The publication of Jan Błoński's groundbreaking essay "Poor Poles Look at the
Ghetto," in Tygodnik Powszechny in 1987, brought to an end the long period of
silence on the subject of the attitudes of the Poles toward the Jews during World War Two.
At the same time, a hollow, tedious credo about the Holocaust crumbled. This credo had
been endlessly repeated by the communist regime, was not based on the analysis of
research, and failed to shock public awareness in the way that public awareness in the
West had been shocked by the disclosure of the truth about those times.
Błoński wrote about the shared guilt falling upon the countries and peoples of Europe,
stressing that this guilt should be expressed with particular force in Poland, a country
in which so many Jews had lived for so many centuries. He touched upon painful truths
without hesitation, but he also expressed relief that the worst evil had passed Poland by:
"When one reads what people wrote about the Jews before the war, how much hatred
there was in Polish society, one often wonders how it is that words were never followed by
deeds. Well, they were not (or were seldom) followed by deeds. God stayed our hands. Yes,
God, because if we did not take part in this crime, it is because we were still somewhat
Christian, and realized at the very last moment what a satanic venture this was."
That is what Błoński thought, and that is also what many friends of Poland thought until
recently. In the light of the Jedwabne massacre, one can no longer claim that genocide was
alien to the Poles during the Holocaust.
We know full well that the horror of the Nazi occupation in Poland did not root out
anti-Semitism, and that anti-Semitism also did not disappear during the Holocaust, or even
later. The plague of szmalcownicy ,
evil-minded bounty hunters who sought out Jews hiding among the Poles, is a case at hand.
The underground publications churned out by nationalists of all stripes did not shy away
from anti-Jewish accents and anti-Semitic prejudices. Here and there, armed groups
"liquidated Jewish bandits" or, in truth, murdered scattered remnants of Jewish
groups seeking shelter in the woods.
Nor can one gloss over the depravity which Kazimierz Wyka attributed to certain social
segments in his collection of essays entitled Życie na niby [A Pretense of Life]:
".the economic-moral standpoint of the average Pole toward the tragedy of the Jews
boils down to this: The Germans committed an atrocity by murdering the Jews. We would
never do such a thing. For this atrocity the Germans will be punished, they have stained
their consciences, but we-we have nothing but advantages today, and in future, too, we
will have nothing but advantages, not having burdened our consciences or stained our hands
with blood." But such opinions were rare. Generally, within the framework of a
consensus adopted by people of good will in and outside Poland, it was said that the only
glaring sins against our neighbors were sporadic excesses committed by crazed
hooligans or incurable fanatics who were morally lost in an inhuman reality. It was
thought that the majority, or the overwhelming majority, of Poles, suffering under and
paralyzed by brutal terror, were wrapped up in their own fears and worries.
Jedwabne clearly goes far beyond the pattern of universal indifference or marginal deviation. This is the murder of a major part of the inhabitants of an impoverished town by their compatriots and neighbors, with whom the victims had lived for generations. These people knew each other's names and faces, they knew their neighbors' parents and children, had worked together in order to survive the difficult times and, just as in other towns, had visited each other at family celebrations and festivities. This massacre - committed only because the victims were Jews-is an unheard of, incomprehensible atrocity. The tools and the methods by which mass murder was committed against defenseless people, completely at the mercy of their tormentors, illustrate an incredible breakdown of humanity.
Prof. Tomasz Szarota, the author of one of the publications in this collection, says in
the interview with Jacek Żakowski: "These unquestionable facts are so shattering
that they force even me, a historian who has read much and written a good deal about
various instances of disgraceful behavior by Poles under German occupation, to come to
completely new conclusions . . . Through his publications, Gross has forced us to change
our views on the subject of the attitudes of the Poles during the Second World War, and
that is an unquestionable service." Another author, Zdzisław Krasnodębski, asks why
Jan T. Gross's book Neighbors "affects the Polish reader to the core when, for
example, Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men. Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the
Final Solution in Poland, which is also set in Poland . . . can be read with much more
distance. The answer is simple. Neighbors invokes the national identity of the
reader."
Such an approach is justified, but it offers only a partial explanation of the matter. I
have never agreed with Browning's claim that the perpetrators of this crime were
"ordinary men." The uniformed Germans who murdered women, old people and
children in "special operations" were not "ordinary men," but a
product of Nazi ideology and the Third Reich regime. Yet the murder in Jedwabne and - as
it turns out - in several other nearby towns, was committed by Poles, who were united by
their view of the Germans as the implacable foe. The Poles were not uniformed ruffians. So
how was this atrocity possible, and where did all the pent-up fury and bloodlust come
from?
