Jan Tomasz Gross describes the crime that was committed against 1,640 Jewish
inhabitants during the war by the Poles of the small town of Jedwabne. Some Jews were
beaten or knifed to death; the majority were herded into a barn and burnt alive. The
author, relying on documents and accounts of witnesses, carries out a detailed
reconstruction of the bloody events. Gross himself captures perfectly the feelings that
come from reading this book: "The murder carried out against the Jews in Jedwabne
invokes feelings of helplessness and stupefaction". These sentiments
result in the fact that even the desire for revenge becomes understandable, which Rabbi
Julius L. Baker expresses in the Jedwabne Yitzkor Book [Town Memory Book]:
"May God revenge their blood" - understandable even when you yourself
believe in a God of forgiveness and love.
At the same time, Gross reveals the postwar history of deception about this crime -
officially ascribed to the Germans, as it is to this very day in the official inscription
on the local monument. In the Nowa Encyklopedia Powszechna [New Universal
Encyclopedia; 1996], it is possible to read that: "during the Second World War the
Germans murdered over 1,600 people in Jedwabne, including around 900 Jews burnt
alive."
This is a significant book, one that is painful for the Polish reader despite the fact
that, as Professor Tomasz Szarota shows, it leaves open certain questions relating to the
details of the massacre. It refutes definitively the comfortable and calming conviction
that Poles were only witnesses, that they were never responsible for the crime committed
against Jews during the Second World War. This book also invokes more general reflections,
and not by accident, as in Gross's previous book Upiorna dekada [ The Ghastly Decade ]. Neighbors
is not only the work of a historian, but also a morality play calling for reflection and a
coming to terms with our consciences.
It is impossible to avoid asking why this book 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 reveals equally appalling facts, can be read with much
more distance. The answer is simple. Neighbors invokes the national identity of the
reader.
Of course, I can always ask: What has that got to do with me? What do I have in common
with Jerzy Laudański, one of the murderers from Jedwabne? The fact that I was born in the
same country, use the same language, and grew up in a culture that was to some extent the
same-but which I did not choose? If the radical liberals are right in saying that
everything is subject to free choice and that it is possible to distance oneself as much
as one wants from the national community and the national culture, then I should haven't
any problem with this. In this regard, taking the blame, wrongdoing, and obligations are
only individual.
In the case of the Jedwabne crime, it is apparent that this is not so. Without the
existence of national ties that defy rational analysis, it would be impossible to explain
why my attitude to such an incident is different from when I read about crimes committed
by, let us say, Lithuanians, Latvians, Ukrainians, or the Germans amongst whom I have
lived for ten years and whose culture I have been dealing with for much longer. Nor is it
of any help knowing the theory that the nation is only a construct of intellectuals. Even
if I were to repudiate such ties, those who belong to other national communities would not
believe me. The more I try to deny this, the more I confirm it, as well as my own
co-responsibility. When it is said that Poles have done something, this carries over onto
me, identified as a Pole, even if an exception were to be made for me.
In contrast to many contemporary Polish writers, Gross refers to the category of
collective responsibility and the individual as a collective subject. He writes, among
other things: "When reflecting about this epoch, we must remember that there is no
such thing as collective responsibility and that only the murderer is responsible for
murder. But there is an insistent need for reflection on what it is that makes
us-us as members of a collective that has a separate subjectivity and to which we belong
because we feel ourselves to be part of this community-capable of such deeds. As a
collective unified by an authentically experienced spiritual bond, which entitles us to a
sense of a community of fates-I have in mind national pride and a sense of identity rooted
in the historical experience of many generations-are we not likewise responsible for the
shameful deeds of our forebears and countrymen?" [so runs the Polish
edition; the corresponding passage of the American edition is provided in a note, since
some subtle differences in Gross's formulation of the issues at hand may be found- trans.]
