The Massacre in Jedwabne
(Summer 1941)
After being controlled by Russia for two years, Jedwabne,
a small town in northeastern Poland,
was captured by Germany on June 22, 1941. One of the first questions
the Poles asked the Nazis, their new rulers, was if it was permitted
to kill the Jews.
Brutal killings by the Poles immediately began, and
included a Jew stoned to death with bricks as well as a Jew slashed
with a knife, his eyes and tongue cut out. According to Jan Gross's
book, Neighbors:
The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland,
the Nazis tried to persuade the Poles to keep at least one Jewish
family from each profession, but the Poles responded, "We have
enough of our own craftsmen, we have to destroy all the Jews, none
should stay alive."
Gross writes that Jedwabne's mayor agreed to help facilitate
a massacre and that Poles from local villages came in to watch and
celebrate the event as a holiday. About half the men of Jedwabne's
1,600 Catholic community participated in torturing Jedwabne's 1,600
member Jewish community, corralling them into a barn, which was then
set ablaze.
Until recently, a stone memorial in Jedwabne blamed
the massacre on Nazi and Gestapo soldiers, but Gross's book uncovered that the mass execution was actually
performed by locals, who, for decades, had shifted the blame away
from themselves. Since Neighbors publication, Poland has been
engaged in a nationwide debate over whether or not to accept blame
for the atrocities Poles committed against the Jews during the Holocaust,
or to continue to pass them onto the Nazis
Sixty years after the massacre, on July 10, 2001, about
three thousand people helped Poland's president, prime minister, local
officials, Jewish leaders and relatives of the murdered commemorate
the deceased by unveiling a monument at the site of the slaughter.
"This was a particularly cruel crime. It was justified by nothing.
The victims were helpless and defenseless," President Aleksander
Kwasniewski said in an apology long awaited by the international Jewish
community. "For this crime, we should beg the souls of the dead
and their families for forgiveness. This is why today, as a citizen
and as president of the Republic of Poland, I apologize."
The monument now reads, "In memory of the Jews of Jedwabne and
surrounding areas, men, women, and children, fellow-dwellers of this
land, murdered and burned alive at this site on 10 July 1941."
Although the new monument does not blame the Nazis, some are angered
that it does not specifically mention the Poles.
Sources: JTA; New York Times (July 10, 2001); Newsweek (July 10, 2001); Gilbert, Martin The
Holocaust. Henry, Holt and Co. 1985. |