The authors of a few articles, including Professor Szarota, state unequivocally that the
Poles were the murderers ("there is no denying the fact"). They suggest further
investigation into the details, and add that it is necessary to carefully establish the
influence and contribution of the Germans to this atrocity, which might diminish, if only
partly, the responsibility of the Polish inhabitants of Jedwabne.
The appointment of a commission of experts to establish a complete fundamental picture of
the events is an understandable and desirable step. But it is also necessary to check
Gross's remark that the order to exterminate the Jews was given by the Germans on July 10,
1941. Gross provides no specifics as to who gave the order or who was charged with
carrying it out, or even as to his source. The reports of witnesses and documents from the
beginning of the occupation of territories taken over in the summer of 1941 indicate that,
during "Operation Barbarossa ," the Jews
were deprived of all rights and local communities were encouraged to commit pogroms and
robberies with impunity. However, mass killings were carried out by special uniformed
German units (Einsatzgruppen), assisted by volunteers from among the local
riffraff. But Poles did not engage in such collaboration.
A question comes up as to whether the atrocity was fuelled by a desire to rob and
pillage. Our knowledge of the pogroms committed in Russia in the final decades of the 19th
century suggests that a desire to plunder led to the theft and destruction of property,
the torment of people and the rape of women-but rather not to mass murder.
The next absorbing and vexatious question is: What brought about the mass murder of Jews
in Jedwabne? No less surprising is the fact that many residents of Jedwabne took an active
part in the orgy of destruction and murder in a visible way and that, apart from one
documented case where seven Jews were saved, we know of no efforts to rescue and protect
even children. Neither do we now of any local conflict or event with inflammatory
consequences that could cause such fury and bad blood in Jedwabne.
And finally: How is it that the murder of some 1,600 people in the heart of a town, like
the "court case" now being played out, has caught us by surprise 60 years after
the event, like an unexpected archeological discovery?
Knowledge of the mass murder committed in Jedwabne is an enormous, astonishing shock to
Poles, and a shock that clashes with the national myth about the war years. The continuing
series of articles in the press, the public debates and discussions, have concentrated not
solely on Jedwabne, but also on a wide range of issues such as anti-Semitism in Poland,
Polish-Jewish relations at the time of the profound changes that occurred during and after
the turbulent war years, and the question and dimensions of the responsibility for
Jedwabne.
Generally speaking, the wide-ranging debate has been conducted in a mood of contemplation,
without any whitewashing of the truth, and with frequent expressions of contrition and
grief. The Polish people's readiness to recognize the fact that Polish history is not a
glorious chain of heroism and justice, but contains episodes of harm done to weak and
innocent people, does not signify spiritual collapse, but is a test of fortitude on the
path to a better future.
The Polish nation has traveled a long road of bondage and martyrdom. The well-worn
self-portrait of Poland has always shown the country as a victim fighting for its due
right to existence. Now is the time-and not only because of the shadow of Jedwabne-to
accept the fact that the inter-war history of independent Poland, followed by successive
chapters of its history, are tarnished with harm wrought upon its own citizens who looked
to their country for aid and understanding.
In Polish-Jewish relations, the Jews are repeatedly accused of disloyalty and of
welcoming the Red Army with demonstrative joy upon its entry into eastern Poland in
September 1939. They are also accused of occupying key posts in the Soviet
administrative-police apparatus.
These accusations are not unfounded. The arrival of the Soviets came as a great respite
and relief to local Jewish residents and refugees, because the only alternative was a Nazi
onslaught and the prospect of a threat that embraced the Jews. In the land of the Soviets,
the Jews, like everyone else, could expect the evil and cruelty of that regime, but under
the Germans the Jews could expect nothing aside from a Jewish fate. It is true that a
certain percentage of young Jews were favorably inclined toward communism, but
collaborators were to be found everywhere, among "us" and among
"others." It is true that the Jews occupied posts in Soviet offices (and it is
worth remembering that in the prewar independent Poland, posts like these, especially
toward the end of Polish independence, were barred to Jews), but young Jews-Zionists and
members of the Bund -also formed clandestine
groups in the Soviet zone, and many disappointed refugees were even prepared to return to
their town and families in the German zone. The Soviet regime was a misfortune for the
masses of religious Jews and for those engaged in "traditionally Jewish" trades.
Just like the Poles, the Jews were arrested and deported to the depths of eastern Soviet
Russia and Kazakhstan. One of the paradoxes of this war was the fact that a considerable
portion of what was left of Polish Jewry survived in exile and in Soviet camps.
