Jedwabne Pogrom - Pogrom

Pogrom

On the morning of July 10, 1941, by the order of mayor Marian Karolak and the town's German gendarmerie, a group of Polish men from around Jedwabne and neighboring settlements was assembled, who then rounded up the local Jews as well as those seeking refuge from nearby towns and villages such as Wizna and Kolno. The Jews were taken to the square in the centre of Jedwabne, where they were ordered to pluck grass, attacked and beaten. A group of Jewish men were forced by the Nazis to demolish a statue of Lenin that had been put up earlier by the Soviets (as in Kolno), and then carry it out of town while singing Soviet songs. The local rabbi was forced to lead this procession of about 40 people. The group was taken to a pre-emptied barn, killed and buried along with fragments of the monument, while most of the remaining Jews, estimated at around 250 to 300 (IPN final findings), including many women and children, were led to the same barn later that day, locked inside and burned alive using kerosene from the former Soviet supplies (or German gasoline, by different accounts) in the presence of eight German gendarmes, who shot those who tried to escape. The remains of both groups were buried in two mass graves in the barn. Exhumations led to the discovery not only of the charred bodies of the victims in two mass graves, but also of the bust of Lenin (previously assumed to be buried at a Jewish cemetery) as well as bullets that according to a 2000 statement by Leon Kieres, the chief of the IPN, could have been fired from 1941 Walther P38 type pistols.

German photographers, seen by many witnesses, photographed the pogrom. Some sources claim that a movie made by Germans during the massacre was shown in cinemas in Warsaw to document the alleged spontaneous hatred of local people towards the Jews. No trace of such a movie has been found.