In Jedwabne, no one doubts that a crime was committed against Jews in 1941.
The people are, however, troubled by the surrounding circumstances. They would like to
know why it happened, what the actual participation of Poles was in this massacre, and
whether they acted alone or under Germans compulsion. Jan T. Gross's statement that it was
not the NKVD or the UB who killed the 1,600 Jews, but the
"society" [in the Polish edition - trans.] of Jedwabne who acted in such a
savage way, is received as an unjust accusation. The greater the number of descriptions of
the events of 60 years ago that appear, the harder it becomes to discuss then with the
locals.
"It's a small town, everybody knows each other, one's afraid of the next,"
explains a woman who lives at Wojska Polskiego street. She does not want to talk. "I
don't have the strength. Those memories are too painful, and afterwards people pester you
about it. I talked about it once, and they wouldn't give me peace, asking why I did it.
It's best to explain that you don't remember anything. The only trouble is, how can you
not remember?" she asks in a tremulous voice.
"There aren't any of those who murdered the Jews here anymore. They moved away or
died off," she adds. "How many there were exactly and why they did it,
nobody knows. Did the Germans force them, or did they do it of their own free will? We
were only witnesses."
She was 13 years old back then. She saw how the Jews were driven out of the whole
neighborhood. They were led in the direction of the park. They walked in a group. There
were many, many of them. Men, women and children. The Germans weren't much to be seen;
they had surrounded the town. The locals were calling the tune. They did most of the
instigating, they waved axes and clubs. A monument to Lenin stood in the park. They
knocked down the statue, dragged a few young Jews out of the crowd and ordered them to
carry Lenin on their backs, while others had to sing Russian songs. Then they had to dig a
hole. First Lenin was thrown in, and then the Jews were pushed in and buried. Then they
herded the crowd out of town, to the fields, to that barn where they burned everyone to
death. The woman turns her head away and looks out the window for a long moment. "I
only saw the glow of the fire and heard a terrible cry. I can see that image before my
eyes to this day."
Did the town residents watch the crime? "Whoever was bold went," she replies.
"There wasn't anyone to go from our house; the NKVD took my father in 1939 and sent him to
Siberia, and my brother was hiding from the Germans. But the men, I know that some of them
poked around in the remnants of the blaze. They were looking for gold. They pulled off
rings, earrings and necklaces."
She also heard of mothers who jumped into the water with tiny babies, because they
preferred to drown rather than die in the flames. She nods her head. "That was at
the pond. They hadn't started in on the group yet, but already there were a few of them
that dragged those poor women out of the crowd and murdered them. It was Sodom."
* * *
The barn belonged to Bronisław Śleszyński. His daughter, who lives in the center of
Jedwabne, does not want to talk about those events. She shows us out of her apartment.
"I wasn't there on the town square then. Believe me, I didn't see it, I didn't
beat any Jews," she remarks in her agitation. "A German came with Karolak
[the mayor - ed.], ordered him to turn over the keys and that's it. So father gave them
to him. What was he supposed to do? If he hadn't turned them over, he would have been
killed himself, and the Jews would still have been burned. After all, they were destroying
whole ghettos. Along the whole eastern border it was the same thing as in Jedwabne. I
won't say a thing. In 1941, I was 17 years old. I will make a statement only before the
prosecutor, and only if he's not a Jew or a communist."
Because now it looks as if there's an attempt to whitewash the Germans and accuse the
Poles.
* * *
The next address. The proprietress of the house, an older woman, remembers those
events, but the daughter, who takes care of her, will not allow a conversation with her
mother.
"She's over 80 years old. She takes it badly when she talks about it and can't
sleep nights. Once I encouraged her to reminisce for a journalist from Kontakty, and
to this day she chides me for it. Mama had many friends among the Jews. The awareness that
they died in such a tortuous way is still a great trauma for her."
