Jedwabne — the crime of the neighbours

In the summer of 1941, the Białystok region, briefly Soviet since 1939, passes under German occupation in the wake of Barbarossa. In this territory where the recent Soviet occupation, Nazi propaganda associating Jews with Communism, and old tensions overlap, a wave of pogroms targets the Jewish communities.

At Jedwabne, a small town with Polish and Jewish populations long neighbours, the tragedy occurs on 10 July 1941. Jews are gathered, humiliated, forced to destroy a statue of Lenin, then locked into a barn that is set on fire. The crime unfolds in the presence of the German occupier, but the respective share of the forces at hand — that of the occupier and that of the local population — is bitterly debated.

The poll bears on this question of responsibility, at the heart of a controversy that shook Poland: who decides and who carries out at Jedwabne? The German occupier, who organizes and orders; the local inhabitants, who act on their own initiative; or a combination in which the German encourages and the population perpetrates.