"That's the Place!"

The towheaded boy in the blue suit had an angry, muttering mob at his heels. Straight to Kielce's ghetto he led them, to cobblestoned Planty Street, where nearly all the city's surviving 800 Jews lived. The boy stopped in front of a three-story apartment building, pointed, cried: "That's it--that's the place!"

The boy, whose name was Henryk Blasczyk, said that he had been held prisoner in the building, that he had seen the bodies of 15 Gentile children killed by the Jews, that he had escaped through a broken window. The myth of ritual murder by Jews is an ancient one in anti-Semitic Poland; last week, as many times before, it turned the Polish crowd into a pack of bloodthirsty maniacs.

The Jews put up barricades and their leader, Dr. Seweryn Kahane, telephoned the vice governor's office for help. Instead of dispatching police at once, the vice governor drove in his car to Planty Street to see what was afoot. By that time the crowd numbered 5,000 and was eager for action. Police arrived too late. Jews were lured out of the building by men in army uniforms who promised them safe conduct, then turned them over to the mob. Twenty-seven victims were taken to a nearby schoolyard and knifed, clubbed or stoned to death. Seven more were killed after being dragged from a train. At week's end 41 Jews and four Gentiles were dead, and as many more were gravely injured. Among the dead was Dr. Kahane, whose face was unrecognizable.

The Government tried to fend off charges of negligence and complaisance by blaming the affair on 1) Stanislaw Mikolajczyk's Polish Peasant Party; 2) fascist members of the National Armed Forces, led by agents of General Wladyslaw Anders, wartime commander of Polish forces in Italy.

Meanwhile, Henryk Blasczyk, the boy who started the pogrom, admitted that his story was a lie. He had stayed for two days in a Kielce house, where Jew-hating agitators had coached him in the old anti-Semitic falsehood.

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