The village of Zawadka Brzostecka, in south-eastern Poland, belonged to the Kreishauptmannschaft Jaslo in the Krakow District of the German-occupied part of Poland (General Government) following the invasion of the German Reich. Zawadka Brzostecka is one of 188 documented killing sites in the General Government where, between 1939 and 1945, murders were committed against Polish Roma and, in isolated cases, against German Sinti who had previously been deported there.
Investigations
Investigations by the Main Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation [Główna Komisja Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce] revealed that in the Kreishauptmannschaft Jaslo, members of the Jaslo gendarmerie post and other German occupation forces shot hundreds of Jews, Polish civilians and Roma in the villages of Brzostek, Frysztak, Gogołów, Januszkowice, Jodłowa, Kaszyce, and Zawadka Brzostecka.1Before the war, Zawadka Brzostecka was part of the Kraków Voivodeship, the Jasło County and the municipality of Brzostek. Today, the village belongs to the Podkarpackie Voivodeship, the Dębica County and the municipality of Brzostek. According to a publication by the Main Commission authored by Stanisław Zabierowski (1910–1986), at least 75 Roma were killed in the whole of Jasło county. According to Zabierowski, 24 of them were shot in March 1943 in Zawadka Brzostecka alone.2Zabierowski, “Die Ausrottung der Zigeuner in Südostpolen,” 2, 5. The specific sequence of events surrounding the murders is difficult to reconstruct; the source material currently available provides only a fragmented picture.
Shootings in 1942
According to the Polish historian Piotr Kaszyca, who compiled an overview of massacres committed against Roma in the General Government in 1998, the Jasło police shot 27 people next to the cemetery in Zawadka Brzostecka in mid-February 1942. The victims included both Jews and Roma. The majority of those murdered were young Jewish people who had fled from the ghetto in Brzostek. At the site of the massacre, the bodies were buried in a total of four graves, two of which were mass graves.3Kaszyca, “Die Morde an Sinti und Roma im Generalgouvernement 1939–1945,” 131. No further information is currently available.
Shootings in 1943
Kaszyca’s overview of killings of Roma in the General Government lists a massacre of 23 or 24 Roma carried out in March 1943. They were reportedly shot in a forest by the SS, and possibly also by the gendarmerie and the Gestapo from Jasło. The victims are said to have included at least twelve women, three men and eight children, who were taken to the execution site in a truck and buried there. Kaszyca’s account is based on documents from the Main Commission and other sources.4Ibid., 131–132.
Several witness statements about this massacre have been documented by the Main Commission. They were collected during investigations into SS-Obersturmführer Ernst Hildebrandt (1888–1962), who was stationed at the gendarmerie post in Jasło, as well as into other members of the German occupation authorities. In October 1979, they were handed over to the Central Office of the Land Judicial Authorities for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes.5StAN, StAnw Nürnberg-Fürth 2004-01, Nr. 805. In addition, an interview conducted by Yahad – In Unum is also available.6Julian O., “Interview.”
Despite discrepancies in the details regarding the number of victims (between 22 and 24), the perpetrators (Gendarmerie, Gestapo, SS and/or Polish police) and the date (summer 1942, summer 1943 or March 1943 – as the latter is most commonly cited, March 1943 is assumed here to be the date of the crime), it is likely that the information and events discussed by Zabierowski and Kaszyca and documented in the investigation files and the interview all relate to the same mass shooting.
According to these sources, up to 24 Roma, including men, women and children, were taken in a truck arriving from the direction of Jasło to Zawadka Brzostecka, where they were shot at the edge of the forest. No Roma lived in Zawadka Brzostecka itself before the war. According to some witnesses, a young boy managed to escape the shooting and survive the war, though his name is not known. The villagers were instructed to dig a mass grave and bury the victims on the spot that very day. At the execution site, they found a pile of bodies; all the victims were still clothed. A cross was erected at the grave, presumably shortly after the massacre, by the then village headman Stanisław Surder (biographical data unknown). Some of the witnesses interviewed between 1976 and 1979 stated that this cross decayed after a certain time. As a cross can still be seen in the Yahad – In Unum interview recorded in 2014, a new one must have been erected.
Perpetrators
A witness, the then District Commander of the Polish police in Brzostek, stated that the victims came from the Tarnów area and had been brought to Zawadka Brzostecka by three gendarmes, also from Tarnów. According to him, the shooting was carried out by the gendarmerie from Jasło. The witness named the perpetrators as SS-Obersturmführer Ernst Hildebrandt, Oberwachtmeister Hans Breitschneider (1905–unknown), and Gendarmerie Sergeant Major Gustav Heinemann (1898–unknown), a Gendarmerie Oberwachtmeister Bruno Kosma (1910–1944) and a Gendarmerie First Lieutenant Friedrich Müller (1902–1959). Other perpetrators against whom proceedings were initiated in the course of the Central Office’s preliminary investigations are District Administrator Dr Walter Gentz (1907–1967) and a former Polish police officer named Janicki–his first name, date of birth and whereabouts could not be established.
Further witness statements also indicate that a group of between seven and ten perpetrators were involved in the crime. The proceedings, which had been transferred by the Central Office in Ludwigsburg to the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Nuremberg-Fürth, were discontinued in 1983 because the perpetrators known by name had already died, and the remaining participants in the crime could not be identified.
