Report documents Poles' widespread wartime crimes

[Gość: Zydek]

Nov. 3, 2002
Report documents Poles' widespread wartime crimes against Jews
By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA, ASSOCIATED PRESS



WARSAW - Poles committed wartime crimes against their Jewish neighbors in at
least 24 places, a government researcher said Saturday ahead of the
publication of a report sparked by revelations that Poles carried out a
World War II massacre previously blamed on the Nazis.

The 1,500-page, two-volume report "Around Jedwabne," which goes on sale in
bookstores across Poland on Monday, brings together details of incidents
that have shaken many Poles' view that they were only victims in the war.

"It brings to light information that was so far buried in the archives and
puts the facts in a broad perspective, reflecting all the complexity of the
events," Pawel Machcewicz, the editor of the report, told the Associated
Press.

A government institute began investigating the persecution of Jews by Poles
in northeastern Poland two years ago, after a Polish emigr historian, Tomasz
Gross, published a book claiming that Poles murdered up to 1,600 of their
Jewish neighbors in the village of Jedwabne.

Previously, Poland had blamed the massacre on German forces, and the
revelation led to painful soul-searching among Poles, many of whom could not
believe that their countrymen would have committed such an atrocity.

The investigation by the Institute of National Remembrance put the number of
victims at Jedwabne at up to 1,000, Machcewicz said. Officials had
previously suggested the number could be lower.

In compiling their report, researchers dug out records from 1946-58
investigations and trials and translated written testimonies that Jewish
survivors gave to a regional Jewish history commission. Most of the
testimonies were in Yiddish.

Survivors told of crimes, from robbery to pogroms, across the northeast of
Poland in the weeks after the Nazi invasion. In most places, the aggression
against Poland's Jews was planned and inspired by the Nazis - but not
everywhere, Machcewicz said.

While the survivors named dozens of victims and perpetrators, Machcewicz
said it was hard to establish figures for the number of Jews killed by Poles
because of conflicting testimony and lack of other evidence.

The report also draws on the records of about 60 investigations and trials
in the years after the war, when Poland came under communist rule.

At that time, some 93 Poles were charged with crimes against Jews in 23
locations. Seventeen people were convicted and received sentences ranging
from prison terms to the death penalty. One was executed.

"The facts were not known at the national scale because there was no free
press in Poland then and no papers wrote about them," Machcewicz said.

Witold Kulesza, the institute's chief investigator, said the issue was also
overshadowed by hundreds of large-scale trials against Nazis.

"There was nothing in the court records to suggest that the communists were
trying to put a lid on the information," Kulesza said.

Of 3.5 million Jews in Poland before World War II, about 3 million lost
their lives in the Holocaust. About 20,000 live in the country today.