The Jedwabne Pogrom (or Jedwabne Massacre) was a massacre of Jewish people living in and near the town of Jedwabne in Poland that occurred during World War II, in July 1941. Although long assumed to have been a Nazi Einsatzgruppen operation, it is now known that the massacre was mostly undertaken by non-Jewish Poles in the area. Whether and how far the occupying German forces were involved remains unresolved. Selection at the Auschwitz ramp in 1944, where the German Nazis chose whom to kill immediately and whom to use as slave labor or for medical experimentation, such as those of the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele. ... The racial policy of Nazi Germany refers to the policies and laws implemented by Nazi Germany, asserting the superiority of the Aryan race, and including measures aimed primarily against Jews. ... It has been suggested that Reich Citizenship Law be merged into this article or section. ... This poster reads: 60,000 Reichsmark is what this person suffering from hereditary defects costs the community during his lifetime. ... Prior to and during World War II Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps (Konzentrationslager or KZ) throughout the territory it controlled. ... The following is a list of Nazi German concentration camps. ... German [[lusia] ]s have lived in [. and contributed to German culture for over 1700 years, through both periods of olerance and spasms of [[sam] violence, culminating in the Holocaust and the destruction of the Jewish community in Germany and much of Europe. ... Pogrom (from Russian: ; from громить - to wreak havoc, to demolish violently) is a form of riot, a massive violent attack on a particular group; ethnic, religious or other, primarily characterized by destruction of their environment (homes, businesses, religious centers). ... Die Kristallnacht, also known as die Reichskristallnacht (literally Imperial Crystal Night), die Pogromnacht and in English as the Night of Broken Glass, was a massive nationwide pogrom in Germany and Austria on the night of November 9, 1938 (including the early hours of the following day). ... The IaÅŸi pogrom of June 27, 1941 was one of the most violent pogroms in Jewish history, launched by governmental forces in the Romanian city of IaÅŸi against its Jewish population, resulting in the brutal mass-murder of 13,266 Jews. ... Lviv (Ukrainian: Львів, L’viv ; Polish: Lwów; Russian: Львов, Lvov; German: Lemberg; Latin: Leopolis; see also Cities alternative names) is a city in western Ukraine, the capital city of the Lviv Oblast (province) and one of the main cultural centres of Ukraine. ... Ghettos established by the Nazis in which Jews were confined, and later shipped to concentration camps. ... The Ghetto Heroes Memorial The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of the Jewish ghettos established by Nazi Germany in General Government during the Holocaust in World War II. In the three years of its existence, starvation, disease and deportations to concentration camps and extermination camps dropped the population of the... The Łódź Ghetto (historically the Litzmannstadt Ghetto) was the second-largest ghetto (after the Warsaw Ghetto) established for Jews and Roma in Nazi-occupied Poland. ... The Lwów Ghetto (also called the Lemberg Ghetto, Lviv Ghetto, and Lvov Ghetto) was one of the larger Ghettos established for Jews in Poland by Nazi authorities. ... Deportation of Jews from the Kraków Ghetto, March 1943 The Jewish ghetto in Kraków (Cracow) was one of the five main ghettos created by the Nazis during their occupation of Poland during World War II. It was a staging point to begin dividing able workers from those who... Location of the concentration camp in the Czech Republic Gate Concentration camp Theresienstadt was a concentration camp set up by the Gestapo in the fortress and garrison city Terezín (German name Theresienstadt), located in what is now the Czech Republic. ... A member of Einsatzgruppe D is just about to execute Jewish man kneeling before a filled mass grave in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, in 1942. ... The massacre at Babi Yar Babi Yar (Russian:Бабий яр, Ukrainian:Бабин яр, Babyn Yar) is a ravine in Kiev, Ukraine, which was the site of massacres of Jews, Gypsies, and other civilians by the Nazis, with assistance from local collaborators, during World War II. // Before the massacre The Germans reached Kiev on September... Rumbula Forest is a pine forest enclave in Riga, Latvia. ... Paneriai (Polish: , German: ) is a suburb of Vilnius, situated about 10 kilometres away from the city centre. ... The Odessa Massacre was the extermination of Jews and Communists in Odessa during the autumn of 1941. ... In a February 26, 1942 letter to German diplomat Martin Luther, Reinhard Heydrich follows up on the Wannsee Conference by asking Luther for administrative assistance in the implementation of the Endlösung der Judenfrage (Final Solution of the Jewish Question). ... The Wannsee Villa, location of the Wannsee Conference, is now a Holocaust museum. ... Operation Reinhard (Aktion Reinhard, Einsatz Reinhard, Aktion Reinhardt or Einsatz Reinhardt in German) was the code name given to the Nazi plan to murder Polish Jews in the former General Government and rob their possessions. ... Extermination camp (German: Vernichtungslager) or Death Camp was the term applied to a group of facilities set up by Nazi Germany during World War II for the express purpose of killing the Jews of Europe, although members of some other groups whom the Nazis wished to exterminate, such as Roma... The CheÅ‚mno extermination camp was a Nazi extermination camp that was situated 70 km from Łódź near a small village called CheÅ‚mno nad Nerem (Kulmhof an der Nehr, in German), in Greater Poland (which was, in 1939, annexed and incorporated into Germany under the name of Reichsgau Wartheland). ... Bełżec was the first of the Nazi German extermination camps created for implementing Operation Reinhard during the Holocaust. ... Sobibór was a Nazi extermination camp that was part of Operation Reinhard. ... Majdanek in the winter, 2005 Majdanek is the site of a German Nazi concentration and extermination camp, roughly 2. ... Treblinka was a Nazi Germany extermination camp, part of the Holocaust, the systematic murder of Jews and others. ... Auschwitz, Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau, KL Auschwitz is the name used to identify the largest of the Nazi German extermination camps, along with a number of concentration camps, comprising three main camps and 40-50 sub-camps. ... “Jasenovac” redirects here. ... Other languages FAQs | Table free Welcome to Wikipedia, the free-content encyclopedia that anyone can