In Germany a general “combing out” process
began immediately following Hitler’s becoming Chancellor in January, 1933. The
apprehended – communists, social democrats, persons inimical to the Nazi
“revolution” --were taken to Gestapo headquarters for interrogation and
subsequent execution or incarceration in the newly founded concentration camp
at Dachau. As Germany extended its grasp over other countries, similar programs
were put in place to eliminate sectors of the populous against Nazi control. Special
forces, the Einsatzgruppen (Operational Groups) were charged with policing
consolidation in Austria in March, 1938, the Sudetenland in October, 1938, and
Bohemia and Moravia in March, 1939. When on June 22, 1941 the German army attacked
the Soviet Union, several contingents of Einsatzgruppen entered Soviet-held
Poland and Russia immediately behind the Wehrmacht. Comprised of regular and
security police the charge from their chief, Reinhardt Heydrich was to
apprehend and to execute extremists: saboteurs, snipers, agitators, senior and
middle rank Communist Party members and officials, as well as Jews in the
service of the Party or State. In their book "Auschwitz" Dwork and Van Pelt quote from a directive sent
by Heydrich to policing forces entering the Soviet sphere: “no steps will be
taken to interfere with any purges that may be initiated by anti-Communist or
anti-Jewish elements in the newly occupied territories. On the contrary, these
are to be secretly encouraged.” (Pg 284)
An example of this “encouragement” is
documented in Jan T Gross’ 2001 book, Neighbours: The Destruction of the Jewish
Community in Jedwabne, Poland. This town of about 2500 in Eastern Poland was in
Soviet control after the 1939 partition of the country by German and Russian
forces. It was a fairly typical centre in that area, a place of small businesses,
craftsmen, and farmers. About two-thirds of the occupants were Jewish. The day
after the invasion of Soviet-held territories began, German policing forces
entered the town. Two days later, on June 25 an anti-Jewish pogrom was
initiated by some members of the community. Men, women, and children were
stoned, stabbed, or drowned. The following day a local priest intervened,
advising the participants to stop the pogrom, saying that the Germans would
“take care of things themselves.” From that day locals no longer would sell
food to the Jews. Rumours spread that the Germans would give an order for the
Jews to be destroyed.
On July 10 eight Gestapo men met with representatives
of the town authorities. The Germans enquired about the people’s intentions
toward the Jews. Their response was unanimous: the Jews should be killed. The town
representatives were willing for their own people to enforce the decision and
the Germans agreed, giving them that day to carry out their decision. People
fanned out, pressing other individuals to round up Jews from their homes and
bring them to the town square. In the process many were beaten and killed. Some
Jews tried to run away but peasants around the town prevented them. A group of
about 75 younger Jewish men were forced to uproot and carry a large statue of
Lenin installed by the Russians, to a place away from the town square and to
dig a hole for it. After the statue was put into the hole, they themselves were
killed and thrown in as well. One of the mob’s participants volunteered his barn
as a killing place for the large numbers yet to be destroyed. The remaining
Jews of the town were surrounded and forced into this barn. Kerosene was spread
about the outside and it was set alight. In this “action” the Jewish population
of 1600 souls was destroyed. Seven people, hidden by one neighbour survived.
Other than taking photographs of the proceedings, the Germans did not act or
interfere. The next day they re-took control of the policing of the town.
Gross’ documentation of this story derives
in part from a witness account given in April, 1945 by Szmul Wasersztajn, one
of the seven survivors, to the Jewish Historical
Commission in Bialystok. In 1949 and in
1953 the main figures complicit in the massacre were indicted and brought to
trial. The trials were conducted fairly quickly with preparations stages of
about two weeks. Each of the accused was deposed only once. In this heavily
Stalinist period the actions of the perpetrators were viewed not so much as
atrocities against the Jews, as they were crimes against the state: ways that
they had assisted the Nazis in their conquest of Soviet lands. Of the twenty-two
brought to trial, eight were found not guilty. Sentences against those found guilty were relatively light. Gross had access to documents related to the
trials as well as to interviews with and memoirs of elderly town residents in
1998 and later.
