Jedwabne pogrom

The Jedwabne pogrom (Polish: Pogrom w Jedwabnem, pronounced [jɛdˈvabnɛ]) was a World War II massacre committed on 10 July 1941 in the town of Jedwabne, in German-occupied Poland.[1] At least 340 Polish Jews, including women and children, were murdered,[2] some 300 of whom were locked inside a barn that was set on fire.

At least 40 ethnic Poles were implicated with German Order Police being present.[3][4] Debated is the additional involvement of German Gestapo[5] and SS paramilitary forces, especially SS Einsatzgruppe B.[6][7][8][9]

In 2000-02 the Polish government conducted a forensic investigation into the massacre, including excavations and interviews with 111 witnesses.[10] The exhumation was limited by Jewish theological objections to disturbing the remains of the dead,[11] so the full extent of the massacre remains uncertain. Many commentators were shocked by the findings, which contrast with the rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust.

Background

Jedwabne Synagogue before 1913

The Jewish community in Jedwabne was established in the 18th century.[12] There were approximately 1,500 Jews out of a total population of 2,167 residing in Jedwabne in the 1930s.[13] It was a typical shtetl, a small town with a majority Jewish community coexistent with its Polish minority and surrounded by majority Polish countryside, one of many such towns in prewar Poland. The region politically supported the National Democrats,[14] who sought to counter what they said was Jewish economic competition against Catholic Poles, and opposed the Polish government of Józef Piłsudski and his successors. Nevertheless, there were good prewar Polish-Jewish relations in the town, possibly better than elsewhere in the country.[15] At their most tense, a 1934 rumor that drew a connection between the killing of a Jewish woman and the killing of a Catholic man was quashed by a priest and a rabbi addressing the matter together, before it escalated.[15] Older residents of the town had living memory of the nearby Białystok pogrom of 1906, in which Russian Imperial forces sought to set Poles and Jews against each other.[16]

The start of World War II in Europe began with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany on September 1, 1939. Later in the same month, on September 17, the Soviet Red Army invaded the eastern regions of Poland under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.[17][18] The area of Jedwabne was originally occupied by the Germans, who crushed the resistance offered by local Polish cadets and burned the synagogue.[19] Jedwabne was then transferred to the Soviets in accordance with the German–Soviet Boundary Treaty of September 28, 1939. At first, many Polish Jews were relieved to learn that the Soviets, rather than the Nazis, were to occupy their town. Unlike most gentile Poles, some Jews prominently welcomed the Red Army as protectors from Nazism.[9][20] Some people from other ethnic groups in the Kresy (Polish borderlands), particularly Belarusians, also openly welcomed the Soviets.[20] In what Jan Gross has termed "the institutionalization of resentment", the occupiers used privileges and punishments to accommodate and encourage ethnic and religious differences among the local population.[21]

According to Julian Barnes, "though many Jews might have been relieved by the first arrival of the Soviets in 1939, which freed them from anti-Semitic Nazis who had invaded earlier in the year, the new arrivals brought their own (Russian and atheistic) anti-Semitism".[22] According to Anna Bikont, the Soviets brought in Russian and atheistic anti-religious policies: Poland's Hebrew schools were shut by the Soviets, who banned holy days that Poland had recognized, such as Yom Kippur, and appropriated shops and businesses, which were mostly Jewish.[23] Some Jews ("opaskowcy") formed militias and helped the NKVD compile lists of Poles to be sent to Siberia.[24] Bikont writes that Meir Grajewski (later Ronen), a native of Jedwabne, identified five Jewish “louts” who "lorded over" the town, denouncing Poles and, sometimes, fellow Jews.[25] [26] A total of 22,353 Poles (entire families) were deported from the vicinity.[27][28][29] Red Army troops requisitioned food and other goods, depriving the local populace of resources.[9] The Soviet secret police (NKVD) accompanying the Red Army routinely arrested and deported Polish citizens, both gentiles and Jews, and spread terror throughout the region.[7][30] Waves of arrests, expulsions, and prison executions continued until 20–21 June 1941, the very eve of the German Operation Barbarossa invasion of the Soviet Union.[9]

Following Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, German forces overran the parts of Poland that had been occupied by the Soviets since 1939. In the small town of Wizna near Jedwabne, several dozen Jewish men were shot by the invading Germans under Hauptsturmführer Hermann Schaper, much as occurred in other neighboring towns.[31] The Nazis distributed propaganda in the area,[32] exposing Soviet crimes committed in eastern Poland and saying that Jews may 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,[33] who ordered his officers to induce anti-Jewish incidents in the territories newly occupied by the German forces.[34] Local communities were encouraged to commit anti-Jewish pogroms and robberies with total impunity.[35][36] Individual Soviet collaborators, both Poles and Jews, were lynched or denounced before the massacre.[37] [38]

In the days before the Jedwabne massacre, the town's Jewish population increased as refugees arrived from places such as Radziłów and Wizna, from where 230 Jews had fled.[39]

Some Polish villagers participated in massacres of Jews, with varying degrees of German involvement, in 23 localities in the region of Łomża and Białystok after German forces occupied it in the summer of 1941.[3] Aside from Jedwabne, generally smaller massacres also took place at Bielsk Podlaski (the village of Pilki), Choroszcz, Czyżew, Goniądz, Grajewo, Jasionówka, Kleszczele, Knyszyn, Kolno, Kuźnica, Narewka, Piątnica, Radziłów, Rajgród, Sokoły, Stawiski, Suchowola, Szczuczyn, Trzcianne, Tykocin, Wasilków, Wąsosz, and Wizna.[3]

Pogrom

Map of Jedwabne crime scene, compiled from Polish court documents. The Jews' route to Bronisław Śleszyński's barn is marked in red.

Accounts of the pogrom vary. There is general agreement that German secret police Gestapo officials were seen in Jedwabne on the morning of 10 July 1941. Poland's Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) forensic criminal investigation S 1/00/Zn, concluded in 2003, states that on the same morning Polish men from nearby villages began arriving in Jedwabne "with the intention of participating in the premeditated murder of the Jewish inhabitants of the town."[40] The IPN found that some Jews were alerted by non-Jewish neighbors to what was happening.[40] According to another account, by historian Tomasz Strzembosz, the men from nearby villages arrived by order of the German-appointed Jedwabne mayor Marian Karolak and the German paramilitaries billeted to the town; a group of Polish men from Jedwabne and neighboring settlements was assembled who, under German supervision, rounded up local Jews and Jews seeking refuge there from nearby towns and villages such as Wizna and Kolno.[1] Jan Gross writes that a leading role in the pogrom was carried out by four men, including Jerzy Laudański and Karol Bardoń, who had earlier collaborated with the Soviet NKVD and were now trying to recast themselves as zealous collaborators with the Germans.[41]

There is general agreement that Jews were taken to a square in the center of Jedwabne, where they were ordered to pluck grass and were beaten by the assembled group of ethnic-Polish residents of Jedwabne and its environs.[40] Some Jewish men were forced to demolish a statue of Lenin that had been put up by the Soviets and carry it out of town on a wooden stretcher while singing Soviet songs. The local rabbi was forced to lead the procession of some 40 Jewish men, which included the kosher butcher. The group was taken to a barn,[27] killed, and buried together with fragments of the statue. There are varying theories about the manner of the killing, and varying witness testimonies as to whether the Germans were present at the barn and whether they took part in escorting the Jews from the square to the barn.[40] Several Jewish eyewitnesses reported that the Germans were directly involved in rounding up and abusing Jews in the town square, and that they shot at Jews who tried to escape from the burning barn. According to a diary penned during the war, citing reports by Jews who fled Jedwabne and Radziłów, “With the help of local farmers, the Germans gathered the Jews of these places, the rabbi and community leaders foremost, in the market square. At first they beat them cruelly and forced them to wrap themselves in their tallitot and to jump and dance, accompanied by singing. All this was done under an unceasing stream of blows from cudgels and rubber whips. Finally they pushed all the Jews, beating and kicking them, into a long threshing house and set it on fire with them inside."[42]

