A Review of Witnesses

by Manny Bekier

This film focuses on the massacre in Kielce, Poland on July 4,1946. This is a very powerful film on Jew hatred, because Lozinski, who filmed this in secret in 1987 in Kielce, allowed the perpetrators and local Kielce bystanders of the pogrom, to express what happened in their own words (Polish with English sub titles & voice over).

On that day, 42 Jews were savagely murdered and many more wounded by the participation, and in view of a large segment of the local population. Their justification was the rumor that the Jewish survivors, weak from the Nazi camps, killed Christian children for their blood.

Those interviewed stated that the Jews were heretics, the devil, and everything was in the hands of the Jews. The Jews needed blood, so they lured young children away to drain their blood. One priest who was interviewed, stated that the Jews killed Christian children for their blood, may very well have been true in the past.

What is most chilling was how a perpetrator described how EVERYONE joined in the killing and CALMLY killed Jews. Even local women participated in the slaughter, assisted with their brooms and sticks. Workers from the nearby Ludwikow factory closed up early for the day, taking shovels and axes to assist in the slaughter that continued unabated throughout the day.

It is my hope that this documentary film will stand up against the efforts of those who wish to deny the extent of Antisemitism that existed in Poland at that time.

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