The Jews of Jedwabne were aware even before
July 10 that a major pogrom was brewing. Rumours circulated that on July 5
“with German consent” in nearby Wasosz, 1200 had been murdered and on July 7
about 800 in Radzilow. A Jew from the latter town, Menachem Finkelsztajn who
managed to escape with his father reported at length about the breakdown of the
rule of law from the moment the Germans entered their town on July 22. From
that day to the final destruction of the Jewish population there, the Poles
encouraged and even modelled by the Germans, inflicted progressively brutal and
humiliating punishments on the Jews. Finkelsztajn relates how many of the Poles
cozied up to the invading Germans, building a triumphal arch decorated with a
swastika and a portrait of Hitler. They asked the Germans if it was permitted
to kill the Jews and were given an affirmative answer. Over the next two weeks
Jews were beaten and robbed; their homes were invaded and destroyed; their
cattle were taken and given to Poles; they were unable to buy food. “Propaganda
started coming out of the upper echelons of the Polish society which influenced
the mob, stating that it was time to settle scores with those who had crucified
Jesus Christ, with those who take Christian blood for matzoh and are a source
of evil in the world – the Jews....It is time to cleanse Poland of these pests
and blood-suckers. The seed of hatred fell on well-nourished soil which had
been prepared for many years by the clergy. The wild and bloodthirsty mob took
it as a holy challenge that history had put upon it – to get rid of the Jews, and
the desire to take over Jewish riches whetted their appetites even more.”
This story and ones similar to it that
played out in many of the countries invaded by the Germans during WWII reveal
the complex relations that endured for centuries among so-called national
groups and the Jewish peoples who had lived closely beside them. Anti-Semitism
fed by religious intolerance and nationalism, to say nothing of envy and greed,
facilitated atrocities against the Jews especially in Eastern Europe with the
breakdown of the rule of law and the encouragement and participation of the
invading forces. After the war Western Germany was in a sense “forced” by its
essential relationship with the USA to acknowledge its crimes against humanity.
Travelling today in Europe, it is only in Germany that one senses an on-going
effort to educate its young about the war and about the horrors perpetrated
there. In areas dominated by the Soviet Union until the late 1980s, accusations
were levelled only at the Nazis, the fascist hordes, not at the East German
people themselves or at other groups within the Soviet sphere who had
clearly co-operated with the Germans in their efforts to eradicate the Jewish
population of the entire continent. Since the fall of the USSR, however,
efforts are being made, for example, in Poland, to acknowledge and in some
fashion rectify the official narratives of the war. This year a major new
museum has been opened in Warsaw: The Museum of the History of the Polish Jews.
In Jedwabne itself a stone monument was inscribed
after the war: 1600 Jews were killed by the Nazis. After 1989, a second was
mounted that read: To the memory of about 180 people including 2 priests who
were murdered in the Jedwabne district in the years 1939-1956 by the Nazis and
the secret police. The latter inscription refers only to Poles murdered by the
Germans and by Soviet-controlled forces. Yet in the town itself the facts of
the July, 1941 murder of the Jewish population by their neighbours was well-known and spoken of
privately. In the year 2000 the true events of the Jedwabne massacre came to
nation-wide attention in Poland with the broadcast of a documentary “Where is
My Older Brother Cain?” and a series of investigative articles by Andrzej
Kaczynski in the nationwide newspaper Rzeczpospolita. The Polish language
version of Gross’ book, Neighbours, was launched at the same time. Since then
efforts have been made by politicians to acknowledge and to ask forgiveness for
the crimes perpetrated in Poland against their Jewish population. These efforts
meet resistance in some quarters, however. For example, a newer Jedwabne
monument that reflects the actual events of July, 1941 has been defaced by
swastikas. Debates within European countries about responsibilities for war
crimes are far from over, though they are not necessarily showcased in regular
journalism. YouTube has a documentary entitled Legacy of Jedwabne that can be
viewed. Interestingly and unhappily, the series of comments made under its
release are almost universally Anti-Semitic.
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