"Misfortune came to the man
like a wild animal
and fixed him with its eye.
Misfortune waits.
Will the man flinch?"
Cyprian Kamil Norwid
Misfortune did not come unexpectedly; it had been lingering for years, emitting ominous echoes in the form of tumults, strikes, and political trials, and then it drew strength from the wave of fascism abroad and nationalism at home.
In provincial towns such as the Jedwabne of the 1930s, with a population of almost 3,000, not many people knew anything about world affairs. Apart from the communists, to whose ranks mainly Jews were recruited, and a small number of Peasant Party supporters, the only people who had any contact with the "outside world" were the lady of the manor, the parish priest, the doctor, the mayor.. For everyone else in the town and its environs, the entire world consisted of the town itself, and the scene of the most important events was the town square.
"In the middle of the town square stood a building shaped like an airplane" is how some residents recall Jedwabne's prewar appearance. The square was paved with cobblestones, there was some grass, and around it stood Jewish-owned buildings nestling close to each other. There were numerous shops, workshops and tobacco stalls. On workdays, there was more bargaining in the shops than selling. But the seasonal fairs and market days in Jedwabne attracted farmers and merchants from outside town. On market days, there was already traffic on the roads at dawn.
On holidays, these same people, dressed in their best, separated into two groups - some went to the synagogue, and others to church. In 1935, a new brick church on the town square, was consecrated in place of the wooden one which had burned down during World War I. Inside the new church, Father S., a supporter of the "nationalists," expressed new ideas imported directly from Nazi Germany. On market days, pickets would appear in front of Jewish shops, with the slogan "Do Not Buy From Jews!" However, such slogans had no major effects because there was virtually no shops or workshops at all in the hands of Poles. There were only two small Polish "colonial" shops [selling spices, tea, tropical fruit, etc. - ed.] that somehow managed to survive. The majority of the Polish traders had gone bankrupt in the face of Jewish competition. Even among the Jews, not everyone could afford noodles with cheese and cinnamon. Others had to make do with a dish of buckwheat, onion and turnips, and received financial support from the Jewish kahał [religious community - ed.], who effectively protected them against ruin. In addition, what was in Poland an ethnic minority was in Jedwabne a majority, and in order for a Pole to be elected mayor of a Polish town, it was necessary to gerrymander three hamlets into the boundaries of the town.
Despite frequent differences of interests and mutual ill feeling, there were never any violent events or displays of hostility in Jedwabne. Only the advent of war caused a flare-up of human emotion and the elimination of two-thirds of the inhabitants. The "Jewish question" was "solved" one month before civil administration was introduced to Jedwabne. This is commemorated today by an inscription on a memorial stone opposite an old Jewish cemetery overgrown with hazel: "SITE OF THE SUFFERING OF THE JEWISH POPULATION. THE GESTAPO AND THE NAZI GENDARMERIE BURNED 1600 PEOPLE ALIVE JULY 10, 1941."
Written reports and memoirs by witnesses on the subject of the Jedwabne holocaust also remain. The memoirs are controversial - some of them are flavored with a feeling of co-responsibility, others express the enormous harm suffered, and others still are full of accusations against the Poles, such as this report by Szmul Wasersztajn written on 5 April 1945.
"On July 10, 1941, eight Gestapo came to town. They held talks with representatives of the town authorities. Asked by the Gestapo men what they intended to do with the Jews, all the municipal officials replied as one man that the Jews must be eliminated. The Germans suggested that one Jewish family representing each of the crafts should be kept alive, but the local carpenter, Bronisław S., said: 'We have our own craftsmen. We have to get rid of all the Jews.' Mayor K. and all the others agreed. It was decided that all the Jews would be gathered in one place and burnt. For this purpose, S. provided the use of his barn, situated not far from the town.
