Editing Jedwabne pogrom (section)

===10 July 1941===

There is general agreement that German secret police or intelligence officials were seen in Jedwabne on the morning of 10 July 1941, or the day before, and met with the town council.{{sfn|Persak|2011|pp=412–413}} Szmuel Wasersztajn's witness statement in 1945 said that eight Gestapo men arrived on 10 July and met with the town authorities.{{sfn|Gross|2001|p=18}} Another witness said four or five Gestapo men arrived and "they began to talk in the town hall". "Gestapo man" was used to refer to any German in a black uniform, Persak writes. The witnesses said they believed the meeting had been held to discuss murdering the town's Jews.{{efn|Krzysztof Persak (2011): "The direct perpetrators of those crimes was a sizeable group of residents of Jedwabne and neighboring villages. Those involved in the pogrom took different roles: some killed the victims with their own hands, others supervised the Jews assembled in the market square and escorted them to the execution site in the barn, while some robbed Jewish homes or simply formed a hostile crowd of onlookers. The witnesses were fairly unanimous in assigning the role of pogrom organizers to members of the temporary municipal authorities, with Mayor Karolak at the head. Probably a significant part of the massacre was performed by members of the order service subordinated to them, of which, however, we know very little.{{pb}}"Far less clear is the role played in Jedwabne by representatives of the German occupation authorities. Undoubtedly, they fully approved and possibly inspired the murder. According to testimony of the then-messenger at the gendarmerie post, Jerzy Laudański, before the pogrom 'four or five Gestapo men had arrived in a cab, and they began to talk in the town hall.' In colloquial Polish, a 'cab' (''taksówka'') denoted a motor car, and 'Gestapo man' referred to any German in a black uniform. This reference, no doubt, relates to the meeting of the temporary municipal authorities with—probably—functionaries of the German Security Police or Security Service (''Sicherheitspolizei'' or ''Sicherheitsdienst''), mentioned by other witnesses as well. Although accounts regarding that issue are all secondhand, their common denominator is that during that 'conference' the decision to murder the Jedwabne Jews was taken."{{sfn|Persak|2011|p=412}}}}

According to the [[Institute of National Remembrance|IPN's]] report, on 10 July 1941 Polish men from nearby villages began arriving in Jedwabne "with the intention of participating in the premeditated murder of the Jewish inhabitants of the town".<ref name="Ignatiew 2002"/> Gross writes that a leading role in the pogrom was carried out by four men, including Jerzy Laudański and Karol Bardoń, who had earlier collaborated with the Soviet [[NKVD]] and were now trying to recast themselves as zealous collaborators with the Germans.{{sfn|Gross|2001|p=75}} He also writes that no "sustained organized activity" could have taken place in the town without the Germans' consent.<ref>{{harvnb|Gross|2001|pp=77}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Stola|2003}}. "The plan was reportedly prepared or elaborated at the meeting between Gestapo officers and the town's administration (most sources date this July 10). On the morning of July 10, members of the administration, usually with German gendarmes, visited Polish residents. They ordered a number of men to gather at a designated location, where sticks and clubs (which someone had to have stockpiled earlier) were distributed. Polish conscripts were given specific assignments, such as driving the Jews to the market square, keeping watch over those assembled, guarding the streets leading out of town, and later escorting the Jews from the square to the barn outside town."</ref><ref>''Jedwabne before the Court: Poland's Justice and the Jedwabne Massacre—Investigations and Court Proceedings, 1947–1974.'' East European Politics and Societies. 25 (3): 410–432. Krzysztof Persak p. 412 (2011).</ref>{{efn|[[Institute of National Remembrance]] (2002): "The presence of German military policemen from the police station at Jedwabne, and of other uniformed Germans (assuming they were present at the events), even if passive, was tantamount to consent to, and tolerance of, the crime against the Jewish inhabitants of the town."<ref name="Ignatiew 2002"/>{{pb}}
[[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]]: "On July 10, 1941, Polish residents of Jedwabne, a small town located in 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."<ref>[https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005183 "Pogroms"]. ''Holocaust Encyclopedia''. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.</ref>}}

The town's Jews were forced out of their homes and taken to the market square, where they were ordered to weed the area by pulling up grass from between the cobblestones. While doing this, they were beaten and made to dance or perform exercises by residents from Jedwabne and nearby.<ref name="Ignatiew 2002"/>{{sfn|Persak|2011|p=412}} 
[[File:Jedwabne pogrom map.jpg|thumb|upright=1.35|alt=diagram|Jedwabne crime scene, compiled from Polish court documents{{citation needed|date=April 2020}}]]

