HOLOCAUST, PART I

At five o'clock in the morning of September 1, 1939, the first German bombs struck in the area around Zolynia. Nearby Rzeszow was bombed, and it's known that in the first day of bombing there were deaths or serious destruction at Dabrowki, Sarzyna and Sonina, all between five and ten miles from Zolynia. By September 9 the 14th German Army was at Rzeszow and a huge artillery barrage began, targeted at the Polish infantry brigade based just south of Zolynia. At dawn of September 10, the Germans moved into Lancut and within hours overran the entire area. Zolynia would be occupied for five years. On September 17, the Soviet Union attacked Poland from the east, and the two invaders divided Poland between them with the border at the San River, just east and northeast of Zolynia.

Refugees from the cities, particularly Jewish refugees, flowed through Zolynia to avoid the front lines and the Germans. Most Zolynia Jews, perhaps remembering the Russian occupation of the last war, stayed in their town. One survivor remembers driving Jewish refugees to the river in his horse-drawn wagon, though he and his family stayed in Zolynia. Some of the refugee Jews moved east to escape the incredible German brutality, and others because Germans began expelling Jews from occupied towns, forcing them to the Soviet frontier. Immediately, both scenarios played out in and around Zolynia.

The regular German infantry was followed closely by special SS "Death's Head" units, whose purpose was to wipe out all possible enemies of Nazism, particularly Jews. Beatings, murders and other attacks against Jews took place in towns and villages all across the region. For example, on September 13, Rosh Hashanah, the Nazis burned the synagogues and Jewish study centers of nearby Lezajsk. They burned the Torah scrolls and other religious books in the marketplace. During that week, six hundred Jews, half of them refugees from western Poland, were shot in Przemysl, forty miles (65 km) to the southwest. Hostages were taken and the Jewish community made to pay a huge ransom in Jaroslaw, twenty miles (32 km) to the east. There were surely horrendous events (officially called "Aktions," meaning military operations by the Germans) in many of the towns and villages the size of Zolynia or smaller which remain unrecorded.

After the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland, Jews in many nearby towns were ordered across the San River to the Soviet side, usually with almost no notice. On September 21, an order was given that all Jewish communities of less than five hundred are to be dissolved and their residents were often marched to the Soviet zone. Jews of some of the smaller communities moved into Zolynia and whatever housing they might find. On September 22, the 3,000 Jews of Lancut town were given six hours notice and then are marched with whatever belongings they could carry to the San River. They were forced to cross, many drowning and many being shot by the Nazis as they tried to scramble back. Over the next two weeks, similar orders were given for 10,000 Jews in Rzeszow, 1,700 in Lezajsk, 6,000 in Jaroslaw and many other communities. Often, Jews in these place snuck back into their villages. Sometimes they would find other Jews in their place, forcibly "resettled" from German "living space." At least 1,000 Cracow Jews were moved to Lancut in late September 1939.

On the Soviet side, within a few months many refugee Jews were rounded up and sent to labor camps in Siberia, as was one survivor from Grodzisko Dolne a few miles to the east of Zolynia and another survivor from Zolynia whose family moved a little east to Jaroslaw at the start of the war. Some Zolynia Jews may have forced out, but there does not seem to have been a general expulsion order for the town at this time.

From the first day of German occupation, Jews in Zolynia were grabbed up by German soldiers for labor, such as clearing roadways of rubble and other tasks. On October 21, all Jewish males between the ages of fourteen and sixty were required to formally register for daily work details. Nearly every day there would be quotas for Jewish workers. On October 25, Jewish emigration from Poland was totally banned, trapping Jews in the vast German slave labor machine. On November 23 came the order that all Jews within Poland must wear a Star of David as identification. That first winter of occupation in 1939-1940 was one of the coldest and snowiest in memory. Towns like Zolynia had been stripped of many provisions by the German army and its residents were cut off from the aid many had regularly received from relatives abroad.

At various times the Germans arrested and interrogated Jews and others, including local priests, school teachers and others who might be connected to the growing underground resistence. Count Alfred III, whose brother, Count George Potocki, was Poland's Ambassador the United States since 1936, was investigated a number of times by the Gestapo (a resistence newspaper was printed within his castle during part of the war). Though the Germans attempted to wipe out the old Polish nobility, Count Potocki remained unharmed, probably because of his exceptional connections and visibility to heads of state around the world, and because his profitable estate was vital to the provisioning (by forced requisition) of local German troops.

Occupation life was hard for the rest of the locals, especially for Zolynia's Jews. Soon it would become harder.