According to a memorial book first published in Hebrew in 1963, "The Jews who came from the towns told us terrible things. Rywka Kurc [who had managed to escape from Jedwabne (and is] now in Australia) told us that in Jedwabne, the S.S. enclosed all the Jews in a hayloft—men, women, children and old people, among them her husband and two children. They set fire to the building and everyone was burned alive.”[43] According to another former Jedwabne resident who, shortly after the massacre, met Jews who had fled Jedwabne, they “told us when the Germans first entered their town, they had herded all the Jews into a barn and set it ablaze. Anyone who tried to get out was cut down by machine-gun fire.”[44]

After the group of 40 Jewish men had been killed, most of Jedwabne's remaining Jews, estimated at some 250[27] to 300 (IPN final findings),[45] were led to the same barn, locked inside, and burned alive using kerosene from former Soviet supplies (or, by other accounts, German gasoline). The remains of both groups were buried in two mass graves in the barn.[27] The victims included women, children, and infants.[40]

Many witnesses reported seeing German photographers taking pictures of the massacre. Some sources say a film of the massacre, made by the Germans, was screened in Warsaw cinemas to document the alleged spontaneous hatred of local people for the Jews. No trace of such a film has been found.[46]

Antonina Wyrzykowska in 2007

Between 100 and 125 Jews who escaped the massacre returned to Jedwabne. They resided in an open ghetto before being transferred to the Łomża ghetto in November 1942. A number of Jedwabne Jews escaped to other towns.[47] In November 1942, when the Germans began putting ghetto inmates on trains to Auschwitz for extermination, seven of the surviving Jedwabne Jews escaped again and made it to the nearby hamlet of Janczewko. There Polish farmer Antonina Wyrzykowska and her husband Aleksander Wyrzykowski harbored the seven Jedwabne Jews for twenty-six months from November 1942 to January 1945, despite hostility from neighbors and German searches of their property. The fugitives included Moshe Olszewicz, his wife Lea, and his brother Dov; Jacob and Lea Kubran; Józef Grądowski; and Szmuel Wasersztajn, a Jedwabne resident who later provided testimony about the massacre. After the war, the Wyrzykowskis were harassed and beaten up for what they had done.

The Wyrzykowskis had to move three times due to harassment including getting beaten up by locals for what they had done, eventually relocating to Milanówek, near Warsaw.[48] In 1976 the couple were awarded Israel's Righteous among the Nations medal.[49][50][51] Antonina Wyrzykowska was later also decorated with the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta by Poland's President Lech Kaczyński.[52]

1949–1950 trials

After the war, in 1949 and 1950, the authorities of the People's Republic of Poland arrested and interrogated a number of suspects from the town and vicinity of Jedwabne, accused them of collaboration with the Germans in the pogrom, and put the Poles on trial. Of 22 defendants, none had a higher education and three were illiterate.[53] 12 were convicted of treason against Poland and one was condemned to death.[1]

Records show that extreme physical torture applied during pre-trial interrogation by the Security Office (UB) had caused some of the men to falsely confess to criminal acts—which confessions they later retracted in court. Those who retracted their earlier statements, given under beatings by the security service, included Józef Chrzanowski, Marian Żyluk, Czesław Laudański,[54] Wincenty Gościcki, Roman and Jan Zawadzki, Aleksander and Franciszek Łojewski, Eugeniusz Śliwecki, Stanisław Sielawa, and several others, who were pronounced innocent and released by the court.[1]

The illegal interrogation methods were confirmed by Minister of Public Security Stanisław Radkiewicz, who admitted in an internal memo that the "fixing" of the investigation had included beatings, the complete omission of circumstances and evidence, and the rephrasing of testimonies, to aid the prosecution, in a way that did not reflect reality.[55] None of the Polish people who had rescued Jews in Jedwabne had been contacted, and no attempt had been made to establish the names of the victims. There had been no search for the mayor, Marian Karolak, who had vanished, and no effort to name the German units that had been present at the crime. The courts had, however, confirmed that the defendants' participation had been coerced by German police threats and acts of physical violence.[56]

German investigation, 1960–1965

Pogrom memorial in Jedwabne

Upon the outbreak of war between Germany and the USSR, Reinhard Heydrich 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 Soviet forces along with their NKVD collaborators. Nebe oriented his commanders including Birkner on their new duty on July 2 and 3,[57] but cautioned that the SS should leave "no trace" of its involvement in the pogroms.[58]

SS-Hauptsturmführer Wolfgang Birkner was investigated by prosecutors in West Germany in 1960 on suspicion of involvement in the massacres of Jews in Jedwabne, Radziłów, and Wąsosz in 1941. The charges were based on research by 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 they discovered a new German witness, the former SS Kreiskommissar of Łomża, who named the paramilitary Einsatzgruppe B under SS-Obersturmführer Hermann Schaper as having been deployed in the area at the time of the pogroms. The methods used by Schaper's death squad in the Radziłów massacre were identical to those employed in Jedwabne only three days later, suggesting they had been involved in the second pogrom.

In 1963 a monument to the victims was placed in Jedwabne by the Polish communist state's Society of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy. Its inscription read: "The place of destruction of the Jewish population. Here Gestapo and Nazi gendarmes burnt alive 1600 people on 10 July 1941." [59]

The evidence collected by the West Germans, including the positive identification of Schaper by witnesses from Łomża, Tykocin, 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, Rutki, Zambrów, Jedwabne, Piątnica and Wizna between July and September 1941 that Schaper's men were the perpetrators.

— Alexander B. Rossino[60]

During the subsequent German investigation at Ludwigsburg in 1964, Hermann Schaper lied to interrogators, claiming that in 1941 he had been a truck driver. Legal proceedings against the accused were terminated on September 2, 1965, but 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 Giessen (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.[61] According to German federal prosecutors, the documentation of his investigation is no longer available and has most likely been destroyed.

IPN investigation, 2000–2003

Following publication of Gross's book and the debate it engendered, the Polish Parliament ordered a new investigation into the Jedwabne atrocity in July 2000. It entrusted the Institute of National Remembrance with transmitting its findings for possible legal action. The Polish Institute of National Remembrance (Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, IPN), had recently been created as an independent successor to the Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Poland, formed only after the collapse of the Soviet empire. Its major role was the promotion of historical research on topics banned for over 40 years during the period of Communist rule (1945–1989), including anti-Semitic pogroms in Soviet-occupied Poland. As its first project, the IPN began an investigation of the Jedwabne pogrom in response to a heated debate among leading historians, which followed the publication of Sąsiedzi (Neighbors) by the Polish-American historian Jan T. Gross first in the Polish language.[62][63] His book was a catalyst to the investigation, although the first scholarly analysis reaching similar conclusions had been published in December 1966 by Szymon Datner in the Białystok bulletin of the ŻIH (No 60). It was followed by a brief inquiry, aided by German authorities, in 1976.[62][64]

Proceedings

Over the course of two years, investigators from the IPN interviewed some 111 witnesses, mainly from Poland, but also from Israel and the United States.[62] One-third of the IPN witnesses had been eyewitnesses of some part of the Jedwabne pogrom. Since the event had occurred 59 years earlier, when most of the survivors still living today were children, their recollections varied. IPN also searched for and examined documents in Polish archives in Warsaw, Białystok and Łomża, 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. Gross criticized the decision to restrict the scope of the exhumation.[65] Rabbi Joseph Polak also took issue with the decision, asserting that Jewish law required the bodies to be reinterred in a proper burial ground.[66]

Based on a similar exhumation at Katyn, where Stalin's forces murdered 22,000 Polish prisoners of war in 1940, the IPN's forensic examiner estimated that the burial site in Jedwabne contained the remains of between 300 and 400 victims.[67] There were charred bodies in two mass graves, and also broken pieces of the bust of Lenin (previously assumed to have been buried at a Jewish cemetery). On December 19, 2001 IPN chief Leon Kieres and Prof. Andrzej Rzepliński presented forensics proving beyond doubt that some German bullets found were not of a type used by the German forces in 1941; evidence appeared to confirm that the German troops had not been involved in the killings.[59]

Leon Kieres, the President of IPN, also met in New York with Rabbi Jacob Baker,[68] formerly Yaakov Eliezer Piekarz, who had emigrated in 1938 from Jedwabne to the United States. In January 2001, during his visit to New York, Kieres said that IPN had accumulated enough evidence to confirm that a group of Poles were perpetrators in the Jedwabne massacre. The IPN's evidence was subsequently presented in reports by IPN to the Polish Parliament and in various other public statements.[27] While the IPN's investigation continued for two more years, as of early 2001 the finding of Polish involvement in the Jedwabne massacre became public knowledge in Poland.

