Oleksin | Podlaskie Voivodeship

Henryk S., born in 1920: “Only one Jewish family lived in Oleksin before the war. They were tradespeople; they made their living in commerce. I recall the man’s name was Lejzor, and his mother-in-law was called Malicha." ©Cristian Monterroso/Yahad In Unum Henryk S., born in 1920: “Out in our settlement, in Oleksin Kolonia, a Jewish woman was killed. I had to bury her afterward.” ©Cristian Monterroso/Yahad – In Unum Edward M., born in 1930: “I remember two Jews with families living in Oleksin before the war: Leibko and Abraham. They were poor traders; as the Jewish saying goes, 'Better a small trade than a heavy spade.'” ©Cristian Monterroso/Yahad – In Unum Edward M., born in 1930: "My family hid two Jewish brothers from Brańsk, Brydziuk and Leibko, for several weeks in an old building nearby. After, they hid within Popławski family where they stayed until the liberation”. ©Cristian Monterroso/Yahad– In Unum Edward M., born in 1930: "I witnessed the shooting of seven Jews on the outskirts of Oleksin. They had been caught in a roundup by the sołtys and some men in Oleksin, and were subsequently shot by gendarmes from Brańsk." ©Cristian Monterroso/Yahad–In Unum Edward M., born in 1930: "The Jews were brought here on a cart. Germans made them step into a sandpit and shot them with handguns. I stood just fifty meters away, watching everything with the other kids.” ©Cristian Monterroso/Yahad – In Unum The killing site of Jews caught in an autumn 1942 Oleksin roundup, including a mother and child. Other Jews later took their bodies to be buried in an unknown location. ©Cristian Monterroso/Yahad – In Unum Henryk S., born in 1920, led the Yahad-In Unum’s team to the killing and burial site of a Jewish woman shot by a Polish policeman in Kolonia Oleksin. ©Cristian Monterroso/Yahad – In Unum Henryk S., born in 1920: “Near the Oleksin forest, a father, his two daughters, and his 10-year-old son hid. The father sometimes came to my father's place just to talk, without even asking for food.” ©Cristian Monterroso/Yahad – In Unum Henryk S., born in 1920: “They were shot by the Germans. One of two daughters managed to flee but was eventually shot too by a navy-blue policeman. The German gendarme came and ordered us to bury her.” ©Cristian Monterroso/Yahad – In Unum The killing and burial site of a Jewish woman from Brańsk, aged about 20, who was shot in the Długie Karty forest near Oleksin. ©Cristian Monterroso/Yahad – In Unum

Destruction of Jews in Oleksin

1 Sitio(s) de ejecución

Tipo de lugar antes:
Forest
Memoriales:
No
Período de ocupación:
1941-1944
Número de víctimas:
Several

Entrevista del testigo

Edward M., born in 1930: "During the German occupation, seven impoverished Jews wandered the village, going from house to house begging for food. Sometimes they slept in barns without the owners' knowledge. One day, the village head (sołtys), who seemingly fancied himself Hitler's successor, organized a roundup. Under the cover of night, he and several of his henchmen searched the entire village. The Jews were caught and locked in a local pigsty for the rest of the night.

The Germans arrived the following morning. One Jewish man attempted a desperate escape, prompting the Germans to open fire. The sołtys asked them to hold their fire and chased the man down himself, dragging him back to the site. The captured Jews, including a woman with a child, were loaded onto a horse-drawn cart and driven to the outskirts of the village, where they all were shot by the side of the road, in a pit where locals used to dig sand for construction. I witnessed this shooting with my own eyes from a distance of about 50 meters. One Jewish man, Szulim, was shot several times before he was finally killed. Another Jewish young man who was killed that day was Pinia. Only one Jewish woman managed to survive the roundup; having heard the search parties in the dead of night, she had slipped into our barn and hidden under the straw beneath the cows. Some time later, the victims' bodies were taken away by other Jews to be buried somewhere—I don't know where exactly, but perhaps at the Jewish cemetery in Brańsk." (Witness N°YIU590P, interviewed in Oleksin, on June 17, 2016)

Archivos polacos

Citizen Popławski Stanisław, a peasant from the village of Oleksiany [Oleksin] (colony), commune of Brańsk, district of Bielsk Podlaski, saved 4 Jews from death during the German occupation by hiding and feeding them […]. He sheltered them over a period of 21 months, from November 11, 1942, to August 3, 1944. (AŻIH 301/6630; AŻIH 301/2269; AŻIH 301/3526; AŻIH 301/3152; AIPN Bi_1_1028)

Nota histórica

Oleksin is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Brańsk, within Bielsk County, Podlaskie Voivodeship, in north-eastern Poland. Little is known about the prewar Jewish community of Oleksin itself. Witnesses interviewed by Yahad-In Unum recall no more than two Jewish families living in the village: the Leibko and Abraham families, who worked as small-scale traders. Henryk S., born in 1920, recalls that there was a mill in the nearby village of Hołonki owned by a Jewish man named Jankiel, where residents from surrounding villages would go to grind their grain.

