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 executed by non-Jewish Poles and "Volksdeutsche" in the area. Whether and how far the occupying German forces were involved remains the subject of dispute among historians.

1 The massacre
2 Controversy and investigation
3 References
4 External links

[edit] 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, a number of 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.

[edit] 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 ^[1] by Polish-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 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, 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 [1].

Following an intensive investigation 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 they had not witnessed Germans in the town at that time. As contemporary 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. The IPN concludes that the crime in a broader sense (concerning the initiative) must be ascribed to the Germans, whilst in a stricter sense (concerning the atrocities) to non-Jewish Poles, estimated at about 40 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 [2]. 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.

[edit] References

^ Gross, Jan Tomasz (2001). "Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland". Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-14-200240-2.

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 0-691-11306-8.
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.