IPN's final findings, 2002–2003

On 9 July 2002 the IPN released the final findings of its two-year-long investigation.[69] In a summary by chief prosecutor Radosław J. Ignatiew,[70] the IPN stated its principal "Findings of Investigation S 1 / 00 / Zn into the Murder of Polish Citizens of Jewish Origin in the Town of Jedwabne on 10 July 1941":

  • The perpetrators of the crime sensu stricto were Polish residents of Jedwabne and the environs; responsibility for the crime sensu largo could be ascribed to the Germans. The IPN found that Poles played a "decisive role" in the massacre, but the massacre was "instigated 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 did not 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 men, and the second about 300 persons. The exact number of victims could not be determined. The previously estimated figure of 1,600 was "highly unlikely, and was not confirmed in the course of the investigation."[71]
  • "At least forty (Polish) men" were perpetrators of the crime. The majority of Jedwabne residents were "utterly passive," the IPN found, and did not participate in the massacre. The IPN wrote: "On the basis of the evidence gathered in the investigation, it is not possible to determine the reasons for the passivity of most of the town in the face of the crime. In particular, it cannot be determined whether this passivity resulted from acceptance of the crime or from intimidation by the brutality of the perpetrators' acts."[72][73]
  • 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 group of Jewish people survived" the massacre. Several dozen — according to several sources, about a hundred — Jews lived in a ghetto in Jedwabne until November 1942, when they were transferred by the Germans to a ghetto in Łomża, and eventually deported to Treblinka, where they were killed. The seven Jews hidden by the Wyrzykowski family were not the only survivors of the Jedwabne massacre.

A greatly expanded version of the findings, in 203 pages of Polish text, was issued by the IPN on 30 June 2003. The original version of 9 July 2002 appears as the concluding five pages of this document. Pages 60–160 contain summaries of the testimonies of numerous witnesses interviewed by the IPN. The full 203-page text detailing the government-led investigation was published on the IPN website.[67] It was supplemented with two volumes of studies and documents concerning the Jedwabne pogrom, Wokół Jedwabnego, vol. 1: Studies (525 pp.) and vol. 2: Documents (1,034 pp.), available in Polish.[74]

Kieres delivered the IPN report at the 27 February 2002 session of the Polish parliament. A small opposition party, the League of Polish Families (LPR), called Kieres a "servant of the Jews" and blamed him and President Aleksander Kwaśniewski for "stoning the Polish nation." LPR MP Antoni Macierewicz made an official complaint against the IPN's conclusion that ethnic Poles and not the Germans had committed the massacre.[75]

Polish cultural anthropologist Ludwik Stomma questioned the IPN's downward revision of the number of victims, objected to the IPN's conclusion that the massacre was "committed directly by Poles but instigated by the Germans", and said that this formulation was meant to please the political right.[75]

Joanna Michlic described the activities of the IPN as "a very professional forensic investigation into the massacre." She added: "Members of the IPN team headed by Leon Kieres had refused to bend to the version of the crime presented in the strongly defensive camp, and thus came under attack in the nationalist press."[75]

American historian Jan T. Gross praised the conduct of the IPN investigation.[76][77] His findings were incorporated into a Polish secondary-school history text.[75]

On 30 June 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 so the IPN investigation was now closed.[78][79]

After the investigation, new archival evidence confirmed that the Germans employed paid agents to instigate pogroms. Prosecutor Ignatiew stated: “It is obvious that Poles could not just do whatever they pleased in the German-occupied territories. They could not therefore have organized pogroms. These were organized by the Germans. As the documents show, the Germans readied themselves to organize pogroms of Jews and had advance intelligence (from their agents) as to who among the Poles bore hatred toward Jews because Jews had denounced their relatives to the Soviets, and who was a bandit who would kill if paid money. And it was those people whom they chose to carry out the pogroms, turning them into ordinary criminal gangs."[80]

Documentaries

Polish film-maker Agnieszka Arnold made two documentary films interviewing witnesses of the Jedwabne massacre. (Gdzie mój starszy syn Kain) (1999, Where is my elder son Cain) included interviews with Szmul Wassersztajn, and the daughter of the owner of the barn where the massacre took place. (Sąsiedzi) (2001, Neighbors) dealt with the subject in greater depth. Jan Gross wrote a book of the same name, with Arnold's agreement as to title.[81] Arnold's work featured the mayor of Jedwabne Krzysztof Godlewski, who pioneered efforts to investigate and memorialize the murders.

The massacre and its aftermath is also the subject of Haim Hecht's documentary Two Barns (2014). Its title is a phrase used by Prof. Shevah Weiss, former speaker of the Israeli Parliament and Israel's ambassador to Poland, who was saved from death by Polish villagers who hid him in a barn, a fact that he recounted at the site of the burnt down Jedwabne barn over the mass grave at the memorial ceremony in 2001. The film features other prominent Holocaust historians, the sociologist Professor Jan Tomasz Gross and Literature Nobel-prize winner Wislawa Szymborska.[82]

Monographs

One of the most significant features of the Jedwabne debate is that it was not primarily a Polish-Jewish controversy, but one within Polish society and mostly among Polish historians and intellectuals.

— E. Barkan, E.A. Cole, K. Struve, Shared History – Divided Memory, 2007.[83]

Neighbors by Jan T. Gross (2000–2001)

Neighbors (Sąsiedzi) by Jan T. Gross provoked an intensive two-year debate in Poland on Polish-Jewish relations in World War II.[2][84] 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, but by a mob of their own Polish neighbors. Gross recognized that German forces were in Jedwabne during the massacre.

Gross also 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." Nevertheless, Gross concluded that the massacre was carried out entirely by Poles from Jedwabne and the surrounding area. Gross asserted that Polish perpetrators were not coerced by the Germans (p. 133).

One of Gross's principal sources was an already known account written by a Jew, Szmul Wasersztajn, that had been deposited in 1945 at the Jewish Historical Institute (Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, ŻIH) in Białystok, Poland; and Stalinist investigation affidavits and records of the 1949-1950 trials. Wasersztajn was not an eyewitness to the events of 10 July 1941, since he had spent the day of the pogrom in a hiding place near Jedwabne.[85] Wasersztajn was however an eyewitness to events on 25 June 1941, saying:[86][87][88]

I saw with my own eyes how they killed Chajca Wasersztein, 53 years old; Jakub Kac; and Eliasz Krawiecki. Kac was stoned with bricks, Krawiecki was knifed – they ripped out his eyes and cut his tongue – and he suffered inhuman agony for 12 hours until he died. The same day I saw a terrible sight. When Chaja Kubrzanska, 28 years old, and Basia Binsztein, 26 years old, both with babies on their arms, saw what was happening, they went to the pond in order to drown themselves and their children, rather than fall into the murderers hands. They threw the children into the water and drowned them with their own hands. Binsztein jumped in and immediately sunk to the bottom, while Kubrzanska still struggled for several hours. The thugs that gathered around the pond behaved as if it were a spectacle. They told her to lie with her face in the water to make her drown faster. When she saw that the children were dead, she threw herself into the water and died.