Evoking the antisemitic stereotype of "[[Żydokomuna]]" against their victims, who they alleged had collaborated with the Soviet regime,{{sfn|Persak|2011|p={{page needed|date=April 2020}}}}{{efn|[[Doris Bergen]] states in this context that "Poles accused Jews of collaborating with the Soviet oppressors, but in fact it was often precisely those individuals most deeply implicated in Soviet crimes who were quickest to take the lead in attacks on Jews—attacks that would serve both to deflect the anger of their neighbors and to curry favor with the new German occupiers."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bergen |first=Doris L. |title=War and genocide: a concise history of the Holocaust |date=2016 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=978-1-4422-4227-2 |edition=Third |location=Lanham |oclc=928239082}}</ref>}} 40–50 Jewish men were forced to demolish a statue of [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]] in a nearby square and carry part of the statue on a wooden stretcher to the market square then to a nearby barn,<ref name="Ignatiew 2002"/> while singing communist songs. The local [[rabbi]], Awigdor Białostocki, and the kosher butcher, Mendel Nornberg, led the procession.{{sfn|Persak|2011|p=412}} According to an eyewitness, Szmuel Wasersztajn, the group was taken to the barn, where they were made to dig a pit and throw the statue in. They were then killed and buried in the same pit.<ref>{{harvnb|Wasersztajn|1945}}, quoted in {{harvnb|Gross|2001|pp=19–20}}.</ref> Polish government investigators found this grave during a [[#exhumation|partial exhumation in 2001]]. It held the remains of about 40 men, a kosher butcher's knife, and the head of the concrete Lenin statue.{{sfn|Persak|2011|p=429, n.&nbsp;12}}

Most of Jedwabne's remaining Jews, around 300 men, women, children and infants, were then locked inside the barn, which was set on fire, probably using [[kerosene]] from former Soviet supplies.<ref name="Ignatiew 2002"/> This group was buried in the barn near the first group. The 2001 exhumation found a mass grave within the barn's foundations and another close to the foundations.{{sfn|Musial|2003|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=a_49GjK8ovMC&pg=PA325 325]}}

Several witnesses reported seeing German photographers take pictures of the massacre. There was also speculation that the pogrom was filmed.<ref name="Ignatiew 2002"/><!--The following references primary sources: Several Jewish eyewitnesses reported that the Germans were directly involved in rounding up and abusing Jews in the town square, and that they shot at Jews who tried to escape from the burning barn. According to a diary penned during the war, citing reports by Jews who fled Jedwabne and Radziłów, "With the help of local farmers, the Germans gathered the Jews of these places, the rabbi and community leaders foremost, in the market square. At first, they beat them cruelly and forced them to wrap themselves in their ''[[tallitot]]'' and to jump and dance, accompanied by singing. All this was done under an unceasing stream of blows from cudgels and rubber whips. Finally, they pushed all the Jews, beating and kicking them, into a long threshing house and set it on fire with them inside."<ref>{{Cite book |title=Deliverance. The diary of Michael Maik: A True Story|last=Maik|first=Michael |last2=Ben-Dov|first2=Avigdor |last3=Ben-Dov |first3=Laia |date=2004 |publisher=Avigdor and Laia Ben-Dov |isbn=9789659070107 |pages=38–39 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HHstAQAAIAAJ}}</ref>{{third-party inline|date=April 2020}}

According to a memorial book first published in Hebrew in 1963, "The Jews who came from the towns told us terrible things. Rywka Kurc [who had managed to escape from Jedwabne (and is] now in Australia) told us that in Jedwabne, the S.S. enclosed all the Jews in a hayloft—men, women, children and old people, among them her husband and two children. They set fire to the building and everyone was burned alive."<ref>Yitzchak Ivri, ed., ''Book of Kehilat Ostrolenka: Yizkor Book of the Jewish Community of Ostrolenka'', Tel Aviv, Irgun Yotzei Ostrolenka in Israel, 2009, p. 384.</ref> According to another former Jedwabne resident who, shortly after the massacre, met Jews who had fled Jedwabne, they "told us when the Germans first entered their town, they had herded all the Jews into a barn and set it ablaze. Anyone who tried to get out was cut down by machine-gun fire."<ref>{{Cite book |title=The Warriors: My Life As A Jewish Soviet Partisan|last=Zissman|first=Harold|date=2005|publisher=Syracuse University Press|isbn=9780815608394 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PsAY9uwZkmEC}}</ref>{{third-party inline|date=April 2020}}-->