It is certainly possible to seek other ways of dealing with this problem. It is possible
to negate the facts or lessen them. It is possible symbolically to exclude those
responsible from one's group. After all, there are criminals and thugs amongst Poles but
their behavior does not testify to the entire national collective. (In this case, however,
exclusion is unusually difficult. The genocide in Jedwabne was a collective crime in which
all of the small town as it were took part or were at least in passive attendance). In the
end, it is not possible to avoid confrontation with this issue. Gross stresses that a
painful period of settling accounts is starting in Poland. He writes of the young people
in Jedwabne who made a step towards truth by placing information about this crime on the
school Internet site, though without naming the perpetrators: "You have to take
your hat off to the young, for a very difficult task waits for them in coming face to face
with the crime of their own grandparents' generation" [the American edition omits
any reference to this initiative, which Gross describes as "a step in the direction
of truth" in the Polish edition, p. 115 - trans.]. In fact, the hope remains that
these young people won't say to themselves: "Let's choose the
future", let's not worry about secondary matters since we face such important
tasks as the economic development of the region, our career, or the integration of Europe.
Relatives wait for the memory of the victims to be restored. In the introduction to the Jedwabne
Yitzkor Book, Rabbi Jacob Eliezer Baker writes: "Indeed, the murderers did not
only humiliate and butcher their victims; they wanted also to blot out their memory. They
slaughtered them twice, reducing them in Yedwabne literally into ashes, and then trying to
deny their deed. Not to remember our martyrs would mean to become accomplices to the
design of their murderers." From the victims' point of view, the denial of memory is
to conspire in lies and even to take a symbolic part in the crime itself. He who does not
wish to be among the perpetrators should demand the truth.
The matter of the atrocity in Jedwabne calls, however, for a certain wider reflection. I
think that one of the principal problems in restoring memory and a sense of responsibility
in Poland stems from the fact that the average citizen received and continues to receive
conflicting signals from the political and intellectual elites. On the one hand, they say:
let's remember what happened during the war; let's remember the dark sides of our national
fate and deeds. On the other hand, in the meantime, they announce that democracy involves
forgetting, and that in the case of the communist past we shouldn't be too inquisitive or
too moralistic.
So I must on the one hand accept partial responsibility as a Pole for nationalist and
chauvinist excesses, law-breaking, and crimes-while on the other hand I am told that no
one, none of the political parties, no group, and no individual will be responsible for
the communist system and for particular deeds committed under it. On the one hand, I am
told that I must look the uncomfortable, painful truth in the eye, and on the other that I
must accept that everything is an interpretation, that there are various truths.
One of the most brilliant Polish intellectuals, Marcin Król, wrote in his book, Liberalizm
strachu czy liberalizm odwagi [The Liberalism of Fear or the Liberalism of Courage]:
"The controversy about these issues [the memory of the former communist system and
the eventual consequences that should ensue from the crimes and injustices remembered] is
a controversy that, regardless of its meaning, has an undemocratic nature because memory
cannot be fully democratic and there is no question of justice or of equal treatment of
all those who deserve to be remembered. Therefore in fact, and not for moral reasons,
moderate forgetting is highly conducive to the building of a liberal-democratic
society." What sort of forgetting is moderate? Can it relate to crimes such as those
in Jedwabne? Is that memory "fully democratic"? Should the act of forgetting
only entail crimes and lawlessness committed in the name of reason, progress,
emancipation, the workers' movement, and social justice?
In fact, such wrongs become more anonymous with the passage of time, since there is no
well-defined collective entity to which to ascribe their legacy. The easiest thing would
be to say that the victims of communism were simply victims of history. Not only are the
victims anonymous, but it also transpires that no one is responsible. Poles did not become
post-Poles, but communists became post-communists, and the past can be treated as a closed
book. The post-communists do not inherit any blame or responsibility in a cultural or
moral sense, and do not have anything on their conscience. It thus turns out,
paradoxically, that voluntary participation in a totalitarian movement is not associated
today with any moral or political consequences or responsibilities, while belonging to a
national community by reason of birth is all the more so associated with such
consequences. The Polish President, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, encapsulated this splendidly
when, in a speech marking the thirtieth anniversary of the March 1968 events, he spoke
of the responsibility of the Poles for expelling Jews from the country, but not about the
responsibility of the PZPR and its members.
At times, it appears that the memory of the nation's wrongdoing has not only serve in the
fight against nationalism, but also serve in the dismantling of thinking in the categories
of the nation [nation meaning "people," in the sense of "the Polish
nation" - ed.] itself, and the dissolution of national ties. It appears that only
when we dispense with these categories will we be inoculated forever - that we will have a
guarantee that ethnic cleansing and genocide will not be repeated. The German Left once
reasoned this way. The Germans had to remember about national-socialist crimes in order to
stop being Germans. This was not only an ambiguous stance in moral terms, but also a
contradictory one. It turned out that the nation was absolutely essential for expiation.
