), notes the date of 15 August 1941, when the battalion's Third Company rounded up the Jews of Narewka Mała: 282 Jewish men were shot and 259 women and 162 children were taken to Kobryn, where a ghetto was subsequently established, before they were eventually killed. (During the Aktion, apparently one Pole was shot for looting.) Some have said that women and children were held in a barn in Narewka, before they were killed; this latter account is noted in Leon Leyson's memoir, The Boy on the Wooden Box (p. 174), and was also told to me by a son of Moshe Birenbaum, who had heard this from his father, who had survived the war, returned to Narewka in 1957, and had spoken with non-Jewish residents. (The Radfahrer-Bataillon went from Bialystok, through the forest region of Białowieża, to Baranovichi (Baranowicze), to Minsk, and then Mogilev and Smolensk.) For the relevant pages from the surviving field report, see below; for more on the 322 Order Police Battalion, see the chapter, "The Order Police and the Final Solution: Russia 1941," in Ordinary Men; Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning (New York: 1992, 1998), and the article, "From the Diary of a Killing Unit," by Konrad Kwiet in Why Germany? National Socialist Anti-Semitism and the European Context (Oxford and Providence: 1993), edited by John Milfull. Kwiet wrote that some Police Battalion 322 material is included in an SS war collection held in the Military Archives in Prague. Curiously, a man I happened to meet and speak with at the Museum and Centre of Belarusian Culture in Hajnówka told me about some records in Prague that documented the killing of the Jews in Narewka. The company diary is at the Zentrale Stelle Landesjustizverwaltungen.

Courtesy International Tracing Service, Bad Arolsen, Germany, and U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.,
from Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen zur Aufklärung Nationalsozialistischer Verbrechen in Ludwigsburg, Germany

Memorials:

Joy Kestenbaum at memorial in Zabłotczyzna in 2010. Barbara Kotin at memorial in Zabłotczyzna in 2015.

The Narevker Landsman societies did not produce a yizkor book, but this monument in Mt. Hebron Cemetery is considered one of the oldest Holocaust memorials in the New York area, having been erected in 1951.

Photos © 2014 Joy Kestenbaum

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Additional Victims from Narewka:

JEWISH PRISONERS-OF-WAR (IN POLISH ARMY) MURDERED BY GERMANS
Meirtchak, Benjamin. Jewish Prisoners-of-War Murdered by Germans in the Lublin District 1939-1943, (Jewish Military Casualties in the Polish Armies in World War II, Volume III). Tel Aviv: Association of Jewish War Veterans of Polish Armies in Israel, January 1996.

Geller Mieczyslaw, b. 1915, Narewka; sapper
Polojko Szepsel, b. 1910, Narewka; non-commissioned officer

P.O.W. Polojko, Szepsel - Personalkarte
[Son of Freidke (nee Frydman) and Hersh Polojko; my grandfather's nephew. - JK]

Courtesy Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw

LODZ GHETTO HOSPITAL DEATH RECORDS

Fajngold Szolem, Narewka 1889, died 22 Jul 1942, malnutrition

PRUZHANY GHETTO RESIDENTS BORN IN NAREWKA SENT TO AUSCHWITZ - January 1943

Kestin Ewasr (survivor), Narewka 4/21/1925, Carpenter, father: Kestin Pejsa, mother: Dolinski Hana*
Kestin Josef (survivor), Narewka 6/13/24, Carpenter, father: Kestin Pejsach, mother: Dolinski Chana*
Rozanski Szaja**, Narewka 2/1/1905, Cobbler, father: Rozanski Chaim, mother: Szynikowski Malka, wife: Szpilewska
Eszka
Simonowski*** Rachmil, Narewka 3/15/1912, Barber, father: Simonowski, Hersz, mother: Kurkin, wife: Rudy Mina

*Pesakh Yosef Kestin, born in Warsaw, 1897/1900, a baker, and Chana/Khana Kestin, born in Narewka, 1898/1900, lived in Hajnowka; Chana's maiden name was Dolinski, mother Malka; during the war in Pruzhany, murdered at Auschwitz; son Moshe also killed, (according to testimony submitted to Yad Vashem)

