THE DAY WE BURNED OUR NEIGHBORS ALIVE ‘The Crime and the Silence’ The Jedwabne massacre

[Krakow1]

Anna Bikont, a daughter of Wilhelmina Skolska, or Lea Horowitz before she changed her name. Anna Bikont's Mother Lea Horowitz or Wilhelmina Skolska was a journalist also, however for the communist. Anna Bikont a psychologist by trade. Works for Gazeta Wyborcza, a terrible newspaper that reports things that are not true.

Unfortunately, once something is written People believe its true.... that is what I said in my initial response.

Jan Gross, born in Poland, went to best communist schools, lived in the privileged quarter, ate the best food communist could provide went on vacations to places reserved for the "privileged" , went to shop for clothes in privileged stores and in 1968 when the communist and the Jews got into it he left Poland.
Does he like Poland ? is he objective towards Poland ? is he a Historian by trade ?

Marek Edelman : why did he elect to stay in Poand after 1945 ? maybe because he was not wanted any where else.... maybe not.

[Krakow1]

Antonina Wyrzykowska herself is true she was afraid in 2001. In April 1945 she was beaten by Polish Undergound soldiers for denouncing 10 members of AK (Polish Underground Army) to UB (Secret Police) and herself with Mr Wasserstein and other Polish Jews escaped to Austria.

Other mentioned by Mrs Bikont, one S. Lamotowski was a TW (snitch) for UB. (Secret Police).

Szmul Wasserstein, the "eye' witness of the Tragedy :

in 1949 a communist polish Court did not believe him.

Eliasz Gradowski : who testified as eye witness, turned out that in 1940 he was deported to Siberia for theft by the Soviets. (Jedwabne 1941), so no way he was back in 1941.

Adam Boruszcak, another eye witness , lied, never lived in Jedwabne.

These were the main eye witnesses as to what occurred.

[Krakow1]

One should not make up its mind after reading one book on the subject, especially when the subject is Polish history from 1939-1990. Poland's history is very difficult and complicated when it comes to Polish Jewish relations.

[Wagriff]

"One should not make up its mind after reading one book on the subject"
This statement can fully apply to many aspects of the past.

[hassiman]

Wow.... Thanks

[CARL]

Poland's history is very difficult and complicated when it comes to Polish Jewish relations.

True...

But remember...this is NOT the place for such debate.

Carl

[Larboard]

Not sure where Jerry clipped this from the net, but what wasn't immediately apparent when this was posted earlier (got over my initial disgust, went and painted a barn shed I've been needing to paint all summer, had a great dinner, and back on the forum, and some research of my own) was that this was a MASSACRE OF SIXTEEN HUNDRED PEOPLE!!! It's hard to fathom the mood going around in those days, as most of us have never known war [at home] and all its atrocities and will live out the rest of out lives in peace...

As a university student in Warsaw in the first half of the 1970s, I used to spend much of my summer vacation hitchhiking around the country. This is how one fine July day I found myself in Jedwabne, a nondescript but beautifully located small town in Poland’s Northeast. Wandering through the meadows and forests, I lost my sense of direction and eventually had to ask a local for the road out of town. The gentleman, somewhat inebriated, pointed vaguely toward the church belfry rising in the distance and said: “That way, by the place where they burned the Jews.” Shocked, I responded, “What do you mean, ‘They burned the Jews?’” “Oh, in the war,” he explained, matter-of-factly.

Yet there was something in his voice that made me ask:

“You mean the Germans?”

“Nah, what Germans? Ours.”

“Which ‘ours?’”

“Well, the guy who lives over there,” he said, pointing to a nearby cottage. “And her father,” pointing to a woman passing down the road. “And…”

Book Review // The Crime and the Silence: Confronting the Massacre of Jews in Wartime Jedwabne - Moment Magazine

One Morning in Poland - WSJ

On July 10, 1941, 1,600 Jews, nearly the entire Jewish population of the Polish village of Jedwabne, were murdered by their Polish neighbors. Some were hunted down and killed with clubs, axes and knives; most were herded into a barn and then burned alive. Although the slaughter was not a secret, publicly the Nazi occupiers were blamed. A monument in Jedwabne (pronounced yed-VAHB-nay) declared: ''Place of martyrdom of the Jewish people. Hitler's Gestapo and gendarmerie burned 1,600 people alive, July 10, 1941.'' But last May, Jan T. Gross, a historian at New York University, published ''Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne'' in Poland. The book, which will be issued in the United States in April, documents the massacre by Polish villagers in gruesome detail. In a country whose people think of themselves as wartime victims, not villains, it set off a storm of debate in corner shops, cafes and classrooms, and among the country's political and church leaders. Some Poles have continued to deny Polish responsibility; most have tried to wrestle with the country's history of anti-Semitism and questions of collective guilt. Jozef Cardinal Glemp, the Roman Catholic Primate, and President Aleksander Kwasniewski have publicly asked for forgiveness, and on Thursday the Jedwabne memorial was removed. Adam Michnik is a dissident and historian who spent six years in prison under the postwar Communist regime, served as an adviser to the Solidarity leader Lech Walesa and is now editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland's largest daily newspaper. He wrote this article for The New York Times, and it was translated from the Polish by Ewa Zadrzynska.

Poles and the Jews - How Deep the Guilt? - NYTimes.com


This is obviously a sort of hot potato as far as massacres go... I can see why books have been written in opposition. It stirs up a lot of feelings. It brings up an ugly past. It speaks of institutionalized hatred (teachings of the Catholic Church in Poland) for your fellow man. I can only hope we're moving towards a more enlightened consciousness.

[Jerry B]

I am not denying events. I am not denying that Jedwabne happened.

It is just how it happened and how Jan Gross and Anna Bikont are portraying it is what I and several Polish known historians have a problem with.

OK, your statement did not make clear your point.

Certainly, all written works need to be treated with caution, but it seemed clear that many accept the version outlined above. There are plenty who write books to deny the unpleasant past and the holocaust in particular and it is not possible for me to have an opinion.

I posted a thread about a book on an incident that many did not know about and this incident took place.

In some ways the perpetrators do not really matter, the point was to raise awareness and to remember the dead, though I can see that this is a sensitive issue for the Polish nation.

[TrondK]

Humans are weird. We flock together and blame "weaker" humans for all the errors we often has managed to create ourselfs...

I dont get it, sometimes i believe i am in Hell- Because it cant be possible that so much hateful and negative selfdestructive behaviour is all around me where ever i turn.

No wonder why i live alone in the jungle without any human beings around me, only have contact with my animals and the maid cleaning my shack once a day.

[big ned]

Humans are weird. We flock together and blame "weaker" humans for all the errors we often has managed to create ourselfs...

I dont get it, sometimes i believe i am in Hell- Because it cant be possible that so much hateful and negative selfdestructive behaviour is all around me where ever i turn.

No wonder why i live alone in the jungle without any human beings around me, only have contact with my animals and the maid cleaning my shack once a day.

I've heard about you and your "maid".....