edit. ... Å»ydowski ZwiÄ…zek Wojskowy (Å»ZW, Polish for Jewish Military Union) was an underground organisation operating during World War II in the area of Warsaw Ghetto and fighting during Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. ... Ghetto Uprising refers to an armed struggle by people incarcerated in German Ghettos during World War II against the plans to resettle all the inhabitants to concentration and death camps. ... Combatants Nazi Germany Jewish resistance (Å»OB, Å»ZW) Commanders Jürgen Stroop Mordechai Anielewicz Strength 2,054, including 821 Waffen SS 40,000 civilians, 750-1,000 fighting Casualties 300 KIA, official reports acknowledge 16 KIA and 85 wounded about 13,000 killed, almost all of the rest sent to extermination... Dachau concentration-camp inmates on a death march through a German village in April 1945. ... Berihah (literally escape in Hebrew) was the organized effort to help Jews escape post-Holocaust Europe for the British Mandate of Palestine. ... Sherit ha-Pletah is a biblical (First Chronicles 4:43) term used by Jewish survivors of the Nazi Holocaust to refer to themselves and the communities they formed following their liberation in the spring of 1945. ... The UstaÅ¡e (often spelled Ustashe in English; singular UstaÅ¡a or Ustasha) was a Croatian organization put in charge of the Independent State of Croatia by the Axis Powers in 1941, in which they pursued Nazi policies. ... Generalplan Ost (GPO) was a Nazi plan to realize Hitlers new order of ethnographical relations in the territories occupied in Eastern Europe during World War II. It was prepared in 1941 and confirmed in 1942. ... Gypsy arrivals in the Belzec death camp await instructions The Porajmos (also Porrajmos) literally Devouring, is a term coined by the Roma (Gypsy) people to describe attempts by the Nazi regime to exterminate most of the Roma peoples of Europe during the Holocaust. ... The German word Gleichschaltung â’½ â’¾ (literally synchronising, synchronization) is used in a political sense to describe the process by which the Nazi regime successively established a system of totalitarian control over the individual, and tight coordination over all aspects of society and commerce. ... 1932 KPD poster, End This System The Communist Party of Germany (German Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands – KPD) was a major political party in Germany between 1918 and 1933, and a minor party in West Germany in the postwar period. ... Pink triangle prisoner Erwin Schimitzek, interned in Auschwitz in 1931, died in 1932. ... Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the firm control of the totalitarian and fascist ideology of the Nazi Party, with the Führer Adolf Hitler as dictator. ... (April 20, 1889 – April 30, 1945) was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 and Führer (Leader) of Germany from 1934 until his death. ... Reinhard Heydrich as SS-Gruppenführer Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich (March 7, 1904 – June 4, 1942) was an SS-Obergruppenführer, chief of the Reich Security Main Office (which included the Gestapo, security agency and criminal police) and Reich governor of Bohemia and Moravia. ... Adolf Eichmann, Germany 1940. ... (October 7, 1900 – May 23, 1945) was the commander of the German Schutzstaffel (SS) and one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany. ... The infamous double-sig rune SS insignia. ... The Deaths Head emblem similar to Skull and crossbones, often used as the insignia of the Gestapo The (contraction of Geheime Staatspolizei; secret state police) was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. ... The factual accuracy of this article is disputed. ... The Nuremberg Trials were the trials of officials involved in World War II and the Holocaust during the Nazi regime. ... Chief prosecutor Telford Taylor opens the prosecution case in the Krupp Trial The Subsequent Nuremberg Trials (or, more formally, the Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT)) were a series of twelve U.S. military trials for war crimes against surviving members of the military, political, and... Denazification (German: Entnazifizierung) was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary and politics of any remnants of the Nazi regime. ... This is a list of people who helped victims to escape from the Nazi Holocaust during World War II, often called rescuers. The list is not exhaustive, concentrating on famous cases, or people who saved the lives of many potential victims. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... There are many famous Holocaust survivors who survived the Nazi genocides in Europe only to go on to achievements of great fame and notability. ... Holocaust resources for main article The Holocaust. ... Book cover The Destruction of the European Jews is a three-volume work published in 1961 by historian Raul Hilberg. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Functionalism versus intentionalism is a historiographical debate about the origins of the Holocaust. ... Pogrom (from Russian: ; from громить - to wreak havoc, to demolish violently) is a form of riot, a massive violent attack on a particular group; ethnic, religious or other, primarily characterized by destruction of their environment (homes, businesses, religious centers). ... The word massacre has a number of meanings, but most commonly refers to individual events of deliberate and direct mass killing, especially of noncombatant civilians or other innocents, that would often qualify as war crimes or atrocities. ... Jews (Hebrew: יהודים, Yehudim) are followers of Judaism or, more generally, members of the Jewish people (also known as the Jewish nation, or the Children of Israel), an ethno-religious group descended from the ancient Israelites and converts who joined their religion. ... Jedwabne is a village in Poland with about 2,500 inhabitants in the Podlasie Voivodship. ... Combatants Allies: Poland, British Commonwealth, France/Free France, Soviet Union, United States, China, and others Axis Powers: Germany, Italy, Japan, and others Casualties Military dead: 17 million Civilian dead: 33 million Total dead: 50 million Military dead: 8 million Civilian dead: 4 million Total dead: 12 million World War II... For the movie, see 1941 (film) 1941 (MCMXLI) was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1941 calendar). ... Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the firm control of the totalitarian and fascist ideology of the Nazi Party, with the Führer Adolf Hitler as dictator. ... A member of Einsatzgruppe D is just about to execute Jewish man kneeling before a filled mass grave in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, in 1942. ...

