July 10 was the fifty-ninth anniversary of the extermination of the Jedwabne Jewish community. This year's anniversary differed from all the previous ones, which went unnoticed by Jedwabne residents and the general public. For the first time, the Mayor and the chairman of the City Council placed a wreath from society at the commemorative boulder.
The events that took place on the 10th of July 1941 in Jedwabne near Łomża belong on
the darkest pages of the recent history of that region - and of the country.
There was an anti-Jewish pogrom on an unprecedented scale. Approximately 1,600 people,
almost all the town's Jewish residents, were murdered.
For many years it was officially stated that the Gestapo and Nazi gendarmerie did the
killing. That is what it says on the commemorative stone that appeared on the site of the
atrocity in the 1960s.
Publications appearing over the last several months indicate unequivocally that the
instigators and perpetrators of the crime were residents of the town and the outlying
hamlets. The only role played by the Germans was that of "observers."
Jan Tomasz Gross has produced the most fully documented new perspective so far in
Neighbors, published by Fundacja "Pogranicze" in Sejny. Reading this
book is a mighty shock. The author introduces, among others, the account of Szmul
Wasersztajn, one of the survivors of the pogrom. Wasersztajn's account was the basis for a
1949 criminal investigation aimed at identifying and bringing to trial those responsible
for the murder. The second source for the reconstruction of the circumstances and course
of events is the records of this trial, held in May 1949 before the Regional Court in
Łomża. At that time, eleven of the offenders named by Wasersztajn were sentenced to jail
terms of eight to fifteen years, one was sentenced to death penalty, and ten were found
not guilty.
According to these sources, an explosion of anti-Semitism occurred in Jedwabne and places
like, for example, Radziłów and W±sosz, after the retreat of the Soviets and the
invasion by the Nazis in June 1941, and "Polish hooligans" murdered Jews with a
feeling of total impunity. In their savagery, these massacres resembled the Cossack
pogroms of the Jews in seventeenth-century Ukraine during the Chmielnicki uprising,
described on the pages of Sienkiewicz's With Fire and Sword.
On July 7, the extermination of 600 Jews occurred in Radziłów. The German gendarmerie
took an approving attitude as the Jews were burnt alive in a barn. On July 10, the
Jedwabne Jews were dealt with. According to Wasersztajn, many out-of-towners appeared
armed with knives, clubs, axes and the like on that day. Together with "local
hooligans" they herded the Jews into the town square. During this frenzied roundup,
there were murders in various parts of town. Patrols on horseback armed with plow handles
circled the town, catching those who tried to escape.
According to Wasersztajn and the witnesses appearing at the Łomża trial, the
collaborationist authorities in Jedwabne, headed by mayor Marian Karolak, made an
agreement with the Germans to settle the question of the Jews once and for all. Karolak
allegedly received permission from the Germans for the extermination of the Jews, and
arranged for them to be herded into the town square. Gross suggests that, until the very
end, the ringleaders of the slaughter had no clear concept of how to kill 1,600 people
efficiently. The Germans refused to issue firearms, and killing by means of clubs, knives,
and axes took a long time. Because the Germans had given them only eight hours, the
ringleaders decided, as evening approached, to implement the Radziłów model and burn the
Jews in a barn.
This mass murder occurred on the outskirts of town, opposite the Jewish cemetery. The
victims were packed into a barn, gasoline was poured on, and the building set on fire.
Leon Dziedzic from Przestrzele is 74. As a young boy, two days after the crime, he was
picked by the gendarmerie to rake up the remains of the murdered Jews.
"It was here." He points out the exact spot where ¦leszyński's barn stood.
"A long ditch was dug, two meters wide, the length of the north wall, in line with
the foundation".
When Dziedzic started working here, there was already one layer of human remains covered
with earth. Piles of corpses remained in the smoldering ashes of the barn. "They gave
us pitchforks with bent teeth, the ones used for manure. I dragged however I could. If I
hit a leg, I dragged by the leg, a head - by the head, just to get it over with," the
old man recounts.
