Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Nathan Weiselman - January 1, 1985

In, in Kielce, for the reason they said, because it was not far from Radom, that the city Kielce was a pogrom for the Jewish people came back from the concentration camp and sent from Soviet Union. They, they went back to their hometown like I went back to Radom. They went back to Kielce. Kielce happen to be the, like I said, the capital city, the capital city, city, from, from Radom. Like, uh, for instance, Santa Fe, yeah?

Yes.

Is the, all the administration from New Mexico, yeah? How you call this, is, is...

The capital.

The capital. Okay. Over there it was, they call it ???.

Yes.

??? all the, the laws for the state did go out from Kielce. So they make the pogrom and they killed about sixty Jewish people over there.

Any survive?

In 1946. And after the people, mostly they heard in the radio and the paper, that there was a big pogrom and they killed about sixty people, whoever ???. They killed them. This so-called uh, Armia Krajowa, the, the national army, which their idea was they were against, uh, communistic system. They wanted to establish a national ah, Poland, probably like it was before the war. And they were against Jewish, they want to have complete, like to have judenrein, like uh, no Jewish anymore, like the Germans had. Without Jew. So that's the reason everybody was really scared. I mean, no one when they came back, all the refugees uh, from the camps, they con...concentrated in one building and they would have more strength in case...

How many people, how many Jews, lived in Radom before the war?

In Radom before the war, I think about 30,000 people. It was 170-175,000 people all together.

And 30,000 Jews?

Yeah. But mostly the Jews lived in the city. The fact is, the Jews had such impact on the city, like for instance, Saturday was no store open in the whole city. It was Jewish, uh, Gentile stores, too. But they know it's no use to open the store because very few people going come to town. If there was, like I say, ten percent Gentile stores and ninety percent Jewish stores, so, and the stores were the Jewish stores, so they feel it was waste of the time to open, uh, Saturday the store. So nobody was, uh, because people were religious and they didn't go Saturday to the, to the ??? or ??? and, and it was traditional, we prayed and, and observe every Shabbos supposedly.

How many uh, Jews, uh, had returned to Radom?

I think uh, there returned, a few, several hundred.

Several hundred.

Yeah. But the, they didn't stay too long because they, they were in fear for this anti-Semitical outburst.