Jedwabne pogrom
Encyclopedia
The Jedwabne pogrom of July 1941 during German occupation of Poland, was a massacre (pogrom
) of at least 340 Polish Jews of all ages. These are the official findings of the Institute of National Remembrance
, "confirmed by the number of victims in the two graves, according to the estimate of the archeological and anthropological team participating in the exhumation," wrote prosecutor Radosław J. Ignatiew, quoted in The neighbors respond by Polonsky & Michlic.
A treason
and murder
trial
was launched by Poland's communist regime in 1949, which was later condemned as a miscarriage of justice
. After a fresh investigation concluded in 2004, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance stated the crime was committed by Polish inhabitants of the town, with the complicity of Nazi German Ordnungspolizei. The involvement of German paramilitary forces of the SS
and Gestapo
remains the subject of debate, especially the role of Nazi German Einsatzgruppe Zichenau-Schroettersburg. According to some later commentators, many people were shocked by the findings, which contrast with the rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust
.
was established in the 18th century. According to the 1921 census
, the town had a Jewish community consisting of 757 people, or 61.9 percent of its total population It was a typical shtetl
, a small town with a very significant Jewish community, one of many such towns in prewar Poland
.
The start of World War II in Europe
began with the invasion of Poland
by Nazi Germany
. Likewise, on September 17, 1939, the Soviet Red Army
invaded
the eastern regions of Poland
while in secret agreement with Germany. The area of Jedwabne was originally occupied by the Germans who crushed Polish resistance being offered by local Polish cadets. Jedwabne was then transferred to the Soviets in accordance with the September 28, 1939, German–Soviet Boundary Treaty. As soon as the Soviets entered Jedwabne, the local Polish government was dismantled. At first, many Polish Jews were relieved to learn that the Soviets, rather than the Nazis, were to occupy their town, and unlike gentile
Poles, publicly welcomed the Red Army
as their protector. Some people from other ethnic groups in Kresy
, particularly Belarusians
, also openly welcomed the Soviets. Administrative jobs were offered to Jews who declared Soviet allegiance. Some Jews joined a Soviet militia
overseeing deportations organized by the NKVD
. At least one witness testimony says that during round-ups, armed Jewish militiamen were seen to be guarding those prepared for deportation to Siberia
. A total of 22,353 Poles (entire families) were deported from the vicinity. Red Army troops requisitioned food and other goods, undercutting nearly everyone's material needs. The Soviet secret police
accompanying the Red Army routinely arrested and deported Polish citizens - both gentile and Jewish - spreading terror throughout the region. Waves of arrests, expulsions and prison executions continued until June 20–21, 1941.
Following Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the German forces quickly overran the territory of Poland which had been occupied by the Soviets since 1939. The small town of Wizna
near Jedwabne saw several dozen Jewish men shot by the invading Germans under Hauptsturmführer
Schaper, as did other neighboring towns. The Nazis distributed propaganda
in the area, revealing crimes committed by the Soviets in Eastern Poland and saying that Jews might have supported them. In parallel, the SS
organized special Einsatzgruppen
("task forces") to murder Jews in these areas and a few massacres were carried out. The guidelines for such massacres were formulated by Reinhard Heydrich
, who ordered his officers to induce anti-Jewish incidents on territories newly occupied by the German forces. Local communities were encouraged to commit anti-Jewish pogroms and robberies with total impunity.
. The Jews were taken to the square in the centre of Jedwabne, where they were ordered to pluck grass, attacked and beaten. A group of Jewish men were forced by the Nazis to demolish a statue of Lenin
that had been put up earlier by the Soviets (as in Kolno), and then carry it out of town while singing Soviet songs. The local rabbi
was forced to lead this procession of about 40 people. The group was taken to a pre-emptied barn, killed and buried along with fragments of the monument, while most of the remaining Jews, estimated at around 250 to 300 (IPN
final findings), including many women and children, were led to the same barn later that day, locked inside and burned alive using kerosene
from the former Soviet supplies (or German gasoline, by different accounts) in the presence of eight German gendarmes, who shot those who tried to escape. The remains of both groups were buried in two mass grave
s in the barn. Exhumations led to the discovery not only of the charred bodies of the victims in two mass graves, but also of the bust of Lenin (previously assumed to be buried at a Jewish cemetery) as well as bullets that according to a 2000 statement by Leon Kieres, the chief of the IPN, could have been fired from 1941 Walther P38 type pistols. Some sources claim that a movie made by Germans during the massacre was shown in cinemas in Warsaw to document the alleged spontaneous hatred of local people towards the Jews. No trace of such a movie has been found.
arrested and interrogated a number of suspects from or around the town of Jedwabne, accused of collaboration
with the Nazis in committing the crime and put them on trial. Of 22 defendants, 12 were convicted of treason
against Poland and one person was condemned to death.
Records show that the use of extreme physical torture during pre-trial interrogations conducted by the Security Office (UB) resulted in some individuals admitting to made-up crimes, which were later renounced by them before the courts. Among those who (at trial) retracted their earlier statements given during prolonged beatings by the security service were Józef Chrzanowski, Marian Żyluk, Czesław Laudański, Wincenty Gościcki, Roman and Jan Zawadzki, Aleksander and Franciszek Łojewski, Eugeniusz Śliwecki, Stanisław Sielawa and several other local men pronounced innocent and released by the courts without recompense. Out of 22 indicted for the crime at the time, almost half were wrongfully accused.
The unlawful interrogation methods were confirmed by the minister of Public Security Stanisław Radkiewicz
, who admitted in an internal memo that the "fixing" of the investigation included beatings, the complete omission of circumstances and evidence, and the rephrasing of testimonies to aid prosecution in a way that did not reflect reality. None of the Polish people who rescued Jews in Jedwabne was contacted, and no attempts were made to establish the names of the victims. There was no police search for the mayor, Marian Karolak, who had vanished, and no effort to name the German units present at the time. The courts however confirmed that the defendants' participation had been prompted by threats and acts of physical violence by the German police.
ordered his security forces to "cleanse" the border areas of Jews which led to formation of additional Einsatzkommandos. He instructed Nebe
to organize pogroms (i.e. "self-cleansing") in the Bezirk Bialystok
district, inspired by the warm welcome received from the Poles, when they chased out the Soviets along with their NKVD collaborators. Nebe oriented his commanders including Birkner
on their new duty on July 2 and 3, but cautioned that the SS should leave "no trace" of its involvement in the pogroms.
Wolfgang Birkner was investigated by the West German prosecutors in 1960, suspected in the 1941 massacres of Jews in Jedwabne, Radziłów, and Wąsosz nearby. The charges were based on research of Szymon Datner
, head of the Białystok branch of the Central Committee of Polish Jews
(CŻKH). The German prosecutors found no hard evidence implicating Birkner, but in the course of their investigation discovered the German witness who named the Gestapo
paramilitary Einsatzgruppe B under SS-Obersturmführer Hermann Schaper deployed in the area. The methods used by Schaper's death squad in the Radziłów massacre were identical to those employed in Jedwabne only three days later suggesting their specific involvement in that pogrom also.
