The tragedy that engulfed the Polish town of Jedwabne during World War II continues to rear its ugly head today.
On the morning of July 10, 1941, a group of Poles in the town, allegedly under the close supervision of German policemen, assembled with the purpose of rounding up the local Jewish citizenry. When they had found enough victims, the Poles made the Jewish men march to the town square, where they were beaten and brutalized and forced to pick blades of grass with their hands. Some of the men were ordered to destroy a statue of Lenin and carry the debris out of town while singing Soviet patriotic songs.
This group of adult males, numbering roughly 40, was led by a local rabbi into a barn, where they were shot to a man. The corpses were then dragged from the barn and buried along with fragments of the Lenin statue.
Later that day, the remaining Jews that had been rounded up earlier, approximately 300 women and children, were taken to the same barn and locked inside. The structure was then doused with gasoline and set afire. The occupants were burned alive.
The sad saga of Jedwabne in World War II did not begin with the atrocity of July 10. It was initiated with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. Two weeks after the Germans rolled across the Polish frontier, the Soviets did the same—the forces converging on the hapless country from east and west. According to prearranged treaty terms, the Germans, who had initially occupied the town, turned it over to the Soviets some time later.
During the Red Army and NKVD (Soviet Secret Police) occupation of Jedwabne, it was reported that Jews and Poles alike were either enlisted into civil service or auxiliary jobs, rounded up and deported to Siberia, or summarily executed. Some observers recalled that the Soviets allowed Jews who swore allegiance to Moscow to be placed in positions of responsibility, often enough guarding Poles on their way to an unknown collective fate. Herein may have laid the root of the Polish reprisal against the local Jews following the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. The reported massacre of Jews on July 10 occurred only two weeks later.
Following World War II, a series of investigations was conducted in an effort to fix blame for the massacre of the Jews. The first of these was under the jurisdiction of the Polish Communist government with the intent of also punishing Poles who had collaborated with the Nazis. This was followed by German inquiries. From 2002 to 2004, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance released a series of reports that acknowledged the perpetrators were Polish Gentiles and apologized for the atrocity. They also confirmed the presence of the German authorities during the tragedy.
Most recently, in August of this year, vandals struck a monument that had been erected to the memory of those murdered on July 10, 1941. The apparent neo-Nazis or Polish ultra-nationalists scrawled across the monument with spray paint the dreaded SS runes and the hateful comment, “I don’t apologize for Jedwabne—they were flammable.”
Apparently in response to the Polish government’s acceptance of its people’s participation in the atrocity and the courage of then President Aleksandr Kwasniewski to own up to the fact, these individuals felt compelled to deface the memorial. At press time, an investigation is continuing.
While World War II ended more than six decades ago, incidents such as this indicate that mankind still has far to go when it comes to tolerance and forgiveness. Consider that those who committed the vandalism were very likely born at least 30 years after the end of the war. Another generation of hate? For everyone’s sake, let us hope this is not so.
Michael E. Haskew
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