"It is painful for all the inhabitants of Jedwabne", she adds. "If
you hear on television or read in the paper that in Jedwabne there was a slaughter of Jews
like nowhere else in all Poland, and if it turns out that Poles took part in it, which was
documented, then indeed we wonder where all that evil in people, that led them to commit
such horrible acts, came from. Even worse, because we know that in Jedwabne, just like in
the rest of Poland, people were intimidated by the occupying army. Everyone was afraid.
The Germans must have provoked the people of Jedwabne to do such a thing. Did they know
when taking part in it what would happen to the Jews? Definitely not. The Nazis used them.
People say that those people were given vodka earlier or some stimulants, because they
were all worked up that day."
* * *
A school, in the teachers' lounge. "Whether you believe it or not - it's horrible, shameful. Nothing like that should ever happen," comes the answer at once. "It's an undeniable fact. Jews were killed, but to what extent Poles were responsible - that issue hasn't been clarified. The community was definitely divided, as it is now. But something like that could have happened due to a defined group of residents who held grudges against the Jews. And they didn't do it of their own initiative. That's impossible," doubt the teachers. "Round up 1,600 people and lead them to their death?"
The secretary of the town and district office also has her doubts. Like most, she knows
the events only from stories. According to her, it was the town riffraff who took part in
the massacre, and not in any circumstances the society.
My parents said that there was one guy who always walked around with a knife, and his
wife had her whole backside poked full of holes he'd just as soon stab her as look at her.
You never knew what he'd do next. There are a lot of questions to be answered. Even the
number of murdered Jews. In Jedwabne the biggest building is the church, and there is no
way that all the residents would fit in. So how did they stuff 1,600 people into a barn?
Or the matter of the German gendarmerie. They must have been in the town. Even Wasersztajn
testified that all Jedwabne was surrounded so that nobody could sneak out. And after all,
500 or a maximum of 600 Poles lived here then, including children and old folks. So they
must have brought in German detachments. It's not all the same if the slaughter was
committed only by residents taking advantage of permission from the local gendarmerie, or
by a group of scum stirred up by the Germans who sent a battalion of police to purge the
town of Jews," says the secretary.
It's difficult to hold conversations in Jedwabne. Those who earlier talked to reporters about these events now refuse to speak. One of the women can't forgive herself for talking with a Jewish journalist (as she assumes from the sound of her last name). She claims the journalist twisted her words and wrote that she confirmed in a stuttering voice that the Poles murdered the Jews. "I never said any such thing in my life. And do I stutter?!"
Like an echo, the theme of who was responsible for what happened resurfaces, including
the Jews themselves. There is talk of revenge for their attitude [during the 1939-1941
Soviet occupation -ed.] toward the local people. That when the Russians came they didn't
have to search out the Poles that could cause them trouble.
"They denounced many people to the NKVD, and those people were then sent to
Siberia. The Jews informed on people - where they lived, what they were doing,"
says one of the women. "My father was also denounced, I know exactly by whom.
Father worked in a sawmill, a Jew was the owner. The Ruskies came to search for weapons.
Father had some, they arrested him and sent him to Russia, to Archangel. I never saw him
again. He joined Anders' army, made it to England and
never returned to Poland. And the UB killed my brother, after the war. He
survived the Ruskies, the Germans, but his own people finished him off. What a fate."
* * *
In Jedwabne there are two monuments commemorating the martyrdom of residents during
World War II. A black stone obelisk stands near the Catholic cemetery. It was erected in
recent times. On the base is a crowned eagle and the inscription: "To the memory of
about 180 people including 2 priests who were murdered in the territory of Jedwabne
district in the years 1939-56 by the NKVD, the Nazis and the UB. [Signed] Society."
A stone obelisk in the field where Śleszyński's barn once stood reminds us of the murder
of the Jews. It was erected in the 1960s by the Łomża branch of ZBoWiD. White, freshly painted posts, a blue metal
fence, wreaths and candles. The inscription on the stone is still the same as years ago:
"SITE OF THE SUFFERING OF THE JEWISH POPULATION. THE GESTAPO AND THE NAZI GENDARMERIE
BURNED 1600 PEOPLE ALIVE JULY 10, 1941."