During the subsequent German investigation at Ludwigsburg
in 1964, Hermann Schaper lied to interrogators that in 1941 he had been a truck driver. Legal proceedings against the accused were terminated on September 2, 1965. However, Schaper's case was reopened in 1974. During the second investigation, Count van der Groeben testified that it was indeed Schaper who conducted mass executions of Jews in his district. In 1976 a German court in Giesen
(Hessen), pronounced Schaper guilty of executions of Poles and Jews by the kommando SS Zichenau
-Schröttersburg. Schaper was sentenced to six-years imprisonment, but was soon released for medical reasons. According to German prosecution, the documentation of his investigation is no longer available and, it has most likely been destroyed.
. German, French and Hebrew translations were also published.
In ‘Neighbors’ Gross gave a gripping account, containing horrifying scenes of Jews being assaulted, rounded up and killed, describing how on "one day, in July 1941, half of the population of a small East European town murdered the other half - some 1,600 men, women and children." Gross concluded that the Jews in Jedwabne had been rounded up and killed not by the Germans as had previously been assumed, but by a mob of their own Polish neighbors.
Gross recognized that German forces were in Jedwabne during the massacre:
"There was an outpost of German gendarmerie in Jedwabne, staffed by eleven men. We can also infer from various sources that a group of Gestapo men arrived in town by taxi either on that day or the previous one."
And Gross recognized that German occupying forces had control of the town:
“At the time, the undisputed bosses over life and death in Jedwabne were the Germans. No sustained organized activity could take place there without their consent. They were the only ones who could decide the fate of the Jews. It was within their power also to stop the murderous pogrom at any time....”
Nevertheless, Gross concluded that the massacre was carried out entirely by Poles from Jedwabne and the surrounding area. As for the German role, he wrote,
“the only direct German involvement was........taking pictures”
Gross asserted emphatically that Polish perpetrators were not coerced by the Germans: “the ‘’Einsatzgruppen,’’ German police detachments and various functionaries who implemented the ‘final solution’ did not compel the local population to participate directly in the murder of Jews.......the so-called local population involved in killings of Jews did so of their own free will.” (p.133)
Gross’ principal sources were first, an account which Szmul Wasersztajn, a Jewish survivor from Jedwabne, had filed in 1945 with the Jewish Historical Institute (żydowski instytut historyczny, ZIH) in Poland; and secondly, the investigation depositions and trial records of the 1949-1950 trials. But Wasersztajn was not an eyewitness of many of the events he described, since he had spent the day of the pogrom in a hiding-place near Jedwabne. And in the 1949-1950 trials a number of witnesses gave testimony during the investigation which they recanted at the trial, leaving conflicting testimonies.
‘Neighbors’ sparked a controversy in Poland. Some readers refused to accept it as a factual account of the Jedwabne pogrom. While Polish historians praised Gross for drawing attention to a topic which had received insufficient attention for a half-century, several historians criticized ‘Neighbors’ on the grounds that it included accounts which were uncorroborated, and that where conflicting testimonies existed, Gross had chosen that account which presented the Poles in the worst possible light.
‘Neighbors’ was enormously successful in provoking an intensive two-year debate in Poland on Polish-Jewish relations. In response to ‘Neighbors,’ the Polish Parliament ordered an investigation of the Jedwabne pogrom, the IPN investigation which is described below. From May 2000 onwards, the Jedwabne pogrom became a frequent topic of discussion in Polish media. A list compiled by the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita
listed over 130 articles in Polish on the Jedwabne pogrom. The Catholic periodical ‘Wiez’ published a collection of 34 articles on Jedwabne pogrom, ‘Thou shalt not kill: Poles on Jedwabne’ available in English. In 2003 an extensive collection of articles from the Polish debate, in English translation, was compiled by Joanna Michlic and Professor Antony Polonsky of Brandeis University and published under the title ‘The Neighbors Respond.’
(Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, IPN), then a recently created independent successor to the Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Poland, commenced an investigation of the Jedwabne pogrom, as its first project. A major task assigned to IPN was the promotion of historical research on topics on which discussion was not permitted during the 1945-1989 period of Communist rule, and anti-Semitic pogroms were such a topic.
IPN interviewed 111 witnesses, mainly from Poland but also from Israel and the United States. One third of IPN’s witnesses had been eyewitnesses of some part of the 1941 pogrom. Since the event had occurred 59 years earlier when most of the witnesses still living were children, their recollections varied. IPN searched for and examined documents in Polish archives in Warsaw, Białystok and Łomźa, in German archives, and at Yad Vashem in Israel.
In May–June 2001 IPN conducted a partial exhumation at the site of the barn where the largest group of Jewish victims perished. The scope of the exhumation was strictly limited by religious objections against disturbing the remains of the dead embodied in Jewish religious doctrine. IPN’s forensic examiner, based on a similar exhumation at Katyn
where Stalin’s aides had murdered 20,000 Polish prisoners-of-war in 1942, estimated that the burial site in Jedwabne contained between 300 and 400 victims.
Leon Kieres, the President of IPN, also met in New York with Rabbi Joseph Baker (formerly Eliezer Piekarz) who had emigrated in 1938 from Jedwabne to the United States.
In January 2001, during a visit to New York, IPN President Leon Kieres made public that IPN had accumulated enough evidence to confirm Gross’ basic thesis that Poles were indeed perpetrators in the Jedwabne massacre. The IPN evidence was presented in reports by IPN to the Polish Parliament and in other public statements. While the IPN investigation continued for two more years, as of early 2001 IPN’s finding of Polish involvement in the Jedwabne massacre was public knowledge in Poland.
attended a ceremony at Jedwabne where he made a speech stating the murderers were Poles whose crime was both against the Jewish nation and against Poland. He said the murderers had been incited by German occupiers, but they alone carried the burden of guilt for their crimes. While ruling out the notion of collective responsibility, he also sought forgiveness "In the name of those who believe that one cannot be proud of the glory of Polish history without feeling, at the same time, pain and shame for the evil done by Poles to others." The ceremony was attended by Catholic and Jewish religious leaders and survivors of the pogrom. Most of the locals of Jedwabne boycotted the ceremony.
Awareness of the Jedwabne massacre among the Polish public was very high. A March 2001 poll conducted by the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita found that one-half of Poles were aware of the Jedwabne massacre; among Poles with a higher education the proportion rose to 81 percent. 40 percent of respondents supported Kwaśniewski's decision to apologize for the crime. A majority condemned the actions of the Poles involved in the Jedwabne massacre.
A monument had been placed in Jedwabne in the 1960s with the inscription: “Site of the Suffering of the Jewish Population. The Gestapo and the Nazi Gendarmerie Burned Alive 1600 People July 10, 1941.” In March 2001 this inscription was removed. A new monument was placed in July 2001, with inscriptions in Polish, Hebrew and Yiddish:
"TO THE MEMORY OF THE JEWS OF JEDWABNE AND ITS ENVIRONS, MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN, OUR FELLOW CITIZENS OF THIS LAND, WHO WERE MURDERED, BURNED ALIVE AT THIS PLACE ON JULY 10TH, 1941......July 10, 2001"
In Polish the inscription reads: "Pamięci Zydów z Jedwabnego i okolic, męzczyzn, kobiet, i dzieci, współgospodarzy tej ziemi, zamordowanych, żywcem spalonych w tym miejscu 10 lipca 1941...... 10 lipca 2001 R."
