Janina Pilger-Bugaj, living in the Netherlands, is looking for information about people who were hiding at her parents' farm in Rzegocin, near Nowy Korczyn, Poland, during World War II. (We wrote this page in a variety of English, because most known Nowy Korczyn survivors (or their descendents) live in an English speaking country. If someone suggests to include another language, and can provide the translation, we would be happy to add it.)

 
Knowing where you are (or were) from a map is not so easy. We'll try to describe the surroundings in such a way that someone could recognise some orientation points.

 

Where is Rzegocin?

From Nowy Korczyn there is a road to Busko Zdrój (=Spa) (by Stróżyska, Piasek Wielki), and a road to Pacanów (by Wełnin, Świniary). Between those roads lies Rzegocin. (See the rough map below.) (For pronunciation of names, see at the bottom.)

On the road from Nowy Korczyn to Pacanów, after approx. 3 kilometres, less then half way towards Wełnin, there is a crossroad. The 'roads' to the right and to the left were unpaved sandy tracks (until the 1980s). To the right (S-E) one goes to Górnowola, to the left (N-W) one goes to Rzegocin.
      (When you go to Górnowola -- (farm-) houses on both sides of the road -- you can later turn to the right towards Nowy Korczyn, or turn to the left towards Ostrowce, where there is a church and a cemetery, from where you can go to Wełnin.)
      (From Wełnin you go left to Solec Zdrój.)

The road on the left from the crossing, on which on both sides stand the (farm-) houses that make up the village of Rzegocin (the first part is known as Piotrówka), after one or two kilometres turns to the right. A kilometre or so after the curve, there was a school on the right hand side of the road. (The building is still standing, see photo.)

Before 1980 there were unpaved tracks from Solec and Wełnin to Rzegocin that do not exist anymore.

 

The Bugaj farm

The Bugaj farm was off-road, standing alone, on the right before the curve in the road.
      The farm consisted of:--
-- a simple farmhouse (wood, thatched roof; 1 1/4 rooms ("izba": living-room with two large beds, table and chairs, and a cooking / baking / heating stove + "komórka": a small room with a small cooking / heating stove, where later were a single bed, a table and a chair -- the girls did not sleep there -- at some time after the war it was rented by a teacher); (potato-) cellar under the stove; entrance-hall ("sień") with a grinding stone and a ladder to the loft; loft),
-- a stable (having its own entrance: there was no door between the house and the stable) built adjacently with several divisions ("stajnia": horses?, cows? + "chlewik": pigs? + "grzęda": chicken) and a loft -- which was linked to the loft of the house,
-- a separate barn ("stodoła"). (All were made of wood with a thatched roof).
-- In the yard there was a horse-treadmill ("kierat") for working farm machines. (Electrification had not reached Rzegocin.)
-- Around the farm house there were quite a few trees, including fruit trees.

What was being grown on the farm at that time, is hard to say. After the war there were various types of grain (wheat, rye, oats, millet), fodder plants (lupin, "seradela" (Ornithopus)), potatoes, tobacco and hemp (from which Zygmunt made ropes, which he sold).
      The Bugajs presumably had some cows, maybe some pigs, chicken, and two work-horses (the horses were however at a certain moment confiscated / requisitioned).

(The Bugaj farm and the trees around it disappeared -- after it was sold to the state for an old age pension. The fields are not cultivated any more. The region around Rzegocin is now an environmental sanctuary with restrictions on modern ways of farming. The remaining farmers can hardly make a living.)

 

The Bugaj family

Zygmuś or Zygmon (officially: Zygmunt) Bugaj, 1910-1972
Marynka (Marianna) Bugaj (née Podkowa), 1909-1990
daughters:
Julka (Julianna), 1933-1981 (Julianna Juszczyk)
Alka or Alcia (Alicja), born 1940 (Alicja Szewczyk)
In 1945 a third daughter, Jania (Janina) was born (now Janina Pilger-Bugaj).

While he had little formal education (three or four years), Zygmunt read a lot: he borrowed books where he could. Once this brought him into conflict with the parish priest, who denounced him from the pulpit as a reader of "bad books" (not mentioning his name, but describing where he lived, what was clear to everybody). He was a cheerful person, who was good at singing improvised rhyming songs at weddings and other occasions, and was often invited in the hope he would sing.
      With only three years of school education, Marianna was very good in quietly organizing the family and the farm, and at writing: she did all official and family correspondence. Not putting herself in the foreground, she had things well under control.

 

The pre-war relations between the Bugajs and Nowy Korczyn Jews

In this context, something has to be said about the relations between the Bugajs, themselves Catholics, and the pre-war Jewish majority in the Nowy Korczyn region.
      Before the war, Zygmunt Bugaj apparently had good friends among the many Jewish inhabitants of the region -- as could be concluded from what and whom he talked about (and how he talked about them) after the war (Janina was born in 1945!). He had, for instance, (even?) been invited for a sabbath service at the Nowy Korczyn synagogue. -- Years after the war he was visited a few times by people (from where?), apparently well known to him, who spoke Polish with a Yiddish accent.
      At the Bugajs', eating meat and drinking milk did not go together, and after they married, the daughters quite naturally introduced that custom in their families. When asked (much) later, where this custom came from, (then) babcia (=grandma) Bugaj explained that some Jewish acquaintances convinced them, it was unhealthy to mix milk and meat.
      We cannot avoid mentioning that especially Marianna Bugaj at times said very unfriendly things about certain pre-war Nowy Korczyn Jewish merchants and traders. It should be kept in mind, though, that nearly all merchants and traders she had to deal with in "the city" (Nowy Korczyn up to 1869 had had city rights) before the war, the good and the bad, were Jews. In Nowy Korczyn, Jews were the vast majority (about 3/4), and it seems that some of them behaved like, too often, members of a majority group behave towards members of a minority. To this may be added a rather general disdainful attitude of "town people" towards "peasants", not at all a specific Jewish or Polish phenomenon.

