Jedwabne: The anti-Polish Lie that persists in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum

A familiar myth has it that Poles murdered Polish Jews in the small town of Jedwabne during World War 2. This fiction continues to be spread by Polonophobes and is unwittingly accepted as true by the uninformed. One of the disseminators of this fiction is the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, which proclaims its website “is the world’s leading online authority on the Holocaustâ€. The website’s Holocaust Encyclopedia has the following two-sentence entry on its “Progroms†page:

“On July 10, 1941, Polish residents of Jedwabne, a small town located in the Bialystok District of first Soviet-occupied and then German-occupied Poland, participated in the murder of hundreds of their Jewish neighbors. Although responsibility for instigating this “pogrom†has not been fully established, scholars have documented at least a German police presence in the town at the time of the killings.â€

Three obvious questions that logically arise are: (1) What is the Museum’s source for this purportedly authoritative post? (2) Are there material facts the Museum has omitted? (3) Are there recently emerged facts the Museum has ignored?

The “Authoritative†Source.

In response to the first question, the Museum’s source is Jan T. Gross’s 2001 book Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland. You wouldn’t know this by reading the titles of the five books listed as “Further Reading†at the bottom of the “Pogroms†page. The reason the Museum won’t list Neighbors is because the book has been decisively discredited by historians and investigative journalists who recognize that Gross is a sociologist posing as an historian.

Historian Alexander B. Rossino points out that Gross’s failure to examine German documentary sources have fundamentally flawed his depiction of the events. He explains that German sources confirm SSObergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich explicitly authorized his SS and Security Police units to organize pogroms in Jedwabne’s area with no trace of SS involvement. Rossino also notes that postwar investigation by West German authorities established that, based on eyewitness accounts between July and September 1941, SS-Hauptsturmführer Hermann Schaper and the men of his Einsatzkommando unit were the perpetrators of pogroms at Åomża, Tykocin, and Radziłów. Based on the similarity of the methods used in the pogroms at Rutki, Zambrów, Piatnica, WÄ…sosz, and Wizna, the West German authorities concluded that Schaper was the Jedwabne perpetrator. In each of these towns, the Germans used the same terrifying method. Polish Jews were rounded up, marched to the town square, and herded into a building, which was then set on fire and anyone who escaped was shot. However, lacking absolutely watertight evidence placing Schaper in Jedwabne on 10 July 1941, the investigators could only tentatively conclude “it is highly probable that the Einsatzkommando from Schröttersburg was responsible for the murder of Jedwabne’s Jews on 10 July 1941.â€

Historian Ewa Kurek points out Gross became infamous by announcing to the world that Poles killed more Jews than Germans during the Second World War, which is an obviously ridiculous assertion. Kurek calls attention to the fact that Gross relied extensively on the testimonies of three sources (Polish Jews Szmuel Wasersztejn, Abram Boruszczak, and Eljasz Gradowski) who were not in Jedwabne at the time. The main Jedwabne trial was held in 1949, eight years after the fact, yet Gross largely relies on these three non-eyewitnesses. Kurek further disproves Gross’s claim that 1,600 Polish Jews died in the Śleszyński barn in Jedwabne by explaining that its area of 19 by 7 meters could only accommodate at most about 300 victims.

In his 2005 book The Massacre in Jedwabne, July 10, 1941: Before, During, After, historian Marek Jan Chodakiewicz points out that Gross “considered a very limited pool of evidence through the prism of a single survivor testimony.†By contrast, Chodakiewicz examined all the evidence that was currently available and notes that Gross rejected 20 Jewish and Polish postwar depositions, each of which were freely given and identified the Jedwabne murderers as Germans. He further invalidates Gross’s story about the bishop of Åomża taking money from Jews and then refusing to help them, pointing out that the bishop was in hiding at the time and his whereabouts was unknown.

Historian Christopher Browning, who specializes in Hitler’s attempted destruction of Europe’s Jews, criticizes Gross for selectively using witness testimonies that were consistent with his thesis, which alleges that Poles single-handedly committed the crime. Browning instead concludes that the role of the Germans was active instigation, orchestration, and participation.

Material Facts Omitted.

In response to the second question, there are key material facts the Museum omits so that uninformed readers will draw the wrong conclusion and unwittingly accept the falsehood that Jedwabne Poles murdered the town’s Polish Jews. In a court of law, such excluded facts constitute material omissions, which then result in an incomplete portrayal of the truth. As an old Hebrew adage says, a half-truth is a whole lie.