--- The perpetrators of the crime sensu stricto were Polish inhabitants of Jedwabne and its environs; responsibility for the crime sensu largo could be ascribed to the Germans.
IPN found that Poles played a ‘decisive role’ in the massacre, but the massacre was ‘inspired by the Germans’. The massacre was carried out in full view of the Germans, who were armed and had control of the town, and the Germans refused to intervene and halt the killings. IPN wrote:
“The presence of German military policemen.....and other uniformed Germans.....was tantamount to consent to, and tolerance of the crime.”
--- At least 340 Jewish victims were killed in the pogrom, in two groups of which the first contained 40 to 50 people, and the second group contained about 300. The exact number of victims could not be determined. The figure of 1,600 or so victims (cited in ‘Neighbors’) was “highly unlikely, and was not confirmed in the course of the investigation.”
---“At least forty (Polish) men” were perpetrators of the crime. As for the remainder of Jedwabne’s population, IPN deplored “the passive behavior of the majority of the town’s population in the face of the crime.”
However, IPN’s finding of ‘utter passivity’ shown by the majority of Jedwabne’s population is very different from the statement on page 7 of ‘Neighbors’ that “half of the population of the town murdered the other half.” The majority of Jedwabne residents were “utterly passive,” IPN found, and they did not participate in the pogrom.
--- A number of witnesses had testified that the Germans drove the group of Jewish victims from Jedwabne’s town square to the barn where they were killed (these testimonies are found in the expanded 203-page ‘Findings’ published in June 2003). IPN could neither conclusively prove nor disprove these accounts. “Witness testimonies vary considerably on this question.”
---“A certain group of Jewish people survived” the massacre. Several dozen Jews, or according to several sources approximately one hundred Jews, lived in a ghetto in Jedwabne until November 1942, when the Jews were transferred by the Germans to a ghetto in Lomza, and eventually died in Treblinka. The seven Jews hidden by the Wyrzykowski family were not the only survivors.
In 2002 IPN published two volumes of studies and documents concerning the Jedwabne pogrom under the title 'Wokół Jedwabnego,' Vol.1 'Studies' (525 pp.) and Vol.2 'Documents (1034 pp.). These are available only in Polish.
A greatly expanded version of IPN’s Final Findings, in 203 pages of Polish text, was issued by IPN on June 30, 2003. The July 9, 2002 version appears as the concluding five pages of this document. Pages 60 through 160 contain summaries of the testimonies of numerous witnesses interviewed by IPN. The full 203-page Polish text detailing IPN's investigation was published on IPN’s website. http://www.ipn.gov.pl/ftp/pdf/jedwabne_postanowienie.pdf
On June 30, 2003, prosecutor Radosław J. Ignatiew announced that the investigation of "the mass murder of at least 340 Polish citizens of Jewish nationality in Jedwabne on July 10, 1941" had discovered no living suspected perpetrators in the Jedwabne atrocity who had not already been brought to justice, and hence the IPN investigation was now closed.
, and some British journalists, for having opposed a national apology for the Jedwabne massacre in 2001. The criticism came shortly after Kaminski was made chairman of the European Conservatives and Reformists
group in the European Parliament
, which includes Labour's opponent, the Conservative Party (UK)
. Kaminski denied his opposition to the apology was derived from anti-Semitism, and has been defended by the Conservatives and some journalists including the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard.
A 2009 play Our Class by Polish playwright
Tadeusz Słobodzianek, performed in Britain. deals with a massacre of Jews by Poles in a small town during the Holocaust and is based on the Jedwabne massacre, though it does not mention Jedwabne by name. A review in The Daily Telegraph
argued that the play misrepresented Poles as "just itching for the German invasion as the excuse to give violent vent to their deep-rooted anti-Semitism" and "too often [...] looked like an object lesson in gross simplification."
On July 11, 2011 the President of Poland, Bronislaw Komorowski asked for forgiveness at a ceremony to mark the 70th anniversary of the Jedwabne massacre. At the time of the event, Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants
stated that "Holocaust survivors view Jedwabne as a symbol of the widespread, but little acknowledged, collaboration by the local population in the countries occupied by the Nazis in the slaughter and the plunder of the Jews during World War II." and that "The ceremonies today at Jedwabne is a welcome and important step in the confrontation with the truth by the Polish nation."
It was reported on September 1, 2011 that the memorial to the Jedwabne pogrom had been defaced with a swastika and graffiti that read "They were flammable" and "I don't apologize for Jedwabne." Poland launched an anti-hate crime investigation involving the country's domestic intelligence agency
, the ABW
. Poland's President Bronisław Komorowski condemned the vandalism. Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski
stated: "I utterly condemn these acts of criminality, alien to Polish tradition. There is no room for such behavior in Polish society." Michael Schudrich
, the Chief Rabbi of Poland, said the use of the Nazi swastika by vandals was anti-Polish as well as anti-Semitic, and that "Non-Jewish Poles also suffered horribly under the Nazis... the vast majority of Poles are appalled by what’s just happened."
Pogrom
A pogrom is a form of violent riot, a mob attack directed against a minority group, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes and properties, businesses, and religious centres...
) of at least 340 Polish Jews of all ages. These are the official findings of the Institute of National Remembrance
Institute of National Remembrance
Institute of National Remembrance — Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation is a Polish government-affiliated research institute with lustration prerogatives and prosecution powers founded by specific legislation. It specialises in the legal and historical sciences and...
, "confirmed by the number of victims in the two graves, according to the estimate of the archeological and anthropological team participating in the exhumation," wrote prosecutor Radosław J. Ignatiew, quoted in The neighbors respond by Polonsky & Michlic.
A treason
Treason
In law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one's sovereign or nation. Historically, treason also covered the murder of specific social superiors, such as the murder of a husband by his wife. Treason against the king was known as high treason and treason against a...
and murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
trial
Trial
A trial is, in the most general sense, a test, usually a test to see whether something does or does not meet a given standard.It may refer to:*Trial , the presentation of information in a formal setting, usually a court...
was launched by Poland's communist regime in 1949, which was later condemned as a miscarriage of justice
Miscarriage of justice
A miscarriage of justice primarily is the conviction and punishment of a person for a crime they did not commit. The term can also apply to errors in the other direction—"errors of impunity", and to civil cases. Most criminal justice systems have some means to overturn, or "quash", a wrongful...
. After a fresh investigation concluded in 2004, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance stated the crime was committed by Polish inhabitants of the town, with the complicity of Nazi German Ordnungspolizei. The involvement of German paramilitary forces of the SS
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
and Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
remains the subject of debate, especially the role of Nazi German Einsatzgruppe Zichenau-Schroettersburg. According to some later commentators, many people were shocked by the findings, which contrast with the rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust
Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust
Polish Jews were the primary victims of the German Nazi-organized Holocaust. Throughout the German occupation of Poland, many Polish Gentiles risked their own lives—and the lives of their families—to rescue Jews from the Nazis. Grouped by nationality, Poles represent the biggest number of people...
