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

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2000

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Key Figures

Jan Tomasz Gross

Historian Jan Tomasz Gross is the narrator of this history of the Jedwabne massacre. Though Gross was not a survivor and has no connection to this specific community, he is of Polish descent. As a Pole he, therefore, personally contends with Poland’s role in the Holocaust as well as its history of victimization by the Nazis. Frequently, Gross injects his own voice into the narrative, usually to explain evidence or to pose a series of questions to prod the reader into thinking differently about the Holocaust.

Gross was born in Warsaw but left his homeland in 1969, according to The Guardian, after political dissidents, particularly Jews, became targets of the government. Gross has a reputation as a voice that speaks for underrepresented groups. His work as a historian contends with Poland’s aversion to examining its history, as well as the nation’s tendency to pursue a singular historical narrative. Gross is Professor Emeritus of History at Princeton University, where he teaches about Soviet politics, Eastern European politics and society, comparative politics, the Holocaust, and totalitarian and authoritarian regimes.

Wyrzykowski Family

The Wyrzykowskis were a Polish family from “the nearby Janczewo hamlet” (78) who assisted some Jewish neighbors who escaped the pogrom in Jedwabne. Seven of the dozen Jedwabne Jews who survived World War II managed to do so because of the Wyrzykowskis’ assistance. Aleksander Wyrzykowski and his wife Antonia “[saved Szmul] Wasersztajn and six other Jews during the occupation” (95). The family hid and looked after this group until the Allies defeated the Nazis. After the occupation, the family was stigmatized for having helped Jews. Thus, they left Jedwabne and moved to Lomza. They then moved to Bialystok due to threats against them. In 1946 they relocated yet again—this time to Bielsk Podlaski. They remained in the latter town for several years before having to relocate again. Antonia eventually immigrated to Chicago. The Wyrzykowskis who stayed in Jedwabne remained stigmatized for helping Jews.

Szmul Wasersztajn

Wasersztajn was a Polish inhabitant of Jedwabne who witnessed the 1941 pogrom of Jewish citizens. Records of his deposition are held at the Jewish Historical Institute (JHI) in Poland. Wasersztajn provided “the first and most comprehensive report about the Jedwabne massacre […] in 1945” (24). He and six other Jews were protected by the Wyrzykowski family during the Nazi occupation.

Boleslaw Ramotowski

Ramotowski was one of 20 men put on trial for the murder and torture of Jedwabne’s Jewish citizens in 1941. The trial against those men, which took place in Lomza, is named after Ramotowski.

Józef Sobuta

Sobuta, one of the culprits in the Jedwabne massacre, “was put on trial in 1953” (27) and later freed. Sobuta “was the main instigator of the dismantling of the Lenin monument during the pogrom” (161). He also likely participated in the effort to burn hundreds of Jews in a barn. He was married to a woman named Stanislawa. They moved into a home that had belonged to a Jewish family that was murdered during the pogrom. The Stalinist judiciary, however, represented in Bialystok by Wiktor Chomczyk, determined that “there were no grounds for prosecution of Sobuta” (161).

Sobuta was under investigation during the Ramotowski trial but didn’t appear with the other defendants because he was in a psychiatric ward. The author suspects that Sobuta was feigning mental illness to avoid going to trial. After he was released from the hospital, he moved to Lodz. There he managed a shop “until he was sentenced to twelve months of corrective labor for attempting to bribe a state functionary” (161). Two psychiatrists examined Sobuta and determined him fit to stand trial for this crime, despite his attempts to seem “mentally impaired.”

Bronislaw Sleszynski

Sleszynski owned the barn in which Jedwabne’s Polish residents burned 1,200 of their Jewish neighbors. Though no record shows that Sleszynski directly participated in the murders of local Jews, he is exemplary in his complicity. He provided the space in which 1,200 people were incinerated, including those who were burned alive. He also attempted to dissuade the Germans from letting Jewish craftsmen live by insisting “that there were enough skilled craftsmen among the Poles” (173). Sleszynski had a son, Edward, who told Gross how many Jews burned in his father’s barn, a fact he had learned from his neighbors in Jedwabne. The Germans later built Sleszynski a second barn, which was dismantled.

Marian Karolak

Karolak was the mayor of Jedwabne. He worked with Józef Sobuta, who was his deputy. Karolak, with the assistance of Józef Sobuta, ordered the town’s Polish Gentiles to gather at the town hall. From there he ordered them to round up Jedwabne’s Jews to prepare them to be murdered. Karolak then worked with Sobuta to seize Jewish property. The German authorities later arrested Karolak due to his failure to share confiscated property with the Germans.

Karol Bardón

Bardón was the only defendant during the Ramotowski trial “who was condemned to death” (64). Bardón was a good writer, which makes his accounts more reliable than those of his codefendants. Gross also suspects that Bardón “was a kinder man than the others” (170). Gross also believes Bardón’s claim that he barely spent any time in the town square and was only sentenced to death because he had already been convicted to six years in prison “for serving as a uniformed German gendarme” (170).

Bardón was a German-speaker from Silesia—currently located mostly in Poland, but also partly in the Czech Republic and Germany. He served as an intermediary between the local population in Jedwabne and the Germans due to his language skills. He soon worked for the German police. Bardón’s father was “a socialist and worked as a clockmaker” (170). During World War I, Bardón served as a soldier for the Austro-Hungarian army. He apprenticed as a mechanic in a clock factory before experiencing sporadic employment. In 1936 he settled in Jedwabne, “where he maintained mechanical mills” (170). In March 1939 Bardón was out of work again and had seven children. In 1940 he became a supervising mechanic and the manager of a repair shop that specialized in fixing tractors and other agricultural machinery. Bardón also served as “deputy to the city soviet” (85) in Jedwabne.

The Laudanski Brothers

Zygmunt and his younger brother Jerzy were the most notorious murderers during the Jedwabne pogrom. Zygmunt first served the Soviets as a collaborator with the secret police (the NKVD). He then worked with the Nazis to kill Jews during World War II. Finally, he joined Poland’s Communist Party (the PPR) before being sentenced to prison.

Jerzy was regarded as “the worst murderer among the accused” (88) and later served the German gendarmerie, alongside Karol Bardón. Based on accounts, Gross supposes that Jerzy was “a strapping youth, six feet tall, and full of energy” (88) with a loud, clear voice. Jerzy was the youngest defendant tried during the Ramotowski trial. He and his elder brother were raised in Poland and, according to Jerzy, had been instilled with nationalist Polish values. In 1941 he joined the Polish Association for Insurrection—a conspiratorial underground organization for which he distributed newspapers and other materials. The Gestapo arrested him in March 1942 and imprisoned him in Warsaw. He was then sent to various concentration camps, including Auschwitz, where he lived for three years before the Soviet Army liberated the camps in 1945. He was 20 when he returned to Poland. He was later put on trial and sentenced, despite claiming that he “was in no way a supporter of the occupier” (89). Jerzy was released on parole on February 18, 1957.

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