The first material omission is the nearly two-year period, September 1939 – June 1941, during which the Soviets occupied Jedwabne. The Museum’s post only says Jedwabne was “first Soviet-occupied and then German-occupiedâ€, which is notably dishonest given the fact that, during this time, Jedwabne’s Polish Jews collaborated with the Soviets against the town’s Poles. It’s important to remember that Hitler and Stalin, in the secret protocol of their August 1939 nonaggression pact, agreed to divide Europe between them and established their demarcation line through the middle of Poland. They jointly attacked Poland in September 1939 with the express purpose of annihilating it as a nation state and did so by annexing their respective occupied territories; western Poland became part of the Third Reich and eastern Poland became Soviet territory. As a result, Jedwabne was located in Soviet-occupied territory. Hitler’s objective was extermination and genocide of the Polish nation. Stalin’s objective was physical destruction of a large part of the Polish elite, which he implemented in part by deporting Poles to Siberia.

The second material omission is that in Soviet-occupied eastern Poland, Polish Jews openly collaborated with the Soviets against the Poles. For Poles, this was a shocking change as Polish and Jewish communities in many towns had lived peaceably together. This was also true in Jedwabne, which the Museum conveniently ignores. However, various accounts document Jews, including rabbis, greeting the Soviets with welcoming banners, kissing their tanks, and forming militias and revolutionary committees that denounced Polish “class enemies†for deportation, identified Poles to the Soviet Secret Police (NKVD) for execution, and arrested, robbed, and in some cases, murdered Polish officials, priests, community leaders, and landowners. By directly aiding the Soviet Union in its objective to destroy the Polish state, these actions constituted de facto treason. With the help of such collaborators, the Soviets deported over one million Poles to gulag camps in the deep Soviet interior that resulted in the deaths of many thousands.

This same collaboration occurred in Jedwabne. Rossino and Chodakiewicz cite witness Danuta Wroniszewska from Jedwabne who testified that, during the deportation of local Poles to Siberia in the third week of June 1941, “I remember when the Poles were being carted off to Siberia. On each wagon there was a Jew with a rifle. Mothers, wives, and children were kneeling down before the wagons, begging for mercy and help.†Investigative journalist Wojciech SumliÅ„ski recently produced a documentary film, “Return to Jedwabneâ€, that exposes the Jedwabne lie. Unsurprisingly, it was removed from YouTube but you can see it with English subtitles at this link: https://www.cda.pl/video/87175836f. You’ll have to endure a commercial before the film begins, as well as a commercial during the film.

SumliÅ„ski’s film shows that there are still-living Polish eyewitnesses of the Jedwabne massacre, a number of whom confirm that some of the town’s Jews collaborated with the Soviets against the Poles. At 38:26 in the documentary, Andrzej PieÅ„kowski, a descendant of a Polish eyewitness, relates how 40 Jedwabne Jews warmly welcomed the Soviets with flowers and comprised the main group of collaborators. At 39:47, you’ll hear eyewitness Marian WÄ…doÅ‚owski, who was 14 years old in 1941, describe how, upon the entry of the Red Army in 1939, local Jews donned red armbands and proclaimed that Poland was gone and would never return. The local Jews then denounced entire families to the Soviets for deportation to Siberia. At 40:48, Andrzej PieÅ„kowski points out that from 17 September 1939 to 22 June 1941, which is the period of the Soviets’ occupation of eastern Poland, Jews contributed to the deportation of around 2,500 Poles from the area. At 41:12, Jedwabne Mayor Adam Niebrzydowski notes that about 500 Poles from the town’s 5,000 residents, or 10 percent, were deported, arrested, or murdered, which is clearly a tragedy. At 41:28, Marian DÄ…browski tells how his brother Antoni was denounced by a Jewish classmate to the NKVD. The Jewish classmate then went with the NKVD to his neighbor WÄ…doÅ‚owski and arrested him too. At 42:22, Marian WÄ…doÅ‚owski describes how the NKVD, accompanied by a Jew, came for his brother WÅ‚adysÅ‚aw, who was then deported to Siberia. The Jew who denounced him was a member of the church band. At 43:35, Marian DÄ…browski explains that his brother Antoni was interrogated by Jews in Jedwabne and then by Jews in Pisz, Åomża, BiaÅ‚ystok, and finally Minsk.

A third material omission is that, Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, and top-ranking SS officer Reinhard Heydrich, explicitly authorized SS and Security Police units to not only organize pogroms but also ensure there was no trace of SS involvement. Although the Museum’s “Pogroms†page repeats the first part of Heydrich’s order, i.e., German units were directed to organize pogroms, it omits the second part of the order, i.e., they were to do so surreptitiously. It’s also important to remember that the German-staged pogrom in Jedwabne occurred on July 10, 1941, just three weeks after the Soviets were driven out of the area by the Germans. Hitler had ended his two-year alliance with Stalin and attacked the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. In doing so, he drove the Soviets out of eastern Poland and the Germans now occupied all of Poland.

