This year’s commemorative ceremonies mark a watershed, as high-ranking representatives of the Roman Catholic Church are expected to attend for the first time, writes Nick Hodge.
The climax of the 1941 Jedwabne atrocities, which occurred shortly after the Nazis expelled the Red Army from Eastern Poland, saw Jewish men, women and children herded into a barn which was then set alight.
The question as to whether German soldiers oversaw the pogrom remains a contentious point of historical debate, as does the precise number of victims, thought to range between 340 – 1000.
Nevertheless Poland’s state-sponsored Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) has concluded that Poles played “a decisive role”.
Reviving the legacy
Jedwabne became a household name a decade ago in the wake of the controversial book Neighbours (2001) by Polish-born Princeton academic Jan T. Gross.
The national debate which the book spawned, coupled with the 60th anniversary of the pogrom, prompted the then president, Aleksander Kwasniewski, to make a public apology to the Jewish nation.
Although a trial involving 23 Jedwabne citizens was held in 1949 under the then communist authorities, the crime subsequently disappeared from the sphere of historical debate.
Poland’s centuries-old Jewish past was not broadly studied in Polish schools under the communist regime, becoming especially taboo following a government-led anti-Zionist campaign in 1968, after which several thousand Poles of Jewish background were compelled to leave the country, including the Gross family.
It was not until the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 that conditions allowed for a more open exploration of the country’s past.
Resentment unleashed
Although a significant number of Poles risked their lives to save Jews during the Nazi occupation, with the government-in-exile backing an official wing of the underground state for this purpose, anti-Semitism had been prevalent in pre-war Poland, which had the largest Jewish population in Europe.
Right-wing elements had repeatedly called for a boycott of Jewish businesses, and anti-Semitic measures were successfully pushed through in universities.
When Hitler’s forces drove back the Red Army from Eastern Poland in 1941, the Nazis launched a propaganda campaign against the Jews.
The fact that a visible proportion of Jews had taken employment in the apparatus of Soviet rule, and that the Red Army had overseen the deportation of several hundred thousand Poles to forced labour camps, helped exacerbate ethnic tensions.
However, it was not only in territories that had been occupied by the Soviets that murders of Jews by Poles took place. Earlier this year, the Polish Center for Holocaust Research postulated that approximately 15,000 Jews were murdered by their Polish neighbours during the war.
Preserving memory
Cardinal Glemp, former Primate of Poland, made a speech in 2001 broadly accepting the findings relating to Polish involvement in the Jedwabne crime. However, he did not take part in the commemorative ceremonies.
Some Catholic journals, including the longstanding Tygodnik Powszechny weekly, have promoted open debate and reconciliation as regards the legacy of Jedwabne.
However, the reaction of clerics has not been uniform.
Father Wojciech Lemanski, the only priest to have been actively involved in the commemorative ceremonies at Jedwabne, hopes that the participation of high-ranking clergymen will help continue the healing process.
Until now, prominent residents of the town have not taken part in the ceremonies. Mayor of Jedwabne, Krzysztof Moenke, has said that he will not be attending Sunday’s meeting.
“It is how it is with parents and children,” says Father Lemanski.
“As long as the parents show that they are not going there, the children will not go to such a forbidden place,” he expands.
“But if a father takes a child by the hand and leads the way, the child will follow in his path.” (jb)