The Crime and the Silence by Anna Bikont

Jews. Until one day I met my friend Malinowski from Czerwonki and he says to me: some people are getting together from the villages in the area to do the same job they did the day before in Wąsosz. And what had they done in Wąsosz? The farmers drove by Jewish houses in wagons and murdered the men, women, and children with axes. The streets were drenched in blood. I ran to warn the Finkelsztejn family right away.”
    The Finkelsztejns had a mill in Dziewięcin, right next to Kramarzewo; their garden bordered the Ramotowskis’. One of their daughters was already married; their other daughter—Rachela—had long been a favorite of Ramotowski’s.

    Marianna Ramotowska, formerly Rachela Finkelsztejn, and her husband, Stanisław. Dziewięcin, near Radziłów, 1950s. (Author’s private collection)

    Marianna and Stanisław Ramotowski in an Evangelical nursing home near Warsaw toward the end of their lives, 2001. (Photograph © Krzysztof Miller / Agencja Gazeta)
    â€œShe was delicate, with two little braids. She’d worn glasses since she was a child,” he says, looking at his wife with tenderness and pride.
    Sixty years after Rachela first stole shy glances at him, Ramotowski himself is still a handsome man, tall and fair with a noble profile and big blue eyes with a perpetual twinkle. And Rachela? I look at old pictures of her and see a modest girl, skinny, alert, and bespectacled.
    â€œWhat did your parents say?” I ask.
    â€œThey weren’t crazy about the idea. Before the war, my wife’s mother once pursued us so hotly when we were going to hide in the corn that Marianna lost a shoe.”
    â€œBut back then you called her Rachela. Do you still sometimes call her that?”
    â€œAs soon as we had her baptized, I switched to Marianna.”
    â€œWhy Marianna, exactly?” I asked Mrs. Ramotowski later.
    â€œI took the name they gave me.”
    â€œThey thought they were safe,” Ramotowski goes on. “They didn’t believe me and I had to spend quite a while persuading them before they agreed to come onto our land. It was still night when people started to drive to Radziłów in wagons to settle scores with the Jews. Dziewięcin was on their way, so they stopped to smash the windows at the mill and loot what they could. Not much, because that evening I had gone with my brother-in-law and packed up the Finkelsztejns’ things in sacks and thrown them up in the attic. There were some supplies there; a crate of vodka, a crate of soap.”
    â€œWhere were they coming from?”
    â€œFrom Wąsosz, from Å»ebry. All of Orlikowo must have been there. The same with the folks from Słucz. I don’t think any one of us in Kramarzewo or from Czerwonki nearby took part. I promised the Finkelsztejns I’d go and see what was going on in town … They were dragging Jews out of their homes and driving them into the square. I saw little Jewish kids hugging one another and bowing their heads. I didn’t see the barn burning, I wanted to get back and find a good way to hide the Finkelsztejns, but I had a good look around. Poles were guarding the streets so that Jews couldn’t get away. They were already looting Jewish homes when the Jews were on the way to the barn.”
    â€œDid you see Germans?”
    â€œOne policeman. He was standing on a balcony taking pictures. There were about four policemen for all of Radziłów at that time. No German joined in the killing, either in Wąsosz or in Radziłów, or in Jedwabne. Poles were the ones hunting down and rounding up the Jews. And right away they went to Jewish homes to take what they could find. Had they lost all sense of decency? People went crazy, they went into homes, ripped open quilts, feathers were flying around, the wind blew them in all directions, and they went home with a bundle on their backs, only to come straight back with an empty