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2 Killing site(s)
Mieczysław B., born in 1925: "During the German occupation, trains packed with Jewish people passed along the tracks near our village every single day, but mostly during the summer. They never stopped at the station. They just kept moving, pulling about ten wagons each. German guards monitored the wagons from the inside. Desperate people would jump through the train windows, trying to escape, but the Germans shot at them right from inside the wagons. Once the train had passed, a group of about ten German gendarmes would walk along the tracks. If any of the Jews who had jumped were still alive, the gendarmes finished them off right there. Then, they would take whatever gold the victims had on them. Afterward, it fell on us, the villagers, to bury the bodies.
The sołtys [village head] requisitioned me once to bury two bodies. It was a Jewish couple. Another man from Janówka was requisitioned to transport victims on his cart to the forest, where they were all buried. In total, about thirty Jewish people were buried there, in the Szkółka forest.
I remember other terrible moments, too. Once, during the winter, a villager was forced to bury a Jewish woman. Because the ground was frozen, he only covered her body with snow. When the snow melted, the body was exposed. As punishment, they forced him to drag her body all the way to the forest to bury her properly. Another time, a young girl managed to flee from a train. A local villager wanted to take her into his home and shelter her, but he got too scared. In the end, he took her to the police. She was killed right there." (Witness N°YIU610P, interviewed in Szepietowo-Janówka, on June 25, 2016)
Szepietowo-Janówka is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Szepietowo, within Wysokie Mazowieckie County, Podlaskie Voivodeship, in northeastern Poland. It is located approximately 50 km (31 mi) southwest of the regional capital, Białystok.
According to Mieczysław B., born in 1925 in Szepietowo-Janówka, the pre-war village consisted of at least 30 houses and was inhabited exclusively by Catholics. He recalled that occasionally nomadic Roma people passed through the village, arriving in the summer and camping for 2 to 3 days in the surrounding forest. However, in nearby Szepietowo, located 2–3 km away, the Jewish population grew notably over time. In 1890, the Szepietowo municipality counted 288 Jewish residents out of a total population of 7,627. By 1911, the number of Jews living in Szepietowo had risen to 908, alongside 9,656 Catholic inhabitants. Having no local cemetery of their own, the deceased were buried in the Jewish cemetery in nearby Wysokie Mazowieckie.
Szepietowo-Janówka lay not far from Szepietowo, which was located beside the crucial Białystok–Warsaw railway line. This was a route used by deportation trains that carried thousands of Jewish people toward the Treblinka killing center between the summer of 1942 and the autumn of 1943. Trains passing through Szepietowo to Treblinka primarily carried Jewish residents from the Białystok Ghetto, which was being liquidated, and the surrounding towns in the Białystok Region. These transports were part of Operation Reinhard, the systematic mass extermination of the Jewish population in occupied Poland. A portion of the trains traveling along this main rail line was also formed in Grodno and in smaller regional assembly points, such as Sokółka or Zambrów.
Mieczysław B., born in 1925, a local witness interviewed by Yahad - In Unum, recalled seeing trains pass nearly every day during the summer months, each pulling around ten heavily guarded wagons. As the trains sped past without stopping at Szepietowo station, Jewish deportees attempted to jump from the windows, only to be fired upon by German guards positioned inside the carriages. Following the passage of each train, patrols searched the tracks to kill survivors and confiscate their remaining belongings. Local residents were then routinely requisitioned by the village head (sołtys) to bury the victims who had been shot along the tracks or nearby while trying to escape the transports.
According to Mieczysław B., there are at least two burial sites of these victims in the vicinity of Szepietowo-Janówka. Mieczysław recalls that one day, he himself was requisitioned by the sołtys to bury the bodies of a Jewish couple. Their grave is located approximately 3 meters from the railway line. Another pit containing the remains of eight Jewish victims is located in the forest near the village of Szepietowo-Janówka. Thanks to to Mieczysław’s testimony, a Yahad team was able to identify both burial sites.
According to Mieczysław, another 30 Jews were buried in the “Szkółka” forest, but the exact location of this pit remains unknown.
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