Jedwabne Pogrom
Encyclopedia : J : JE : JED : Jedwabne Pogrom
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The Jedwabne Pogrom (or Jedwabne Massacre) was a massacre of Jewish people living in and near the town of Jedwabne in Poland that occurred during World War II, in July 1941. Although long assumed to have been a Nazi Einsatzgruppen operation, it is now known that the massacre was mostly undertaken by non-Jewish Poles in the area. Whether and how far the occupying German forces were involved remains unresolved.
The massacre
Following their attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, German forces quickly overran those areas of Poland that the Soviet Union had annexed as part of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact. The Nazis distributed propaganda in the area claiming that Jews had assisted in crimes committed by the Soviet Union in Poland and the SS organized special Einsatzgruppen ("task forces") to murder Jews in these areas. The small town of Wizna, for example, near Jedwabne in the northeast of Poland, saw several dozen Jewish men shot by the invading Germans.A month later, on the morning of July 10, 1941, the non-Jewish inhabitants of Jedwabne rounded up their Jewish neighbors and any others they could find, including Jews visiting from nearby towns and villages such as Wizna and Kolno. They were taken to the square in the centre of Jedwabne, where they were attacked and beaten. A group of about forty to fifty Jews, including the local rabbi, were then forced to destroy a monument of Lenin placed in the square during the Soviet occupation. This group was then murdered and buried in a mass grave along with fragments of the monument.
Some time later – witness statements vary from one to a few hours – most of the remaining Jews that had been rounded up (and had survived being beaten) were herded into a barn, which was then set alight. They were burned alive.
Controversy and investigation
It was generally assumed that the Jedwabne massacre was an atrocity committed by an SS Einsatzgruppe until 1997-2000, when Agnieszka Arnold's Where is my older brother, Cain? and Neighbors documentary films were produced, followed by a detailed study of the event was published Jan Tomasz Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, Princeton University Press, 2001, ISBN 0142002402. by a Polish-American historian Jan T. Gross. The author described the massacre as a pogrom and set out how his research led him to conclude that, contrary to received accounts, the Jews in Jedwabne had been rounded up, clubbed, drowned, gutted or burned to death by mobs of their own non-Jewish neighbors, without any supervision or assistance from an Einsatzgruppe or other German force.Not surprisingly, the book caused enormous controversy in Poland and many people questioned its conclusions. Tomasz Strzembosz, Professor of History at the Catholic University of Lublin and at the Polish Academy of Sciences' Institute of Political Studies, argued that though Poles would have been involved, the operation had been supervised by German forces [link].
Following an intensive investigation, however, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, IPN) released a report in 2002 in which they supported some of Gross's findings, although the number of Jews killed (around 380) was significantly lower than 1,600 he had indicated earlier. (Confirmation of an exact number of victims was not possible due to opposition from Jewish religious authorities to the exhumation of bodies.) The IPN also found that there were eight German policemen present, so the degree of German involvement remains an open question. Many witnesses claim to have seen German soldiers that day in Jedwabne, whereas others contend that there were no Germans in the town at that time. As court records show, the active involvement of non-Jewish Poles is beyond doubt, but the question of extent and nature of possible German participation has not been settled, albeit IPN concludes that the crime "sensu largo" is ascribed to the Germans, whilst "sensu stricto" to non-Jewish Poles, estimated at about 40 people.
In 2001 the President of Poland, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, officially apologized on behalf of Poland to the Jewish people for this crime [link]. This caused some criticism, as many considered Jedwabne to be solely a German crime, and at that time IPN investigation wasn't yet completed.
References
- Dariusz Stola, "Jedwabne: Revisiting the evidence and nature of the crime", Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 17, no. 1, Spring 2003, 139-152.
- Antony Polonsky and Joanna B. Michlic (editors), The Neighbors Respond: The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland, Princeton University Press, 2003, ISBN 0691113068.
- Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, The Massacre in Jedwabne, July 10, 1941: Before, During, After, Columbia University Press and East European Monographs, 2005, ISBN 0880335548.
External links
PDF Joanna Michlic, [The Polish Debate about the Jedwabne Massacre]- Adam Michnik, [Poles and the Jews: How Deep the Guilt?], New York Times, 17 March 2001
- ["Burning Alive" by Andrzej Kaczynski, published May 5, 2000 in the Polish newspaper "Rzeczpospolita"]
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