The Crime and The Silence – Will The Truth Ever Be Acknowledged?

Anna Bikont is a Jewish journalist based in Warsaw and has written about her attempts to look at one of Poland’s darkest and most shameful events. This was an event that for many years was denied that ever took place, when it has been an open festering sore, especially to those who survived. The murder of Jews in Jedwabne until recently was not even acknowledged by the Polish government, it now is.

My Polish Grandfather was a soldier in the Polish Army in 1939 and was on the Western Front fighting in the defence of Poland; his family lived out in the eastern borderlands from Lwow (Lviv in Ukraine today) to the border of Poland and Soviet Ukraine. He was captured by the Nazis and escaped to fight on in France before coming to the UK. He felt betrayed by the Soviets when on 17th September 1939 they crossed the border and assisted their Nazi allies in crushing Poland.

From the start of the Soviet occupation there were Poles who collaborated with the invaders, some were Jews, some were Poles, and some were even Austrian! The Soviets set about destroying the middle and upper classes of Poland, by killing Police and Army officers at Katyn (happened to some of my family) others were transported to Siberia (happened to my Great Grandmother and other family members). It would be easy to say it was just Poles that the Soviets transported, but to counter that argument, as an example, Menachem Begin and his family were also transported as they were middle class.

The Soviet Union removed all those who were leaders of Polish society and administrators were removed. This in turn helped to lay the foundations for what happened under the Nazi invaders from 1941. In Black Earth, Timothy Snyder successfully argues that the Soviets lay the conditions for the Holocaust to occur in Poland by turning the whole area into a lawless ‘wild east’. So it was easy to play to prejudices of the time, as Jews were, unfairly, seen as pro-communist, pro-Soviet, and anti-Poland.

As a child my Grandfather rarely mentioned much about the war, as he lost his family, his home now occupied by Ukrainians, on land that was Polish for 1946 years. I remember that he once talked about a shameful event that happened in the war in 1941, a crime committed by Poles on Jews, when they burnt Jewish families in a barn. He did say it was encouraged by the SS and Gestapo, and there is evidence they were active in the area at the time. Whether there is evidence they were there is a different matter as no evidence has ever been presented to say they were.

With many of the leaders no longer in Jedwabne to be able counsel restraint those left behind would have seen some Jews succeeding under the Soviets and collaborating and blame them for it. The Poles committed the crime of rounding up those Jews in the barn, they committed the crime of lighting the fire that killed them and throwing those back that tried to escape.

Anna Bikont in The Crime and The Silence examines this open sore, and found that even today people referred to the place where the Jews were burnt. They can also point out the families that committed those crimes, whether it was her father or grandfather. This is an examination of collective memory which can be painful reading at times.

This is a matter that still needs to be investigated properly but books such as The Crime and The Silence are pointing out the uncomfortable truths and asking difficult questions which are required. I could point out that there is not enough evidence based historical analysis and a lot of the journalist comes through in the book, but then it is part memoir. This is an excellent addition to the Holocaust library, like Jan Gross before her, not the best, but it is a start on this painful subject. Will Poles ever honestly acknowledge what happened at Jedwabne, this book is a first step at asking that question. ( )