It needed to be retained at least as a Schamgemeinschaft, a community of disgrace.
Nor was this a realistic position, for, as we know, the Germans, too, failed to become
post-Germans. Today it is said officially that in Germany the crimes of National Socialism
were committed "in the name of Germany" ("im deutschen Namen"),
rather than simply coming out and saying that Germans perpetrated these crimes. The
genocide in Jedwabne was perpetrated by the Polish inhabitants of this small town. In
whose name?
This question appears to me to be rather important in deliberations on the theme of
responsibility. Jan T. Gross notes that the Jews have even greater resentment towards
Poles than towards Germans-because the former murdered not in uniform, not as agents of
the state, but of their own free will, out of their own private initiative: "And
if in collective Jewish memory this phenomenon is ingrained-that local Polish people
killed the Jews because they wanted to, not because they had to-then Jews will hold them
particularly responsible for what they have done. A murderer in uniform remains a state
functionary acting under orders, and he might even be presumed to have mental reservations
about what he has been ordered to do. Not so a civilian, killing another human being of
his own free will-such an evildoer is unequivocally but a murderer." This is
true. On the other hand, however, this civilian to a greater extent represents only
himself, and not the collective to which he belongs, the nation or state.
It would be difficult, therefore, to argue that the crime in Jedwabne was committed in the
name of Poland or that it was an expression of the political will of the Poles. In
principle, its motives were, as Gross stresses, pre-political and pre-ideological. The
Germans in uniform represented the German state which was governed by the National
Socialists, who were elected and supported by the majority of the German nation. The
German nation accepted and carried out Hitler's policies, knew its criminal intentions,
and was in a position at least to suspect that they were being consistently carried out.
From this point of view, their responsibility as a collective-it was the Germans who
planned and carried out the Holocaust-has a completely different quality and dimension,
notwithstanding the number of helpers they may have had from among other nationalities. It
appears that the descendants of the victims should also understand this fundamental
difference.
This does not mean that we should be able to forget about our responsibility stemming from
facts such as those of the crime in Jedwabne. Gross's book reminds us of the need to
redress this responsibility, and of the obligations that flow from the deeds of our
fathers and grandfathers. After the things that happened, we have a particular moral and
political responsibility to our compatriots of Jewish origin, to Polish Jews and Jews in
general. It is not only the Poles from Kazakhstan to whom
we owe a debt, but all those Polish Jews for whom Poland once failed to become a homeland.
This book also reminds us of the need for truth in community life. Gross is right to say:
"And if at some point in this collective biography lies are situated [in the
American edition: "a big lie is situated" - trans.], then everything that
comes afterward will be devoid of authenticity, underlain with anxiety and a lack of
self-confidence [in the American edition: ". . . authenticity and laced with fear
of discovery" - trans.]. That is also why the search for truth about that period, as
well as determining and condemning the guilty, lies in our own interests. I am convinced
in any case that if Poland had become democratic after 1945, all the perpetrators of this
and other similar crimes would have met with the appropriate punishment.
In evaluating the importance of Gross's book, I cannot fail to mention certain doubts
which its explicatory layer raises. This is because, aside from the narration of events,
the author has yet another aim in mind, which to my mind is completely unnecessary.
Namely, just as in his book The Ghastly Decade ,
he seeks to dismiss the widespread conviction that among the circumstances that may have
contributed to exacerbated ethnic hatred and, indirectly, to the massacre, were events
from the period of Soviet occupation. The crime in Jedwabne is presented as an
inexplicable explosion of dark forces, as a mystery play, as an epiphany of evil. The
perpetrators were a dark and benighted force that was unleashed. The pogrom was an
incident that seemed to emerge from the shadows of ancient annals. As Gross writes, "the
murder of Jedwabne Jews reveals yet another, deeper, more archaic layer of this enterprise
[the Shoah]." It could be said that this is an incident beyond history, having
nothing in common with that which occurred before or after. In principle, it could have
occurred at any time. This is how Rabbi Jacob L. Baker presents it. According to him, the
crime represented only the surfacing of permanent attitudes: "We are convinced that
during the centuries of its existence, Jewish Yedwabne had to face the same kind of rough,
inhuman neighbors." The life of the Jewish community in Jedwabne, therefore, was the
life of a small group of honorable people among wolves, in constant danger of death.
