Responding to an appeal for help that Inga Marczyńska posted on Facebook last year, we took action, and together with Inga we are fighting for the memory and dignity of the victims #forthegirls.

12 August 1942. The Nazis drove all the Jewish inhabitants of Kołaczyce and the surrounding area onto the Błonie meadow in Kołaczyce. Promising them freedom, they ordered them to buy themselves out of the death transport with whatever valuables they had. Among those on the Błonie were the families of Salomea Korzennik from Sowina and Rachela Pacher, who were friends. The Jews camped near the market on the Błonie for several days. Two related Jewish families lived in Sowina: the Korzenniks and the Krygiels.

Salomea’s father, Edmund Korzennik, sent the girl home to Sowina for the ransom. Salomea left the market square on the Błonie together with her friend Rachela Pacher. The two of them went to Sowina, 7 km away, where the Korzennik family’s “valuables” were hidden in the barn of their nearest neighbour. On the way back, at the entrance to the square on the Błonie where the Jews were being held, a policeman stood in their way: a collaborator from Silesia, one Teodor Drzyzga (a pre-war officer of the Polish Army, a miner in civilian life). Drzyzga first robbed the girls, then raped and shot them. Almost all of Salomea’s and Rachela’s families were murdered and buried in a mass grave in Krajowice on 12 August 1942. Salomea’s father Edmund survived. At the place where the girls were murdered and buried, he made neighbours he knew promise to put up a memorial plaque. They kept their word. After the war all trace of Edmund disappears; we know nothing of his fate.

The death of these two young, beautiful Jewish girls did not pass unnoticed among the people of Kołaczyce. Right after the war, members of the Jewish community who had been close to the girls, and people from Kołaczyce, came to the place of the murder and burial. The family of the girls’ nearest neighbours and friends visited the grave. Through the efforts of people of goodwill, the girls’ burial place was entered in the register of war graves as a place important for our history and our memory.

A terrible, tragic story, like so many from the time of the Holocaust and the occupation. And yet it is exceptional, because 79 years later the story of these teenage girls (probably sixteen years old) continues. The property with the grave was sold and fenced off, with no way to reach the grave and pay due respect to the murdered girls. Despite its protection on paper, in practice the burial place does not look like a grave. Only a cracked slab with the girls’ names recalls the tragedy. The slab is often covered with rubble and rubbish. The owner does not believe the girls are buried there, and no communication with him is possible. For several months we fought hard for the girls’ dignity; in the next posts and a short film I will show the results of our work.

Deep respect to Inga for years filled with remembrance of the two friends. Thank you for letting me be part of such a noble and important struggle. Your help will be needed soon. When I often hear that the Holocaust is history from books, a closed chapter, soon each of you will be able to see that this is not true, because many stories reach their ending only after decades. As with the story of the girls: we cannot give them back their lives, but we will write a different ending to this tragedy, and each of you can be part of it.

Text: Inga Marczyńska, Dariusz Popiela.