Father and mother Bugaj did in fact not really talk to their younger daughters about hiding people during the war. Alicja (2-4 years old), being so young, would have been considered a security risk if she knew too much. The older daughter Julianna (9-11 years old) knew more, but father Zygmunt had said "Don't tell anybody, because if it is found out, all of us will be shot dead". The youngest daughter Janina was born after liberation by the Russians, in times still uncertain. Much of what is mentioned here, has been overheard from conversations that were not intended for children's ears. (But, like many parents, they had the mistaken idea that if one orders children to sleep (in the same room!), they won't listen...) Other things were mentioned by chance ("Dziecko (=child), imagine, where now the pigs are, during the war people were hiding!").

 

Things that might ring a bell

Close to the Bugaj farm (at approx. 1/2 km) there was another off-road farm: Mother (a very short person) Satora/Sotora ("Sotorzyna") with daughter Lodka (Leokadia) ("Sotorzonka") (and probably already then her daughter's husband Tomek (Tomasz) Kochan), and a younger son Włodek Satora/Sotora). Tomek played the violin at any occasion -- also at the Bugajs'. Rumours went that Tomek Kochan in fact was a son of a certain Jew called Simela. Tomek's mother was a midwife.

The water from the Bugaj farm well was (already then?) often undrinkable because of sulphur; then drinking water had to be fetched from a spring in farther off fields (with some trees around it).
Zygmunt Bugaj coughed a lot (from 1940 on).
Marianna and Zygmunt Bugaj had many relatives in Górnowola, from where they came originally.
There were (as Zygmunt pointed out to everyone) two species of swallows (house-martins and barn-swallows) building nests on/in the farm, and pigeons.
Near the Rzegocin school house there are two 400 year old oak trees.
In the woods North-West of the school (in the direction of Piasek) there was a building (a ruin?) called "the palace".
In summer there were storks breeding in the surroundings.

Other villages in nowaday's Nowy Korczyn commune (if not yet mentioned), not all very close (up to 15 km) to Rzegocin: Badrzychowice, Błotnowola, Czarkowy, Grotniki Duże, Grotniki Małe, Harmoniny, Kawęczyn, Łęka, Parchocin, Pawłów, Podraje, Podzamcze, Sępichów, Ucisków, Winiary, Żukowice.

 

The hiding place (or places)

There were hiding places "in" (in/under/over?) the stable adjacent to the house, one of them on the fodder-loft under the stable roof. There were also people hiding (or at least living for the time being) in the small room (komórka) (one or even two families). Also "behind the hay in the barn (stodoła)" people stayed. Because unexpected visitors could be spotted while coming across the fields, the people could leave the hiding place from time to time.
      The stable, or part of it, had been built or renewed sometime during the war. After the war, it was taken apart and rebuilt. Was this, because there had been a special structure or division that had become superfluous?

 

The people

From memory of things heard (by Janina and her sister Alicja, and as told by Julianna to her daughter), the following details about the people may be constructed. There is however no certainty that all are correct.
      (While it was clearly said that there had been Jews hiding at the farm, of course there could have been also non-Jews who had a reason for hiding. Names (e.g. Byszewski: 'Polish'? -- Głuski: 'Jewish'?) are not conclusive. We also understand that in other cases (at least in the Netherlands!) some people used "hiding names".)
-- Among them was a couple (with child), of whom one or both were a pharmacist (apothecary), who even had a provision of medicine in the farm. They survived. Later they ran a pharmacy in Solec Zdrój and at several times provided free medicine to the Bugajs (and their horse). They gave young Janina a beautiful doll. The woman (Anna Głuska?) is said to have been seen in 1997 ('over 70').
-- Another man survived. (Zbyszek? or Byszewski? He probably was a relative or a good friend of the previous.) He is said to have died around 1970.
-- In the small room (komórka) lived a family (father, mother, child) (or even two families?); whether they were hiding or staying there temporarily for other reasons, is not clear ("Stalowie/ Sztalowie"? (= Mr. and Mrs. Stal/Sztal)).
-- One man was shot dead in Piotrówka, where he had gone against warning. (He had been hiding over there before with other people and had been thrown out by them "when his dollars ran out" (that is what he had told).) No name or further details.
-- There may have been other people, not necessarily at the same time (in the barn?) (Baruch/ Boruch?, Mazur?, Chmielewski/ Chmielczary?).
-- Towards the end of the war, there were Russian soldiers (one or two at a time) staying for a short time, sleeping on a field-bed they had brought with them, in the living-room.
 

We would very much like to know more about the people who stayed there.

We do not like, though, to receive more spam (undesired advertisements) than we get already, so we do not put our email address in our web page. You may contact us through our mail-form at
www.geocities.com/pilger.geo/postxs.htm   (please don't use more than 500 letters (70-80 words) in that message: the remainder will not be forwarded by Geocities)
or try:    nospam  dot  pilger  at  xs4all  dot  nl
-- if you mention your email address, we'll contact you. Thanks for any information!

Names - (without special letters) - /pronunciation (rough approximation)/

Nowy Korczyn Memorial Pages -- www.nowykorczyn.com history, victims, saviors, saviours, righteous

Maps of 1882 Poland on the Shtetlinks-Poland page

Pilger Family
Michel Pilger (with pictures of Nowy Korczyn 2001) = x

Farm Holidays in Rzegocin (with pictures of school surroundings 2001) = x = x

One of the reasons for this page