**Shaja Rozanski, born in Narewka in 1905, (to Isaac/Jakov and Chaia); merchant/grocer and married to Neszka, before the war lived in Hajnowka, during the war in Pruzhany, murdered at Auschwitz, (according to testimony submitted to Yad Vashem)

***Abram Simenowski, born in Narewka, 1911, a merchant in Narewka, son of Dov and Rakhel, was murdered in the Shoah, (according to testimony submitted to Yad Vashem)

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Testimonies, Interviews, and Lectures:

Accounts, memories: Interviews: Aviva Nisenbaum (nee Leizon) ... (On the Virtual Shtetl website)
Accounts, memories: Interviews: David Leizon ... (On the Virtual Shtetl website)
Aviva Nissenbaum (nee Leizon) Testimony - USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, Code 8880, 11/16/1995, Hebrew; on-site access only.
David Leizon Testimony - USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, Code 37542, 11/25/1997, Hebrew; on-site access only.
Leon Leyson Remembers: Holocaust Survivor Leon Leyson Tells His Story: Lecture at the Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba, 4 March 2010; (On the Asper Media Centre website) Leon Leyson, a native of Narewka, moved to Krakow with his family when he was nine years old.
Leon Leyson Testimony, about his early life in Narewka, his family, his experiences during the Holocaust and how he was saved by Oskar Schindler. Available online; go to the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive Online: You need to register online and then search by the Leyson name or interview code 8916. 11/16/1995, English.
An Evening with Leon Leyson - (3 Parts) - California State University, Los Angeles
Oral history interview with Janina Skiepko: Skiepko, born in Narewka in 1921, discusses Narewka's prewar Jewish community; Soviet occupation; harassment by the NKVD; arrival of German forces; concentration camp in nearby Gruszki; killing of Jewish men; conditions under German occupation; local collaborators; distribution of Jewish houses; Nathan Beyrak, projector director for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Oral History Branch, coordinated interview for the Polish Witnesses to the Holocaust Project on 10 November 1998; in Polish. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Interview made possible by a grant from Jeff and Toby Herr. For English summary of oral history interview with Skiepo, from Polish Witnesses to the Holocaust Project, click here.
Oral history interview with Nadzieja Krasowska: Krasowska, born in Narewka in 1909, discusses Narewka's ethnic diversity; prewar Jewish community; arrival of German troops; mass killing of Jewish community; local collaborators; brother's execution as a communist; appropriation of Jewish houses; Nathan Beyrak, projector director for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Oral History Branch, coordinated interview for the Polish Witnesses to the Holocaust Project on 10 November 1998; in Polish. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Interview made possible by a grant from Jeff and Toby Herr. For English summary of oral history interview with Krasowska, frrom Polish Winteses to the Holocaust Project, click here.
Snila mi sie Hana (I Had a Dream About Hana): 1999, 30 min., dir. Mikolaj Wawrzeniuk, Jerzy Leszczynski, TVP Bialystok (Telewiizja Polska SA - Bialystok), won a MF Film and Television Ethnic Prize, Krakow, 1999; Polish documentary about Christian villagers in Narewka, mostly Slavic Orthodox, who reminisce about their former Jewish neighbors. (See FilmPolski.pl) - (Due to licensing restrictions, the film is no longer available online in the USA and other locations)
Testimony of Szymon Kaminski regarding the fate of the Jews of Hajnowka and Narewka: 02/02/1946, from The Bialystok Ghetto Underground Archives (Mersik-Tenenbaum Archive), Record Group M.11, Item ID 3714384, File Number 255, Courtesy of Yad Vashem. "Occupation of Hajnowka by the German Army, 24 June 1941; deportation of approximately 250 Jews from Narewka for forced labor in a chemicals factory in Hajnowka; transfer of the Jews back to Narewka; deportation of the men to outside of Narewka; murder of the men; deportation of the women and children to Kobryn, on orders from Staczek Solowej, the Polish deputy mayor; transfer of the women and children to Pruzany by truck; death march of 300 Jews to Pruzany including abuse acts." English translation from the Polish to be provided soon, courtesy of Barry Cohen.