After this meeting, the massacre began. Local hooligans, armed with axes, special clubs studded with nails and other tools and instruments of torture, forced all the Jews out into the streets. They chose 75 of the youngest and healthiest males to be the first victims of their diabolical instincts, and ordered them to remove the big statue of Lenin which the Russians had put up in the town center. This statue was extremely heavy. Nevertheless the Jews, with terrible blows raining down upon them, had to comply. In addition, while carrying the statue, they were forced to sing until the statue had been brought to its appointed place. There, they were ordered to dig a hole and throw the statue into it. After this had been done, these same Jews were beaten to death and thrown into the same trench. . Older Jews had their beards singed, and infants were killed while clinging to their mothers' breasts. The Jews were beaten, murdered, forced to sing and dance, etc. Finally, the main operation - the horror of the burning - began. The whole town was surrounded by guards so that no one could get out. Then the Jews were lined up in four rows, with the rabbi, aged over 90, and the Kosher butcher at the front. They were given a red banner and marched off, singing, to the barn..."
The daughter of Bronisław ¦. claims she no longer remembers all the details of the events that took place 47 years ago, but she is sure her father did not stain his hands with Jewish blood as others say he did. "He was a town councilor before the war, and that is probably why he took part in the mayor's official turnout. But the story that he offered his barn in which to burn the Jews is utter nonsense. It's as if the Germans were asking for permission. The barn was very convenient because it stood near the Jewish cemetery and at a safe distance from other buildings. I bore no grudges against the Jews, and I don't think my father had anything against them, either. For many years we lived next door to a Jewish family of hat-makers without the slightest quarrel. I grew up with Jews, played with them. When on July 10th the Germans began to round the Jews up in the town square, allegedly in order to weed the grass growing there, my mother and I, together with two female Jewish neighbors, watched the whole thing from an upstairs window. One of them translated for us what the Germans were saying to the assembled Jews. The Germans were telling them that they were going to be moved out of Jedwabne because they were not allowed to live there. They must have already heard about the ghettoes, because they formed themselves obediently in four rows, and behaved as if they believed the whole thing. Not until the Jews were directed towards the graves did some of them begin to think that they were being sent to their deaths. Two days earlier, Jews had been burnt in Radziłów, and news of this must have reached the Jews in Jedwabne. They began to moan and wail, and in the town itself such tension arose that no one felt like doing any work, and all they could do was talk about what was going to happen to the Jews. Later, when we saw the black smoke, we knew. None of us betrayed these neighbor women. They survived the pogrom. Later they ended up in the ghetto in Łomża."
In fact, the actual people responsible for this deed, as the daughter of Bronisław ¦. claims with conviction, were the Germans. But only the Poles were punished for it, and innocent Poles at that. She herself saw how a strapping young Gestapo man went up to one of the Jewish houses. Ż. only peeked out from behind the door, but was immediately noticed by the German. "Come here, you. Go and find the Jews!" So it was actually a Pole who sought them out. Well, who would have had the courage to oppose an armed German? And yet that man died in prison after the war for what he had done.
| "Until at last death became a common possession, Edible and easily digestible like bread. We partook morsels of it, A slice blossoming with flavor but without a name, Our daily bread" Rafał Wojaczek |
Eugeniusz ¦. has no doubts about who was behind this tragedy. "It was Hitler's policy to exterminate the Jews, and he achieved his aims one way or another - by means of ghettoes or concentration camps. However, the 'Endlösung' occurred sooner in Radziłów, W±sosz and Jedwabne. The Nazis took advantage of reluctant assent and resentment among the Poles, and found a few hooligans for good measure. Although we have peace, law and order today, how much violence theft and even murder there still is. And one must remember that forty-odd years ago was a period when the law and people's characters were regularly broken, a period of killing. For some people, it was enough to be told by the Gestapo 'You are allowed to kill,' whilst others had to be told 'You have to burn the Jews.' And the price of obedience was your own life and that of your family."
Says Jan S: "K. played a not insignificant role in the pogrom. He had just been appointed mayor by the Germans, more or less at random. On July 10, as I was sweeping the road outside my property, he said to me: 'You know what? Today they're either going to burn the Jews or shoot them.' He didn't look particularly worried. A little later he repeated this news to other people. I heard shouts of joy, as if they were pleased that they were going to have fun. I went to Drozdów on business, and when I returned, all I saw was billowing black smoke...."
After the liberation, Mayor K. disappeared somewhere and was never seen again. His older children fled to Warsaw, while his wife and youngest child stayed in Jedwabne. In the mayor's absence, vengeance was wrought on her. While she lay in the street, murdered, the little one still sucked at her breast. No one looked for the perpetrators of this atrocity. Is it because this atrocity was considered more just, more noble?
