On our Facebook Page, Łukasz Biedka shared a link to a page describing the efforts of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research to build a memorial to Jews killed in Gniewczyna Łańcucka and Kańczuga between 1942 and 1945. During the war they were buried in mass graves, and after the war the bodies were exhumed and moved to the cemetery in Jagieła – Niechciałka near Jarosław. [Update: This memorial has been built, see below.]
The bodies were buried in mass graves with only numbers referencing the exhumation protocol numbers. The center was able to track down the exhumation protocols and identify some of the bodies buried in the graves, and now want to build stone memorials for those who are buried there. For Kańczuga, the names they found were:
Izrael Ejzig, age 35
Chana Krieger, age 20
and her unborn child
Sima Krieger, age16
Dawid Krieger
Pinia Krieger, age10
Jankiel Krieger, age 12
Fejwel Jakubes, age 33
Dora Bergman, age 32
Mindla Saltzman, age 55
Bernard (Berek) Zwanziger, age 26
Izydor (Azri) Reitzfeld
Debora Risman
murdered on March 31, 1945
and 72 unknown persons
murdered in 1942
Unfortunately only 12 names out of more than 80 buried in the mass grave, but it’s something.
They’re looking to raise about $4600 for the two stone memorials (one for Kańczuga, and one for Gniewczyna Łańcucka). Read more on the page. There’s nothing that indicates how far they’ve come in their fundraising efforts, but it only started a few weeks ago, and I guess you can e-mail the center directly and try to find out how much they now need if you’re interested in donating.
Update: See More info about the massacre of Jews in Kańczuga in 1945 for some further details about the murder of Kańczuga Jews over Passover in 1945.
Update: This memorial was built in 2019. Here is a photo of the memorial:
I was very moved to read these pages of yours about Jews in Kańczuga that I just found, and the extra horror of the 1945 massacre. My grandfather fled Kańczuga in 1911 at the age of 16 because of pogroms, and tinkered his way across Europe to England – where he was promptly interned on the Isle of Man as an enemy alien when WWI broke out. I’ve always wondered whether I still had any relatives in the village, but that sounds very unlikely. Anyone who didn’t get the hell out went into camps in the end, I think. Thank you for writing about this.