The massacre

Following their attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, German forces quickly overran those areas of Poland that the Soviet Union had annexed as part of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact. The Nazis distributed propaganda in the area claiming that Jews had assisted in crimes committed by the Soviet Union in Poland and the SS organized special Einsatzgruppen ("task forces") to murder Jews in these areas. The small town of Wizna, for example, near Jedwabne in the northeast of Poland, saw several dozen Jewish men shot by the invading Germans. Annexation is the legal merging of some territory into another body. ... Molotov signs the German-Soviet non-aggression pact. ... It has been suggested that Propaganda in the United States be merged into this article or section. ... The infamous double-sig rune SS insignia. ... Wizna is a small town in Podlasie Voivodship, Poland. ...

A month later, on the morning of July 10, 1941, the non-Jewish inhabitants of Jedwabne rounded up their Jewish neighbors and any others they could find, including Jews visiting from nearby towns and villages such as Wizna and Kolno. They were taken to the square in the centre of Jedwabne, where they were attacked and beaten. A group of about forty to fifty Jews, including the local rabbi, were then forced to destroy a monument of Lenin placed in the square during the Soviet occupation. This group was then murdered and buried in a mass grave along with fragments of the monument. Kolno is a town in northeastern Poland. ... Rabbi (Classical Hebrew רִבִּי ribbÄ«;; modern Ashkenazi and Israeli רַבִּי rabbÄ«) in Judaism, means teacher, or more literally great one. The word Rabbi is derived from the Hebrew root-word RaV, which in biblical Hebrew means great or distinguished, (in knowledge). In the ancient Judean schools (and among Sefaradim today) the sages... The Taj Mahal in Agra (Uttar Pradesh, India) Monuments are usually created for the dual function of commemorating an important event or person while also creating an artistic object that will improve the appearance of a city or location. ... Vladimir Ilyich Lenin ( Russian: Влади́мир Ильи́ч Ле́нин  listen?), original surname Ulyanov (Улья́нов) ( April 22 (April 10 ( O.S.)), 1870 – January 21, 1924), was a Russian revolutionary, the leader of the Bolshevik party, the first Premier of the Soviet Union, and the founder of the ideology of Leninism. ... Grave in Sarajevo during the siege in 1992-1993. ...

Some time later – witness statements vary from one to a few hours – most of the remaining Jews that had been rounded up (and had survived being beaten) were herded into a barn, which was then set alight. They were burned alive.