The findings of historians leave no doubt about the role played by the Germans in the
murder of the Jews of Jedwabne. In his Polityka okupacyjna III Rzeszy w Okręgu
Białostockim 1941-44 [The Occupation Policy of the Third Reich in the Białystok Area
1941-44], Jan Karlikowski writes that special operation groups (Einsatzgruppen A,
B, C and D), set up by the RSHA (Reich Main Security Office), were engaged in
exterminating the Jewish and Polish population. These groups were divided into Einsatzkommandos,
and these in turn consisted of Sonderkommandos and smaller units attached to armies
and tactical formations. The Białystok region belonged to the area of operations of Einsatzgruppe
B, commanded by Arthur Nebe.
In the opinion of Waldemar Monkiewicz, chairman of the Białystok branch of the Commission for the Investigation
of Nazi Crimes, the pogrom in Jedwabne was carried out by a special police unit, the
so-called "Birkner Kommando." It consisted of some 200 ruffians, people
deprived of all scruples. They drifted from one locality to another, carrying out a new
pogrom every other day. They were capable of exploiting the tiniest element of ethnic
animosity. In Rajgród, for instance, they found a woman who said that the Jews had
murdered her son. That was enough to fan a flame of vengeance in people's hearts.
However, Waldemar Monkiewicz objects when he hears people say that the Jews of Jedwabne
were murdered by the Poles. "That can only come from the lips of people who have
no idea about the reality of those times. There was a period in 1941 when the Russians
were already retreating and the Germans had not yet arrived. The local ruffians took
advantage of this interregnum and committed robberies and settled all kinds of scores. To
prevent complete anarchy, a police force began to be formed. When the Germans arrived,
some of these people in the police resigned, whilst others resolved to collaborate with
the Germans. During the pogrom they escorted the doomed Jews, though they probably had no
idea what was going to happen to them. I don't deny that there were also a few who gave
the Jews a rough time, but they were on the margins of society, the kind that exists in
any community. In any case, these people, too, had their justifications. When the Russians
came to Jedwabne in 1939, they were ordinary invaders to the Poles, but most of the Jews
immediately took the side of the Soviet authorities. They had no scruples about swapping
their Polish eagles for Russian stars, and willingly attended meetings. Anti-Semitic moods
also rose for certain just before the arrival of the Germans, when people who had been
denounced by Jews returned after serving time in the prison at Łomża."
Many residents of Jedwabne also believe that the Jews themselves brought the "lash
of God" down on their own backs. "They were Polish citizens, but they never
felt Polish," says Jan Czesław S. "I remember how pleased they were when the
Poles passed eastwards through this area in 1920.
They said 'Our men are heading for Wilno!' Later, when the Russians were advancing on
Warsaw, they said: 'Our men are coming!' But after the 'miracle on the Vistula' came
crowding around, joyfully saying, 'It's God's will, our men are coming back.' Ethnic
discord flared up between the wars. The Jews acquired strength and significance. Under the
Russians, the Jews developed a fighting spirit. Some of them sensed that blind obedience
would turn against them one day. Kuropatwina once told me: 'My Pesa and Chaja are happy,
but I know the old prophecy: our death is nigh.' I remember how the Russians loaded the
Poles onto carriages to be taken to Siberia. On top of each carriage was a Jew armed with
a rifle. Mothers, wives and children knelt before the carriages, begging for mercy and
help. The last time this happened was 20 June 1941. So when the Germans came...There was
only a handful of these zealous, revengeful Poles, but that was enough to bring shame down
on all Poles. Because the Germans had not just machine pistols, but also cameras...."
Jan C. of Wizna, himself of Jewish extraction, thinks it correct to say that the
behavior of Poles was dictated by a desire for revenge. "In Wizna, after the
Soviets had left, Poles held kangaroo courts on fellow Poles who had worked in the
selsovets selsovets. The Jews were
dealt with solely by the Germans: shooting, plunder, deportation to ghettoes like
everywhere else."