— The Testimony of Szmul Wasersztein, one of the seven Jewish survivors, about the murder of the Jews in Jedwabne, 5 April 1945

However, Rivka Fogel, another eyewitness, disputes Wasersztajn's version:

On the very first day that the Germans entered the city of Yedwabne, they murdered the harnessmaker Yakov Katz, the stitcher Eli Krawiecki, the blacksmith Shmuel Weinstein, the businessmen Moshe Fishman, Choneh Goldberg and his son. The sisters, the wife of Avraham Kubzanski and the wife of saul Binshtein, whose husbands left with the Russians after enduring horrible punishment at the hands of the Germans, decided to end their own lives and that of their children. They exchanged the children between themselves and together they jumped into deep water. Gentiles standing nearby pulled them out, but they managed to jump in again and were drowned.[12]

Some Polish readers refused to accept Gross' book as an account of the Jedwabne pogrom.[31] While some Polish historians praised Gross' having drawn attention to a topic which had received insufficient attention for half a century, several criticized him for including uncorroborated accounts and—wherever conflicting accounts existed—for choosing only those which showed the Poles in the worst possible light.[85][89][90][91]

Alexander B. Rossino, a research historian at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., commented: "By writing that Poles in Jedwabne and other small towns west of Białystok had taken part in the murder of local Jews, Gross challenged the long-cherished notion in Poland that all Poles—Christians and Jews—had suffered equally under the Nazis. Gross' portrayal also deeply offended Poles who clung to the myth that their countrymen had never collaborated with the Germans. But while Neighbors contributed to an ongoing re-examination of the history of the Holocaust in Poland, Gross' failure to examine German documentary sources fundamentally flawed his depiction of the events. The result was a skewed history that did not investigate SS operations in the region or German interaction with the Polish population."[92]

Around Jedwabne (Wokół Jedwabnego) (2002)

Around Jedwabne (Wokół Jedwabnego),[93][94] written in the Polish language, is the official two-volume Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) publication of documents produced by the 2000-2003 IPN investigation. Volume 1, Studies (525 pages) contains historical and legal studies written by historians working for IPN. Volume 2, Documents (1,034 pages) contains original documents collected by the IPN investigation. Included are testimonies by Jews on various anti-Semitic acts committed by Poles, as well as testimonies by Polish schoolteachers deported to Siberia who reported that Jewish communists had been moved into positions of authority in the Soviet occupation apparatus in eastern Poland. Volume 2 includes a Polish translation (from the Hebrew) of a remarkable memoir written by Chaya Finkelsztajn of Radziłów, describing conditions under the 1939-1941 Soviet occupation and the subsequent 1941 Operation Barbarossa German invasion. Chaya Finkelsztajn survived the 1941-1945 German occupation, under extremely perilous and difficult circumstances, after a Polish Catholic priest agreed to baptise her as a Christian. She later emigrated to Israel, where she wrote her memoir.

The Neighbors Respond (2003)

An extensive collection of articles from the Polish and international debate, in English translation, was published in 2003 by Joanna Michlic and Professor Antony Polonsky of Brandeis University. It appeared as The Neighbors Respond: The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland.[72][95] The book includes the IPN's Findings of Investigation S 1 / 00 / Zn into the Murder of Polish Citizens of Jewish Origin in the Town of Jedwabne on 10 July 1941, as well as essays from Polish daily newspapers such as Rzeczpospolita and Gazeta Wyborcza, written before the conclusion of the IPN investigation in 2002. The book includes articles published before the publication of Jan T. Gross' Neighbors. Other contributors include Tomasz Strzembosz, Bogdan Musial, Dariusz Stola; and, from outside Poland, Israel Gutman, Istvan Deak, and Richard Lukas. The collection features some archival documents and essays covering the entire 1939–1941 period.[72][95]

The Massacre in Jedwabne, July 10, 1941 (2005)

Marek Jan Chodakiewicz's book The Massacre in Jedwabne, July 10, 1941: Before, During, and After[96] is based on a study of available postwar evidence. It challenges Jan T. Gross' interpretation of the events.[97] It suggests that the number of Germans participating in the massacre was far greater than previously assumed, including four or five truckloads of armed SS-men who arrived from Łomża, swarmed out, and terrorized the local population before leading Jews and Poles to the crime scene.[98]

Chodakiewicz's book was reviewed by Joanna B. Michlic, who wrote: "It does not accept the complicated history of Poland and the complex image of (ethnic) Poles, which depicts them not only as heroes and victims but also as evildoers committing crimes against Polish Jews and representatives of other ethnic and cultural minorities living in Poland."[99]

Piotr Wróbel, reviewing the book, wrote that Chodakiewicz's aim, stated in the introduction, was to show that Jan T. Gross was wrong. According to Wróbel, "each of the chapters contains enough controversial material for a separate discussion", but he focused on Chodakiewicz's analysis of Gross's work. Wróbel acknowledged that Chodakiewicz made some good arguments but wrote that they are "are overshadowed by numerous flaws", lack a sense of proportion, and make selective use of information from sources that support Chodakiewicz's view. According to Wróbel, the book has a "visible political agenda" and is "difficult to read, unoriginal, irritating, and unconvincing".[100]

Peter D. Stachura wrote of the book: "The important debate about Polish-Jewish relations must continue to develop on the basis of informed, impartial scrutiny, analysis and interpretation, with reference to authenticated, solid evidence, as Professor Chodakiewicz has so ably demonstrated." In response, Michlic and Antony Polonsky wrote a letter to the editor of History, expressing their strong disagreement with the content and tone of Stachura's review; according to Michlic and Polonsky, Chodakiewicz's conclusions and Stachura's favorable review were very far from those reached by most historians who have examined the Jedwabne pogrom, including Poland's Institute of National Remembrance.[101] Stachura in his turn, in replying to their criticisms, took exception to Michlic and Polonsky.[102]

Debates

From May 2000 on, the Jedwabne massacre has been a frequent topic of discussion in the Polish media. A list compiled by the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita contained over 130 articles for the years 2000-2002 alone.[103] The Catholic periodical Więź published a collection of 34 articles from that time period, Thou shalt not kill: Poles on Jedwabne, available in English.[104]

2001 anniversary speeches and Polish public opinion

In July 2001, on the 60th anniversary of the pogrom, Polish president Aleksander Kwaśniewski 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."[105] The ceremony was attended by Catholic and Jewish religious leaders and survivors of the pogrom. Most of the locals of Jedwabne boycotted the ceremony.[106][107]

Prof. Shevah Weiss, Ambassador of Israel to Poland, also delivered a speech. He said Jedwabne was "typical of the Poland of those days - a colourful and alluring world, and a place where Polish and Yiddish were almost interchangeable." He said that people who were friendly with the Jews of Jedwabne "set upon their Jewish neighbors, dragging them to the local barn, before slaughtering and burning them alive." Weiss recounted his Polish birth, that he knew other neighbors, and other barns, thanks to which he and his family survived the Holocaust. "I have come here on behalf of the State of Israel... Living among us also are Holocaust survivors whose lives were saved as a result of the brave actions of their Polish neighbors," he said. He praised Poland's research and investigation process and appealed to young Poles in particular to "act with determination against any manifestation of anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia, evil and cruelty."[108]

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.[109]

Nobel Peace Prize recipient and former Polish President Lech Walesa commented about the apology: "The Jedwabne crime was a revenge for the cooperation of the Jewish community with the Soviet occupant. The Poles have already apologized many times to the Jews; we are waiting for the apology from the other side because many Jews were scoundrels."[110]

Father Stanislaw Musial, a leading activist for Polish-Jewish dialogue and reconciliation said: "One cannot be surprised that after the publication of the truth about Jedwabne, public opinion has split into two camps. One, undoubtedly the more numerous, is situated on the center and the political right, thinking nationally. It either negates the participation of Poles at Jedwabne, or tries to play it down.... The second, smaller camp sees in the publication of the truth about Jedwabne a chance for cleaning Polish memory of the period of the occupation, and a stimulus toward fighting anti-Semitism in Poland today."[110]

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."[111] In March 2001 this memorial stone was removed. A new monument was placed in July 2001, with inscriptions in Polish, Hebrew and Yiddish: "To the Memory of Jews from Jedwabne and the Surrounding Area, Men, Women, and Children, Co-inhabitants of this Land, Who Were Murdered and Burned Alive on This Spot on July 10, 1941."[111]

In August 2001 Jedwabne mayor Krzysztof Godlewski, a pioneer for the commemoration of the massacre, resigned in protest at the local council's lack of majority support for it.[112] He became a recipient of the Jan Karski Humanitarian Award.[113]

Events, 2006–present

Part of core exhibition dedicated to Jedwabne pogrom at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw

