On a single day, the Polish residents of Jedwabne in the Łomża Province murdered fifteen hundred Jews.
Horse-drawn wagons kept arriving in Jedwabne all night. Drivers cracked their whips and excited people had been gathering in the streets since dawn. The old Honks spent the night at the Bukowskis'. In the morning, however, they packed their gear and went to the town square. Józef Bukowski tried to convince them to wait it out - to no avail. The Honks were reticent and composed. - "Our time has come" - old Honk remarked upon departing.
Krzysztof Godlewski, the Mayor of Jedwabne, has distanced himself from the events of 59 years ago. He comes from Olsztyn Province. He has been taking frequent walks around the town lately: - "I try to visualize what it was like. For long years no one would as much as mention the events of 1941, and then suddenly all hell broke loose. I keep seeing snapshots of Jedwabne in the 1960s. No sidewalks, cobblestone streets, gutters and those little rundown houses. Straight out of a Bruno Schulz novel."
"The memories start pressing back. I can see these faces more vividly now. I can hear the voices more distinctly. It is time to settle accounts in my old age" - the voice of Halina Popiołek (the daughter of Józef Bukowski) begins to waver. - "On the night that the Honks came over, father brought home terrifying news. He said they were going to burn the Jews."
Stanisław Ramotowski lived right outside of Radziłów, a town a few kilometers away from Jedwabne. What lay in wait for the Jedwabne Jews took place in Radziłów two days earlier. Stanisław learned about the preparations for the pogrom from his friend in the neighboring village. He rushed to the Finkelsztajns, the owners of a grain mill in Radziłów. He hid the whole family in the henhouse attic: the old Mrs. Finkelsztajn, her son, two daughters and two grandchildren. He then went to Radziłów to take a look. - "I saw 60 families rounded up in the town square. They were pulling up weeds in the scorching sun. Meanwhile, their Polish neighbors were plundering their homes. A German soldier was taking pictures from a balcony. It was about to begin."
Szmul Wasersztajn asked his mother to take some "rags" to Jedwabne. Leon harnessed the horses to the wagon and set off for his schoolmate's village. He packed his clothes and a sewing machine. - "When we arrived, a band of young men surrounded the wagon, metal-spiked clubs in their hands. They shoved our load off the wagon and started sorting through it. I lost sight of Szmul."
The next morning, Halinka Bukowska was running around the streets of Jedwabne along with a bunch of other kids. She was eight but nevertheless remembered a lot: - "First they walked from door to door, telling people to come to the square and cut off Jews' beards. My father didn't go. The Jews stood in the square all day. The sun was beating down mercilessly. They made them pull up the grass growing there. They battered them with clubs. Mr. Bielecki rode his horse past our house chasing a young Jewish woman by the name of Kiwajko - I can't remember her first name. Dripping sweat, she cried for help but no one would come to the rescue. Everyone knew that she had taken care of Bielecki's children while he was in prison."
The barn belonged to Bronisław ¦leszyński. Large, located on the outskirts of town,
it was perfect. Marian Karolak, the Mayor, went to get the keys to the padlock.
¦leszyński and his daughter, Ja¶ka, removed the thresher and the wagon.
Janina Biedrzycka (née ¦leszyńska, the daughter of Bronisław) sits down to relax by
the well. I find a place next to her on the freshly mowed grass. The farmer turns her face
toward the orange setting sun: - "Have you got some sort if identity card to show me?
Your name doesn't sound Polish. At any rate, I don't care. Everyone listens to the Jews.
No one is interested in the truth."
- "What truth?"
- "The truth is that when the Russians came in, the Jews welcomed them with bread and salt. They informed on us, made threats. Within a week, the Ruskies arrested twelve Poles. I remember. I can recite all the names."
- "And what about the barn?"
- "You think my father had anything to say about it? They came and asked for the keys. There was no way to say no. But it was not the Poles' idea. The Poles would never have come up with anything of that sort. After all, the Jews could have been locked up in a ghetto."
Halina Popiołek does not claim to have seen everything. "I wasn't there when they
were cutting off heads or stabbing the Jews with sharpened stakes. I found out about that
from my neighbors. Neither did I see them make those young Jewish women drown themselves
in a pond. My mother's sister did. Her face was covered in tears when she came to tell us
about it. I did see them make young Jewish boys lug Lenin's monument around and shout
'This war is our fault!' I saw them whipping the boys with rubber truncheons. I saw them
torturing Jews in the synagogue and how Lewiniuk, all beaten up, was buried alive, before
he stopped breathing."
A black cat leaped into Popiołek's lap. Halina Popiołek gasped: - "They drove them
all into a barn. They doused it with kerosene on four sides. It was all over in less than
two minutes but that screaming... I can still hear it in my ears."
The cry of fifteen hundred burned people turned into a dull wail when it reached the
house of Leon Dziedzic, three kilometers away. Then the wind brought the black smoke and
the smell of burned bodies.
The next morning, German gendarmes told young men to come for work with their
shovels. The workers included Leon Dziedzic. - "It was covered with a thin layer of
sand. We had to clean it up to prevent an epidemic. When we started digging, we released
the carcass gas. Each of us vomited about two dozen times, but when the gas was gone only
the smell of baked meat remained." Dziedzic adjusts his cap. The warm wind tousles
the leaves of the pear tree that gives us shade. Puppies, few weeks old, play with our
trouser cuffs. "After an hour or so, the Germans themselves decided the work was
hopeless - the bodies were entangled like roots. Someone came up with the idea of tearing
them apart piece by piece and throwing them in the pits. They brought us pitchforks and we
started jabbing randomly at the heads and legs."
