11th May 1945
Maniowy
Perpetrators armed with automatic rifles assault 4 Jewish Holocaust survivors from Podhale, gathered at one of the houses. After issuing the order: “Hands up!”, they rob their victims and murder* them.  
The victims:
Wilhelm Reich, age 41
BaruchFeit, age 34
Leon Kraus, age 17
Chaim Kalman Blonder, age 32

12th August 1945
Rabka
The Jewish medical facility „Children’s Home” at Słoneczna Street is attacked for the first time. Ninety six patients – children that survived the Holocaust – and women who take care of them are inside the building.
The attacker is Mieczysław Klempka “Kot”, a member of the scouting team from the Private Sanatorium Gymnasium for Men, and a former Home Army soldier (from the 1st Regiment of Podhale Rifles). The grenade he throws in through the window explodes in an isolation room. A thirteen-year-old girl is injured.
There was a hole in the floor, about 10 to 15 centimeters in diameter, the windows were smashed, the walls damaged, medical equipment destroyed, the examination bed in the room was turned upside down, the underwear put on the examination bed now scattered around the room. The children are in a terrible panic. – Anna Górska, an employee of the “Children’s Home”

19th August 1945
Rabka
The second attack on the “Children’s Home”, now guarded by a group of soldiers of Jewish nationality. The perpetrators (students from the Rabka gymnasium) fire at the buildings with automatic guns and throw grenades. They cut the electricity and telephone lines. The children huddle under the beds and in the corridors – as far as possible from the breaking glass.
The attack was instigated by Father Józef Hojoł – a scouts educator from the Private Sanatorium Gymnasium for Men, an instructor of the Catholic Youth Association. During his trial, he explains: it doesn’t matter, if Jewish communities are chased away, as long as there are no accidents*.

27th August 1945
Rabka
The third attack on the “Children’s Home”, lasting several hours. A group of militia men and members on Jewish self-defense protects the children.
The attackers, over 30 in total, include scouts and members of the local Home Army Resistance unit. During the trial, one of the perpetrators states that the aim of the operation was to “scare the Jewish children in Rabka”*.
The following day the children are evacuated, under escort, to a facility in Zakopane.

29th January 1946
Zakopane
Two assailants kill Józef Oppenheim in his house in the Krzeptówki district. Oppenheim, who served as the head of the Tatra Volunteer Search and Rescue, was known for his leftist views and helped organise holidays for workers.
The perpetrators are identified as two partisans from the “Błyskawica” unit. During the interrogation one of them explains that they went to the “sheeny” to “get him to show identification, and to take ransom from him”. After the attack, they leave the following message on the door: every communist traitor will die this way*.

10th February 1946
Nowy Targ
Several armed men assault Dawid Grassgrün in his home.
Grassgrün was the only one who had managed to escape the mass execution carried out in the Nowy Targ cemetery in 1942. He was the oldest of the few Jewish survivors from Nowy Targ that chose to return to the town after the war. Grassgrün was the head of the post-war Jewish Religious Association in Nowy Targ.
He is murdered, his property robbed. Just before shooting him, the perpetrators ask Grassgrün: What do you prefer, Jew, dollars or death?*
Leaflets that appear on the streets of Nowy Targ soon after the crime call Grassgrün a “dirty leech” killed by “real Poles”.

20th April 1946
Nowy Targ
Five Jewish people set out from Nowy Targ towards Czechoslovakia in a rented car, with the intention of emigrating.
At the outskirts of the town their vehicle is halted by a group wearing Polish Army uniforms. The travellers are identified and shot. The perpetrators loot their bodies, taking their clothes and shoes.  
According to intelligence data the mentioned murder was done under “Ogień’s” personal supervision – Note from the voivodship branch of the Department of Security in Krakow to the Director of Department III of the Ministry of Public Security, 30th April 1946.
The victims:
Ruth Joachisman, age 21
Ludwik Herz, age 21
Salomon Lindenberger, age 24
Beniamin Rose, age 33
Henryk Unterbuch, age 42

29th April 1946
Białka Tatrzańska
Seven Jews are murdered on the road at night. They are a part of the group fleeing Poland through Czechoslovakia. Unidentified perpetrators fire at them with automatic guns. One of the Jews who manage to escape recalls hearing the order “get out of the car” and the screams of victims.*
The victims:
Blima Krebs, age 32
Beila Gold, age 43
Frida Salzberg, age 48
FeigaSchwerdszarf, age 48
Chaskel Świecznik, age 30
Sara Dornberg, age 40
Salomon Dornberg, age 14

2nd May 1946
Krościenko
Late in the evening, a unit under Jan Bartkiewicz “Śmigły” from the partisan group “Błyskawica” assaults a truck parked by the roadside. Inside is a group of several Jews waiting to be smuggled across the border.
The “Błyskawica” partisans order the passengers out of the truck, look at their identification documents and proceed to shoot them. Thirteen people are killed; several sustain light wounds. The assailants loot the bodies and take their luggage.  
The victims:
Tema Holand (age 44)
Rachela Holand (age 14)
Rachela Piniuńska (age 54)
Dwojra Wygoda (age 48)
Abraham Wygoda  (age 48)  
Izrael Flam (age 19)
Rachela Szapiro (age 19)
Liba Szapiro (age 49)
Jakub Finkelstein (age 27)
Józef Galler (age 12)
Izrael Piniuński (age 46)
Regina Schlosser (age 45)
Mosze Szmulewicz (age 42)
The person escorting the group of fugitives, Jan Wąchała “Łazik”, is also killed.
9th August 1947
Rabka
Late in the evening, uniformed assailants kill three Jews. They ask for their nationality, and then shoot them. The victims are a married couple by the name of Goldstein, who came there for holiday with their son Ludwik, aged a year and a half. The child is wounded during the attack. The third victim is Sabina Cyns, who visited the town with her husband and nine-year-old son Jerzy.
All the adults and little Jerzy were prisoners in concentration camps during the war. The nine-year-old also survived the first attack on the Jewish orphanage in Rabka, where he was transferred after he became ill during his days in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The perpetrators of the crime are partisans under Józef Pucuła “Mściciel”, formerly “Ogień’s” men.
The victims:
Sabina Cyns (age 37)
Dora Goldstein (age 29)
Zygmunt Goldstein (age 33)

Almost all of the Jews that had managed to survive the Holocaust and the post-war attacks left Podhale.

*All quotations and descriptions of the incidents come from the testimonies of victims and eyewitnesses, found in court files and materials gathered by the security apparatus (Citizens’ Militia; Department of Security). The documents are currently held in the archives of the Institute of National Remembrance.

Illustrations

Jan Machauf’s letter to his mother, written on 13th August 1945, after the first attack on the Jewish medical facility in Rabka. Suffering from tuberculosis, Jan was staying at the facility since July 1946. Collection of Janina Naskalska-Babik.

Maria, Rena, Józef and Izrael Galler. Before the war, they lived in Krakow, then moved to Nowy Targ. Izrael was a veterinarian. The Gallers returned to Krakow at the beginning of the war. In 1941 they were confined to the ghetto, and in 1943 deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Ill and exhausted, they returned to Poland after the end of the war. Joseph Strimber’s collection.
 
The Galler family at the New Jewish Cemetery in Krakow, by the grave of young Józef Galler, 1946. From the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Joseph Strimber’s bequest.
 
Excerpt from a letter by Maria Galler, mother of little Józef, killed in Krościenko, written to the directors of the Polish Radio and sent from Israel on 23rd January 1951. Collection of the Institute of National Remembrance.