Rdziostów | Lesser Poland Voivodeship

"Executions of Poles, Jews, and other victims occurred systematically from 1942 until the end of 1944. The number of victims is stated to be 2150, including 17 people from Krynica and the rest from the prison in Nowy Sącz. The victims were of various ages, but mostly young people. There were victims of both sexes, including children aged 6 to 8. Approximately 700 Jews were murdered, with the rest of the victims being Poles. The gendarmerie and Gestapo from Nowy Sącz, with the help of local Volksdeutsche, carried out the killings. The victims are buried at the execution site." [Deposition concerning the execution of 2150 people, both Jews and Poles, in the village of Rdziostow, Chełmiec commune; IPN Krakow Report 1/11620/DVD/1 p. 1-2 of the PDF]

Rdziostów is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Chełmiec, within Nowy Sącz County, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, in southern Poland. It lies approximately 4 km (2 miles) north of Chełmiec, 5 km (3 miles) northwest of Nowy Sącz, and 69 km (43 miles) southeast of the regional capital, Kraków.

Little is known about the pre-war Jewish community of Rdziostów; neither witnesses nor archival documents mention the presence of Jews living in the village. However, a large Jewish community resided in nearby Nowy Sącz, the county capital, located about 9 km to the south.

The German army occupied the city of Nowy Sącz on September 6, 1939.

Throughout the Second World War, Rdziostów became a site of systematic mass killings of civilians by the Germans. While initial executions may have occurred as early as 1939, the mass atrocities began in earnest around 1940 and continued until the very end of the war. The victims—estimated at between 1,000 and 2,500 people—included men, women, and children of both Polish and Jewish descent. Many were members of the local resistance and their families, while others were priests, artists, doctors, teachers, and students.

The most systematic murders of Jews began in 1942, particularly in connection with the liquidation of the Nowy Sącz ghetto. The ghetto had become a central holding site for Jews from surrounding towns such as Muszyna, Krynica, and Piwniczna, as well as from other regions of Poland, including Łódź, Kraków, and Lviv.

Witnesses, such as Wanda M., born in 1931, recalled that members of the German labor service—the Junaki—were forced to dig huge pits in a small forest on soft, marshy ground along a stream. The longest of these pits, she noted, was reserved for Jewish victims. Wanda remembered that the victims, who included men, women, and children, were brought to the site in trucks.

The executions were described by witnesses as follows: the victims were forced to line up at the edge of the pit and were shot by German gendarmerie and Gestapo with bursts from rifles. Jan P., born in 1929, an eyewitness to several mass killings at the site, recalled that the Germans drank heavily before beginning the shootings. They led the victims to the pit in groups of five, placing them on a special walkway at the edge, and then shot them in the back of the head. The bodies fell into the pit. After each killing, the corpses were covered with lime and earth, and the Junaki boys were forced to bury them. Wanda M. added that the Germans camouflaged the graves afterward with birch trees, which had been cut before the pits were dug.

Among those murdered were members of the local Jewish community, Jews from the Nowy Sącz ghetto, and patients and staff from the Jewish hospital in Nowy Sącz. The exact number of Jewish victims is difficult to determine, though Polish archival sources from the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) estimate it at 700.

After the war, the mass graves were exhumed. Some victims were identified, and their names are now inscribed on a commemorative plaque. According to one account, the bodies of the Jewish victims were later moved to the Jewish cemetery on Rybacka Street, though others were likely left in the mass graves.

Today, the site of the killings is fenced and commemorated. The plaque at the memorial, in addition to listing several dozen victims’ names, bears the following inscription:

"Cemetery of those murdered by German fascists: men, women, and children of Polish and Jewish nationality, members of the resistance movement and their families, artists, priests, and all who showed solidarity with the suffering during the years of terror. Mass executions took place here from June 12, 1940, to January 18, 1945. The exact number of victims from the Nowy Sącz region and other parts of Poland is unknown and is estimated to be between 1,000 and 2,500 people."

For more information about the killing of Jews in Nowy Sącz, see the corresponding profile.