.
Background
The Jewish community in JedwabneJedwabne
Jedwabne is a town in Poland, in the Podlaskie Voivodeship, in Łomża County, with 1,942 inhabitants .- History :First mentioned in 1455, Jedwabne received city rights on July 17, 1736, from the Polish king August III, including the right to hold weekly markets on Sundays and five country fairs a...
was established in the 18th century. According to the 1921 census
Polish census of 1921
The Polish census of 1921 or First General Census in Poland was the first census in the Second Polish Republic, performed on September 30, 1921 by the Main Bureau of Statistics ....
, the town had a Jewish community consisting of 757 people, or 61.9 percent of its total population It was a typical shtetl
Shtetl
A shtetl was typically a small town with a large Jewish population in Central and Eastern Europe until The Holocaust. Shtetls were mainly found in the areas which constituted the 19th century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, the Congress Kingdom of Poland, Galicia and Romania...
, a small town with a very significant Jewish community, one of many such towns in prewar Poland
Second Polish Republic
The Second Polish Republic, Second Commonwealth of Poland or interwar Poland refers to Poland between the two world wars; a period in Polish history in which Poland was restored as an independent state. Officially known as the Republic of Poland or the Commonwealth of Poland , the Polish state was...
.
The start of World War II in Europe
European Theatre of World War II
The European Theatre of World War II was a huge area of heavy fighting across Europe from Germany's invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 until the end of the war with the German unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945...
began with the invasion of Poland
Invasion of Poland (1939)
The Invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign or 1939 Defensive War in Poland and the Poland Campaign in Germany, was an invasion of Poland by Germany, the Soviet Union, and a small Slovak contingent that marked the start of World War II in Europe...
by Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
. Likewise, on September 17, 1939, the Soviet Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
invaded
Soviet invasion of Poland (1939)
The 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland was a Soviet military operation that started without a formal declaration of war on 17 September 1939, during the early stages of World War II. Sixteen days after Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west, the Soviet Union did so from the east...
the eastern regions of Poland
Kresy
The Polish term Kresy refers to a land considered by Poles as historical eastern provinces of their country. Today, it makes western Ukraine, western Belarus, as well as eastern Lithuania, with such major cities, as Lviv, Vilnius, and Hrodna. This territory belonged to the Polish-Lithuanian...
while in secret agreement with Germany. The area of Jedwabne was originally occupied by the Germans who crushed Polish resistance being offered by local Polish cadets. Jedwabne was then transferred to the Soviets in accordance with the September 28, 1939, German–Soviet Boundary Treaty. As soon as the Soviets entered Jedwabne, the local Polish government was dismantled. At first, many Polish Jews were relieved to learn that the Soviets, rather than the Nazis, were to occupy their town, and unlike gentile
Gentile
The term Gentile refers to non-Israelite peoples or nations in English translations of the Bible....
Poles, publicly welcomed the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
as their protector. Some people from other ethnic groups in Kresy
Kresy
The Polish term Kresy refers to a land considered by Poles as historical eastern provinces of their country. Today, it makes western Ukraine, western Belarus, as well as eastern Lithuania, with such major cities, as Lviv, Vilnius, and Hrodna. This territory belonged to the Polish-Lithuanian...
, particularly Belarusians
Belarusians
Belarusians ; are an East Slavic ethnic group who populate the majority of the Republic of Belarus. Introduced to the world as a new state in the early 1990s, the Republic of Belarus brought with it the notion of a re-emerging Belarusian ethnicity, drawn upon the lines of the Old Belarusian...
, also openly welcomed the Soviets. Administrative jobs were offered to Jews who declared Soviet allegiance. Some Jews joined a Soviet militia
Militia
The term militia is commonly used today to refer to a military force composed of ordinary citizens to provide defense, emergency law enforcement, or paramilitary service, in times of emergency without being paid a regular salary or committed to a fixed term of service. It is a polyseme with...
overseeing deportations organized by the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
. At least one witness testimony says that during round-ups, armed Jewish militiamen were seen to be guarding those prepared for deportation to Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
. A total of 22,353 Poles (entire families) were deported from the vicinity. Red Army troops requisitioned food and other goods, undercutting nearly everyone's material needs. The Soviet secret police
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
accompanying the Red Army routinely arrested and deported Polish citizens - both gentile and Jewish - spreading terror throughout the region. Waves of arrests, expulsions and prison executions continued until June 20–21, 1941.
Following Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the German forces quickly overran the territory of Poland which had been occupied by the Soviets since 1939. The small town of Wizna
Wizna
Wizna is a village in Łomża County of Podlaskie Voivodeship, in north-eastern Poland. The Biebrza River flows through town. Wizna is also known for the battle of Wizna which took place in its vicinity during the 1939 Invasion of Poland. At present, farming and food production are the primary...
near Jedwabne saw several dozen Jewish men shot by the invading Germans under Hauptsturmführer
Hauptsturmführer
Hauptsturmführer was a Nazi rank of the SS which was used between the years of 1934 and 1945. The rank of Hauptsturmführer was a mid-grade company level officer and was the equivalent of a Captain in the German Army and also the equivalent of captain in foreign armies...
Schaper, as did other neighboring towns. The Nazis distributed propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
in the area, revealing crimes committed by the Soviets in Eastern Poland and saying that Jews might have supported them. In parallel, the SS
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
organized special Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting, of Jews in particular, but also significant numbers of other population groups and political categories...
("task forces") to murder Jews in these areas and a few massacres were carried out. The guidelines for such massacres were formulated by Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich , also known as The Hangman, was a high-ranking German Nazi official.He was SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei, chief of the Reich Main Security Office and Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia...
, who ordered his officers to induce anti-Jewish incidents on territories newly occupied by the German forces. Local communities were encouraged to commit anti-Jewish pogroms and robberies with total impunity.
Pogrom
On the morning of July 10, 1941, by the order of mayor Marian Karolak and the town's German gendarmerie, a group of Polish men from around Jedwabne and neighboring settlements was assembled, which then rounded up the local Jews as well as those seeking refuge from nearby towns and villages such as Wizna and KolnoKolno
Kolno is a town in northeastern Poland, located in the Podlaskie Voivodeship, about 150 km northeast of Warsaw. It is the seat of Kolno County, and the seat of the smaller administrative district called Gmina Kolno, but it is not part of this district, as the town has gmina status in its own...
