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Poland re-opens 1941 massacre of Jews investigation

PR dla Zagranicy
Peter Gentle 07.03.2012 12:50
Poland’s chief rabbi has said that the National Remembrance Institute (IPN) investigation into the murder of 20 Jews by Poles in north east Poland in 1941 is “better late than never”.
Warschauer IPN-SitzWarschauer IPN-SitzBild: Jacek Turczyk

photo
photo - IPN/Jacek Turczyk

The investigation just opened in Warsaw looks into the brutal WW II rape and murder of Jewish women in the small village of Bzury, Podlaskie province.

The case has been reopened by the state-backed IPN, which is charged with investigating crimes against the Polish nation.

Poland’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich has told thenews.pl that though the investigation into the massacre, after 71 years, is late in starting, “it’s not too late” and that, “the value of justice never expires.”

“That IPN is willing to investigate these murders after so many decades is a strong symbol that it is never is too late for justice to be done,” he told us, Wednesday morning.

Massacre

The crime took place in August 1941, during Nazi occupation.

According to testimonies from 1948 to 1950, by which time Poland was under communist rule, the victims were raped and clubbed to death by local men.

Only one man, Stanislaw Zalewski, was convicted of the crime by the communist authorities, but IPN prosecutor Michal Ignatiew believes that there were several more perpetrators.

“Investigators from IPN believe that not all those guilty of the crime were brought to justice,” he told Polish Radio Bialystok.

The women, who were between 15 and 30 years of age, had been let out of the Nazi-run Jewish Ghetto in the town of Szczuczyn, so as to perform free labour on farmland in Bzury.

Their job was to tend to a field of vegetables. However, Michal Ignatiew claims that the murderers had already prepared weapons and dug a pit in the forest prior to the loan of the forced-labourers.

“Of course they intended to kill them,” he told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily, stressing that “there is no doubt that the torturers were Poles.”

The perpetrators allegedly fixed metallic elements to wooden clubs in a forge, prior to the killings, so as to maximise the impact of the blows.

“To this day, no one has remembered about that these young women, they are anonymous,” he said.

Michal Ignatiew also led IPN's investigation into the Jedwabne pogrom, which also took place in Nazi-occupied Eastern Poland during the war.

His investigation confirmed that Poles had carried out the murder of over 300 Jews in the village of Jedwabne. The victims were herded into a barn, and the structure was then set alight.

The investigation came in the wake of the book Neighbours, by Polish-American academic Jan T. Gross. The book, which focused on the Jedwabne massacre, prompted a painful reassessment of the relations between Polish Catholics and Polish Jews during the war. (nh/pg/hh)

tags: holocaust, WW II
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