Probe finds Poles guilty for massacre

Friday, July 12, 2002 | by

RUTH E. GRUBER

WARSAW—Local Poles, not Nazi occupiers, carried out a 1941 massacre of Jews in the Polish village of Jedwabne, according to the findings of a two-year probe.

The long-awaited announcement from Poland's Institute of National Memory came on the eve of the 61st anniversary of the massacre, in which as many as 1,600 Jews were burned to death in a barn on July 10, 1941.

For decades, the slaughter had been attributed to the Nazis.

But in 2000, "Neighbors," a book by Polish-American scholar Jan Gross, revealed that the massacre was carried out by local Poles.

The revelations sparked a widespread and wrenching debate about Poland's role—and the role of individual Poles—in the Holocaust.

The revelations also prompted the institute's investigation.

Radoslaw Ignatiew, the prosecutor who conducted the investigation, said that while Germans were present at the massacre, witness testimony and forensic evidence including bullets and bones from mass graves showed that "Polish residents of Jedwabne, numbering at least 40," committed the crime.