Leon Dziedzic falls silent. An unripe pear falls out of the tree. An aggravated dog growls
at her puppies. Leon Dziedzic sprawls out comfortably in his garden chair: - "At
night, toward the end, only isolated human shreds were left. We scooped them all up. At
one point, my pitchfork hit upon a shoeshine box. The box opened and gold coins fell out.
People ran over and started picking them up. Then the Germans shooed us away with their
rifle butts and searched everyone. 'The gold is ours, the rest is yours,' they said,
pointing to the dead bodies."
Dziedzic remembers another detail: - "I heard there was a problem later - the Germans
had told the Poles to save at least one craftsman for every craft. But the Poles didn't,
and then they searched frantically for craftsmen among Christians."
Ramotowski succeeded in hiding the Finkelsztajns until 1943. Then someone informed on
them. Everyone was taken off to a ghetto and then, reportedly, on to Treblinka. Stanisław
followed the Jews. Even then, he was in love with Rachela Finkelsztajn. She was well
educated and refined. She had worked for the Buick and Chrysler dealer in Kielce.
Stanisław was lucky - one of the gendarmes was Feliks Godlewski, who cooperated
with Home Army. He helped Stanisław sneak Rachela out.
"This is when the Holocaust started for me too. They searched for me with more
vengeance than they did for the Jews," reminisces Stanisław Ramotowski.
"Finally, I made a dug-out in a field for us to live in. Before the liberation, a
German soldier accidentally stumbled upon the camouflaged dug-out. He was a frontline
soldier, however, and had little interest in the extermination of the Jews. The Germans
did not respond even when a neighbor informed them that a Jewish woman, Finkelsztajn,
lived there. Instead, the Germans gave Rachela a job in a field kitchen."
After the war, Stanisław let the girl choose. "He said 'You're free to do as you
please,'" recalls the former Rachela Finkelsztajn, now Marianna Ramotowska. "I
was sure of what I wanted."
They have lived happily for 54 years. "Perhaps we have been so happy together because
we went through all the worst things at the start."
In the late 1940s, Stanisław was summoned to the prosecutor's office regarding the
pogrom. "Who burned the Jews?" asked the prosecutor. "Poles." The
prosecutor shook his head in disdain. Ramotowski fumed: - "If you know, why do you
ask?" The prosecutor said, "You need to calm down, Mr. Ramotowski, you don't
need this. Let's just say it was the Germans."
A few days after the burning of the Jews, Leon Dziedzic walked into his barn to get hay
for his horse. A pile of hay moved and Szmul's face emerged. Wasersztajn had seen
everything that had happened in Jedwabne from his hiding place. "He was preparing a
hideout in Janczewko. He stayed there for three years. After the war, the forests still
teemed with guerillas. My brother was in the Home Army and found out that guerillas wanted to
'take care of' Szmul. As a witness to the Jedwabne killing, Szmul had to die. He fled to
Białystok in the nick of time. He sent us a soft, tanned hide as a token of his
appreciation."
In 1949, Szmul Wasersztajn testified before the Jewish Historical Committee in Białystok.
His account became the main source of information on the Jedwabne events.
With Mayor Godlewski, we ascend a hill where, in the 1960s, a stone with a
commemorative plaque was placed in the memory of Jews burnt alive by the
"fascists". Across the road, the only reminder of the Jewish cemetery are the
wildly spreading hazel trees. As late as the 1980s, stones from the cemetery were taken
away by Poles who returned here to build houses with money earned in the United States.
Dozens of houses have tombstones embedded in their foundations.
"Why don't we have the Star of David? What good is a monument that won't last a year?
It would attract anti-Semites from all over Poland," Godlewski says. "It
shouldn't irritate people. The same goes for the inscriptions. The monument stands outside
of town. It is too easy to deface it with graffiti."
One day, the Ramotowskis were visited by a neighbor. He told them about his trip to the Holy Land. "'I saw a tree planted in your honor,' he said. 'It grows on the Mount of Remembrance in Jerusalem.'"
Hanna (black bushy eyebrows, lively blue eyes, hair covered with a flowery
handkerchief) feeds chickens in a yard by her house on Jedwabne town square. The magazine Niedziela is spread out on the table; her husband
is sick in bed in the adjoining room.
Hanna was the only survivor in her family. Her name then was Sara; she was 15 when
neighbors from a village outside of Jedwabne gave her a place to hide. She spent three
years and three months hiding with her mother. They came out in January 1944. Her mother
enjoyed her freedom until March, then died of exhaustion.
- "Don't use my name. Why would you even want to? The name is gone, as are the
people. God wanted them all to die in that barn. I hold no grudges. Poles gave me
life." Hanna wipes her hands on her a blue apron and holds them together in an
imploring gesture. "It was so quiet for years. Why go back to all that? Don't use my
name, not for my sake but for my children's sake. When my son was studying in Białystok,
he grew a beard. I had to plead with him to shave it off so that people didn't get the
wrong idea. Then he wanted to name my grandson 'David,' but I explained that it might make
people angry. I don't want to make anybody upset. I want to die in peace. As quietly and
peacefully as possible."
P.S. A few weeks ago, Professor Jan T. Gross published Neighbors. The first
printing sold out in record time. A second, from Pogranicze publishers, will be
in bookstores in mid-August.
We would like to thank Henryk Bagiński and other residents of Jedwabne for their help in
compiling the report.