Poland to probe 1940s murder after Israeli meets alleged killer

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Last update - 04:17 02/04/2006

Poland to probe 1940s murder after Israeli meets alleged killer

By Amiram Barkat , Haaretz

In 1943, at the height of World War II and the systematic annihilation of European Jewry, Gitl Lerner, a 45-year-old Jewish woman, hid with five of her children in the home of a Polish farmer. The six managed to escape a transport to the Majdanek death camp and found shelter along with two Jewish youths. On the night of October 30, Polish farmers in the area stabbed Lerner and the five children to death.

Sixty years later Roni Lerner, an Israeli businessman and Gitl's grandson, set out to track down his family's murderers. In the course of his investigation, Lerner, pretending to be a historian, met the sole surviving murderer and uncovered the horrific case, which the prosecution in Poland has now reopened as a result.

Under Polish law, there is no statute of limitations on murders committed during World War II or the country's Communist era. However, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Israel, Dr. Efraim Zuroff, who assisted Lerner in his contacts with the Polish prosecution, says that despite admirable Polish willingness to bring criminals to trial, the proceedings drag on and convictions have been exceedingly few, in view of the number of suspects still alive.

With the help of an Israeli film crew and local researchers, Lerner managed to locate the last remaining suspect in the murder. The suspect, Joseph Radchuk, a 92-year-old farmer, led Lerner and his people to the place where the victims were buried 60 years ago. Lerner is going to Poland today at the head of a delegation to exhume the skeletons and bring them for burial in Israel, alongside his father's grave. "I won't leave my family members in that cursed land of Poland," he said before departing Israel.

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/701236.html