Akta procesu z 1953 roku Józefa Sobuty oskarżonego o udział w zbrodni na ludności żydowskiej w Jedwabnem

Persak, Krzysztof

Akta procesu z 1953 roku Józefa Sobuty oskarżonego o udział w zbrodni na ludności żydowskiej w Jedwabnem

Abstract

Documents from the 1953 Trial of Jozef Sobuta Accused of Participating in the Massacre of Jews in Jedwabne. Selected and introduced by Krzysztof Persak. Jozef Sobuta was frequently named by witnesses and defendants in the criminal trial of 1949 as one of the main organizers of the massacre of Jews in Jedwabne. Sobuta was not tried along with the other suspects in that criminal case because a few days before the planned arrest by the Security Office (UB), he was placed in a psychiatric hospital for observation. The investigation of his role was discontinued. Sobuta was arrested in ¸ode, where he was then living, on March 6, 1953. He was accused of participating in the burning of several hundred Jews in Jedwabne and of handing over Czeslaw Kupiecki, who had been a militiaman during the Soviet occupation, to the German gendarmerie. The investigation was conducted by the District Office of Public Security in Lomza. Several witnesses gave seriously incriminating testimony pertaining to Jozef Sobuta. He had allegedly participated in all phases of the crime, and even directed the Jews’ destruction of the Lenin statue. Along with two other individuals, he was also alleged to have tortured Czeslaw Kupiecki, who was killed during the first few days of the German occupation. According to witnesses, after the Germans occupied Jedwabne in June 1941, Jozef Sobuta became Mayor Marian Karolak’s deputy, or secretary of the Municipal Board that was created at that time. As part of his duties, he was said to have helped draw up a list of those slated to be sent for forced labor in Germany. Jozef Sobuta did not plead guilty to any of the counts. He stated that he had not been Mayor Karolak’s deputy, nor had he been a magistrate employee. On July 10, 1941, he was hiding in his own home and did not go out at all the whole day. He also maintained that the Lenin statue had been destroyed during the first days of the German occupation, not the day the Jews were killed, and that at that time he was in the village of Biczki, three kilometers from Jedwabne. The investigation in the Lomza District Office of Public Security was finished in early September 1953. The portion of the investigation about Sobuta’s role in handing over Czeslaw Kupiecki to the Germans was discontinued. In the indictment, dated October 5, 1953, one charge was made against Jozef Sobuta in regard to his part in the burning of approximately one thousand Jewish people in Jedwabne in July 1941. Antoni Malecki headed the Provincial Court in BiaΠystok, which heard Jozef Sobuta’s case on December 11, 1953. He was the same judge who in 1949 examined the case of twenty-two Jedwabne residents accused of participating in the massacre of Jews. The key witnesses for the prosecution retracted their testimonies during the proceedings. It was only Jozef Gradowski who continued to accuse Jozef Sobuta of being one of those who herded the Jews onto the market square, stick in hand. Other witnesses for the prosecution did not remember anything, and witnesses for the defense said Sobuta was an upstanding and good person. After proceedings that lasted twelve hours, the Provincial Court in Bialystok acquitted Jozef Sobuta for lack of evidence. On February 22, 1954, the Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Provincial Court in BiaΠystok and sent Jozef Sobuta’s case to trial again. The new trial took place on September 24 and 25, 1954, and was similar to the first in the way it unfolded. The witnesses for the defense attempted to discredit Jozef Gradowski, who gave an account of what had happened on the market square in Jedwabne on July 10, 1941. On September 25, 1953, the Provincial Court in BiaΠystok once again acquitted Jozef Sobuta. All documents of historical value about the events in Jedwabne and about the trial itself have been included here. These are records of the examination of witnesses and defendants, the indictment, records of the main proceedings and verdicts of the court with its reasoning.