Poland marks 80th anniversary of Jedwabne massacre of Jews by their Polish neighbours

A commemoration was held yesterday in Jedwabne to mark the 80th anniversary of a pogrom that killed at least 340 of the town’s Jews, most of whom were burned alive in a barn by non-Jewish Poles during the German Nazi occupation of Poland.

“We were victims, but unfortunately we were also victims of [other] victims,” said Shevah Weiss, a Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivor and former speaker of Israel’s Knesset, at yesterday’s ceremony, referring to the fact that Poles were both victims of the occupation but also, as in this case, responsible for atrocities.

“But I personally know of barns where Jews were rescued [by Poles],” added Weiss, referring to the many Poles who helped Jews survive the Holocaust. “I am a child of the Holocaust saved by a Polish family in a chapel and in a barn, [and] by a Ukrainian family in a double-wall.”

As well as Weiss, yesterday’s ceremony was attended by an advisor to Polish president Andrzej Duda, a Polish deputy foreign minister, German, Israeli and US diplomats, the auxiliary bishop of Warsaw, and Poland’s chief rabbi, reports the Polish Press Agency (PAP).

The local community in Jedwabne, however, once again refused to attend the event, reflecting longstanding controversy over how the pogrom – and who is to blame for it – is remembered.

The head of the Jewish community in Warsaw, Lesław Piszewski, said that it caused him “pain in my heart” that invitations to the local community are always met with “silence and emptiness”.

“We know well that the Jedwabne issue is polarising and divisive, but I think that today we should first of all focus on honouring the victims and simply remember them and be here,” added Adam Bodnar, Poland’s commissioner for human rights, who was also in attendance.

In 2002, the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), a Polish state body, released the results of a two-year investigation into the 1941 pogrom. It found that a group of around 40 Poles who carried out the massacre were responsible “in the strict sense” while responsibility “in the broad sense” fell on the German occupiers.

A year earlier, President Aleksander Kwaśniewski had declared that he “apologises in the name of those Poles whose conscience is shattered by that crime…in Jedwabne [where] Polish citizens were killed at the hands of fellow citizens”.

“Let us stick with the academic knowledge that has been duly verified  by serious historians,” said Bodnar yesterday. “I do not see any need to question what the Institute of National Remembrance has already established a long time ago.”

In 2015, Duda himself aroused controversy when, during an election debate, he criticised his predecessor, Bronisław Komorowski, for saying on the 70th anniversary of Jedwabne that “the [Polish] nation of victims was also a perpetrator”. This supported “false accusations” that damage the “good name of Poland”, argued Duda.

The incident highlighted tensions over how Polish actions towards Jews during the war are remembered. Many argue that, while some Poles committed crimes, they did so as individuals and under the brutal conditions of German occupation. They point to the many Poles, including in the exiled and underground Polish state apparature, who sought to help Jews.

Yesterday’s commemorations in Jedwabne – held a day after the anniversary in order to avoid clashing with the Jewish sabbath – saw further controversy when police initially prevented a group of around 70 people, including members of the Jewish community, from attending the event.

Some said they had travelled 200 kilometres to be there, and that this was the first time police had guarded entry to the annual commemoration. The group was eventually admitted after the intervention of Bodnar and Michael Schudrich, the chief rabbi, reports Onet.

A separate small group of men gathered outside the event waving a white and red Polish flag and protesting against “Jewish lies that Poles committed murder here”.

One of them, an inhabitant of Jedwabne, told Onet that, while he “does not deny that there were a few Poles” present during the pogrom, “all of them were directed by the German gendarmes”.

“Today, the Germans are cleansed [of guilt] and Poles are blamed so that we would have a sense of guilt and trauma passed down from generation to generation,” he added.

However, Kamil Mrozowicz, an academic who was raised in Jedwabne, said that the pogrom should be commemorated. “We have no influence” on the actions of our “ancestors”, he said. “But we are all responsible for remembering these events and ensuring that they never happen again.”

In recent years, some have called for the IPN’s investigation into the pogrom to be reopened, and in particular for the remains of the victims to be exhumed and examined. This has, however, been opposed by Poland’s Jewish community, on the grounds that it would violate Jewish religious tradition.

“The role of the Germans, who encouraged the Polish population to engage in pogroms, is obvious,” said Andrzej Żbikowski from the Jewish Historical Institute, quoted by TVN24. “Despite German inspiration, the responsibility rests with those who committed this murder. And they were Poles.”

“[Jedwabne] is very important for Poles and for Jews, and this is a common challenge for us and for Poles, because together we were a victim of the worst totalitarian regime in history,” said Weiss yesterday. “For that reason, this place is a question mark about human values, but also an exclamation mark [saying] ‘Never kill again’.”

Main image credit: Agnieszka Sadowska/ Agencja Gazeta

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.