The largest Jewish community in the area resided in Brańsk, located 6 km south of Oleksin. In 1921, Jews made up 58% of Brańsk's total population of 3,725 residents. Before the outbreak of World War II, Brańsk was home to four synagogues (houses of prayer) and a Jewish cemetery, both of which also served the Jewish populations from the surrounding localities. On September 1, 1939, the population of Bransk was roughly 4,600, with Jewish residents making up more than half of the community. Witnesses note that Jews from Brańsk frequently traveled to nearby villages, including Oleksin, to engage in petty mobile trade.

Holocausto por balas en cifras

Following the outbreak of World War II and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, German forces ceded the Brańsk area to the Soviet Union on September 24, 1939. This status quo ended on June 22, 1941 with Operation Barbarossa. Little documentation exists regarding the immediate German occupation of Oleksin, though local witnesses state several Jewish families evacuated the village before German forces returned that June.

For those who remained, anti-Jewish measures altered conditions significantly. According to Yahad-In Unum witness Henryk S., born in 1920, the Jewish Lejzor family from Oleksin initially attempted to hide. Unable to secure refuge, they subsequently reported voluntarily to the Brańsk ghetto. In November 1942, the liquidation of the Brańsk ghetto commenced. The village head (sołtys) of Oleksin requisitioned local residents, including relatives of Henryk S., along with their horse-drawn carts to transport the Jewish population from the Brańsk Ghetto to Bielsk Podlaski. From there, the victims were deported to the Treblinka death camp, where the Lejzor family highly probably perished.

Following the liquidation of the Brańsk ghetto, some Jewish survivors sought refuge in Oleksin, though many were eventually captured and killed.

The first killing site, where several Jewish victims perished, was identified on the outskirts of Oleksin. According to archival records, a mid-December 1942 manhunt supervised by the village head resulted in the capture of sixteen Jews who were held in a pigsty. While two managed to escape, the remaining fourteen were killed on the spot, an execution witnessed from a hiding place by survivors Arie Lejb Prybut and Jakub Samojło. Yahad-In Unum testimonies expand on these events, indicating that the captured Jews were taken by horse drawn cart to the village outskirts and shot by German forces in a roadside sand excavation pit. Local accounts differ on the exact victim count: Edward M., born in 1930, recalls seven victims, while Henryk S., born in 1920, recalls over ten. This discrepancy suggests that multiple manhunts or separate killing Aktions may have occurred. Both witnesses note that the victims’ bodies were later exhumed by other Jewish survivors and relocated, likely to the Brańsk Jewish cemetery. This subsequent relocation is why this specific killing site does not appear on the Interactive Map.

A second killing site was identified in the nearby Długie Karty forest. After the killing of her family, which included her father, her sister aged 18 to 20, and a 10 year old brother, a young Jewish woman from Brańsk attempted to flee but was captured and shot by a Polish policeman. The witness Henryk S., born in 1920, buried her body in the forest. According to Henryk, when postwar Jewish delegations exhumed other victims’ remains in the area, they chose to leave this victim's body in place. Henryk’s brother planted two spruce trees to mark the pit, but the site remains uncommemorated.

In contrast to those who were killed, some Jewish refugees managed to survive due to local residents who provided assistance. Edward M., born in 1930, testified to Yahad-In Unum that a Jewish man named Leibko returned to Oleksin during the occupation and found shelter in an outbuilding belonging to Edward’s family. Two other Jewish individuals, the Brydziuk brothers from Brańsk, also hid in the same building for a period, and Edward secretly brought them food.

After a few weeks, the fugitives left this hiding place and relocated to the property of the Popławski family. According to Edward, at least the Brydziuk brothers survived until the end of the war under their care. The assistance provided by the Popławski family is documented in archival sources, which identify the fugitives who hid with them as the brothers Lejb and Fajwel Szapiro, their mother, their sister, Fajwel's fiancée Mina Waserówna (Menucha Wasser), and Sonia Weinstein.

For more information about the killing of Jews in Brańsk please follow the corresponding profile.

Otros enlaces

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