A fourth material omission is the exclusion of seven nearby towns in which pogroms occurred, namely Åomża, Tykocin, Radziłów, Rutki, Zambrów, Piatnica, and Wizna. The Museum knows Schaper was identified as the perpetrator in these towns by eyewitnesses and West German investigators. As a result, ascribing responsibility to Poles would be easily disproved. Instead, sticking to its story that responsibility for Jedwabne “has not been fully establishedâ€, the Museum believes it’s safe to name Poles as the criminals. However, investigative journalist Wojciech SumliÅ„ski, this time with Internal Security Agency officer colleague Tomasz BudzyÅ„ski, point out in their 2019 Polish-language book Return to Jedwabne that Chaja Finkelstein and Izaak Feler picked out a picture of Schaper as the one who led the killings of Jedwabne’s Jews. Additionally, SumliÅ„ski and BudzyÅ„ski explain that Schaper is known to have taken part in the mass murders of Jews at Wizna, Radziłów, Tykocin, and an eighth town of WÄ…sosz. As for the Germans committing the massacre, the eyewitnesses in SumliÅ„ski’s film debunk the claims of those who say the Germans weren’t in Jedwabne at the time. At 46:48, Andrzej PieÅ„kowski relates how five or six trucks came from Åomża with German military police, who then surrounded Jedwabne. Poles were forced to show where Jews lived and pull them out to the town square. At 47:28, Marian DÄ…browski relates how his father told him he realized something was wrong when he saw that German troops were deployed to ÅomżyÅ„ska Street. At 47:52, Anna WÄ…doÅ‚owska, who was 12 at the time, points out that when she exited the church after attending religious instruction, many Germans were standing around. She stated: “It was obvious that a tragedy was about to happen.

Recently-emerged Facts Ignored.

This brings us to the third question. In order to establish the truth of what occurred, a forensic exhumation of the Śleszyński barn in which Jedwabne Jews died was initiated in 2001. As Ewa Kurek notes at 57:58, historians started the exhumation but hysteria soon followed. This ended when the Polish government inexplicably halted the exhumation. The forensic team was led by Professor Małgorzata Grupa of the Anthropology Department at the Nicholas Copernicus University in Toruń. At 58:02, Grupa points out that her team participated in the exhumations of the thousands of Polish officers executed by the Soviets at Katyń in 1940, so she was well-prepared for this one. She then describes how her team was repeatedly told to start and then halt their investigation. According to Grupa, there were calls between Washington and Tel Aviv that handcuffed the team from the beginning. They were allowed to brush the dirt down to the level of the bones, and to brush the dirt from off the bones, but they were not allowed to lift or move the bones.

At 59:48, Ewa Kurek recounts how a woman of the Jewish community accompanied her to the ÅšleszyÅ„ski barn and when they arrived, the woman grabbed her head and said “Oh my, this is the scam of the century.†The reason for her reaction is clear; an overhead view now shows the site of the former barn and a Jewish cemetery directly across the street. Agreeing with the Jewish woman’s exclamation, Kurek states: “The remains of the victims should have been buried there. That’s it.â€

Directly after that, at 1:00:18, Bolesław Szenicer, Jewish activist and former Director of the Jewish Cemetery in Warsaw, confirms that Halacha, Jewish law forming the legal part of the Talmud, requires the bones to be exhumed and taken to a Jewish cemetery. Starting at 1:00:26, Grupa explains that a collective grave of the victims was found inside the barn that was not previously mentioned in the testimonies of the postwar Jedwabne trials. At 1:00:50, Grupa presents her analysis of what occurred. She concludes that the men were first herded into the barn, shot, and then buried in the barn. After this, the women, children, and elderly were forced into the barn, which was then set on fire. Anyone attempting to escape was shot. She points out that, because the male victims were buried under a layer of dirt, their clothes were not burned when the barn was set on fire. Instead, their clothes were severely charred by the heat of that fire, the discovery of which became a turning point in their investigation.

At 1:02:09, Grupa shows the bullet shells that were found at the site. As a result, the exhumation was halted by Polish authorities. It should be noted that Poles were prohibited from having a weapon and anyone caught with one was executed. At this point, it was evident that the Germans were the murderers because the bullet shells were identified as those of German Mausers, including the Mauser 7.92 caliber machine gun. The bullet shells could not have originated at the site before the massacre because some of the shells were entwined with the skeletal elements.

The obvious question is why the exhumation was suddenly halted. The answer is that American-born Michael Schudrich, who emerged as Chief Rabbi of Poland under unclear circumstances, pleaded with then-Minister of Justice Lech Kaczyński to do so. Schudrich justified his plea by claiming that Halacha does not allow a full exhumation of the skeletons of Jews. However, Rabbi Joseph A. Polak, Chief Justice of the Rabbinical Court of Massachusetts, pointed out that not only should the Jedwabne victims be exhumed, they should be reinterred in a Jewish cemetery or in Israel. Additionally, German Rabbi Walter Homolka, who ordained the first three rabbis in Germany since World War II, maintains that exhumation is required whenever the bodies have been buried outside a normal burial ground. Note also that, because the massacre was a crime, Polish law requires it to be fully investigated. However, Kaczyński chose to allow Schudrich’s fabricated rabbinical law to take precedence over Polish law. One should contrast this action with that of Israel, which conducts exhumations in criminal investigations without religious interference.