So as to refute the assumption that it was the Soviet occupation that dug the abyss
between the Poles and Jews, Gross points out that in Jedwabne there was no
over-representation of Jews in the organs of authority at that time. On the basis of this,
he draws the following conclusion: "[T]here is no reason to single out Jedwabne as
a place where relationships between Jews and the rest of the population during those
twenty months of Soviet rule were more antagonistic than anywhere else." But
could they perhaps have been equally bad everywhere? Could the years 1939-1941 have caused
such an escalation of enmity and hatred that German consent sufficed for it to end up in a
bloody settlement of accounts? No doubt the religious and ethnic enmity at that time
played a huge role. One of the Jewish inhabitants of Jedwabne recalls, for example, that
only the intervention of the Łomża archbishop saved the Jedwabne Jews from a pogrom at
the hands of Haller's army . It is also
characteristic that one of the Jedwabne Jews who converted to Christianity survived, and
still lived peacefully in Jedwabne long after the war. It is impossible to fail to notice
that the Jedwabne crime fits in with other, similar events that were acts of revenge for
Soviet policy. After the invasion by the Wehrmacht of territory seized by the
Soviet Union in 1939 and the discovery of the NKVD crimes, anti-Jewish
excesses and pogroms occurred in many places. Bogdan Musiał
describes them in a book, published this year, about the situation in the eastern lands
before the German-Russian war and after it broke out.
Is it therefore really possible to understand those incidents while passing over the years
1939-1941? It is, at any rate, a fact that the motive of settling accounts with the
communists was always present in the Jedwabne horror. After all, it is hardly a matter of
chance that the Jews were ordered to dismantle and carry a monument to Lenin. Those who
survived the pogrom also recall these motives. One remembers: "When Poles saw the
oncoming German army they came to the Germans with flowers and shouted 'Heil Hitler, our
savior. Down with communism!' They destroyed an enormous stand built by the Russians at
the town square. The Poles began forming their government, elected a mayor, town clerk and
police. They immediately arranged for all Jews who had collaborated with the Russians to
be taken to the town office where they were severely beaten, then let go." As is
known, the Wehrmacht entered Jedwabne the first time in 1939. Did the Polish people
already then greet them with joy? It is certain that only the experience of the Soviet
occupation gave them the illusion that the Wehrmacht brings liberation.
Rywka Fogel recalls that in the case of Karolak, the Mayor of Jedwabne and a known
anti-Semite: "The Germans allowed him to murder only communists. At this time all
Jews were considered communists, with the exception of the tradesmen who the Germans
needed in their workshops". The Polish population was certainly influenced by
German propaganda which ascribed Soviet crimes to "Jewish communism".
Perhaps the ringleaders were only looking for a scapegoat and exploited this pretext in
order to settle accounts. But it is highly probable that in the years 1939-1941, not
without any real reasons, they aggravated or deepened the abyss between the Polish and
Jewish population. This division could probably only have occurred because the Jews,
weakly integrated with the Poles, reacted in a different way to the Soviet occupation,
treating it simply as still another change of state allegiance, and rather quickly adapted
to the situation. This, however, could have been interpreted by Poles as a lack of loyalty
or as outright treason. A fact testifying to the role played by the issue of loyalty in
Jedwabne was that, despite the complete breakdown of the moral order, Poles wanted to
spare the life of a Jedwabne Jew who had saved the life of a Polish officer.
The Jewish population was treated differently by the Soviets than the Poles, though, as we
know, the Jews also fell victim to deportation and other repressive measures. Herschel
Piekarz Baker, describing the years 1939-1941, maintains that the Jedwabne Jewish
population quickly adapted to the new conditions: "It was difficult to comply with
the regulations of the communist government. In a short period of time, however, the
Jewish community organized itself so as to supply everyday articles that were needed. They
baked bread and opened cooperatives, run mainly by Jews. Jews were hired in various
positions and institutions. Jewish tradesmen continued their work in shops whose owner was
the state, not as before, in their own shops. Earnings were low but the situation was
calm. Men who were stronger physically, aged 20-38, were taken into the Russian
army."
