Jedwabne: An Anatomy of Lies, by Ewa Kurek. 2019
Shaming Poland: How the Truth About the Jedwabne Massacre Has Been Suppressed
This work overlaps the earlier Polish-language version of this book, which I have reviewed separately:
JAN T. GROSS’ ACCUSATION DOES NOT HAVE A LEG TO STAND ON. HE IS LIONIZED AND PROCLAIMED A HERO. GO FIGURE
None of Gross’ star witnesses were even at Jedwabne at the time! This is true of Szmul Wasserstein (pp. 78-81, 96), Abram Boruzczak, and Eljasz Gradowski. (p. 92).
The preliminary forensic dig showed that the barn was 19×7 meters, and the grave within the barn was 7.5×2.5 meters. (p. 149). The number of victims could only be a small fraction of the Gross-claimed 1,600—a figure still repeated in parts of the media.
Bishop Lukomski of Jedwabne could not possibly have accepted any bribes from the Jews. He was away from Jedwabne at the time. (p. 92).
Jan T. Gross’ attempts to minimize the scale of the 1939-1941 Jewish-Soviet collaboration fare no better. There are thousands of testimonies, attesting to this fact, from Polish, Jewish, and Soviet sources, and there are authoritative statements from Stefan Grot-Rowecki [Commander of the Armia Krajowa] and Jan Karski. Additionally, thousands of testimonies are located in the Hoover Institution archives. (p. 55).
BLAMING THE POLES FOR JEDWABNE: A CONTINUATION OF THE PEDAGOGY OF SHAME (PEDAGOGIKA WSTYDU)
Consider first the diffusion of German guilt for the Holocaust. Kurek quotes Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, who prophetically said, in a 2003 television interview, that “Soon it will turn out that the only victims of the war were the Germans and the Jews.” (p. 22).
What of the politics of shame? Kurek sagely comments, “A wise man once said we should beware of those who wish to arouse a sense of guilt in us, as they wish to have power over us. The validity of the maxim was well understood by the Communists. Julia Brystygierowa, a Jewish executioner of the Stalinist Security Services, allegedly used to say that she would beat Poles out of their pride and honor with a whip if necessary. She knew that Polish pride and honor constituted the greatest danger to totalitarian rule. She knew that unless she thrashed the Poles of their pride and honor, she would not be able to enslave them. In 1989, the Bolshevik Polish People’s Republic ceased to exist, but the Bolshevik spirit and desire for rule, united the circles of selected representatives of the anti-Communist opposition and former Communists, painting themselves as democrats, as well as Communists and opponents with Jewish roots. The Round Table gave Michnik access to the media…His Gazeta Wyborcza was read by nearly all Poles. If radio and TV stations created in the 1990s by those who had collaborated with the Security Services and which spoke in unison with Adam Michnik & Co, then it must be stated that the functionaries had been perfectly prepared to beat any pride and honor out of the Poles.” (p. 155).
First, Gazeta Wyborcza [funded by George Soros] publicized Michal Cichy and his lie about Poles murdering Jews during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. It was quickly refuted and it failed miserably. No matter: The Jedwabne falsehood was concocted. Jan T. Gross was made into a hero in the media and in academia. Dissenting historians (Tomasz Stzembosz and Piotr Gontarczyk) were ignored. The IPN investigation was put on a short political leash, as elaborated by Kurek, “…then Prof. Lech Kaczynski, who decided that the voice of one rabbi had more weight than the right guaranteed by the Constitution…The exhumation was interrupted by the dictates of some rabbis, in a scandalous and unprecedented manner.” (pp. 30-31). The written decision to stop the exhumation has been suppressed, as has Andrzej Kola’s research on the German bullet shells found at Jedwabne. (p. 31).
Historian Ewa Kurek, expanding upon the now decades-old refusal to allow a proper exhumation, adds that, “Despite historians’ protests for many years now, about being prevented from carrying out their diligent examinations, the panoply of charges aimed at Poles for their alleged war crimes, continues unabated. And in truth, the Jewish chutzpah with Jedwabne, never tried to establish the historical truth, but instead to instill some feeling of guilt within Poles for the Jews, which aimed at battering their Polish pride and honor. It is pitiful that the highest Polish authorities were dragged into this case of fraud; and it is pitiful that these authorities, on at least two occasions, did not fulfill the burden placed on them in accordance with Polish law.” (p. 156).
SCHUDRICH’S PRETEXTS REFUTED: JEWISH RELIGIOUS LAW DOES NOT FORBID AN EXHUMATION AT JEDWABNE
Kurek has investigated this matter, and reports that, “A year ago I received [a magazine] Kolbojnik, from the Polish religious Jews with its interpretation of Jewish law and Jewish religious beliefs regarding exhumation. Religious Polish Jews share the position as that of the above mentioned Rabbis Polak and Homolka and think that an exhumation in Jedwabne will satisfy the requirements of Jewish law and Jewish religion and will cut through the atmosphere of lies, misapprehension and nonsense surrounding this case.” (p. 142).
NO EQUIVALENCE OF POLES WELCOMING THE GERMANS (1941) AND JEWS SERVING THE SOVIETS (1939-1941)
Kurek wisely writes, “One could assert, however, that there was a huge difference between welcoming the invading Germans who came in the middle of horrendous deportations, whose arrival in effect stopped the deportations, thus allowing hundreds of people to leave cruel places of torture—Soviet prisons (between others in Brzesc, Lomza, Bialystok, and in Jedwabne), and between attacking Red Army soldiers, who until recently were our occupiers—and it is something else altogether to engage in killing soldiers of the Polish Army, who are defending the country you reside in against invaders. Indeed, the Jews who lived in pre-war Poland, did not fare the best, and there were without doubt, ‘lists of grievances’, to cite a poem by Broniewski (a Polish poet and Communist sympathizer), however in Poland Jews were not ever deported to Siberia; nobody shot them; they were not ever sent to the concentration camps; they were not condemned to hunger, slavery, and torturous work. If Jews, who for generations resided in Poland, did not regard Poland as their homeland, they still should not have treated it as an occupant and they should not have, together with Poland’s mortal enemies, kill the Polish soldiers or murder escaping Polish civilians. They did not have to take part in selecting their neighbors for deportation to Siberia.” (p. 59).
GROSS WAXES ELOQUENT AGAIN: NOW POLES KILLED MORE GERMANS THAN JEWS. GROSS HAD BETTER KNOW THE HORNETS’ NEST HE IS STIRRING UP
Author Ewa Kurek comments, “Recently, Thomas Gross became infamous by announcing to the world that Poles had killed more Jews than Germans during the Second World War. He would be better off keeping quiet and letting sleeping dogs lie. If we were to calculate precisely all the Polish inhabitants of Jedwabne, Galicia, Wolyn, Podlasie and Bialystok, who were sent to death in Siberian camps as a result of the denunciations by Polish Jews, between 1939 and 1941; if we were to count all the Underground soldiers of the Home Army and the National Armed Forces, sent by Jewish functionaries of the KGB and Security Services to Siberia during the second exile stage of 1944-1945; and finally were we to count all the victims of Jewish judges, prosecutors and functionaries of the Secret Service and Internal Security Corps between 1944-1956…” (p. 158).
Finally, Kurek reminds us that, “Stalin’s policy was to place Communists of Jewish background in the top positions in the Ministry of Public Security, in the judicial system and also as investigative agents used to hunt down, torture, prosecute and execute Polish freedom fighters.” (p. 162).
Jan Peczkis
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Justice4Poland.com 
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