At a round-table discussion on July 7, 2006, Jan T. Gross said, "I repeat three times in the book (Neighbors) that the murder happened by order of the Germans" ("mord był z rozkazu Niemców").[77]

In 2008 Polish historian Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski recorded a 45-minute lecture for Telewizja Trwam, at his residence in the US. He pointed out that, in World War II, herding people into a barn, then setting it on fire, was German standard operating procedure which the Germans frequently followed in France, Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine; that Jedwabne's Polish residents did not possess the wherewithal to carry out the Jedwabne murders; and that, after the war, a German officer was sentenced by a West German court to six years' imprisonment for them. Pogonowski provided additional corroborating evidence for exclusive German guilt in the matter. His lecture was played back by TV Trwam several times in the following years, usually on the anniversary of the massacre.[114]

In 2009 Polish politician Michał Kamiński was attacked by Britain's Labour Party and some British journalists for having in 2001 opposed a Polish national apology for the Jedwabne massacre. The criticism came shortly after Kaminski was made chairman of the European Parliament's group of European Conservatives and Reformists, which includes Labour's opponent, the British Conservative Party.[115] Kamiński denied that his opposition to an apology stemmed from antisemitism, and he was defended by the Conservatives and some journalists, including the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard.[116][117]

A 2009 play Our Class by Polish playwright Tadeusz Słobodzianek, performed in Britain.[118] 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."[119]

On 11 July 2011 Poland's President Bronisław Komorowski asked for forgiveness at a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Jedwabne massacre.[120] At the time of the event, Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, wrote 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 "[t]he ceremon[y] today at Jedwabne is a welcome and important step in the confrontation with the truth by the Polish nation."[121]

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."[122][123] Poland launched an anti-hate crime investigation involving the country's domestic intelligence agency, the ABW.[124][125] 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."[126] Michael Schudrich, the Chief Rabbi of Poland, said the use of the Nazi swastika by vandals was anti-Polish as well as anti-Jewish and that "Non-Jewish Poles also suffered horribly under the Nazis ... the vast majority of Poles are appalled by what's just happened."[122]

In 2013 a surviving witness to the Jedwabne atrocity named Hieronima Wilczewska was discovered in the United States by the Canadian Polish-diaspora TV station Niezależna Polonia (Independent Polonia).[127] At age 8 she had witnessed the Jews being forced into the barn, and had seen its burning.[128][129] In 2015 Wilczewska described what she saw that day while walking home from church. She said the crime was committed by the Germans alone, on their own initiative, and under their sole supervision. The functionaries wore black uniforms which she assumed might have been Gestapo uniforms. She described the barn as so small that the Jews had to be squeezed into it, little children being thrown on top of their elders by the Germans.[128][127] After the barn had been locked, she said, the Germans splashed its walls with gasoline and set it afire with a flamethrower. After the barn collapsed some Jews, still alive, crawled on top of the dead and kept swaying for hours before dying. She said armed Gestapo and SS stood around the rubble, ensuring that no one escaped. She said she tried to give the dying Jews water but was prevented by the Germans. It took several days for the remaining Jews to die. Only then, she said, were the bodies buried in a mass grave.[128][127]

In a 2016 television interview, Polish education minister Anna Zalewska expressed doubt regarding whether Poles had participated in the pogrom and said: "Jedwabne was a historic fact that involves much misunderstanding and biased views. I'm not an expert, but the facts around that dramatic situation are controversial."[130][131][132] When the interviewer asked her whether Poles had killed their Jewish neighbors, Zalewska described that as one viewpoint and said other researchers had reached other conclusions about what had happened in Jedwabne. She also described Gross' research as biased and untruthful.[130][132] In a radio interview two months later, she said that Poles shared responsibility for the massacre, while adding that the country was under Nazi German occupation and that the continuity Polish resistance state punished the murder of Jews.[132]

