Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland

Edward Sleszynski told Gross that many Jews burned in his father Bronislaw’s barn. Though he did not witness the murders himself, he learned from his Gentile neighbors how his Jewish neighbors were burned.

Julia Sokolowska, a cook for the gendarmes at the time, was another witness. During the investigation against Ramotowski, which was conducted on January 11, 1949, she testified that Polish residents of Jedwabne began to kill Jews alongside Germans just a few days after the invading army arrived. The Poles “killed over one and half thousand people of Jewish nationality,” according to Sokolowska, who emphasized that she never saw “any Germans beating the Jews” (61). Ironically, there were some Germans who protected “three Jewish women” by taking them to the gendarmerie, where Sokolowska provided them with something to eat. Sokolowska named 15 individuals as well as fathers and sons who participated in the slaughter.

During the trial, however, Sokolowska was “reluctant to speak on the witness stand” (63). Then she testified that “there were sixty gestapo men” on the day of the murders, which she knew because she had “cooked dinner for them” (63). There were also, she claimed, around the same number of gendarmes. This reveals that there were many Germans in Jedwabne on the day of the pogrom.

Sokolowska’s testimony is unique because most of those accused during the trial “had families and friends in the vicinity” (63) who could create internal pressure within the small community to prevent further testimonies.

Toward the end of the Nazi occupation, there was an active and “very strong Polish nationalist underground organization” (63) called the National Armed Forces (NSZ). Most of its members lived in the nearby forest. On September 29, 1948, “an armed detachment” from a group called “Wiarus” (64) overtook Jedwabne for a few hours. The inhabitants of Jedwabne feared these “boys from the forest” (64) as much as the Soviet secret police. Thus, this group may have had some influence on witnesses’ reluctance to testify.

Karl Bardón—the only defendant in the trial given a death sentence—appealed the verdict by the Lomza District Court. In the supplemental testimony that he attached to his appeal, he claimed that Sokolowska’s testimony about the presence of many Germans and gendarmes during the murders was false. Bardón recalled not seeing “any gestapo men or gendarmes” in “the square where Jews were assembled” (65). Bardón returned to the gendarme outpost where “a few civilians” ran into the courtyard and attempted to grab “three Jews who were chopping wood” (65). The commander there—a man named Adamy—emerged and scolded the mob for being greedy; eight hours was enough time “to do with the Jews as [they pleased]” (65). Thus, Bardón asserted, civilians conducted the murders—not the Gestapo—with the guidance of Mayor Karolak.

During the Ramotowski trial held in Lomza, nine of those accused “were found not guilty” (66). Even though numerous participants in the pogrom were mentioned by name, there were likely plenty of others assembled who remain anonymous. There were also, according to one defendant, people who arrived from nearby towns to watch the murders. Boleslaw Ramotowski noted that “it was very crowded” (66) on the day the Jews were chased into Sleszynski’s barn.

All 92 of the identified perpetrators were adult males and citizens of Jedwabne. Of the 2,500 people who lived in Jedwabne before World War II, Jews made up two-thirds of that population. There were around 450 male Poles of all ages. If this number is divided, that leads one to conclude that around half of all adult males in Jedwabne were identified as perpetrators of the pogrom, which “lasted an entire day” and took place in an area “no bigger than a sports stadium” (67). Sleszynksi’s barn “was but a stone’s throw of the square in the center of town” (68). Many of the assaults on Jewish citizens took place in the Jewish cemetery across the street.

On the day of the murders, all Polish men were called to the town hall. Mayor Marian Karolak and Józef Sobuta ordered the men to bring all the town’s Jews “to the square in front of the town hall” (69). One witness claimed that the Poles were served vodka, though no one else repeated this detail. Supposedly the Jews were to be gathered to perform a chore. They had been assembled before to do “cleanup jobs” (69). Several minutes after they gathered, the Gentiles (whom the Jews called “goyim”) began beating a young boy to death.

The Jewish community knew early on that it was in danger. Some fled into “neighboring fields, but only a few succeeded” (71), due to the difficulties of getting out of town undetected. More worryingly, there were bands of peasants “milling around trying to ferret out and catch hiding and fleeing Jews” (71).

Violence quickly overwhelmed Jedwabne. Jews were stoned and clubbed to death while their homes were pillaged. The kheyder teacher’s young daughter was beheaded, then her head was kicked around. A woman fainted from dehydration and “no one was allowed to help her” (72). The mob then killed her mother for trying to bring her water. Another woman was murdered while she held an infant.

The crowd decided to drive their victims to Sleszynksi’s barn because they realized they could kill 1,500 people more easily by burning them. This same method had been employed in Radzilów several days earlier. They initially tried to get local man Józef Chrzanowski to give them his barn, but he pled with the mob to spare his barn and they agreed, in exchange for his assistance with driving the Jews toward Sleszynski’s barn.

Józef Sobuta led the effort in organizing “a sideshow.” The victims were forced to perform various activities, including exercises. Sobuta demanded that the Jews scream “[w]ar is because of us, war is for us” (180). He and his colleagues also forced them to take down a statue of Vladimir Lenin, which stood near the town square. The Jews broke up the statue at command and carried its various pieces around on boards.

However, some Jews managed to escape, and some of those given preferential treatment refused it to remain in solidarity with their community. Michal Kuropatwa was spotted in the crowd of Jews and offered the opportunity to go home because he “had helped a Polish army officer hide from his Soviet pursuers” (75). Kuropatwa refused, choosing to remain with his people even as they faced death. Janek Neumark managed to escape from the burning barn. He wrestled an ax from a man who had barred him, his sister, and her five-year-old daughter from leaving the barn. The three then ran into the cemetery. From there, they watched flames consume the barn.

Most of the bodies were completely consumed by the fire. The barn was so crowded that those on the lower layer were probably “crushed and asphyxiated” (76) while those on the higher tier were incinerated. The bodies “were so intertwined with one another that [they] could not be disentangled” (76). Still, some Poles searched the bodies for valuable objects.

A man named Kobrzyniecki was rumored to have set the barn on fire and earned the reputation for being “[t]he worst murderer of the whole lot” (76). Kobrzyniecki killed 18 Jews on his own by stabbing them to death. He admitted as much one day to a homemaker while installing a stove in her apartment.

After the bodies were burned, Adamy, “the commander of the German gendarmerie in Jedwabne” (78), demanded that the Poles bury all of the bodies. He was afraid that, in the heat, the decomposing bodies could cause an epidemic. Moreover, stray dogs were sniffing around the corpses. Someone in the crowd had the idea of dismembering the corpses to make it easier to throw them into the ground. Thus, everyone brought pitchforks and set to work with tearing the bodies apart.

After July 10, the Poles no longer had permission to kill Jews without German consent. Those few who had survived the pogrom returned to town. Among them were several who worked at the gendarmerie. However, they were all later taken to a ghetto in Lomza. Around a dozen of those driven out survived after World War II.