Jedwabne

1941 Jedwabne¹

Against the backdrop of Poland's new law criminalizing the mention of Polish complicity in the Nazi genocide. Poland's prime minister today essentially blamed "Jews" for the shoah. A far different reflection than in July 2001 when Polish president Aleksander Kwaśniewski came to Jedwabne to redress a dreadful "Day of hatred and cruelty" that occurred there exactly Sixty years earlier, on 10 July 1941:

May be we will never learn the whole truth. But.... We know enough to stand here in truth — facing pain, cry and suffering of those who were murdered here. Face to face with the victims' families who are here today. Before the judgment of [our] own conscience. ...

This was a particularly cruel crime. It is justified by nothing. Among the victims, among the burned were women, there were children. Petrifying cry of people closed in the barn and burned alive - continues to haunt the memory of those who witnessed the crime. The victims were helpless and defenseless. ...

We cannot have any doubts - here in Jedwabne citizens of the Republic of Poland died from the hands of other citizens of the Republic of Poland. It is people to people, neighbors to neighbors who forged such destiny. ...

We are standing on a tormented land. The name Jedwabne, by a tragic ordain of fate had become for its today's citizens a byword recalling to human memory the ghosts of fratricide.

It is not only in Jedwabne that superstitious prejudice was enkindled into the murderous flame of hatred in the "furnace era". Death, grief and suffering of the Jews from Jedwabne, from Radzilow and other localities, all these painful events which lay a gloomy shadow on Poland's history are the responsibility of the perpetrators and instigators. ... Every man is responsible only for his own acts. The sons do not inherit the sins of the fathers. But can we say: that was long ago, they were different? ...

And this is why we have to look the truth into the eyes. Any truth. And say: it was, it happened. Our conscience will be clear if the memories of those days will for ever evoke awe and moral indignation.

We are here to make a collective self examination. We are paying tribute to the victims and we are saying - never again. ... 

Aleksander Kwaśniewski


Today, unlike that day in July 2001, "people to people, neighbors to neighbors" once again forged a destiny as Poland once again "passed by on the other side." ." 

 "Willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?" (Luke 10:29).

¹By Fotonews - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A-438_Mogi%C5%82a-pomnik,_na_cmentarzu_%C5%BCydowskim,_1941_Jedwabne.jpg, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45409017 ©2017 Christian. Textual content may be copied and distributed, but it may not be sold.