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Poles mark 70 years since post-Holocaust pogrom

PR dla Zagranicy
Agnieszka Łaszczuk 03.07.2016 10:40
An annual memorial march has been held in the southeastern city of Kielce to commemorate the victims of a brutal post-war pogrom against the Jewish community.
A tenement house in Kielce, where the tragic events took place. Photo: Grzegorz Pietrzak/Wikimedia CommonsA tenement house in Kielce, where the tragic events took place. Photo: Grzegorz Pietrzak/Wikimedia Commons

Residents of Kielce as well as guests from Israel and the United States commemorated the Jews who were massacred in the city 70 years ago.

The March of Remembrance and Prayer took place on Sunday afternoon.

The Kielce Pogrom was carried out by Poles on 4 July 1946, ten months after the official end of the Second World War.

As many as 42 people perished in the massacre, and the crime prompted thousands of Jews who had survived the war to emigrate.

The pogrom was sparked by false claims that a Polish Catholic boy named Henryk Blaszczyk had been kidnapped by Jews, thus raising the ancient spectre of ritual murder.

Police and soldiers, accompanied by an angry mob of hundreds of locals, surrounded a building occupied by members of the Jewish community. Waves of violence broke out shortly thereafter.

Some Jews were murdered within the building, whilst others were dragged out into the street and beaten by the mob. Nine death sentences were later handed down to some of those accused of taking part in the murders. (ał/aba)

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