On 10 July 1941, Jewish inhabitants of the little town of Jedwabne were burnt alive in a barn by their Polish neighbors. This was probably the worst act of violence inflicted on Jews by the Poles during World War II. By examining postwar legal proceedings related to the Jedwabne massacre, this article looks at the attitude of Polish authorities towards crimes committed by the Poles on Jews during the war as well as the reaction of the local community to its own dark past. Although a group of perpetrators were put on trial in 1949 and 1953, criminal court files reveal the indolence and ineffectiveness of Communist Poland’s justice in such cases. The documents also expose a conspiracy of silence among residents of Jedwabne and their solidarity with the defendants. On the other hand, a scrutiny of civil court proceedings discloses mechanisms of appropriation of the victims’ property by the perpetrators. An analysis of a subsequent investigation into the Jedwabne case carried out in the 1960s and 1970s proves that it predominantly aimed at erasing the truth about Polish involvement in the crime, and as its result German gendarmes were officially pointed out as the sole culprits. Only after the restitution of democracy in 1989 was Poland able to openly confront black pages of its history including the Jedwabne massacre.
Jan T. Gross, 2001. Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); original Polish edition: Sąsiedzi: Historia zagłady żydowskiego miasteczka (Sejny: Pogranicze, 2000).
2.
See Antony Polonsky and Joanna B. Michlic, eds., The Neighbors Respond: The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). See also Jacek Borkowicz and Zbigniew Nosowski, eds., Thou Shalt Not Kill: Poles on Jedwabne ( Warsaw: Więź, 2001).
3.
Paweł Machcewicz and Krzysztof Persak, eds., Wokół Jedwabnego, vol. 1, Studia; vol. 2, Dokumenty ( Warsaw: IPN, 2002), hereinafter: WJ.
4.
Anna Bikont, My z Jedwabnego (Warsaw: Prószyński i S-ka, 2004). For other notable publications, see also Andrzej Żbikowski, U genezy Jedwabnego. Żydzi na Kresach Północno-Wschodnich II Rzeczypospolitej, wrzesień 1949-lipiec 1941 ( Warsaw: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, 2006).
5.
Decision by Public Prosecutor Radosław J. Ignatiew to discontinue investigation S/1/00/Zn of 30 June 2003, http://www.ipn.gov.pl/ftp/pdf/jedwabne_postanowienie.pdf (accessed 29 December 2010), hereinafter: Decision of 30 June 2003. This 203-page document contains a description of the evidence accumulated and the investigation’s conclusions.
6.
The most important documents were edited by the author and published in WJ, vol. 2, chaps. 6-9. A juridical analysis of the trials of the Jedwabne massacre perpetrators was carried out by Andrzej Rzepliński: "Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej? Sprawy karne oskarżonych o wymordowanie Żydów w Jedwabnem w świetle zasady rzetelnego procesu," in WJ, vol. 1, 353-459.
7.
Marcin Urynowicz , "Ludność żydowska w Jedwabnem. Zmiany demograficzne od końca XIX wieku do 1941 roku na tle regionu łomżyńskiego," in WJ, vol. 1, 97.
8.
Those were the militia man Czesław Kupiecki, chairmen of village councils in the nearby Bartki and Siestrzanki-brothers Aleksander and Władysław Wiśniewski, saddler Jankiel Kac, cobbler Eliasz Krawiecki, and an unidentified Jewish baker from Jedwabne.
9.
Those were Basja Binsztejn, the wife of militia man Saul Binsztejn, and Chaja Kubrzańska, the wife of a former member of the Communist Party of Poland (KPP), Abraham Kubrzański.
10.
Samuel Wasserstein Kahn and Yehudi Monestel Arce, La denuncia. 10 de Julio de 1941 (San José, Costa Rica: Editorial Guayacán Centroamericana, 2001).
11.
In some cases, this took place on the order of the Home Army, of which they were secret members.