. The Jews were taken to the square in the centre of Jedwabne, where they were ordered to pluck grass, attacked and beaten. A group of Jewish men were forced by the Nazis to demolish a statue of Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
that had been put up earlier by the Soviets (as in Kolno), and then carry it out of town while singing Soviet songs. The local rabbi
Rabbi
In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...
was forced to lead this procession of about 40 people. The group was taken to a pre-emptied barn, killed and buried along with fragments of the monument, while most of the remaining Jews, estimated at around 250 to 300 (IPN
IPN
IPN may refer to:* Intuit PaymentNetwork* Independent Practitioners Network* Infectious pancreatic necrosis, disease in fishes* Instant Private Network, type of VPN...
final findings), including many women and children, were led to the same barn later that day, locked inside and burned alive using kerosene
Kerosene
Kerosene, sometimes spelled kerosine in scientific and industrial usage, also known as paraffin or paraffin oil in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Ireland and South Africa, is a combustible hydrocarbon liquid. The name is derived from Greek keros...
from the former Soviet supplies (or German gasoline, by different accounts) in the presence of eight German gendarmes, who shot those who tried to escape. The remains of both groups were buried in two mass grave
Mass grave
A mass grave is a grave containing multiple number of human corpses, which may or may not be identified prior to burial. There is no strict definition of the minimum number of bodies required to constitute a mass grave, although the United Nations defines a mass grave as a burial site which...
s in the barn. Exhumations led to the discovery not only of the charred bodies of the victims in two mass graves, but also of the bust of Lenin (previously assumed to be buried at a Jewish cemetery) as well as bullets that according to a 2000 statement by Leon Kieres, the chief of the IPN, could have been fired from 1941 Walther P38 type pistols. Some sources claim that a movie made by Germans during the massacre was shown in cinemas in Warsaw to document the alleged spontaneous hatred of local people towards the Jews. No trace of such a movie has been found.
1949–1950 trials
Soon after the war ended, in 1949 and 1950, the authorities of the People's Republic of PolandPeople's Republic of Poland
The People's Republic of Poland was the official name of Poland from 1952 to 1990. Although the Soviet Union took control of the country immediately after the liberation from Nazi Germany in 1944, the name of the state was not changed until eight years later...
arrested and interrogated a number of suspects from or around the town of Jedwabne, accused of collaboration
Collaborationism
Collaborationism is cooperation with enemy forces against one's country. Legally, it may be considered as a form of treason. Collaborationism may be associated with criminal deeds in the service of the occupying power, which may include complicity with the occupying power in murder, persecutions,...
with the Nazis in committing the crime and put them on trial. Of 22 defendants, 12 were convicted of treason
Treason
In law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one's sovereign or nation. Historically, treason also covered the murder of specific social superiors, such as the murder of a husband by his wife. Treason against the king was known as high treason and treason against a...
against Poland and one person was condemned to death.
Records show that the use of extreme physical torture during pre-trial interrogations conducted by the Security Office (UB) resulted in some individuals admitting to made-up crimes, which were later renounced by them before the courts. Among those who (at trial) retracted their earlier statements given during prolonged beatings by the security service were Józef Chrzanowski, Marian Żyluk, Czesław Laudański, Wincenty Gościcki, Roman and Jan Zawadzki, Aleksander and Franciszek Łojewski, Eugeniusz Śliwecki, Stanisław Sielawa and several other local men pronounced innocent and released by the courts without recompense. Out of 22 indicted for the crime at the time, almost half were wrongfully accused.
The unlawful interrogation methods were confirmed by the minister of Public Security Stanisław Radkiewicz
Ministry of Public Security of Poland
The Ministry of Public Security of Poland was a Polish communist secret police, intelligence and counter-espionage service operating from 1945 to 1954 under Jakub Berman of the Politburo...
, who admitted in an internal memo that the "fixing" of the investigation included beatings, the complete omission of circumstances and evidence, and the rephrasing of testimonies to aid prosecution in a way that did not reflect reality. None of the Polish people who rescued Jews in Jedwabne was contacted, and no attempts were made to establish the names of the victims. There was no police search for the mayor, Marian Karolak, who had vanished, and no effort to name the German units present at the time. The courts however confirmed that the defendants' participation had been prompted by threats and acts of physical violence by the German police.
German investigation of 1960–1965
Upon the outbreak of war between Germany and the USSR, Reinhard HeydrichReinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich , also known as The Hangman, was a high-ranking German Nazi official.He was SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei, chief of the Reich Main Security Office and Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia...
ordered his security forces to "cleanse" the border areas of Jews which led to formation of additional Einsatzkommandos. He instructed Nebe
Arthur Nebe
SS-Gruppenführer Arthur Nebe was a member of the NSDAP party with card number 574,307. In July 1931, he joined the SS and his membership number was 280,152. His early career included the Berlin position of Police Commissioner in the 1920s...
to organize pogroms (i.e. "self-cleansing") in the Bezirk Bialystok
Bezirk Bialystok
The Bezirk Bialystok , also Belostok was an administrative unit that existed during the World War II occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany...
district, inspired by the warm welcome received from the Poles, when they chased out the Soviets along with their NKVD collaborators. Nebe oriented his commanders including Birkner
Wolfgang Birkner
SS-Hauptsturmführer Wolfgang Birkner was a Nazi war criminal and Holocaust perpetrator. He was a member of the NSDAP party with card number 3,601,309, and...
on their new duty on July 2 and 3, but cautioned that the SS should leave "no trace" of its involvement in the pogroms.
Wolfgang Birkner was investigated by the West German prosecutors in 1960, suspected in the 1941 massacres of Jews in Jedwabne, Radziłów, and Wąsosz nearby. The charges were based on research of Szymon Datner
Szymon Datner
Szymon Datner was a Polish historian of Jewish descent, best known for his studies of Nazi war crimes committed against the Jewish population of the Białystok area after the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941.Datner settled into Białystok in 1928...
, head of the Białystok branch of the Central Committee of Polish Jews
Central Committee of Polish Jews
The Central Committee of Polish Jews also referred to as the Central Committee of Jews in Poland and abbreviated CKŻP, was a state-sponsored political representation of Jews in Poland at the end of World War II...
(CŻKH). The German prosecutors found no hard evidence implicating Birkner, but in the course of their investigation discovered the German witness who named the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
paramilitary Einsatzgruppe B under SS-Obersturmführer Hermann Schaper deployed in the area. The methods used by Schaper's death squad in the Radziłów massacre were identical to those employed in Jedwabne only three days later suggesting their specific involvement in that pogrom also.
"The evidence collected by the West Germans, including the positive identification of Schaper by witnesses from Łomża, TykocinTykocinTykocin is an old, smaller size town in north-eastern Poland, with 1,800 inhabitants , located on the Narew river. Tykocin has been situated in the Podlaskie Voivodeship since 1999. Previously, it belonged to Białystok Voivodeship...
, and Radziłów, suggested that it was indeed Schaper's men who carried out the killings in those locations. Investigators also suspected, based on the similarity of the methods used to destroy the Jewish communities of Radziłów, Tykocin, RutkiRutkiRutki may refer to the following places:*Rutki, Masovian Voivodeship *Rutki, Opole Voivodeship *Rutki, Pomeranian Voivodeship *Rutki, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship...
, ZambrówZambrówZambrów is a town in northeastern Poland with 22,933 inhabitants . It is the capital of Zambrów County. Situated in the Podlaskie Voivodeship , previously in Łomża Voivodeship .-History:...
, Jedwabne, PiątnicaPiatnicaPiątnica is a village in Łomża County, Podlaskie Voivodeship, in north-eastern Poland. It is the seat of gmina called Gmina Piątnica...
and WiznaWiznaWizna is a village in Łomża County of Podlaskie Voivodeship, in north-eastern Poland. The Biebrza River flows through town. Wizna is also known for the battle of Wizna which took place in its vicinity during the 1939 Invasion of Poland. At present, farming and food production are the primary...
between July and September 1941 that Schaper's men were the perpetrators." — Alexander B. RossinoAlexander B. RossinoAlexander B. Rossino , is a research historian at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. with Doctor of Philosophy from the Syracuse University in New York. He is best known for writing about Nazi Germany in World War II, the...