So it was with no small surprise and disappointment that I read an exhaustive article by
Prof. Tomasz Strzembosz, the doyen of historians of the Polish underground, entitled:
"Covered-Up Collaboration." He claims that: "the Jewish population,
especially youths and the town-dwelling poor, staged a mass welcome for the invading
[Soviet] army and took part in introducing the new order, some with weapons in hand".
The Jewish poor with weapons. Strzembosz's rumors and generalized accusations, which he
lays on thick, are the products of fantasy and are not worth discussing. Although he does
not say so clearly, these words suggest a certain tit for tat approach to Jedwabne - you
hurt us, so now we'll hurt you!
It is difficult to hold a conversation when we keep returning to "the Jews, all
Jews," to a stereotype of hostility, and when we keep imitating the Bourbons in
"never forgetting anything and never learning anything." Those who are pained by
the memories of the misfortune, and there are many of them in Poland, pay a high price for
the publication, here or there, of someone's defamatory comparisons. And, as
usual-well-worn stereotypes, difficult to dispense with, give rise to diametrically
opposed stereotypes.
I believe that the sources of the disasters, the savagery, and the annihilation of the
Jews were the Nazi style of racism, brutal German aggression, and the inhuman occupation
regime. This is best expressed by Paul Celan in his poem "Fugue of Death ": "Der
Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland" [Death is a master from Germany].
Are the Poles a nation of incorrigible anti-Semites? I have never thought so or believed
so. I think that such a sweeping statement itself bears something of the plague of
anti-Semitism. It is true that anti-Semitism has embedded itself deeply among Poles over
the past few generations, that it existed during the war and occupation, and that it made
itself sharply felt after the war. It was expressed in the Kielce pogrom and the wave of
killings in the 1940s, and in the expulsion of Jews in 1968 -1969, the result of
squabbling between Communist party factions.
At the same time, a relatively large number of Poles occupy an honorable place among the
Righteous among Nations for helping hunted Jews at the risk, and sometimes with the loss,
of their lives and the lives of their families. They did so selflessly, for people whom
they did not know, and lived in constant fear and in ceaseless effort. Their fate-even the
fate of those not discovered by the Germans-was colored with tragedy. There is no doubt
that the task of rescuing Jews was more difficult and dangerous in Poland than anywhere
else.
Nor do I think that the institutions representing the Polish people during the
occupation-the government-in-exile in London and the underground Home Army in Poland-are
responsible for atrocities against the Jews, even if they did little to alleviate Jewish
misery.
So is no one responsible for the massacre in Jedwabne? A lot has been said about
individual responsibility or limited local responsibility, and various aspects of
responsibility and guilt have been examined in detail. It has also been said that
responsibility for the sins of a small, remote town do not weigh on the nation and its
future generations.
I think such a manner of gauging responsibility is mistaken. There is such a thing as the
personal responsibility of the perpetrators, but that is only one side of the coin. There
is no denying that the evil force of what happened in Jedwabne was nourished by a
widespread dislike of Jews. This hostility, which reached its peak in Poland in the 1930s,
required the Jews-who had lived in Poland for centuries-to be seen as a threat to the
state, and a threat that ought to be eliminated. This anti-Semitism was not just imported
from outside, but grew on Polish soil, on Polish home ground.
The regime of lawlessness and disregard for human life imposed by the Germans provoked the
tragedy of Jedwabne, a tragedy which is but a small part of the enormous tragedy of the
Holocaust-yet it is a misfortune for the Jews and a blow to the Poles.
The settling of historical scores is primarily a lesson in the community of life and
existence. Anti-Semitism is an illness that is not easy to eradicate. After the experience
of our century, on the threshold of mankind's self-destruction, we must be on full guard
against all forms of totalitarianism, racism and anti-Semitism. Leszek Kołakowski wrote in a
brief treatise on anti-Semitism in 1956: "A necessary condition for bloody Jewish
pogroms, slaughters and atrocities has always been a social atmosphere of emotional
tolerance of anti-Semitism, even in its mildest, watered-down form. Wherever atrocities
occurred, the system of discrimination and suspicion, even if apparently harmless, always
gathered reserves of destructive social energy beforehand which nourished and bred
criminals."
The world we live in now-and it will never be perfect-is engaged in a struggle for the
freedom of the individual, nations and social strata. In this struggle, it is also our
task to try to shape and educate human beings whose consciousness is an independent store
of memory and knowledge, and an independent signpost to the future.