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 Prof. Tomasz Strzembosz (31 March 2001). "A different picture of neighbors" ["Inny obraz sąsiadów"]. Rzeczpospolita. no. 77. Translation: "A separate problem concerns the townsmen who had been named during the interrogations conducted by the Security Office [UB] functionaries. That is because, on this point, the statements were all retracted in court as having been obtained through torture." Polish-language original text: "Osobnym problemem są mieszkańcy miasteczka wymieniani podczas zeznań składanych na ręce funkcjonariuszy Urzędu Bezpieczeństwa. A to z tego powodu, że zeznania te, właśnie w tym punkcie, były gremialnie odwoływane na sali sądowej jako wymuszone torturami.". Archived from the original on June 10, 2001. Retrieved May 18, 2015 – via Internet Archive.
  2. 1 2 P.A.I.C., The Jedwabne Tragedy. Archived 2012-07-16 at the Wayback Machine. Polish Academic Information Center, University of Buffalo, 2000.
  3. 1 2 3 "Pogrom in Jedwabne: Course of Events, Polin Museum, 09 July 2016; accessed 2 April 2018
  4. ↑ "Pogroms", Holocaust Encyclopedia, US Holocaust Memorial Museum
  5. ↑ The Neighbors Respond: The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland edited by Antony Polonsky, Joanna B. Michlic p.338
  6. ↑ [archive.is/vw1if IPN (2002), Końcowe ustalenia śledztwa w sprawie zabójstwa obywateli polskich narodowości żydowskiej w Jedwabnem w dniu 10 lipca 1941 r.]
  7. 1 2 Contested memories By Joshua D. Zimmerman, Rutgers University Press - Publisher; page 67-68
  8. ↑ Antisemitism By Richard S. Levy, ABC-CLIO - Publisher; page 366
  9. 1 2 3 4 Alexander B. Rossino, Polish 'Neighbors' and German Invaders: Contextualizing Anti-Jewish Violence in the Białystok District during the Opening Weeks of Operation Barbarossa, Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, Volume 16 (2003). Internet Archive. Referenced citations: #58. The Partisan: From the Valley of Death to Mount Zion by Yitzhak Arad; #59. The Lesser of Two Evils: Eastern European Jewry under Soviet Rule, 1939-1941 by Dov Levin; and #97. Abschlussbericht, 17 March 1964 in ZStL, 5 AR-Z 13/62, p. 164.
  10. ↑ "Jedwabne Postanowienie"
  11. ↑
  12. 1 2 http://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/Jedwabne/Yedwabne.html Jedwabne Yizkor book, published in Jerusalem in 1980.
  13. ↑ , YIVO Encyclopedia
  14. ↑ Gross, Jan T. (2001), Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, p. 18
  15. 1 2 Gross (2001), Neighbors, p. 19
  16. ↑ https://www.newhistorian.com/conspiracy-anti-semitism-lead-bialystok-pogrom/6641/
  17. ↑ Kitchen, Martin (1990). A World in Flames: A Short History of the Second World War. Longman. p. 74. ISBN 0-582-03408-6. The joint invasion of Poland was celebrated with a parade by the Wehrmacht and the Red Army in Brest Litovsk
  18. ↑ Raack, Richard (1995). Stalin's Drive to the West, 1938-1945. Stanford University Press. p. 58. ISBN 0-8047-2415-6. The generals of the two invading armies went over the details of the prearranged line that would mark the two zones of conquest for Germany and Soviet Russia, subsequently to be rearranged one more time in Moscow. The military parade that followed was recorded by Nazi cameras and celebrated in the German newsreel: German and Soviet generals cheek by jowl in military homage to each other's armies and victories.
  19. ↑
  20. 1 2 Tec, Nechama (1993). Defiance: The Bielski Partisans. Oxford University Press US. ISBN 0-19-509390-9.
  21. ↑ Holc, Janine P., "Working through Jan Gross's 'Neighbors'", Slavic Review Vol. 61, No. 3 (Autumn, 2002), p. 454
  22. ↑ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/11/19/jedwabne-even-worse-we-thought/
  23. ↑ Bikont, Anna (2015). The crime and the silence : confronting the massacre of Jews in wartime Jedwabne. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 0-374-17879-8. OCLC 899949605.
  24. ↑ Barkan, Elazar; Cole, Elizabeth A.; Struve, Kai (2007). Shared History, Divided Memory: Jews and Others in Soviet-occupied Poland, 1939–1941. Leipziger Universitätsverlag. pp. 136, 151. ISBN 3865832407. 'Opaskowcy' were called such for the red armbands they wore.[p.151]
  25. ↑ Bikont, Anna (2015-09-15). The Crime and the Silence: Confronting the Massacre of Jews in Wartime Jedwabne. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780374710323.
  26. ↑ Strzembosz, Tomasz (2002). Translated by Jerzy Michałowicz. "Thoughts on Professors Gutman's Diary" (PDF). Yad Vashem Studies. Shoah Resource Center. XXX: 7–20. PDF file, direct download. The localities in question include: Grodno, Skidel (see the Skidel revolt), Jeziory, Łunna, Wiercieliszki, Wielka Brzostowica, Ostryna, Dubna, Dereczyn, Zelwa, Motol, Wołpa, Janów Poleski, Wołkowysk, and Drohiczyn Poleski.
  27. 1 2 3 4 5 "The 90th session of the Senate of the Republic of Poland. Stenograph, part 2.2" (in Polish). 2008-04-23. Report by Leon Kieres, President of the Institute of National Remembrance, for the period from July 1, 2000 to June 30, 2001. Donald Tusk presiding. Following his detailed Report of the Jedwabne Investigation, Leon Kieres responds to questions from the Senate. Statement by Senator Jadwiga Stokarska (translation): "With the Soviet arrival, Poles were laid off immediately, and all administrative offices, including municipal, were staffed by Jews who were also handed out weapons and formed the local militia. Many joined the NKVD, the Komsomol and the Bolshevik Party, compiled the list of Poles to be sent to Siberia, and performed their deportations directly." Original: "Po wejściu Rosjan natychmiast z urzędów zwolniono Polaków i wszystkie urzędy, łącznie z miejskim, obsadzili Żydzi. Otrzymali oni od Rosjan broń i utworzyli miejscową milicję. Sporo młodych Żydów wstąpiło do NKWD, do Komsomołu, do partii bolszewickiej. W Jedwabnem Żydzi utworzyli listę Polaków do wywózki na Sybir i bezpośrednio ją nadzorowali." – via Internet Archive.
  28. ↑ Alexander B. Rossino, Polish 'Neighbors' and German Invaders: Contextualizing Anti-Jewish Violence in the Białystok District during the Opening Weeks of Operation Barbarossa, Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, Volume 16 (2003). See citation #43: Michal Gnatowski, "W radzieckich okowach: studium o agresji 17 wrzesnia 1939 r. i radzieckiej polityce w regionie Łomzynskim w latach 1939-1941" (Łomza: Łomzynskie Tow. Nauk. im. Wagów, 1997), p. 115. Among the 22,353 deportees, were families from around Białystok, Jedwabne, Łomża and Wizna.
  29. ↑ Pogonowski, Iwo Cyprian (June 8, 2002). Jedwabne: The Politics of Apology and Contrition. Panel Jedwabne – A Scientific Analysis. Georgetown University, Washington DC: Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America.
  30. ↑ Sanford, p. 23; (in Polish) Olszyna-Wilczyński Józef Konstanty, Encyklopedia PWN. Retrieved 14 November 2006.
  31. 1 2 Prof. Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski, "Jedwabne: The Politics of Apology", presented at the Panel Jedwabne – A Scientific Analysis, Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America, Inc., June 8, 2002, Georgetown University, Washington DC.
  32. ↑ Jerzy Lukowski, Hubert Zawadzki, A Concise History of Poland, page 261.
  33. ↑ Christopher R. Browning, Jürgen Matthäus, The Origins of the Final Solution, page 262. Publisher University of Nebraska Press, 2007. ISBN 0-8032-5979-4
  34. ↑ June 29, 1941, Warsaw - Order No.1 of Reinhard Heydrich to the Einsatzgruppen Commanders on "Self-Cleansing" Operations and the Role to be Played in the Same by German Military and Police Forces (excerpts), "Inferno of Choices," p. 21 PDF file, direct download.
  35. ↑ Michael C. Steinlauf. Bondage to the Dead. Syracuse University Press, p. 30.
  36. ↑ Paweł Machcewicz, "Płomienie nienawiści", Polityka 43 (2373), October 26, 2002, p. 71-73 The Findings
  37. ↑ Machcewicz, Paweł; Persak, Krzysztof; Polskiemu, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej--Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi (2002). Wokół Jedwabnego [Around Jedwabne] (in Polish). Instytut Pamięci Narodowej. pp. 44–45. ISBN 9788389078087.
  38. ↑ Marci Shore, "Conversing with Ghosts: Jedwabne, Zydokomuna, and Totalitarianism", Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Volume 6, Number 2, Spring 2005 (New Series) pp. 345-374, via Project MUSE
  39. ↑ The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CAMPS AND GHETTOS, 1933–1945, Geoffrey P. Megargee, Martin Dean, and Mel Hecker, Volume II, part A, page 900,
  40. 1 2 3 4 5 Antony Polonsky, Joanna B. Michlic. The Neighbors Respond: The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland (Przednia okładka), Princeton University Press, 2009.
  41. ↑ Gross (2001), Neighbors, p. 75.
  42. ↑ Maik, Michael; Ben-Dov, Avigdor; Ben-Dov, Laia (2004). Deliverance: the diary of Michael Maik : a true story. Avigdor and Laia Ben-Dov. pp. 38–39. ISBN 9789659070107.
  43. ↑ Yitzchak Ivri, ed., Book of Kehilat Ostrolenka: Yizkor Book of the Jewish Community of Ostrolenka, Tel Aviv, Irgun Yotzei Ostrolenka in Israel, 2009, p. 384.
  44. ↑ Zissman, Harold (2005). The Warriors: My Life As A Jewish Soviet Partisan. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 9780815608394.
  45. ↑ IPN Communiqué. Final findings. "Postanowienie o umorzeniu sledztwa" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on November 14, 2012. Retrieved 2012-11-14. . Facsimile of the original document in full. Institute of National Remembrance, June 30, 2001. PDF file, direct download 25.4 MB. (in Polish)
  46. ↑ Gross, Neighbors p. 17-18 (Polish edition)
  47. ↑ Chodakiewicz, Marek Jan (2005). The Massacre in Jedwabne, July 10, 1941: Before, During, After. East European Monographs. p. 88. ISBN 9780880335546.
  48. ↑ http://www.thenews.pl/1/9/Artykul/59542,Woman-who-helped-Jedwabne-Jews-dies
  49. ↑ Joanna Michlic, Coming to Terms with the Dark Past: The Polish Debate about the Jedwabne Massacre (Analysis of Current Trends in Antisemitism), Jerusalem, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2002.
  50. ↑ "Righteous Among Nations", Yad Vashem database
  51. ↑ "Woman who helped Jedwabne Jews dies", The News, Radio Poland, 12 February 2011; accessed 2 April 2018
  52. ↑ , Marucha blog
  53. ↑ https://muse.jhu.edu/article/183717/summary
  54. ↑ Bohdan Poręba, "Jedwabne - ostatni świadek" (The Last Witness). Interview with Jerzy Laudański (son of Czesław Laudański of Jedwabne), TV documentary directed by Bohdan Poręba. 1:07:00 (Polish). on YouTube
  55. ↑ Michlic, Polonsky, ibidem. "Memories and Methodologies," page 306.
  56. ↑ Paweł Machcewicz, professor of history at the Warsaw University, Wokół Jedwabnego, 2002; see: excerpt in "The Jedwabne Case" ABSTRACTS, translated by Christina Manetti, Institute of National Remembrance, Poland
  57. ↑ Alexander B. Rossino, historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. (2003). "Polish 'Neighbors' and German Invaders: Contextualizing Anti-Jewish Violence in the Białystok District during the Opening Weeks of Operation Barbarossa". Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry. 16. Archived from the original on February 22, 2014. Cited by Bogdan Musial in: "Konterrevolutionäre Elemente sind zu erschiessen": Die Brutalisierung des deutsch-sowjetischen Krieges im Sommer 1941, (Berlin: Propyläen, 2000), pp. 32, 62.
  58. ↑ Piotr Wróbel (2006). Polish-Jewish Relations. Dagmar Herzog: Lessons and Legacies: The Holocaust in international perspective. Northwestern University Press. pp. 391–396. ISBN 0-8101-2370-3. Retrieved May 10, 2011.
  59. 1 2 Michlic, Joanna. Coming to Terms with the Dark Past: The Polish Debate about the Jedwabne Massacre (Analysis of Current Trends in Antisemitism). Jerusalem : Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2002.