One way or another, the participants in the Jedwabne pogrom were called to account after
the war. A trial was held and severe verdicts handed down. Waldemar Monkiewicz has more to
say on this topic than anyone else, for he was a prosecutor in that trial. Today he admits
he acted against his own conscience. "Those people", he stressed, "had to
be convicted, regardless of the extent of their guilt. After all, that was the time of Jakub Berman and people like
him."
Bronisław ¦., whom Szmul Wasersztajn considers to be the Polish ringleader of the
pogrom, did not even live to see a trial.
"Our homegrown evil spirit was Miss Z.", the daughter of Bronisław ¦.
recalls. "She married a Soviet lieutenant. She came from a poverty-stricken home,
so this marriage meant advancement. It also helped her win the trust of the Soviet
authorities later. She 'turned the Russians loose' against various people. Because she was
our neighbor, she knew what sort of valuables we had. Under some pretext she arranged a
search of our house. They didn't notice the jug full of home-brewed vodka in the corner,
but they fished out the gold from underneath the mattress. When the Russians returned with
the Poles in 1945, Z. immediately made her presence known. She told the commanding officer
lies about my father. In the night, some people dismantled the barn which had just been
rebuilt on a formerly Jewish-owned field, and they beat my father up so hard that he died
from his injuries. They had sentenced him without a trial, without witnesses or an
explanation. It was necessary to find guilty persons, and the Nazis were no longer
around."
This search for the guilty was never easy. The people of Jedwabne most readily point to
anonymous "farm hands and stable boys" as the guilty. To this, the peasants say:
"It's the local people who took them into their houses. They stripped them of all
their possessions - beds, pots and pans, everything. What peasant had anything to gain
from abandoning his land and house?"
And yet some of them did just that. 70 year-old Maria K., points to one side of the town square and says: "Here, where about 30 Jewish families used to live, there are these four villas built of brick. There are not many people left here who were born and bred in Jedwabne. Most people, like my husband and I, moved into deserted houses after the war. I never saw the burning, only my husband secretly helped some escapees get away. Two days later, I visited my mother in town. What a lot of people had arrived on carts, looking for loot! The Germans did not interfere in any way, not even when gold was found on a dead body. When they fought over the gold, the Germans simply laughed and said: 'You're going to end up the same way.' I'm not afraid to say this because I never got any advantage out of the burning. A quilt and two pillows are all I got, plus a cupboard which my mother took for me. And think of all the trouble I went to transporting all these goods! We lived at my mother-in-law's, and she was a bit of a member of a tertiary religious order. She prayed for the Jews, lamented their misfortune, and heaped curses on those who had enriched themselves at the expense of the Jews."
"There was a need for life, there was a need for death"
Rafał Wojaczek
In Janczewko, a village of the righteous, 5 kilometers from Jedwabne as the crow flies, everyone still remembers old Karwowski, who was famous for having successfully hidden seven Jews in storeroom throughout the German occupation. Apart from Franciszek and Józefa Karwowski and their daughter Antonina Wyrzykowska, no one in the village knew anything about this, though a few must have wondered suspiciously why their neighbors' appetites (or those of their animals) had grown so much. In any case, the Gestapo men who turned up in the village one day searched the premises of only these two families. The remaining peasants stood in front of their properties with raised hands, with the full knowledge that if the Karwowskis and Wyrzykowskis were hiding anyone and the Germans found them, the entire village would go up in smoke. Luckily, the Germans found no one, and not even families suspected of hiding Jews suffered any harm. Nevertheless, to this very day some people in Janczewko find it difficult to make a clear assessment: "They saved the Jews, but they rather recklessly endangered the entire village." No one knows if any of the neighbors belonged to the band of people who whipped the hide off Karwowski and his daughter for their wartime services. When they describe Franciszek Karwowski, their voices contain a hint of ironic forbearance. "He wasn't a hero, rather he was a good, God-fearing man. He would practically break down crying even for an animal that was about to be slaughtered. When he lay half-dead after being beaten by partisans, he said: 'May God forgive them and keep them healthy'."
Out of the Jedwabne Jews hidden in Janczewko, only one decided to return to Jedwabne.
He converted to Catholicism and received the Christian forename Józef. He returned to his
home and to his Polish neighbor, Feliks Ż., who had been a grave-digger before the war.