During the subsequent German investigation at Ludwigsburg
Ludwigsburg
Ludwigsburg is a city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, about north of Stuttgart city centre, near the river Neckar. It is the largest and primary city of the Ludwigsburg urban district with about 87,000 inhabitants...
in 1964, Hermann Schaper lied to interrogators that in 1941 he had been a truck driver. Legal proceedings against the accused were terminated on September 2, 1965. However, Schaper's case was reopened in 1974. During the second investigation, Count van der Groeben testified that it was indeed Schaper who conducted mass executions of Jews in his district. In 1976 a German court in Giesen
Giesen
Giesen is a village and a municipality in the district of Hildesheim, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated approx. 6 km northwest of Hildesheim, and 22 km southeast of Hanover.The municipality includes five villages:* Ahrbergen...
(Hessen), pronounced Schaper guilty of executions of Poles and Jews by the kommando SS Zichenau
Ciechanów
Ciechanów is a town in north-central Poland with 45,900 inhabitants . It is situated in Masovian Voivodeship . It was previously the capital of Ciechanów Voivodeship.-History:The grad numbered approximately 3,000 armed men....
-Schröttersburg. Schaper was sentenced to six-years imprisonment, but was soon released for medical reasons. According to German prosecution, the documentation of his investigation is no longer available and, it has most likely been destroyed.
Neighbors, 2000–2001
In May 2000 the Polish-American historian Jan Gross published Sąsiedzi (Neighbors), a Polish-language account of the Jedwabne pogrom. In 2001 the book was published in an American edition, titled Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, PolandNeighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland
Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland is a 2001 book by Princeton University historian Jan T. Gross exploring the July 1941 Jedwabne massacre committed against Polish Jews in a village in Nazi-occupied Poland by their long-time neighbors.-Content and controversy:The...
. German, French and Hebrew translations were also published.
In ‘Neighbors’ Gross gave a gripping account, containing horrifying scenes of Jews being assaulted, rounded up and killed, describing how on "one day, in July 1941, half of the population of a small East European town murdered the other half - some 1,600 men, women and children." Gross concluded that the Jews in Jedwabne had been rounded up and killed not by the Germans as had previously been assumed, but by a mob of their own Polish neighbors.
Gross recognized that German forces were in Jedwabne during the massacre:
"There was an outpost of German gendarmerie in Jedwabne, staffed by eleven men. We can also infer from various sources that a group of Gestapo men arrived in town by taxi either on that day or the previous one."
And Gross recognized that German occupying forces had control of the town:
“At the time, the undisputed bosses over life and death in Jedwabne were the Germans. No sustained organized activity could take place there without their consent. They were the only ones who could decide the fate of the Jews. It was within their power also to stop the murderous pogrom at any time....”
Nevertheless, Gross concluded that the massacre was carried out entirely by Poles from Jedwabne and the surrounding area. As for the German role, he wrote,
“the only direct German involvement was........taking pictures”
Gross asserted emphatically that Polish perpetrators were not coerced by the Germans: “the ‘’Einsatzgruppen,’’ German police detachments and various functionaries who implemented the ‘final solution’ did not compel the local population to participate directly in the murder of Jews.......the so-called local population involved in killings of Jews did so of their own free will.” (p.133)
Gross’ principal sources were first, an account which Szmul Wasersztajn, a Jewish survivor from Jedwabne, had filed in 1945 with the Jewish Historical Institute (żydowski instytut historyczny, ZIH) in Poland; and secondly, the investigation depositions and trial records of the 1949-1950 trials. But Wasersztajn was not an eyewitness of many of the events he described, since he had spent the day of the pogrom in a hiding-place near Jedwabne. And in the 1949-1950 trials a number of witnesses gave testimony during the investigation which they recanted at the trial, leaving conflicting testimonies.
‘Neighbors’ sparked a controversy in Poland. Some readers refused to accept it as a factual account of the Jedwabne pogrom. While Polish historians praised Gross for drawing attention to a topic which had received insufficient attention for a half-century, several historians criticized ‘Neighbors’ on the grounds that it included accounts which were uncorroborated, and that where conflicting testimonies existed, Gross had chosen that account which presented the Poles in the worst possible light.
‘Neighbors’ was enormously successful in provoking an intensive two-year debate in Poland on Polish-Jewish relations. In response to ‘Neighbors,’ the Polish Parliament ordered an investigation of the Jedwabne pogrom, the IPN investigation which is described below. From May 2000 onwards, the Jedwabne pogrom became a frequent topic of discussion in Polish media. A list compiled by the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita
Rzeczpospolita
Rzeczpospolita is a traditional name of the Polish State, usually referred to as Rzeczpospolita Polska . It comes from the words: "rzecz" and "pospolita" , literally, a "common thing". It comes from latin word "respublica", meaning simply "republic"...
listed over 130 articles in Polish on the Jedwabne pogrom. The Catholic periodical ‘Wiez’ published a collection of 34 articles on Jedwabne pogrom, ‘Thou shalt not kill: Poles on Jedwabne’ available in English. In 2003 an extensive collection of articles from the Polish debate, in English translation, was compiled by Joanna Michlic and Professor Antony Polonsky of Brandeis University and published under the title ‘The Neighbors Respond.’
IPN investigation 2000–2003
In July 2000, prompted by the publication of ‘Neighbors,’ the Polish Institute of National RemembranceInstitute of National Remembrance
Institute of National Remembrance — Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation is a Polish government-affiliated research institute with lustration prerogatives and prosecution powers founded by specific legislation. It specialises in the legal and historical sciences and...
(Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, IPN), then a recently created independent successor to the Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Poland, commenced an investigation of the Jedwabne pogrom, as its first project. A major task assigned to IPN was the promotion of historical research on topics on which discussion was not permitted during the 1945-1989 period of Communist rule, and anti-Semitic pogroms were such a topic.
IPN interviewed 111 witnesses, mainly from Poland but also from Israel and the United States. One third of IPN’s witnesses had been eyewitnesses of some part of the 1941 pogrom. Since the event had occurred 59 years earlier when most of the witnesses still living were children, their recollections varied. IPN searched for and examined documents in Polish archives in Warsaw, Białystok and Łomźa, in German archives, and at Yad Vashem in Israel.
In May–June 2001 IPN conducted a partial exhumation at the site of the barn where the largest group of Jewish victims perished. The scope of the exhumation was strictly limited by religious objections against disturbing the remains of the dead embodied in Jewish religious doctrine. IPN’s forensic examiner, based on a similar exhumation at Katyn
Katyn massacre
The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre , was a mass execution of Polish nationals carried out by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs , the Soviet secret police, in April and May 1940. The massacre was prompted by Lavrentiy Beria's proposal to execute all members of...
where Stalin’s aides had murdered 20,000 Polish prisoners-of-war in 1942, estimated that the burial site in Jedwabne contained between 300 and 400 victims.