The next obvious question is why Kaczyński agreed to Schudrich’s plea to stop the exhumation. Tellingly, the Polish government has never provided a formal explanation. However, at 1:25:58 of the Sumliński film, an informal explanation is provided by Kurek, who notes that Piotr Gliński, First Deputy Prime Minister, said to her in a lowered voice that, if the Polish government followed through with a full exhumation, “the United States might not station American troops in Poland.†Apparently, Kaczyński, Gliński, and others feared that by exposing the Jedwabne lie, Jewish Americans in Congress and the US Administration would act to prevent the stationing of American troops in Poland. Such a position can only be described as shamefully reprehensible. Nevertheless, Kurek continues to petition for a full exhumation, which the Polish government likely will never sanction.

Yet another obvious question is why the Jewish side has never tried to establish the historical truth of what happened at Jedwabne. The answer to this question lies in the overall point of the movie. As pointed out by Jerzy KwaÅ›niewski, head of the nonprofit organization Iordo Juris (Latin for “Order of Lawâ€). If Poland can be made to appear culpable in Hitler’s murder of European Jews, international pressure will grow to the point where Poland will be morally compelled to pay for Jewish properties that have no heirs even though the owners were executed by the Germans. Despite the fact that heirless property laws in Poland, the US, and throughout the Western world require heirless properties to revert to the state, the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO) demands that Poland enact a special law in which heirless Jewish properties are to be monetized and the proceeds are to be paid to the WJRO. Although such a law is unprecedented in Western legal practice, the US Congress passed Public Law 115- 171 in 2018 (deceivingly called the “JUST†Act, for “Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Todayâ€), which requires the State Department to submit an annual report to Congress identifying countries that haven’t enacted this special law. As Jerzy KwaÅ›niewski of Juris Iordo indicates, the intent is to shame Poland into enacting it and paying to the WJRO some hundreds of billion dollars. The JUST Act states that the purpose of this money is to “provide property or payment for needy Holocaust survivors, to support Holocaust education, and for other purposes.â€

Still another relevant question is why the Museum claims that “responsibility for Jedwabne has not been fully established†and further offers the pathetic remark “there was at least a German police presence in the townâ€. As for the Museum’s claim about responsibility, historians Rossino, Chodakiewicz, Kurek, and Browning have clearly confirmed that Gross’s account is seriously flawed and cannot be considered factually reliable. Rossino and Chodakiewicz further present evidence that Schaper and his men committed the massacre, which is further confirmed by various eyewitnesses in the SumliÅ„ski documentary. Yet the Museum clings to the falsehood that the perpetrators have yet to be identified. As for the “German police presenceâ€, Rossino and Chodakiewicz confirm not only the presence of Schaper’s men but also that they were the perpetrators. Additionally, eyewitnesses in the SumliÅ„ski documentary present compelling testimonies corroborating not only the “presence†of the Germans but also their crimes. At 1:17:29 in the film, Marian WÄ…doÅ‚owski tells us the Germans were definitely in Jedwabne. At 1:17:32, Anna WÄ…doÅ‚owska saw many Germans who were pulling people out of their homes. At 1:18:02, she estimates a total of 150 Germans were in the town. At 1:19:20, Irena Skowron-RusiÅ„ska saw Germans coming on motorcycles and ran away quickly because she was afraid the Germans would take her as well. At 1:19:38, Marian DÄ…browski tells how the Germans brought Poles to the site, who then tried to escape and hide in their homes. The Germans gave them a sort of baseball bat and forced them to mind the Jews gathered in the square. At 1:20:30, Marian WÄ…doÅ‚owski describes how he was one of the ones caught by the Germans, who then took them to the barn. When one of the captives tried to escape, he was caught and shot. At 1:21:31, Anna WÄ…doÅ‚owska experienced “a huge glare of fire and the stink of fleshâ€. In horror, she hugged her father who asked her, “Andzia, what is Hitler doing burning people alive?â€

Finally, the truly pertinent question is why the Museum continues to post its fabricated entry when it knows that Gross’s Neighbors has been debunked and the emergence of new material facts confirm the post as a nefarious fraud. One logical answer is, if the Museum were to remove the Jedwabne entry, it will have confirmed it to be false, and by doing so, would invalidate itself as “the world’s leading online authority on the Holocaustâ€. A second logical answer is that the Museum supports the campaign to shame Poland into paying the WJRO for heirless property. In both cases, the Museum is woefully wrong.