Jedwabne pogrom

The Jedwabne pogrom (or Jedwabne massacre) (pronounced /jɛdvabnɛ/) was a massacre of Jewish people living in and near the town of Jedwabne in Poland that took place in July 1941 during World War II.

Although long assumed to have been a solely Nazi Einsatzgruppen (death squad) operation, it has now been established by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, that the crime was "committed directly by Poles, but inspired by the Germans." Whether and how far the occupying German forces were involved remains the subject of dispute among historians.

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^{[citation needed]} claiming that Jews, having sided with the communist Soviet occupiers, 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.^{[citation needed]}

A number of people collaborating with the Soviets before Operation Barbarossa were killed by local people in the Jedwabne area during the first days of German occupation. Former Soviet prisoners returned, many of them witnessed massacres of prisoners. One of the prisoners killed by the Soviets was a young priest from Jedwabne.

A month later, on the morning of July 10, 1941, a number of Poles from Jedwabne and its neighborhood rounded up the local Jews as well as those seeking refuge from nearby towns and villages such as Wizna and Kolno. These Jews were taken to the square in the centre of Jedwabne, where they were attacked and beaten. A group of about forty to fifty Jews, were forced to demolish and then carry a statue of Lenin around town while singing Soviet songs. The local rabbi was forced to lead this procession to a barn where they were burned alive and later buried in a mass grave along with fragments of the monument.^[1]

1949–1950 trials

In 1949 and 1950 a number of local people were accused and put to trial. The crime was named as collaboration with Germans. One Pole was condemned to death but commuted to imprisonment, 9 were imprisoned and 12 acquitted.

After the fall of communism in Poland in 1989 nobody has challenged the legality of the 1949–1950 trials. They remain valid.

Controversy and investigation

It was generally assumed that the Jedwabne massacre was an atrocity committed by an Einsatzgruppe until 1997–2000, when Agnieszka Arnold's Where is my older brother, Cain? and Neighbours documentary films were produced, followed by a detailed study of the event^[2] by Polish-Jewish-American historian Jan T. Gross, who described the massacre as a pogrom. Gross concluded 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 Polish neighbours, without any supervision or assistance from an Einsatzgruppe or other German force. He referred to the number of victims (1,600) officially established and presented on the memorial stone in Jedwadbne.^[3]

Not surprisingly, the book caused enormous controversy in Poland and many people, including historians, 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.^[4]

Following an intensive investigation the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, IPN) released a report in 2002 in which it supported some of Gross's findings, although the number of Jews killed (no less than 340^[5]) was significantly lower than the 1,600 that was 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 they had not witnessed Germans in the town at that time. As contemporary court records show, the active involvement of gentile Poles is uncertain, but the question of extent and nature of possible German participation has not been settled. The IPN concluded that the crime in a broader sense ) must be ascribed to the Germans, whilst in a stricter sense to gentile Poles, estimated at about 15 people. After the war ended, in 1945, Jedwabne had a gentile population of 1,670.

In 2001 the President of Poland, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, officially apologized on behalf of Poland to the Jewish people for this crime.^[6] This caused a certain criticism, as some considered Jedwabne to be a solely German crime, while others believed that the Polish nation was not to bear responsibility for the crimes performed by some. At that time when Kwaśniewski offered the apology, the IPN investigation was not yet completed.

Notes

^ Michlic, Polonsky, p.317
^ Gross, "Neighbors ..."
^ The inscription on the memorial stone raised in the place of the barn at Jedwabne: "The place of the genocide of the Jewish population. The Gestapo and gendarmerie burned alive 1600 peple on 10 july 1941." (Miejsce kaźni ludności żydowskiej. Gestapo i żandarmeria hitlerowska spaliła żywcem 1600 osób 10.VII.1941.). In 2001 the stone was removed and deposited in the Polish Army Museum (Muzeum Wojska Polskiego) in Bialystok.
^ Tomasz Strzembosz Jedwabne 1941
^ Komunikat dot. postanowienia o umorzeniu śledztwa w sprawie zabójstwa obywateli polskich narodowości żydowskiej w Jedwabnem w dniu 10 lipca 1941 r.
^ Poland's Kwasniewski apologizes for Jedwabne pogrom.

References

Chodakiewicz, Marek Jan (2005). "The Massacre in Jedwabne, July 10, 1941: Before, During, After". Columbia University Press and East European Monographs. ISBN 0-88033-554-8.
Gross, Jan Tomasz (2001). "Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland". Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-14-200240-2.
Gross, Jan Tomasz (2003). "Wokół Sąsiadów. Polemiki i wyjaśnienia" (in Polish). Sejny: Pogranicze. ISBN 8386872489.
Polonsky, A., & Michlic, J. B. (2004). The neighbors respond: the controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. isbn 0-691-11306-8
Stola, Dariusz. {2003). Jedwabne: Revisiting the Evidence and Nature of the Crime. Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 17 (1):139–152.

External links

The Announcement of the Verdict by Piotr Gontarczyk from IPN
Jedwabne - the Findings of the Historians by Pawel Machcewicz from IPN
The Jedwabne Tragedy
The Tragic Events of the Holocaust in Radzilow and Jedwabne
The Politics of Apology and Contrition by Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski, 2002
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"

[1] Michlic, Polonsky, p.317

[2] Gross, "Neighbors ..."

[3] The inscription on the memorial stone raised in the place of the barn at Jedwabne: "The place of the genocide of the Jewish population. The Gestapo and gendarmerie burned alive 1600 peple on 10 july 1941." (Miejsce kaźni ludności żydowskiej. Gestapo i żandarmeria hitlerowska spaliła żywcem 1600 osób 10.VII.1941.). In 2001 the stone was removed and deposited in the Polish Army Museum (Muzeum Wojska Polskiego) in Bialystok.

[4] Tomasz Strzembosz Jedwabne 1941

[5] Komunikat dot. postanowienia o umorzeniu śledztwa w sprawie zabójstwa obywateli polskich narodowości żydowskiej w Jedwabnem w dniu 10 lipca 1941 r.

[6] Poland's Kwasniewski apologizes for Jedwabne pogrom.

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