He is one of the few witnesses who speak about the mass murder without much reluctance.
"Sure, there are those who won't like it, but I don't care", he laughs. A moment
later, he starts sobbing.
"It's from what I've been through," he explains. "This has been tormenting
me all my life. You can't have a conscience, you can't be a human being."
Dziedzic was not an eyewitness to the murder. In Przestrzele, about 3 kilometers from
Jedwabne, there were only the shouts, the muffled sound of people being murdered, as night
fell on July 10, 1941. A column of smoke then rose in the sky.
Before everything quieted down, eighteen-year-old Szmul, the son of the seamstress
Wasersztajn, appeared at the Dziedzic farm, having managed to slip through the mounted
patrols and escape from the small town. For several days, Szmul hid in Przestrzele. He
told Leon Dziedzic what had happened. Later, Dziedzic had the chance to more stories,
different stories. "I could go on about it for ages," he says, waving his hand.
"I was eight and I saw how they were dragging them out of their homes. When they
set the barn on fire, I was standing right there," says an elderly woman, pointing to
a spot in a field of sparse rye some twenty meters from the commemorative boulder that
marks the site of the slaughter.
On July 10, she came to the plaque to light a commemorative candle. She's been doing this
for three years. "The girls I played with as a child and their parents are buried
here. Someone must remember them", she adds.
The woman doesn't want to give her name, and doesn't want to make an appointment to meet
with a reporter. "I remember the faces and names of the murderers but I'm afraid to
talk", she declares bluntly.
Publications on the subject of the crime have caused a stir in Jedwabne. The town
authorities at the moment are not accepting the image of a "town of criminals"
on the basis of what has been written.
"This is an overblown and unfair image", says the chairman of the town council,
Stanisław Michałowski.
Michałowski is a native of Jedwabne, and the uncovering of the truth is important to him.
As he sees it, Gross condemns all the Polish inhabitants in his book and lumps them
together by accusing them of the collective murder of the Jews. "It's not possible to
agree with this", protests Michałowski. "This matter is far from clear, and
requires thorough investigation."
In the opinion of Jedwabne mayor Krzysztof Godlewski, an investigation should be conducted
and an official finding issued. "A truth should be established that is convincing to
all, to us in Jedwabne, to all Poles, and to all Jews. Only then, if reports of voluntary
Polish involvement in the murder are confirmed, will it be possible to change the
inscription on the boulder."
The Mayor says that he will not allow for a change of the inscription before the facts are
ascertained: "That monument should contribute to reconciliation and not to dividing
people anew. It should pay homage to the victims and be a warning for the future that this
crime and the sacrifice made by the victims, had significance at least in this
context."
In Godlewski's opinion, there are certain symptoms of an effort being made by someone to
exploit this dark page in the history of Jedwabne for ulterior motives. "After all,
Jews have been coming to the scene of the crime for many years," he says. "They
haven't just started coming now. I have never heard of anyone having any objections to the
inscription on the boulder".
In the West, the first reservations about this inscription appeared many years after the
crime. Nor did anyone propose a review of the case in Poland after censorship ended in
1990. In the last ten years, most of those who were alive during the occupation have died.
Amongst the living, only a few witnesses and potential suspects remain. "In my
opinion it's no accident that only now is the truth being sought", Godlewski
reiterates.
After the recent publications, the Main Commission for the
Investigation of Crimes against the Polish Nation, at present being transformed into the Institute of National
Remembrance, has become interested in this case. ">From what I know, the
gathering of materials in this matter has begun", says Krystyna
Michalczyk-Kondratowicz, regional prosecutor in Łomża. "Among others, at the
request of the Commission chairman, one of our prosecutors has questioned a relevant
witness."
In the light of the reorganization and creation of the Institute of National Remembrance,*
the momentum in the case has slowed. Everything indicates, however, that an investigation
will be conducted.