12th September 1939
Końskie massacre

Końskie massacre

The present feldpost postcard was written on the 11th September 1939 and date stamped 12th September 1939 when events in Końskie resulted in a massacre.

On 12th September 1939, the Germans occupied the square next to the Collegiate Church of St. Mikołaja in Końskie , a group of approximately 40-50 Jewish men, whom they ordered to dig graves for the fallen Wehrmacht soldiers - beating and ill-treating them in the process. At one point, disorderly shooting broke out, resulting in the death of 22 Jews. After the war, the Końskie massacre became internationally known due to the fact that it was witnessed by the famous German film director Leni Riefenstahl.

Końskie was captured by Wehrmacht troops on 8th September 1939. On the same day, the Germans burned down the local synagogue. In turn, the funeral of four German soldiers killed in battles with regular Polish troops was scheduled for 12th September. The bodies of the dead rested for some time on a bier in the collegiate church of St. Nicholas in Końskie. Rumors spread that they had been cruelly mutilated by Polish partisans, which caused great outrage among the Germans present in the city.

On the day of the funeral, soldiers of the air reconnaissance battalion of the German 10th Army, together with members of the Reichsarbeitsdienst, herded a group of approximately 40-50 Jewish men pulled from neighbouring houses into the square next to the collegiate church. Jews were ordered to dig graves for the fallen Wehrmacht soldiers. Some men were given shovels for this purpose, but others were forced to dig graves with their bare hands. The Germans brutally abused the detainees, beating them with pickets and rifle butts. Jews who fell to the ground as a result of the blows were kicked in the face. One of the soldiers was so cruel that a Luftwaffe lieutenant present in the square felt forced to escort him to the barracks. However, Major Schulz, the military commandant of the city who arrived at the scene, did not forbid the soldiers from torturing Jews. He limited himself only to remarking that 'although the Jews are to blame for all the misfortunes that have befallen the world now, German soldiers must maintain discipline and avoid excesses'.

Despite the commander's ambiguous attitude, the Jews were allowed to go home. However, before they could disperse, the soldiers started beating and kicking them again. Another outbreak of aggression caused panic among the Jews, who rushed to the gate of the tenement house at Kościuszki 3. in search of shelter.

At that moment, a German military car driven by Second Lieutenant Brunon Kleinmichel entered the square. Seeing a large group of men heading towards him, Kleinmichel opened fire with a submachine gun. Following his example, the remaining soldiers also started shooting at the fleeing crowd. Kleinmichel then exited the vehicle and continued firing. When the shooting stopped, it turned out that 19 Jews were dead and another eight were wounded. By 15th September, three more wounded died, bringing the total number of victims to 22.

The Jews who survived the massacre were ordered to clean up the bodies, which were then buried at the Jewish cemetery in Końskie. The victims of the murder are currently commemorated by a commemorative plaque on the wall of the tenement house at Kościuszki 3.

The crime was witnessed by Leni Riefenstahl, a German film director who was staying in Końskie at that time and the creator of several famous propaganda films glorifying the Third Reich and the Nazi movement . In September 1939, Riefenstahl and her crew went to Poland to make a propaganda film about the victory over Poland. In her 'Memoirs', published after the war, she described the course of the massacre quite faithfully, but repeated claims about the alleged desecration of the bodies of German soldiers by Poles and maintained that she was not aware that the victims of the murder were of Jewish origin. Riefenstahl also claimed that she tried to stop soldiers from mistreating civilians, after which she went to the commander of the Tenth Army, General Walter von Reichenau , whom she informed about the entire incident. Shocked by the massacre, she was supposed to stop working on the film and leave Poland. However, this last statement is contradicted by photos confirming her presence during the victory parade received by Hitler in Warsaw (October 5, 1939).

Field Marshal Erich von Manstein (chief of staff of Army Group 'South' during the September Campaign ) also referred to the Końskie massacre and the presence of Leni Riefenstahl at the crime scene in his memoirs. He described the murder of over 20 Jews as a 'thoughtless shooting in a crowded market square' caused by 'the nervousness of one officer - an anti-aircraft officer'. He cited the fact that the perpetrator was brought to court as 'proof' of the alleged efforts made by the Wehrmacht generals to ensure that the Polish civilian population was treated humanely.

Second Lieutenant Brunon Kleinmichel appeared before a German court-martial, which found that the accused 'deliberately killed people without thinking about what he was doing.' However, the fact that his act was caused by the assumption that the partisans had brutally mutilated the bodies of fallen German soldiers was considered a mitigating circumstance. Ultimately, Kleinmichel was sentenced to two years in prison and demotion. The rank-and-file soldiers who tormented the Jews in the square and then shot at them together with Kleinmichel were not held accountable.

The German historian Jochen Böhler pointed out that the court's justification of Kleinmichel's crimes with the alleged atrocities of the partisans was the first case of using the formula 'where there are Jews, there are partisans', which the Germans used later in the war as a pretext for the mass extermination of the Jewish population in the occupied countries of Europe.

Source: Wikipedia

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