Jedwabne pogrom (1941)
The Jedwabne pogrom was a massacre of Jews in the Polish town Jedwabne on 10 July 1941 when Poland was occupied by Nazi Germany.[1] 300~1,600 are estimated to have been killed, ranging from women, children to elderly, many of whom were burned alive in a barn,[2] while 40+ ethnic Poles are estimated to have participated in the pogrom under the auspices of Nazi German military police (Feldgendarmerie).[3][4]
It is said that the pogrom was conducted with extreme brutality. Not only was an entire village burned alive, but also women were raped before slain, men and children were stabbed to death with knives, pitchforks, axes, hatchets. No compassion was seen by any witnesses who later testified in war crimes trials.[5]
Discovery
The pogrom did not come into public knowledge until 1999–2003, when the film Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland was released in 2001. Poland's Institute of National Remembrance conducted a forensic investigation in 2000–2003 to confirm that the perpetrators were ethnic Poles, shocking the country as it contradicts the common belief about the The Holocaust in Poland emphasizing on Polish victimhood.[6]
See also
References
- ↑
- Gross 2001, pp. 14–20
- Stola 2003
- Persak 2011
- ↑ Stola 2003, pp. 140, 145–146Crago 2012, p. 900
- ↑ Gross 2001, pp. 76–78 "There was an outpost of German gendarmerie in Jedwabne, staffed by eleven men. We can also infer from various sources that a group of Gestapo men arrived in town by taxi either on that day or the previous one." [...] "At the time the undisputed bosses of life and death in Jedwabne were the Germans. No sustained organized activity could take place there without their consent. They were the only ones who could decide the fate of the Jews."
- ↑ "The anniversary of the Jedwabne massacre". Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Warsaw, Poland. Retrieved October 21, 2024.
- ↑ Żbikowski, Andrzej. "Mass murder of Jewish citizens in Jedwabne, Radziłów and other locations in the eastern Mazovia region in the summer of 1941". Jewish Historical Institute. Retrieved October 21, 2024.
- ↑ Adam Michnik, In Search of Lost Meaning: The New Eastern Europe, Chapter 10: "The Shock of Jedwabne", p.204-, University of California Press (2011)