Starachowice And Kielce
Today we went with Howard to his hometown of Starachowice. Of the few survivors still alive from Starachowice, Howard is the only one who comes back to visit anymore. This was where he last saw his mother, younger brother, and sister. They were in the main square of Wierzbnik, once its own town but now apart of Starachowice. It was where the Jewish population lived until most of it went to Treblinka. If not for his father warning him to hide behind a gate during the deportation, Howard would’ve been sent with most of his direct family to Treblinka. On our tour, Howard pointed out his childhood home which was taken during the war and now is a fabric store. Every year, he goes in and says hello to the storeowner. We then went to the Jewish cemetery in Starachowice. Howard‘s grandfather is buried there, but he has no marker. Howard looked over the yard and saw the tombstones of so many lives forgotten. An entire community gone with only a few to remember it. This was the second time Howard became emotional. The first was at Treblinka when he lit candles with Hedy, his daughter, on the rock for the Jewish community of Wierzbnik. There was a prayer at the front of the cemetery. We then left and went to Kielce.
The house where the Kielce pogrom took place looked unassuming, and at first I only realized it was the house upon seeing the candles in red jars which lined the front of the building. From a distance, it looked like a regular old building. But only 72 years and a day ago, this place was the site of mass violence, maiming, and murder. A man whose testimony of the event was inside the first floor had a false eye that always looked up and a murky grey one that saw nothing. “I survived the ghetto, the camps, and the war…but Kielce broke me.” He survived what so many others had not. He had survived the Holocaust. He saw the end of the war. He was going to make it. He had a whole life ahead of him. Then, he was beaten and slashed into blindness by Polish citizens on July 4th, 1946. Others were thrown out the third floor balconies and into the stream that ran beside the street below the house. The people there thought they had done it. They thought they would get to find their family. No. The Holocaust just came late for them.