The Crime and the Silence: A Quest for the Truth of a Wartime Massacre
In 2000, Jan T. Gross published an account of a massacre of the Jewish inhabitants of a small town in eastern Poland, Jedwabne, in July 1941. It caused particular controversy in Poland, as Gross claimed that the massacre, in which up to 1500 Jewish people were herded into a barn and burnt alive, was organised and perpetrated by local Poles, and not by the German security forces, the Gestapo, as was generally accepted. Anna Bikont’s book is a sort of sequel and development of Gross’s book, examining the events and evidence surrounding what happened in Jedwabne. Her clear conclusion, supported by an official investigation, is that Poles were responsible for perpetrating the massacre, torture and stealing of possessions and property.
Bikont is an investigative journalist, and this is not an academic study of the massacre, but an account of her research amongst archives and her attempts to get at the truth by speaking to the few remaining participants and bystanders as well as their families.