Józef G. did not reproach Ż. for having taken part in the Jewish pogrom and for having
dragged Józef G. out of his house and onto the square. After all, Józef G. had survived.
First, he managed to hide in the town hall, and later he crawled his way to Janczewko
through the woods. This was not easy in view of the fact that there were man-hunts and
rumors that the Jews might burn down Jedwabne in revenge.
G. did not ask how his wife and children had died. Nor did he tell his neighbor about the
long years spent in hiding in a hole beneath a cowshed, about the luxury of breathing
fresh air on special nights, or about the slow learning to live with lice, which bit into
his body and left wounds. Details of his story were known only to his wife, a Pole, who
had worked in his house as a servant before the war.
"My husband was very pious", G.'s widow says today, "and that is
probably why he meekly bore all kinds of persecution. In the night, shootings and a
hammering on doors were to be heard all the time. We never opened the door. After a while,
Felek Ż. moved away to the "Recovered
Territories" in western Poland, because his family had become larger and he had
neither a farm, nor a trade that was in demand. Once he had resettled, he developed a new
life. He also built a house for his children in Ełk. While paying a visit to his former
neighborhood, he learned about my husband's death. He came to me, complaining that I had
not told him of the funeral. Then I could stand it no more. 'Józef would have turned in
his coffin if I had told you'. Well, Felek himself is now lying in the cemetery, and my
time is almost up, and soon no one is going to reminisce about old wrongs and misfortunes
any more."
Both sides are forgetting the past. The cousin of Feliks Ż. married a girl of Jewish
descent...
After 1956, Antoni Ch., with his wife Helena, of Jewish origin, also settled in
Jedwabne, and no one gave them any trouble. "My wife owes her life solely to
Providence and human kindness", he says. "God watched over her even when
she was lying in the corn and the Germans were combing the cornfield. Her nightmare began
on July 7, 1941, when the local ruffians led her father, the village blacksmith, off to
Radziłów and burnt him together with others there. The Gestapo came to Kubra to collect
her mother and three children. But the village did not betray them, even though everyone
knew that they could die for hiding a Jew or for so much as giving him a glass of water.
The peasants staged a fictitious man-hunt so as not to fall foul of the Germans, but they
did not want to have any part in the atrocity. Earlier, the peasants had slept in the
fields or gone into hiding in order to avoid being picked to lend a hand in the burning of
the Jews in Radziłów. My wife, her mother and her brothers hid among various people,
including those in Chrzanów, Kubra, Doliwy and Trzaski. The people who hid them did not
do so for money, which no one had in any case. But they put their own lives and those of
their families at risk. One by one, my wife's brothers unfortunately fell into the hands
of the Gestapo and, after being tortured, were shot. My wife and her mother were
luckier..."
Despite the passage of time, Helena Ch. holds in grateful memory the people who hid her. "How
can I say anything bad about the Polish people when they saved my life and that of my
cousin?" she asks.
After reading Szmul Wasersztajn's report, she comments without hesitation: "My
grandfather and my mother's two sisters, with their husbands and children, died in the
fire at the Jedwabne barn. How this came about I know only from what people have told me.
But I don't believe the people of Jedwabne could have been as cruel as that. Szmul's words
must have been dictated by grief and despair, so he wasn't objective. A rabbi from Costa
Rica visited Jedwabne recently, one of the seven Jews whom Karwowski saved. First he
prayed at the Jewish cemetery, and later he came to us. He had good memories of one of
those who, according to Wasersztajn's account, had murdered the Jews; 'That was a very
good man', the rabbi said, and I believe him".
Wars have always been hard on Jedwabne. What was once a flourishing industrial town during the partitions turned into a settlement of merchants and artisans after World War I. World War II cost the town even its shops and workshops. For 40 years it was incapable of rising again, or of regaining more than a fraction of its former importance. It shared the fate of other small Jewish towns, similar to those which Antoni Słonimski describes in his Elegy to the Jewish Towns:
"These towns are no more.
They have passed like a shadow,
And this shadow shall descend between our words
Ere these words come fraternally together and
Rejoin two peoples raised on the same suffering"