The Germans, not the Soviets, were a mortal danger to the Jews. The Soviets were the
opposite, a guarantee of safety. The author quoted above remembers the following incident:
"When the Russians were retreating, Poles plundered the clothing, footwear and food
cooperatives as well as robbing Jewish homes. A Russian patrol walked the streets and shot
at the looters. Several were killed but the majority ran off with the plundered
goods." This incident characterizes the mood of the people and was certainly widely
known, also to those responsible for the Jedwabne crime. I must admit that I don't
understand why Gross does not refer to these accounts. In a footnote he marks, however, a
remark by another Jedwabne resident, Janek Neumark, to the effect that the Soviets
confiscated private property and arrested many Jews. There exist many
testimonies as well as historical works confirming that the positive attitude of the
Jewish population to the new authorities was no exception.
The fact that Gross formulates conclusions of a most general nature in relation to
totalitarian and communist regimes based on his Jedwabne research raises even more doubts.
He maintains, for instance, that "Stalinism or Nazism aimed at winning over and
keeping power by playing on low instincts; they depended on . . . exploiting the evil that
lies within man" [this observation from the Polish edition is missing from the
American one - trans.]. This is true-but even worse, they also exploited the good that
lies within man. Gross suggests that the anti-Semites are to a large extent responsible
for communism: "anti-Semites rather then Jews were instrumental in establishing
the Communist regime in Poland . . . it was indigenous lumpenproletariat rather than Jews
who served as the social backbone of Stalinism in Poland." It probably was the lumpenproletariat
that prevailed numerically among those supporting communism. Yet it was not the lumpenproletariat
that invented this system, introduced it, legitimized it, and managed it. Communist
activists introduced and managed it whilst progressive intellectuals legitimized it.
Blaming the anti-Semitic lumpenproletariat for communism would simply be a
falsification of history.
Among communists and progressive intellectuals supporting communism there were also Polish
Jews and Poles of Jewish origin. The argument that communism was unusually attractive to
many people wishing to escape from traditional Jewish culture, from the Shtetl, has
nothing to do with anti-Jewish ill will. Intellectuals such as Aleksander Wat or Julian Stryjkowski ,
who themselves succumbed for a time to this illusion, repeatedly wrote about it in Polish
literature. After the war, furthermore, many Jews and Poles of Jewish origin became
communists because of their experience during the occupation. It is possible to
demonstrate this, for example, through hundreds of biographies. It is therefore difficult
to maintain that this is only a matter of stereotypes or prejudices. Many of these people
were driven, for understandable reasons, by a deep aversion not only to the Germans
but also to Poles, and especially Poles with right-wing views.
The view that communism was, by all accounts, mainly the work of Jews is an anti-Semitic
stereotype and does not deserve to be considered. Yet is it possible to remain silent
about communism and the positive attitude to it that appeared amongst the Jewish
population when investigating this period? If we justifiably speak of the false perception
among Poles that identifies all Jews as sympathizers with Soviet authority, then can't we
at the same time admit that the viewing of the communist authorities in a positive light
by a significant section of the Jewish population was a mistake fraught with tragic
consequences? Can we not admit that this could also have been one of the causes of the
dissension and growth of ethnic hatred-despite the fact that a large section of the Polish
population, including the intelligentsia, also quickly accepted the new regime and were
inclined to collaborate with it?
I am convinced that, when speaking of the Holocaust, true reconciliation and
"overcoming the past" will be possible only when, while demanding commemoration
and justice for the victims, we will no longer be able to remain silent about the
complicated motives, about the various behaviors and attitudes of the Jews in "The Ghastly Decade".
Only then will we manage to convince everyone that the issue is the truth, rather than
selective interpretation, manipulation for short-term political goals, or an appeal to
nationalistic arguments. Only then will we truly leave the past behind. Unfortunately,
silence and resentment are still obstacles. There is, however, one consolation: despite
all differences we are in agreement that nothing can justify crimes like the one
perpetrated in Jedwabne, and that the truth should be revealed and the guilty punished
severely. I am convinced that, if Poland had become a free and democratic country in 1945,
this would already have been done and, today, we would be able to read Jan T. Gross's book
in a different light.