Leon Kieres, the President of IPN, also met in New York with Rabbi Joseph Baker (formerly Eliezer Piekarz) who had emigrated in 1938 from Jedwabne to the United States.
In January 2001, during a visit to New York, IPN President Leon Kieres made public that IPN had accumulated enough evidence to confirm Gross’ basic thesis that Poles were indeed perpetrators in the Jedwabne massacre. The IPN evidence was presented in reports by IPN to the Polish Parliament and in other public statements. While the IPN investigation continued for two more years, as of early 2001 IPN’s finding of Polish involvement in the Jedwabne massacre was public knowledge in Poland.
Kwaśniewski's speech 2001, and Polish public opinion
In July 2001, on the 60th anniversary of the pogrom, Polish president Aleksander KwaśniewskiAleksander Kwasniewski
Aleksander Kwaśniewski is a Polish politician who served as the President of Poland from 1995 to 2005. He was born in Białogard, and during communist rule he was active in the Socialist Union of Polish Students and was the Minister for Sport in the communist government in the 1980s...
attended a ceremony at Jedwabne where he made a speech stating the murderers were Poles whose crime was both against the Jewish nation and against Poland. He said the murderers had been incited by German occupiers, but they alone carried the burden of guilt for their crimes. While ruling out the notion of collective responsibility, he also sought forgiveness "In the name of those who believe that one cannot be proud of the glory of Polish history without feeling, at the same time, pain and shame for the evil done by Poles to others." The ceremony was attended by Catholic and Jewish religious leaders and survivors of the pogrom. Most of the locals of Jedwabne boycotted the ceremony.
Awareness of the Jedwabne massacre among the Polish public was very high. A March 2001 poll conducted by the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita found that one-half of Poles were aware of the Jedwabne massacre; among Poles with a higher education the proportion rose to 81 percent. 40 percent of respondents supported Kwaśniewski's decision to apologize for the crime. A majority condemned the actions of the Poles involved in the Jedwabne massacre.
A monument had been placed in Jedwabne in the 1960s with the inscription: “Site of the Suffering of the Jewish Population. The Gestapo and the Nazi Gendarmerie Burned Alive 1600 People July 10, 1941.” In March 2001 this inscription was removed. A new monument was placed in July 2001, with inscriptions in Polish, Hebrew and Yiddish:
"TO THE MEMORY OF THE JEWS OF JEDWABNE AND ITS ENVIRONS, MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN, OUR FELLOW CITIZENS OF THIS LAND, WHO WERE MURDERED, BURNED ALIVE AT THIS PLACE ON JULY 10TH, 1941......July 10, 2001"
In Polish the inscription reads: "Pamięci Zydów z Jedwabnego i okolic, męzczyzn, kobiet, i dzieci, współgospodarzy tej ziemi, zamordowanych, żywcem spalonych w tym miejscu 10 lipca 1941...... 10 lipca 2001 R."
IPN Final Findings 2002-2003
On July 9, 2002 IPN published the final findings of its investigation. In a carefully-worded summary, IPN stated its principal conclusions:--- The perpetrators of the crime sensu stricto were Polish inhabitants of Jedwabne and its environs; responsibility for the crime sensu largo could be ascribed to the Germans.
IPN found that Poles played a ‘decisive role’ in the massacre, but the massacre was ‘inspired by the Germans’. The massacre was carried out in full view of the Germans, who were armed and had control of the town, and the Germans refused to intervene and halt the killings. IPN wrote:
“The presence of German military policemen.....and other uniformed Germans.....was tantamount to consent to, and tolerance of the crime.”
--- At least 340 Jewish victims were killed in the pogrom, in two groups of which the first contained 40 to 50 people, and the second group contained about 300. The exact number of victims could not be determined. The figure of 1,600 or so victims (cited in ‘Neighbors’) was “highly unlikely, and was not confirmed in the course of the investigation.”
---“At least forty (Polish) men” were perpetrators of the crime. As for the remainder of Jedwabne’s population, IPN deplored “the passive behavior of the majority of the town’s population in the face of the crime.”
However, IPN’s finding of ‘utter passivity’ shown by the majority of Jedwabne’s population is very different from the statement on page 7 of ‘Neighbors’ that “half of the population of the town murdered the other half.” The majority of Jedwabne residents were “utterly passive,” IPN found, and they did not participate in the pogrom.
--- A number of witnesses had testified that the Germans drove the group of Jewish victims from Jedwabne’s town square to the barn where they were killed (these testimonies are found in the expanded 203-page ‘Findings’ published in June 2003). IPN could neither conclusively prove nor disprove these accounts. “Witness testimonies vary considerably on this question.”
---“A certain group of Jewish people survived” the massacre. Several dozen Jews, or according to several sources approximately one hundred Jews, lived in a ghetto in Jedwabne until November 1942, when the Jews were transferred by the Germans to a ghetto in Lomza, and eventually died in Treblinka. The seven Jews hidden by the Wyrzykowski family were not the only survivors.
In 2002 IPN published two volumes of studies and documents concerning the Jedwabne pogrom under the title 'Wokół Jedwabnego,' Vol.1 'Studies' (525 pp.) and Vol.2 'Documents (1034 pp.). These are available only in Polish.
A greatly expanded version of IPN’s Final Findings, in 203 pages of Polish text, was issued by IPN on June 30, 2003. The July 9, 2002 version appears as the concluding five pages of this document. Pages 60 through 160 contain summaries of the testimonies of numerous witnesses interviewed by IPN. The full 203-page Polish text detailing IPN's investigation was published on IPN’s website. http://www.ipn.gov.pl/ftp/pdf/jedwabne_postanowienie.pdf
On June 30, 2003, prosecutor Radosław J. Ignatiew announced that the investigation of "the mass murder of at least 340 Polish citizens of Jewish nationality in Jedwabne on July 10, 1941" had discovered no living suspected perpetrators in the Jedwabne atrocity who had not already been brought to justice, and hence the IPN investigation was now closed.
Events after 2004
In 2009, Polish politician Michał Kamiński was attacked by the Labour Party (UK)Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
, and some British journalists, for having opposed a national apology for the Jedwabne massacre in 2001. The criticism came shortly after Kaminski was made chairman of the European Conservatives and Reformists
European Conservatives and Reformists
The European Conservatives and Reformists, abbreviated to ECR, is a conservative anti-federalist political group in the European Parliament. The group currently comprises 57 MEPs, making it the fourth-largest group in the European Parliament....
group in the European Parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...
, which includes Labour's opponent, the Conservative Party (UK)
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
. Kaminski denied his opposition to the apology was derived from anti-Semitism, and has been defended by the Conservatives and some journalists including the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard.
A 2009 play Our Class by Polish playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
Tadeusz Słobodzianek, performed in Britain. deals with a massacre of Jews by Poles in a small town during the Holocaust and is based on the Jedwabne massacre, though it does not mention Jedwabne by name. A review in The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
argued that the play misrepresented Poles as "just itching for the German invasion as the excuse to give violent vent to their deep-rooted anti-Semitism" and "too often [...] looked like an object lesson in gross simplification."