12.
This collective grave was found during the 2001 exhumation. Inside, the remains of approximately forty men were found, a concrete head of Lenin, and a characteristic shochet’s knife.
13.
According to different, very imprecise accounts, around one hundred to two hundred people, who had managed to hide or escape, survived the pogrom. Most of them were murdered in 1942 during the Nazi’s "final solution of the Jewish question." About a dozen of Jedwabne’s Jews survived the war.
14.
WJ, vol. 2, 440 (Jerzy Laudański’s testimony). According to another witness, Władysław Miciura, "several Gestapo cabs" were to have arrived in Jedwabne (ibid., 449).
Accounts of Avigdor Kochav and Mosze Olszewicz, quoted in Decision of 30 June 2003.
17.
See Jan J. Milewski, "Wybrane akta procesów karnych z lat 1945-1958 w sprawach o udział w zbrodni na ludności żydowskiej w Radziłowie," in WJ, vol. 2, 863-983; accounts of Chaja, Chana, Izrael, and Menachem Finkelsztejn of Radziłów, in WJ, vol. 2, 246-325.
18.
Detailed studies, which cannot be discussed here for lack of space, show that it could have been a detachment of functionaries of the Ciechanów-Płock Gestapo Office, under the command of SS-Obersturmführer Hermann Schaper. In 2002, the ninety-one-year-old Schaper was found and interrogated by a Polish public prosecutor. Of course he did not admit to any involvement in the massacre, but he did confirm that during July-August 1941, he had commanded a special detachment, ten- to fifteen-men strong, operating in the Łomża region, and equipped with motorcars. See Edmund Dmitrów, "Oddziały operacyjne niemieckiej Policji Bezpieczeństwa i Służby Bezpieczeństwa a początek zagłady Żydów w Łomżyńskiem i na Białostocczyźnie latem 1941 roku," in WJ, vol. 1, 315-23; Żbikowski, U genezy Jedwabnego, 225; Alexander Rossino, "Polish ‘Neighbours’ and German Invaders: Anti-Jewish Violence in the Bialystok District during the Opening Weeks of Operation Barbarossa," Polin 16 (2003): 431-52.
19.
WJ, vol. 2, 628, 695-6.
20.
Peter Klein, ed., Die Einsatzgruppen in der besetzten Sowjetunion 1941/42. Die Tätigkeits- und Lageberichte des Chefs der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD (Berlin: Edition Hentrich, 1997), 319. ("Den Selbstreinigungsbestrebungen antikommunistischer oder antijüdischer Kreise in den neu zu besetzenden Gebieten ist kein Hindernis zu bereiten. Sie sind im Gegenteil, allerdings spurenlos auszulösen, zu intensivieren wenn erforderlich und in die richtigen Bahnen zu lenken, ohne dass sich diese Selbstschutzkreise später auf Anordnungen oder auf gegebene politische Zusicherungen berufen können").
21.
Dmitrów, "Oddziały operacyjne niemieckiej Policji Bezpieczeństwa i Służby Bezpieczeństwa a początek zagłady Żydów w Łomżyńskiem i na Białostocczyźnie latem 1941 roku," 290.
22.
K. Persak, "Au-delà de Jedwabne," in Sonia Combe , Paul Gradvohl, Charles Kecskeméti, Antoine Marès , and Jean-Charles Szurek, eds., Archives et histoire dans le sociétés postcommunistes ( Paris: La Découverte/BDIC, 2009), 259-65.
23.
Marta Kurkowska-Budzan, "My Jedwabne," in Polonsky and Michlic, The Neighbors Respond, 206. The author of studies on the social memory of the Jedwabne massacre is a social historian; she was born and raised there.
24.
Kazimierz Leszczyński, "Eksterminacja ludności na ziemiach polskich w latach 1939-1945. Opracowanie materiałów ankiety z 1945 roku (województwa: białostockie, gdańskie i kieleckie)," Biuletyn Głównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce8 ( 1956): 134.
