Jedwabne pogrom (1941)

Memorial in Jedwabne, Łomża County, Poland.

The Jedwabne pogrom was a massacre of Jews in the Polish town Jedwabne on 10 July 1941 during the Nazi occupation of Poland.[1] 300~1,600 are estimated to have been killed, ranging from women, children to elderly, many of whom were burned alive,[2] while 40+ ethnic Poles are estimated to have participated in the pogrom under the auspices of Nazi German military police (Feldgendarmerie).[3][4][5]

Aftermath

The pogrom did not come into public knowledge until the early 2000s, when the film Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland was released in 2001.[3] The Institute of National Remembrance (Polish: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej), Poland's state research agency that prosecutes Nazi and Soviet war crimes, conducted a forensic investigation in 2000–2003, confirming that the perpetrators were ethnic Poles, shocking the nation and the world.[5][6]

Assessment

It is said that the pogrom was conducted with exceptional 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.[7]

Historians claimed that the pogrom's Polish perpetrators were motivated by grievances towards the preceding Soviet occupation, which had been projected onto the Jews because some Poles believed the Żydokomuna ("Jewish Communism") myth and sought revenge on the Jews as scapegoats for the Soviet oppression.[4]

References

  1. ↑
  2. ↑
    • Stola 2003, pp. 140, 145–146
    • Crago 2012, p. 900
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1
    • Gross 2001, pp. 76–78
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1
    • "The anniversary of the Jedwabne massacre". Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Warsaw, Poland. Retrieved October 21, 2024.
    • Törnquist-Plewa, Barbara. Echoes of the Holocaust: Historical Cultures in Contemporary Europe (PDF) (1 ed.). Nordic Academic Press. doi:10.2307/jj.919484. JSTOR jj.919484. Retrieved October 22, 2024.
    • "This week in Jewish history". World Jewish Congress. July 10, 2022. Retrieved October 21, 2024.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1
  6. ↑ Adam Michnik, In Search of Lost Meaning: The New Eastern Europe, Chapter 10: "The Shock of Jedwabne", p.204-, University of California Press (2011)
  7. ↑ 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.