Poland | Poland: Provocations around Jedwabne

Twenty-five years ago, a small book shocked the Polish public, the shock for readers at home being deliberate. The Polish-American historian Jan Tomasz Gross had dedicated himself to a pogrom that took place deep in the shadow of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, which began on June 21, 1941. The setting was the small eastern Polish town of Jedwabne, which had a population of fewer than 3,000 and, as of autumn 1939, was already under Soviet occupation, not far from the German-Soviet demarcation line. There, on July 10, 1941, several hundred of the town's Jewish residents were murdered, not by the invading German occupiers, but by Polish neighbors, hence the book's title: "Neighbors: The Murder of the Jews of Jedwabne" (Polish 2000, German 2001).

Burned alive

The book stated that the Jews of Jedwabne, who made up about half of the town's population, had been murdered by their Polish neighbors. Most of them were forcibly herded into a barn and burned alive. In 1949, there was even a trial in which a dozen of the perpetrators were convicted, but for the general public in Poland, all of this was at most a marginal note in the larger events of the war and occupation. In 1964, a memorial stone was erected at the site of the burned-down barn, bearing the following inscription: "The Gestapo and Hitler's gendarmerie burned 1,600 people alive here. July 10, 1941." The contrast to the statements in Gross's book could not have been more striking. It should be noted that Gross adopted the number of victims in his book.

A new memorial stone was unveiled in 2001 – on the 60th anniversary of the crime: "In memory of the Jews of Jedwabne and the surrounding area, of the men, women, and children who called this place their home, who were murdered and burned alive on this spot. Jedwabne, July 10, 1941." At the unveiling, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, then Poland's President, apologized – both in his own name and on behalf of those Poles whose consciences were stirred by this crime. This division has remained: here those whose consciences are deeply shaken and who demand a full and unvarnished clarification of the events of that time, and there those who, in all possible shades, adopt a kind of hedgehog stance, who prefer to downplay the situation. For example, when it is falsely claimed that the Jews of Eastern Poland collaborated to a particularly high degree with the Soviet occupiers in many places between autumn 1939 and June 1941.

The Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), which has a huge influence on history policy, sorted the matter out relatively quickly. Its 2004 position seems like the lowest common denominator on which everyone could now agree: at least 340 people were killed, most of them in the barn, the direct perpetrators came from Jedwabne, but the overall responsibility lies with the German occupiers, who had instigated the crime, even if there is no evidence for it.

Gross sees his views vindicated today, pointing out that other cases like the one in Jedwabne have long since been uncovered. Holocaust research in Poland was boosted after the book's publication, a prime example of which is the Holocaust Research Association (Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów), founded in Warsaw in 2003, with its important publications. It's not for nothing, incidentally, that Jarosław Kaczyński, when he rails against the "pedagogy of shame," always essentially targets this research association.

This year, Grzegorz Braun, the avowed anti-Semite, EU opponent, and champion of the restoration of national sovereignty, took advantage of the commemoration in Jedwabne in his own way. The independent member of the European Parliament, who ran in the Polish presidential elections a few weeks ago and received 6.3 percent of the vote in the first round, provoked the crowd on the day of remembrance in Jedwabne: "Stop the Jewish lies. The crime of July 10, 1941, in Jedwabne was committed by the Germans!" The reactions were fierce, with harsh rejection even expressed in the national-conservative camp. Kaczyński vaguely accused Braun of acting in the interests of an external power.

New memorial plaques meet with protest

New memorial plaques near the memorial also blame the Germans for the massacre. As the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza reported, seven stones with signs in Polish and English were placed on private property next to the memorial.

Polish journalist Wojciech Sumlinski explained on the online service X that he had financed the installation through crowdfunding. The Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial has now called on Polish authorities to "remove the offensive installation and ensure that the historical significance of the site is preserved and respected." The plaques, he said, negate the moral and historical responsibility that Poland bears.