25.
K. Persak, "Akta postępowań cywilnych z lat 1947-1949 w sprawach dotyczących zmarłych żydowskich mieszkańców Jedwabnego," in WJ, vol. 2, 376.
26.
State Archive in Białystok, Regional Military Court in Białystok, Sr 728/48, Eliasz Trokenheim’s criminal case, p. 8 (Józef Grądowski’s testimony).
27.
WJ, vol. 2, 387.
28.
See Sławomir Poleszak, Podziemie antykomunistyczne w Łomżyńskiem i Grajewskiem (1944- 1957) (Warsaw: Volumen, 2004).
29.
WJ, vol. 2, 418.
30.
Ibid., 536.
31.
Ibid., 454.
32.
Ibid., 448, 457, 461.
33.
Ibid., 487, 460, 473, 480 (testimonies of Zygmunt Laudański, Antoni Niebrzydowski, Władysław Miciura, and Jerzy Laudański).
34.
Ibid., 528.
35.
Ibid., 535.
36.
Dmitrów, "Oddziały operacyjne niemieckiej Policji Bezpieczeństwa i Służby Bezpieczeństwa a początek zagłady Żydów w Łomżyńskiem i na Białostocczyźnie latem 1941 roku," 265, 288-9.
37.
WJ, vol. 2, 573-88.
38.
Ibid., 461, 480.
39.
Krzysztof Sychowicz , Urząd Bezpieczeństwa w Łomży-Powstanie i działalność (1944-1956) (Białystok : IPN, 2009), 217-25.
40.
Dziennik Ustaw 1946, no. 69, item 377.
41.
"Judgment of the Supreme Court of 16 February 1949," Państwo i Prawo 1949 (8): 133. Cf. Leszek Kubicki, Zbrodnie wojenne w świetle prawa polskiego (Warsaw: PWN, 1963).
42.
WJ, vol. 2, 557.
43.
Ibid., 592.
44.
Those were Jerzy Laudański (fifteen years); Zygmunt Laudański, Władysław Miciura, Bolesław Ramotowski (twelve years); Czesław Lipiński, Stanisław Zejer (ten years); Władysław Dąbrowski, Roman Górski, Antoni Niebrzydowski, Feliks Tarnacki, and Józef Żyluk (eight years).
45.
WJ, vol. 2, 592.
46.
For example, according to the witness Bronisława Kalinowska, Jerzy Laudański was to have killed two or three Jews, which was not mentioned in the indictment or the judgment. See WJ, vol. 2, 507.
47.
Ibid., 674-7.
48.
Ibid., 789-91. The public prosecutor pointed out that Sobuta’s wife had left the courtroom several times before they were summoned to make their statements before the court.
49.
Ibid., 794-6.
50.
Ibid., 798-800.
51.
Ibid., 806.
52.
K. Persak, "Le crime de Jedwabne: effacer et retrouver ses traces après la guerre," in Jean-Charles Szurek and Annette Wieviorka, eds., Juifs et Polonais 1939-2008 (Paris: Albin Michel, 2009), 461-80.
53.
Marcin Zaremba, Komunizm, legitymizacja, nacjonalizm. Nacjonalistyczna legitymizacja władzy komunistycznej w Polsce (Warsaw: Trio, 2001); and Krzysztof Tyszka, Nacjonalizm w komunizmie. Ideologia narodowa w Związku Radzieckim i Polsce Ludowej (Warsaw: IFiS PAN, 2004).
54.
Michael Steinlauf, Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust ( Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997); and Renata Kobylarz, Walka o pamięć.Polityczne aspekty obchodów rocznicy powstania w getcie warszawskim 1944-1989 (Warsaw : IPN, 2009).
55.
WJ, vol. 2, 828.
56.
Ibid., 839.
57.
Ibid., 848-49.
58.
Ibid., 850.
