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Poland Guilty? Poland's self-perception as a victim of the German occupation that had nevertheless offered resistance to the best of its ability outlasted the end of the People's Republic of Poland by almost a decade. At the end of the 1990s the master narrative of resistance and victimization was gradually called into question by the accusation of complicity in the killing of Polish Jews. |
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In the 1960s the village of Jedwabne set up a memorial stone with the inscription: "Site of the execution of the Jewish population. Gestapo and Nazi gendarmerie burned 1,600 persons alive. 10.7.1941." In his book "Neighbours", Jan Tomasz Gross relates a different version of the story. According to this, Polish inhabitants of the village murdered the Jews on that day without being forced to by the Germans. The book queries the traditional interpretation that there was no collaboration with the German occupiers in Poland and that the Polish population had no involvement in the murder of the Polish Jews. Although Gross makes it quite clear that the Germans were the "undisputed masters over life and death", he sees them in the case of Jedwabne as "observers" and the Poles as "perpetrators". Gross' book had an immense effect. Two months after it was published, the first articles began to appear about the "case of Jeswabne" as a prelude to a public discussion in which the controversy about the Polish-Jewish relationship under the Soviet regime was, significantly, also an important element. In July 2001 the State President of Poland apologized to the victims in the name of Poland. Documentary filmmaker Agnieszka Arnold had earlier taken notice of the murders in Jedwabne. A report she found in the Ringelblum Archive inspired her to make a film about Polish-Jewish relations under the German occupation and to shoot material in Jedwabne. The work on this film, "Where Is My Older Brother Cain?", began in 1997. Soon after, using the interviews she did with the inhabitants of Jedwabne, she made the film "Neighbours", which was broadcast on Polish television when the discussion about Jan Tomasz Gross' book was at its height. |
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