Controversy and investigation

It was generally assumed that the Jedwabne massacre was an atrocity committed by an SS Einsatzgruppe until 1997-2000, when Agnieszka Arnold's Where is my older brother, Cain? and Neighbors documentary films were produced, followed by a detailed study of the event was published ^[1] by a Polish-American historian Jan T. Gross. The author described the massacre as a pogrom and set out how his research led him to conclude that, contrary to received accounts, the Jews in Jedwabne had been rounded up, clubbed, drowned, gutted or burned to death by mobs of their own non-Jewish neighbors, without any supervision or assistance from an Einsatzgruppe or other German force. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... SS or ss or Ss may be: The Schutzstaffel, a Nazi paramilitary force Steamship (SS) (ship prefix) The United States Secret Service A submarine not powered by nuclear energy (SS) (United States Navy designator), see SSN A Soviet/Russian surface-to-surface missile, as listed by NATO reporting name Shortstop... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Jan Tomasz Gross is the Norman B. Tomlinson 16 and 48 Professor of War and Society at Princeton University. ... Pogrom (from Russian: ; from громить - to wreak havoc, to demolish violently) is a form of riot, a massive violent attack on a particular group; ethnic, religious or other, primarily characterized by destruction of their environment (homes, businesses, religious centers). ...

Not surprisingly, the book caused enormous controversy in Poland and many people questioned its conclusions. Tomasz Strzembosz, Professor of History at the Catholic University of Lublin and at the Polish Academy of Sciences' Institute of Political Studies, argued that though Poles would have been involved, the operation had been supervised by German forces [1]. The Catholic University of Lublin (in Polish Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski, or KUL) is located in Lublin, Poland. ... Categories: PAN | PAU | Scientific societies | Polish scientific societies | Stub | Education in Poland | Polish institutions | National academies ...

Following an intensive investigation, however, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, IPN) released a report in 2002 in which they supported some of Gross's findings, although the number of Jews killed (around 380) was significantly lower than 1,600 he had indicated earlier. (Confirmation of an exact number of victims was not possible due to opposition from Jewish religious authorities to the exhumation of bodies.) The IPN also found that there were eight German policemen present, so the degree of German involvement remains an open question. Many witnesses claim to have seen German soldiers that day in Jedwabne, whereas others contend that there were no Germans in the town at that time. As court records show, the active involvement of non-Jewish Poles is beyond doubt, but the question of extent and nature of possible German participation has not been settled, albeit IPN concludes that the crime "sensu largo" is ascribed to the Germans, whilst "sensu stricto" to non-Jewish Poles, estimated at about 40 people. Institute of National Remembrance (Polish: ; IPN) is a Polish institution created by the IPN Act in 18 December 1998. ... By other animals Humans are not the only species to bury their dead. ... Flag of the Ordnungspolizei The Ordnungspolizei was the name for the regular German police force that existed in Nazi Germany between the years of 1936 and 1945. ... German cavalry and motorized units entering Poland from East Prussia during the Polish Defensive War of 1939 Wehrmacht (help· info) (Defence force) was the name of the armed forces of Germany from 1935 to 1945. ...

In 2001 the President of Poland, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, officially apologized on behalf of Poland to the Jewish people for this crime [2]. 2001: A Space Odyssey. ... Following are the successive heads of state of Poland. ... Office President of Poland Term of office from December 23, 1995 until December 23, 2005 Profession Journalist Political party SLD Spouse Jolanta KwaÅ›niewska Date of birth November 15, 1954 Place of birth BiaÅ‚ogard, Poland Date of death {{{death_date}}} Place of death {{{death_in}}} Aleksander KwaÅ›niewski (pronounced: â–¶(?)) (born November...

References

1. ^ Jan Tomasz Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, Princeton University Press, 2001, ISBN 0142002402.

• Dariusz Stola, "Jedwabne: Revisiting the evidence and nature of the crime", Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 17, no. 1, Spring 2003, 139-152.
• Antony Polonsky and Joanna B. Michlic (editors), The Neighbors Respond: The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland, Princeton University Press, 2003, ISBN 0691113068.
• Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, The Massacre in Jedwabne, July 10, 1941: Before, During, After, Columbia University Press and East European Monographs, 2005, ISBN 0880335548.

Jan T. Gross is the Norman B. Tomlinson 16 and 48 Professor of War and Society at Princeton University. ... Marek Jan Chodakiewicz (born in 1962 in Warsaw, Poland) is an American historian specializing in East Central European history of the 19th and 20th century. ...

External links

• The Jedwabne Tragedy
• PDF Joanna Michlic, The Polish Debate about the Jedwabne Massacre
• Adam Michnik, Poles and the Jews: How Deep the Guilt?, New York Times, 17 March 2001
• "Burning Alive" by Andrzej Kaczynski, published May 5, 2000 in the Polish newspaper "Rzeczpospolita"