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][5]
Aftermath
[change | change source]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.
The Institute of National Remembrance (Polish: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej), Poland's state research agency that prosecutes Nazi and Soviet war crimes against the country, conducted a forensic investigation in 2000–2003 to confirm that the perpetrators were ethnic Poles, shocking the Poles and the world as the findings contradict the common belief about the the Holocaust in Poland having emphasized on Polish victimhood.[6][3][5]
Assessment
[change | change source]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-inflicted oppression.[4]
See also
[change | change source]- Jews
- Poland
- Pogrom
- Judaism
- Massacre
- World War II
- Antisemitism
- Nazi Germany
- The Holocaust
- Antisemitic trope
- Genocidal massacre
- Odessa massacre (1941)
References
[change | change source]- ↑
- Gross 2001, pp. 14–20
- Stola 2003
- Persak 2011
- ↑
- Stola 2003, pp. 140, 145–146
- Crago 2012, p. 900
- ↑ 3.0 3.1
- 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."
- ↑ 4.0 4.1
- "The anniversary of the Jedwabne massacre". Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Warsaw, Poland. Retrieved October 21, 2024.
On 10 July 1941, an anti-Jewish pogrom took place in Jedwabne. It occurred a dozen or so days after the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from the town, which had then been seized by Germans. Around 10am, Polish inhabitants of Jedwabne and nearby villages, under the German supervision, started to herd Jews from the town to the market square.
[...]
At that time, shortly after the German invasion on the USSR, Germans were perceived as saviors from the cruel Soviet occupation by the local population. Thus, their inspiration—based on antisemitic prejudices and the "Judeo-communism" [żydokomuna] stereotype—was met with much enthusiasm. The pogrom in Jedwabne was a symbolic revenge on Jews for the Soviet repressions of Poles. The victims were condemned for the alleged affiliation of the entire Jewish community with the communists. - 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.
Hundreds of Jews massacred in Jedwabne pogrom
- "The anniversary of the Jedwabne massacre". Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Warsaw, Poland. Retrieved October 21, 2024.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1
- Joanna Beata Michlic (December 5, 2017). "Scholars' Forum: Holocaust Historiography in Eastern Europe (Part II) Editors: Kiril Feferman and Kobi Kabalek". Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust. 31 (3): 296–306. doi:10.1080/23256249.2017.1376793.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link) - Korycki, Kate (March 31, 2019). "Polticized memory in Poland: anti-communism and the Holocaust". Holocaust Studies: 351–376. doi:10.1080/17504902.2019.1567669. Retrieved October 22, 2024.
- Kończal, Kornelia (September 3, 2021). "Forum: "Patriotic History" and the (Re)nationalization of Memory". Journal of Genocide Research. 24 (2) (1 ed.). Bielefeld, Germany: Contemporary European History: 250–263. doi:10.1080/14623528.2021.1968147. Retrieved October 22, 2024.
- Machcewicz, Paweł (August 18, 2023). Neighbors, the Jedwabne Massacre of Jews and the Controversy that Changed Poland (1 ed.). Warsaw, Poland: Contemporary European History. pp. 1–8. doi:10.1017/S0960777323000504. Retrieved October 22, 2024.
- Joanna Beata Michlic (December 5, 2017). "Scholars' Forum: Holocaust Historiography in Eastern Europe (Part II) Editors: Kiril Feferman and Kobi Kabalek". Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust. 31 (3): 296–306. doi:10.1080/23256249.2017.1376793.
- ↑ Adam Michnik, In Search of Lost Meaning: The New Eastern Europe, Chapter 10: "The Shock of Jedwabne", p.204-, University of California Press (2011)
- ↑ 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.