  60. ↑ Rossino, Alexander B. (2003). "Polish 'Neighbors' and German Invaders: Contextualizing Anti-Jewish Violence in the Białystok District during the Opening Weeks of Operation Barbarossa". Polin. 16. Note 97. Archived from the original on February 22, 2014. Cited in German court hearing: Vernehmung von Oberregierungsrat Graf von dem G., 2 September 1960. ZStL, 5 AR-Z 13/62, p. 11.
  61. ↑ Thomas Urban, reporter of the Süddeutsche Zeitung; Polish text: "Poszukiwany Hermann Schaper", in Rzeczpospolita, Sept 1-2, 2001
  62. 1 2 3 "Manslaughter of Jewish Inhabitants of Jedwabne." Institute of National Remembrance. Warsaw, Poland. Publication date: 18 November 2003.
  63. ↑ Gross, Jan Tomasz (2000). Sąsiedzi. Historia zagłady żydowskiego miasteczka (in Polish). Sejny: Pogranicze. ISBN 83-86872-13-6.
  64. ↑ Antony Polonsky; Joanna B. Michlic. "Chronology: December 1966" (Google books preview). The Neighbors Respond: The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland. Ibidem: Princeton University Press. p. 452. Retrieved November 10, 2012.
  65. ↑ A Response by Jan T. Gross, Slavic Review, vol. 61, no. 3 (Autumn, 2002), pp. 483-489 http://www.timeandspace.lviv.ua/files/session/Forum_on_Jan_Gross_5_149.pdf
  66. ↑ Polak, Joseph A. (Winter 2001). "Exhuming Their Neighbors: A Halakhic Inquiry" (PDF). Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought. Rabbinical Council of America. 35 (4): 23–43. Retrieved 26 May 2018.
  67. 1 2 Jedwabne postanowienie (resolution). Archived 2012-11-14 at the Wayback Machine. IPN Gov.pl PDF file, direct download.
  68. ↑ Rabbi Jacob Baker, "We Trusted Each Other" Polish Academic Information Center, University of Buffalo.
  69. ↑ IPN (July 17, 2003). "Insight Into Tragedy". The Warsaw Voice Monthly. Archived from the original (Internet Archive) on March 3, 2011.
  70. ↑ Findings of Investigation S 1/00/Zn into the Murder of Polish Citizens of Jewish Origin in the Town of Jedwabne on 10 July 1941, pursuant to Article 1 Point 1 of the Decree of 31 August 1944. In: Antony Polonsky & Joanna B. Michlic, eds. The Neighbors Respond: The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland. Princeton University Press, 2003.
  71. ↑ Antony Polonsky and Joanna B. Michlic, The Neighbors Respond: The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-691-11306-8, p. 134.
  72. 1 2 3 The neighbors respond: the controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland By Antony Polonsky, Joanna B. Michlic. Page 134 Princeton University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-691-11306-8
  73. ↑ Polonsky and Michlic, The Neighbors Respond, 2004
  74. ↑ Paweł Machcewicz, Krzysztof Persak, Wokół Jedwabnego, vol. 1: Studia (525 pp.); vol. 2: Dokumenty (1,034 pp.), Warsaw, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej – Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2002. See: Google bibliogroup. ISBN 8389078082.
  75. 1 2 3 4 Michlic (2002) Coming to Terms with the Dark Past
  76. ↑ Elżbieta Południk, Andrzej Kaczyński, Wyniki śledztwa w sprawie Jedwabnego - Jednak sąsiedzi, Rzeczpospolita, 10 June 2002
  77. 1 2 Jędrysik Miłada (2006-07-09). "Jedwabne i "Strach"". Gazeta Wyborcza. Retrieved January 1, 2012.
  78. ↑ IPN (June 30, 2003). "A communiqué regarding the decision to end the investigation of the murder of Polish citizens of Jewish nationality in Jedwabne on 10 July 1941" [Komunikat dot. postanowienia o umorzeniu śledztwa w sprawie zabójstwa obywateli polskich narodowości żydowskiej w Jedwabnem w dniu 10 lipca 1941 r.]. Instytut Pamięci Narodowej IPN, ul. Towarowa 28, 00-839 (in Polish). Warsaw. Archived from the original on June 20, 2013.
  79. ↑ IPN. "Judgement to End Investigation (complete text)" [Postanowienie o umorzeniu śledztwa] (PDF). Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Oddziałowa Komisja SZpNP, Białystok (in Polish) – via PDF direct download, scanned from the IPN original; 203 pages. Investigation closed due to perpetrators unknown (wobec niewykrycia sprawców czynu).
  80. ↑ Białous, Adam (July 11–12, 2009). "Agent Gestapo inspirował pogromy w 1941 r. w okolicach Łomży". Nasz Dziennik.
  81. ↑ Agnieszka Arnold documentary filmmaker, Wilma Theater
  82. ↑ Two Barns (English version) on vimeo
  83. ↑ Elazar Barkan; Elizabeth A. Cole; Kai Struve (2007). "Shared History - Divided Memory. Jews and Others in Soviet-Occupied Poland, 1939-1941" (PDF direct download, 796 KB). Leipziger Beitrage zur Judischen Geschichte und Kultur. Leipzig: Simon - Dubnow - Institut. p. 8. Retrieved November 9, 2012.
  84. ↑ Sylvie Kauffmann (19 December 2002). "Poland faces up to the horror of its own role in the Holocaust | Education". London: The Guardian. Retrieved 2011-10-07.
  85. 1 2 Bogdan Musial, "The Pogrom in Jedwabne: Critical Remarks about Jan T. Gross' Neighbors", pp. 304-343; in Michlic and Polonsky, The Neighbors Respond (ibidem).
  86. ↑ The Neighbors Respond: The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland, Antony Polonsky & Joanna Michlic, Princeton University Press, page 53
  87. ↑ The Testimony of Szmul Wasersztein, one of the seven Jewish survivors, about the murder of the Jews in Jedwabne, 5 April 1945, Yad Vashem
  88. ↑ My Father's Wars: Migration, Memory, and the Violence of a Century, Routledge, 2014, Alisse Waterston, pages 85-87
  89. ↑ Joanna Michlic, Antony Polonsky, The Neighbors Respond. Princeton University Press – Publisher. Chapter: Official Statements, page 135, and Bogdan Musial, in "Memories and Methodologies," page 334.
  90. ↑ Tomasz Strzembosz, 'Jedwabne 1941,' http://www.antyk.org.pl/ojczyzna/jedwabne/strzembosz.htm
  91. ↑ Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, 'Research Before Conclusion: The Problems of Shock Therapy in Jedwabne,' http://glaukopis.pl/pdf/czytelnia/ResearchBeforeConclusion.pdf
  92. ↑ Alexander B. Rossino, "Polish 'Neighbors' and German Invaders: Contextualizing Anti-Jewish Violence in the Białystok District during the Opening Weeks of Operation Barbarossa"; Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, Volume 16 (2003).
  93. ↑ http://www.warsawvoice.pl/WVpage/pages/articlePrint.php/361/article
  94. ↑ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-229X.2008.00415.x/epdf?r3_referer=wol&tracking_action=preview_click&show_checkout=1&purchase_site_license=LICENSE_DENIED
  95. 1 2 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
  96. ↑ Chodakiewicz, Marek. "The Massacre in Jedwabne". Retrieved 2018-05-20.
  97. ↑ Marshall Poe (November 8, 2012). "Marek Jan Chodakiewicz: The Massacre in Jedwabne, July 10, 1941: Before, During, After, Columbia University Press, 2005". Interview with Marek Jan Chodakiewicz. New Books in History. Retrieved November 9, 2012.
  98. ↑ Marek Jan Chodakiewicz (2005). The massacre in Jedwabne, July 10, 1941: Before, During, After. University of Michigan: East European Monographs. ISBN 0880335548. Retrieved November 9, 2012.
  99. ↑ http://www.aapjstudies.org/index.php?id=100
  100. ↑ Piotr Wróbel, "The Massacre in Jedwabne, July 10, 1941: Before, During, and After", The Sarmatian Review, 26.3 (2006), pp. 1238-1241.
  101. ↑ Polonsky, Antony; Michlik, Joanna (January 2008). "Letter to the Editor". History. 93 (309): 154–158. doi:10.1111/j.1468-229x.2008.00415.x.
  102. ↑ Professor Peter D. Stachura (February 6, 2008). "Jedwabne: A reply to Antony Polonsky & Joanna Michlic" (PDF direct download, 69.8 KB). Review of Professor Marek Jan Chodakiewicz's monograph, The Massacre in Jedwabne, July 10, 1941: Before, During, and After (East European Monographs, Boulder, CO.; distributed by Columbia University Press, New York, 2005). New York: The Centre for Research in Polish History, University of Stirling. Retrieved November 9, 2012.
  103. ↑ List of articles on Jedwabne compiled by Rzeczpospolita, 2012
  104. ↑ Thou Shalt Not Kill: Poles on Jedwabne.
  105. ↑ "President Kwasniecki's Speech at the Jedwabne Ceremony". Radzilow.com. Retrieved 2011-10-07.
  106. ↑ Kate Connolly in Berlin (11 July 2001). "Poland says sorry for slaughter of Jews | World news". London: The Guardian. Retrieved 2011-10-07.
  107. ↑ "President Kwasniewski's Speech at the Jedwabne Ceremony". Dialog.org. Retrieved 2011-10-07.
  108. ↑ http://www.polish-jewish-heritage.org/eng/jedwabne.htm
  109. ↑ Wiemy i potępiamy (We know, and we condemn). Republic of Poland. Archives.
  110. 1 2 https://web.archive.org/web/20120524200234/https://www.ajc.org/site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx?c=ijITI2PHKoG&b=846743&ct=1093355
  111. 1 2 Alvin H. Rosenfeld, 'Facing Jedwabne.' American Jewish Committee. Retrieved November 8, 2012.
  112. ↑ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/jedwabne-mayor-resigns-over-memorial-to-jews/article4150944/
  113. ↑ http://www.polish-jewish-heritage.org/eng/listopad_former_mayor.html
  114. ↑ Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski, "Prawda o Jedwabnem" (The Truth about Jedwabne) on YouTube. In Polish. Recorded in 2008. 44:46 minutes. Fundacja Lux Veritatis.
  115. ↑ "David Miliband's insult to Michal Kaminski is contemptible | The Jewish Chronicle". Thejc.com. Retrieved 2011-10-07.
  116. ↑ "Analysis: Kaminski is our friend – this is a smear campaign | The Jewish Chronicle". Thejc.com. 2010-11-08. Retrieved 2011-10-07.
  117. ↑ Accusing Euro-sceptics of anti-Semitism is the most shameful tactic yet by Daniel Hannan On Daily Telegraph website
  118. ↑ Nathan, John. "Our Class and the bloody history of Poland that refuses to die", The Times, September 11, 2009.
  119. ↑ Cavendish, Dominic. "Is Our Class at the National Theatre really such a reliable history lesson?", The Daily Telegraph, November 9, 2009.
  120. ↑ "Poland asks Jews for forgiveness on 70th anniversary of Yedvabne massacre". Haaretz. 2011-07-11. Retrieved 2011-07-11.
  121. ↑ "Poland's president asks for forgiveness at Jedwabne memorial". JTA. 2011-07-11. Retrieved 2011-07-11.
  122. 1 2 Andrusz, Katya (2 September 2011). "Polish President Condemns Vandalism of Jewish Massacre Memorial". Bloomberg. Retrieved 2011-10-07.
  123. ↑ "Vandal defaced monument". Los Angeles: JewishJournal.com. September 1, 2011.
  124. ↑ Rp.pl. "ABW szuka wandali, którzy zniszczyli pomnik w Jedwabnem". rp.pl. Retrieved 2011-10-07.
  125. ↑ "Pomnik w Jedwabnem i usuwanie zniszczeń (Memorial in Jedwabne, cleaning of damage)". DEON.pl after Polska Agencja Prasowa. 1 September 2011. Retrieved September 2, 2011.
  126. ↑ JTA, 'Memorial to Jedwabne pogrom vandalized,' 2011-09-01.
  127. 1 2 3 Greg Wasniewski, TV Niezalezna Polonia (September 21, 2013), Jedwabne: a Witness of History. Interview with Hieronima Wilczewska. on YouTube Canadian-Polish Independent TV. Ottawa, Ontario. Canada. [Also in:] Wacław Kujbida (September 2013), Jedwabne – Świadek historii at TVNiezaleznaPolonia.org Ottawa.
  128. 1 2 3 Waclaw Kujbida (September 21, 2013). "Jedwabne – Witness to History Ms Hieronima Wilczewska" [JEDWABNE – ŚWIADEK HISTORII pani Hieronima Wilczewska]. Polish Club Online. Ottawa.
  129. ↑ Michał Lange (8 February 2018). "Jedwabne, czyli kolejne kłamstwo historyczne. "Czaputowicz skompromitowany!"". GazetaBaltycka.pl. Gestapo zaciągnęło wszystkich Żydów do stodoły, następnie niemieccy żołnierze oblali stodołę benzyną i miotaczami ognia podpalili. Całość błyskawicznie zajęła się ogniem – mówi Hieronima Wilczewska – naoczny świadek niemieckiej zbrodni w Jedwabnem.
  130. 1 2 Aderet, Ofer (17 July 2016). "Two Senior Polish Ministers Deny Poles' Involvement in Massacres of Jews". Haaretz. Retrieved 30 December 2017.
  131. ↑ Gera, Vanessa (14 July 2016). "Polish education minister says massacres of Jews an 'opinion'". The Times of Israel. Retrieved 1 January 2018.
  132. 1 2 3 "Minister zmieniła zdanie. 'Polacy współodpowiedzialni za pogrom w Jedwabnem'" [The minister changed her mind. 'Poles are jointly responsible for the pogrom in Jedwabne']. Wprost. 7 September 2017. Retrieved 1 January 2018.

