A secret bunker, an underground tunnel and an armband bearing the Star of David have been discovered in a house in southern Poland that was used by Jews, including young resistance members, to hide from the Nazis during World War II. The findings were made by the Cukerman’s Gate Foundation, which is renovating the property in the town of Bedzin.
Karolina Jakoweńko from the foundation described the armband as a “witness” to the evil of the Holocaust. The house served as a “kibbutz” organised by left-wing Zionist youth groups, where members relied on each other to survive and resist the Nazi occupiers. Among other objects found were a Jewish prayer book from 1934.
Last year, the foundation uncovered a bunker and tunnel on the grounds, based on survivors’ memoirs and oral histories. Evidence suggests there were three bunkers around the property. The entry to one bunker was through the kitchen oven, and it is believed up to 60 people may have hidden there, none of whom survived when the Nazis discovered the hideout.
About 27,000 Jews lived in Bedzin before the war, half the town’s population. In 1942, the Nazis created a ghetto there. By the summer of 1943, when the ghetto was being liquidated, Jews had smuggled in around 20 guns. Aware they had little chance of survival, some chose to die fighting.
Joanna Król-Komła from the POLIN Museum in Warsaw said the site is significant because it is a rare authentic hiding place organised by Jews themselves, rather than by those who saved them. Frumka Płotnicka, a female fighter and courier from the Warsaw resistance, died in a third bunker that has not yet been found.
Karolina Jakoweńko emphasised that resistance took many forms, including building bunkers and hiding loved ones. “The fact that they wanted to survive was a form of resistance,” she said.
