Debate has raged in Poland since the publication last year of Polish-born American scholar Jan Gross’ book, “Neighbors.” In the book, Gross says that Polish villagers of Jedwabne — not the Nazis — murdered some 1,600 of their Jewish neighbors in July 1941 by herding them into a barn and setting it on fire.
The revelations in the book, which is due out soon in English, have sparked a re-examination of Poles’ role during the Holocaust.
Some 3 million Polish Jews died in the genocide. A similar number of non-Jewish Poles were killed by the Nazis.
There have been numerous conferences, articles in the media and heated roundtable discussions. A documentary on the case will be released next week.
An investigation launched last year by the Polish National Remembrance Institute has not yet been completed.
“There is no doubt that Poles participated in the crime,” Buzek said. “But the murder was done neither in the name of the nation nor in the name of the Polish state.”
“We object to the use of the Jedwabne case to spread false statements about the Polish co-responsibility for the Holocaust or on innate Polish anti-Semitism,” Buzek said. Nor, he added, “should all inhabitants of Jedwabne of today be reproached for a murder committed 60 years ago.”
Most of Jedwabne’s current 2,000 residents settled there after the war. Townspeople this week prepared an open letter that condemned the wartime atrocity, but also said today’s residents should not bear the blame.
“You have to realize that asking the town to make peace with its past is tantamount to desecrating its deepest beliefs of patriotism and Catholicism,” Jedwabne’s mayor, Krzysztof Godlewski, told Reuters. “And this is difficult, especially since our town was probably not an isolated incident.”
President Aleksander Kwasniewski last week pledged to publicly apologize for the massacre.
“This should be done by the authorities of the Polish Republic,” he told Polish television. The anniversary of the massacre “on July 10 is a good day, and Jedwabne, because of the tragedy that took place there, is a proper place for that,” Kwasniewski said.
In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Yediot Achronot, which was quoted in the Polish media, Kwasniewski called the Jedwabne case “an act of genocide which Poles from Jedwabne carried out against their Jewish neighbors,” adding that it was “an exceptionally bestial killing of innocent people.”
Kwasniewski, however, drew fire in the media for announcing the apology before a full investigation of the case was completed.