References

  • Bikont, Anna. (2015). The Crime and the Silence. Confronting the Massacre of Jews in Wartime Jedwabne. New York. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
  • 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. https://www.iwp.edu/news_publications/book/the-massacre-in-jedwabne
  • 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 83-86872-48-9.
  • Materski, Wojciech; Szarota, Tomasz (2009). Poland 1939–1945. Casualties and the Victims of Repressions under the Nazi and the Soviet Occupations [Polska 1939–1945. Straty osobowe i ofiary represji pod dwiema okupacjami]. (excerpts online). Institute of National Remembrance (IPN). Hardcover, 353 pages. ISBN 978-83-7629-067-6. With a Foreword by Janusz Kurtyka (IPN); and expert contributions by Waldemar Grabowski, Franciszek Piper, and Andrzej Krzysztof Kunert.
  • 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
  • Shore, Marcia. (2005). "Conversing with Ghosts, Jedwabne, Źydokomuna, and Totalitarianism", in: Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 6, No. 2, pp. 345–374
  • Stola, Dariusz. (2003). "Jedwabne: Revisiting the Evidence and Nature of the Crime". Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 17 (1):139–152.
  • Weinbaum, Laurence.(2002) Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Penitence and Prejudice: The Roman Catholic Church and Jedwabne Jewish Political Studies Review 14:3-4. Fall 2002.

Further reading

  • Grünberg, S. (2005). The Legacy of Jedwabne. Spencer, NY: LogTV, LTD.
  • Zimmerman, J. D. (2003). Contested memories: Poles and Jews during the Holocaust and its aftermath. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. ISBN 0-8135-3158-6
  • Thou Shalt Not Kill. Poles on Jedwabne, Więź.

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