acquaintances who remembered Father Aleksander DoÅÄgowski, the RadziÅów parish priest, proclaiming at the funeral of the National Party attack squad members in 1933: âIf the blood of Jews does not flow to all four corners of the world, Christianity will perish.â Perhaps the words were not quite that brutal. In any case, we know from the Interior Ministry reports that Father DoÅÄgowski dedicated a Mass to the memory of the squad members on the first anniversary of the pogrom, and gave an address to five thousand people crowded into the marketplace.
By the Polish residents of the town, Father DoÅÄgowski was remembered above all as an exceptionally miserly priest. He kept gardens where he had the faithful work for meager wages, which as a rule he neglected to pay them. His curates were outspoken anti-Jewish activistsâand it was they who led the boycotts.
First, the curate WÅadysÅaw KamiÅski. I was told that âhe hated Jews so much that when he was drunk he shot at the windows of the tailor Monkowski, who lived across the street.â StanisÅaw Ramotowski recalled, âI saw with my own eyes how he went with boys from the National Party to break the windows of Jewish shops.â We know from the Interior Ministry reports that he gathered together kids from the senior classes and urged them to combat Jewish trade. As an official at the Interior Ministry department elegantly phrased it, âHe put forward the argument that Jewish bakers mixed dough with their dirty feet and spat in it. He stressed that a student who dared to buy a product from a Jew would fail religion class.â On another occasion, Father KamiÅski said in class that during the war between Poland and Soviet Russia in 1920, Jews had scalded General Rydz-ÅmigÅyâs head with boiling water, leaving him bald. For that reason the general harbors hatred toward Jews and plans to drive them out of Poland. Itâs unknown to what extent the curate was conveying Rydz-ÅmigÅyâs sentiments, but this was doubtless a way to express his own. At a National Party county convention in Grajewo in 1936, which brought together twenty-five hundred participants, the curate, appealing for a battle against Jews and Communism, thundered that it was for their own purposes that Jews permitted their women to marry Poles, and there were ministers who had Jewish wives.
The name of another curate of the RadziÅów parish appears even more frequently in the Interior Ministry reports: Father Józef ChoromaÅski. In March 1937, the curate personally organized pickets of Jewish shops. In his religion classes he sneered at children whose parents shopped with Jews, and âthe schoolchildren, remaining under the influence of the curate, were guilty of anti-Jewish speech and behavior.â On July 18 in WÄ sosz, at the Catholic ceremony blessing the National Party flags, the curate spoke to a group of seven hundred people and organized picketing campaigns. On July 29, he intervened at a police station in RadziÅów on behalf of arrested picketers. In RadziÅów on August 12, he sent people out picketing (and after being transferred to nearby Kolno in 1938, he organized campaigns at the beginning of the school year in which Polish children blocked their Jewish fellow students from entering the schoolhouse).
Jedwabne appears only episodically in the reports, although there, too, like everywhere, anti-Jewish excesses are noted: âOn August 25, 1937, in Jedwabne picketers would not let Jews put up their stalls. One of the Jews put up his stall with hats despite being told not to, and the picketers overturned it.â In the same year, Father Marian Szumowski wrote in the Jedwabne parish book, âAll the tradesmen in the marketplace are now Polish. No one has dared to enter a Jewish shop, and the one woman who defied the warning to go to a Jewish baker was thrashed (with a stick).â
As
By the Polish residents of the town, Father DoÅÄgowski was remembered above all as an exceptionally miserly priest. He kept gardens where he had the faithful work for meager wages, which as a rule he neglected to pay them. His curates were outspoken anti-Jewish activistsâand it was they who led the boycotts.
First, the curate WÅadysÅaw KamiÅski. I was told that âhe hated Jews so much that when he was drunk he shot at the windows of the tailor Monkowski, who lived across the street.â StanisÅaw Ramotowski recalled, âI saw with my own eyes how he went with boys from the National Party to break the windows of Jewish shops.â We know from the Interior Ministry reports that he gathered together kids from the senior classes and urged them to combat Jewish trade. As an official at the Interior Ministry department elegantly phrased it, âHe put forward the argument that Jewish bakers mixed dough with their dirty feet and spat in it. He stressed that a student who dared to buy a product from a Jew would fail religion class.â On another occasion, Father KamiÅski said in class that during the war between Poland and Soviet Russia in 1920, Jews had scalded General Rydz-ÅmigÅyâs head with boiling water, leaving him bald. For that reason the general harbors hatred toward Jews and plans to drive them out of Poland. Itâs unknown to what extent the curate was conveying Rydz-ÅmigÅyâs sentiments, but this was doubtless a way to express his own. At a National Party county convention in Grajewo in 1936, which brought together twenty-five hundred participants, the curate, appealing for a battle against Jews and Communism, thundered that it was for their own purposes that Jews permitted their women to marry Poles, and there were ministers who had Jewish wives.
The name of another curate of the RadziÅów parish appears even more frequently in the Interior Ministry reports: Father Józef ChoromaÅski. In March 1937, the curate personally organized pickets of Jewish shops. In his religion classes he sneered at children whose parents shopped with Jews, and âthe schoolchildren, remaining under the influence of the curate, were guilty of anti-Jewish speech and behavior.â On July 18 in WÄ sosz, at the Catholic ceremony blessing the National Party flags, the curate spoke to a group of seven hundred people and organized picketing campaigns. On July 29, he intervened at a police station in RadziÅów on behalf of arrested picketers. In RadziÅów on August 12, he sent people out picketing (and after being transferred to nearby Kolno in 1938, he organized campaigns at the beginning of the school year in which Polish children blocked their Jewish fellow students from entering the schoolhouse).
Jedwabne appears only episodically in the reports, although there, too, like everywhere, anti-Jewish excesses are noted: âOn August 25, 1937, in Jedwabne picketers would not let Jews put up their stalls. One of the Jews put up his stall with hats despite being told not to, and the picketers overturned it.â In the same year, Father Marian Szumowski wrote in the Jedwabne parish book, âAll the tradesmen in the marketplace are now Polish. No one has dared to enter a Jewish shop, and the one woman who defied the warning to go to a Jewish baker was thrashed (with a stick).â
As
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