59.
Ibid., 858. Sokołowska also said that the gendarmes were to have arrived, among others, from the post in Stawiski (twenty kilometers away). Meanwhile, according to a report of an intelligence officer at Himmler’s staff, SS-Haupsturmführer May, of 7 July 1941, the German police forces had staffing problems. "In Stawiski there is stationed a gendarmerie detachment, eight-men strong, which . . . is to guard at least seventy-four towns and villages in the area. With this scarce force, effective control is impossible . . . the gendarmerie sets up Poles as auxiliary organs" (WJ, vol. 1, 265).
60.
Szymon Datner , "Niemiecki okupacyjny aparat bezpieczeństwa w Okręgu Białostockim (1941-1944),"Biuletyn Głownej Komisji Ścigania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich15 (1965).
61.
Among the 1949 trial documents overlooked by Monkiewicz was Karol Bardoń’s account, according to which on 10 July 1941 the German gendarmes in Jedwabne were under Hauptwachtmeister Adamy’s command. On the other hand, Alois Achilles, whose name was placed in the motion to prosecute by the public prosecutor, was the commandant of the post at a later time. Also, the defense witness, Bolesław Olszewski, claimed that there had been two Gendarmerie posts in Jedwabne, but Monkiewicz clearly ignored it. Similarly, he overlooked the remark of another witness, Wacław Kupiecki, about the presence of Gestapo men in Jedwabne on the day of the massacre.
62.
WJ, vol. 2, 825.
63.
W. Monkiewicz , "Zagłada skupisk żydowskich w regionie białostockim w latach 1939, 1941-1944,"Studia Podlaskie2 (1989).
64.
Die Einsatzgruppen in der besetzten Sowjetunion 1941/42, 379.
65.
In my research into the Jedwabne case, I have come across evidence of analogous frauds in Białystok and Łomża. See also Francois Guesnet, "‘These Are German Houses’: Polish Memory Confronting Jedwabne," in Dan Diner and Gotthard Wunberg, eds., Restitution and Memory: Material Restoration in Europe (New York, NY: Berghahn Books, 2007).
66.
A. Żbikowski , "Pogromy i mordy ludności żydowskiej w Łomżyńskiem i na Białostocczyźnie latem 1941 r. w świetle relacji ocalałych Żydów i dokumentów sądowych," in WJ, vol. 1, 159-272.
67.
Alina Skibińska and Jakub Petelewicz, "Udział Polaków w zbrodniach na Żydach na prowincji regionu świętokrzyskiego," Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały 1 (2005); and Dagmara Swałtek, "For a Coat, a Suitcase, and an Apple: Crimes Against Jews Hiding in the Villages of Falkowa, Wieniec and Janowice in the Light of Post-War Trial Documents," Holocaust Studies and Materials 2 (2010).
68.
The death penalty was adjudicated in about 8 percent of cases based on the August Decree. The statistics, however, do not reveal how many of them involved German perpetrators. One can assume that the German criminals were sentenced to death more often than Polish collaborators.
69.
In several hundred cases, the August Decree was abused by the communist authorities in their fight against their political opponents, who were falsely accused of collaboration with the Nazis during the occupation.
70.
Andrzej Pasek, Przestępstwa okupacyjne w polskim prawie karnym z lat 1944-1956 (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2002), 172-3. After 1956, the prosecution of all crimes under the August Decree, except "complicity in murder," was discontinued. The last sentence in such a case was passed in 2001.
71.
Joanna Wawrzyniak, ZBoWiD i pamięć drugiej wojny światowej 1949-1969 ( Warsaw: Trio, 2009), 280-98.
72.
See Piotr Forecki, Od Shoah do Strachu: Spory o polsko-żydowską przeszłość i pamięć w debatach publicznych (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 2010); see also Jean-Yves Potel, La fin de l’innocence: La Pologne face à son passé juif (Paris: Autement, 2008).