On July 11, 2011 the President of Poland, Bronislaw Komorowski asked for forgiveness at a ceremony to mark the 70th anniversary of the Jedwabne massacre. At the time of the event, Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants
American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants
The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants is the foremost umbrella organization of survivors located in North America with a mission to advocate for survivors and to advance and encourage Holocaust remembrance, education and commemoration. It is located in New York...
stated that "Holocaust survivors view Jedwabne as a symbol of the widespread, but little acknowledged, collaboration by the local population in the countries occupied by the Nazis in the slaughter and the plunder of the Jews during World War II." and that "The ceremonies today at Jedwabne is a welcome and important step in the confrontation with the truth by the Polish nation."
It was reported on September 1, 2011 that the memorial to the Jedwabne pogrom had been defaced with a swastika and graffiti that read "They were flammable" and "I don't apologize for Jedwabne." Poland launched an anti-hate crime investigation involving the country's domestic intelligence agency
Intelligence agency
An intelligence agency is a governmental agency that is devoted to information gathering for purposes of national security and defence. Means of information gathering may include espionage, communication interception, cryptanalysis, cooperation with other institutions, and evaluation of public...
, the ABW
Agencja Bezpieczenstwa Wewnetrznego
The Agencja Bezpieczeństwa Wewnętrznego is the Polish government counterintelligence state agency tasked with the collecting of domestic intelligence etc. Foreign operations counterpart is Agencja Wywiadu.-See also:...
. Poland's President Bronisław Komorowski condemned the vandalism. Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski
Radoslaw Sikorski
Radosław Tomasz Sikorski , is a Polish politician and journalist. He served as Deputy Minister of National Defense in Jan Olszewski's Cabinet and Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs in Jerzy Buzek's Cabinet. He was also Minister of National Defense in Jarosław Kaczyński's Cabinet...
stated: "I utterly condemn these acts of criminality, alien to Polish tradition. There is no room for such behavior in Polish society." Michael Schudrich
Michael Schudrich
Michael Joseph Schudrich is the Chief Rabbi of Poland. He is the oldest of four children of Rabbi David Schudrich and Doris Goldfarb Schudrich.-Biography:...
, the Chief Rabbi of Poland, said the use of the Nazi swastika by vandals was anti-Polish as well as anti-Semitic, and that "Non-Jewish Poles also suffered horribly under the Nazis... the vast majority of Poles are appalled by what’s just happened."
See also
- Anti-Jewish violence in Poland, 1944–1946
- History of the Jews in PolandHistory of the Jews in PolandThe history of the Jews in Poland dates back over a millennium. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Jewish community in the world. Poland was the centre of Jewish culture thanks to a long period of statutory religious tolerance and social autonomy. This ended with the...
- Holocaust in PolandHolocaust in PolandThe Holocaust, also known as haShoah , was a genocide officially sanctioned and executed by the Third Reich during World War II. It took the lives of three million Polish Jews, destroying an entire civilization. Only a small percentage survived or managed to escape beyond the reach of the Nazis...
- Kielce pogromKielce pogromThe Kielce pogrom was an outbreak of violence against the Jewish community in the city of Kielce, Poland on July 4, 1946, perpetrated by a mob of local townsfolk and members of the official government forces of the People's Republic of Poland...
- List of events named massacres
- Lviv pogromsLviv pogromsThe Lviv pogroms were two massacres of Jews living in and near in the city of Lwów, the occupied Republic of Poland , that took place from 30 June to 2 July and 25–29 July 1941 during World War II. 700 Jews were killed in the rioting by some Ukrainian nationalists and Ukrainian militia and further...
- Museum of the History of the Polish JewsMuseum of the History of the Polish JewsThe Museum of History of Polish Jews is a new museum under construction on the site of the Warsaw ghetto. The cornerstone was laid in 2007 and the museum is scheduled to open in 2012. The museum will feature multimedia exhibits on vibrant Jewish community that flourished in Poland for a thousand...
- Nazi occupation of Poland
- Polish Righteous among the NationsPolish Righteous among the NationsPolish citizens have the world's highest count of individuals awarded medals of Righteous among the Nations, given by the State of Israel to non-Jews who saved Jews from extermination during the Holocaust...
- Rescue of Jews by Poles during the HolocaustRescue of Jews by Poles during the HolocaustPolish Jews were the primary victims of the German Nazi-organized Holocaust. Throughout the German occupation of Poland, many Polish Gentiles risked their own lives—and the lives of their families—to rescue Jews from the Nazis. Grouped by nationality, Poles represent the biggest number of people...
- Responsibility for the HolocaustResponsibility for the HolocaustHistorians differ as to where the responsibility for the Holocaust lies. Intentionalist historians such as Lucy Dawidowicz argue that Adolf Hitler planned the extermination of the Jewish people from as early as 1918, and that he personally oversaw its execution...
- Tykocin pogromTykocin pogromThe Tykocin massacre , of August 25, 1941, was the mass murder of Jewish residents of Tykocin in occupied Poland during World War II, soon after Nazi German attack on the Soviet Union.- Circumstances surrounding the massacre :...
- Wąsosz pogromWasosz pogromThe Wąsosz pogrom was the mass murder of Jewish residents of Wąsosz in Nazi German occupied Poland that took place on July 7, 1941, during World War II.- Circumstances surrounding the pogrom :...
- Kaunas pogromKaunas pogromThe Kaunas pogrom was a massacre of Jewish people living in Kaunas, Lithuania that took place in from June 25 to June 29, 1941 – the first days of the Operation Barbarossa and of Nazi occupation of Lithuania. The most infamous incident occurred in the Lietūkis garrage, where several Jews were...
- ŻegotaZegota"Żegota" , also known as the "Konrad Żegota Committee", was a codename for the Polish Council to Aid Jews , an underground organization of Polish resistance in German-occupied Poland from 1942 to 1945....
External links
- Full transcript of Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski's speech at Jedwabne on 60th anniversary of the massacre
- Jedwabne, 10 July 1941: An interview with Pawel Machcewicz, Director, Office of Public Education, Institute of National Memory http://info-poland.buffalo.edu/search-all/classroom/J/Mach.html
- The Jedwabne Tragedy
- Yedwabne: History and Memorial Book. Museum of Jewish Heritage.
- The Tragic Events of the Holocaust in Radzilow and Jedwabne
- Thou Shalt Not Kill, Poles on Jedwabne, 34 articles (in English)http://wiez.free.ngo.pl/jedwabne/main.html
- "Burning Alive" by Andrzej Kaczyński, published May 5, 2000 in the Polish newspaper "Rzeczpospolita"
- The Virtual Shtetl
- Adam MichnikAdam MichnikAdam Michnik is the editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, where he sometimes writes under the pen-names of Andrzej Zagozda or Andrzej Jagodziński. In 1966–1989 he was one of the leading organizers of the illegal, democratic opposition in Poland...
, Poles and the Jews: How Deep the Guilt?, New York Times, 17 March 2001 - The Jedwabne Massacre of 1941 at Never Again!
- Jedwabne - the Findings of the Historians by Pawel Machcewicz from IPN
- Joanna Michlic, The Polish Debate about the Jedwabne Massacre
- The verdict of 1949