MORE "BIRDS"?

As we had suspected would ultimately happen, some Poles and Polish Americans are discovering the truth about the Jedwabne incident and are attempting to inform the public. Hopefully, we played some part in the revelation.

You will probably recall that Jerzy Kozinski authored "Painted Bird," the supposedly auto-biographical tale of a young Polish Jew, who avoided the murderous instincts of the Nazis only to suffer at the hands of his fellow Poles. Well, that little epic turned out to be a total fabrication, the author and his family actually owing their lives to the decency of Catholic Poles. The facts are not all in and the investigation is ongoing, but it is already becoming clear that Jan Tomasz Gross' book, "Neighbors," supposedly the product of honest research, shares at least some the lack of respect for veracity as the "Bird."

Gross relies primarily on the testimony of one so-called eyewitness, although there is even some evidence that his witness was not actually close enough to the scene to actually see anything. There is other testimony, but the author has a variety of excuses for dismissing it. Naturally, if the testimony comes from a Christian Pole, it is automatically deemed untrustworthy.

 Likewise, Gross considers any discussion of Polish-Jewish relations in Jedwabne to be extraneous, unworthy of serious discussion. That, of course, eliminates notice of the fact that Poles and Jews lived peacefully as neighbors in the town until the Soviets arrived. At that point, although Gross avoids the notion, many of the town's Jewish inhabitants happily accepted leadership of the town and turned over their erstwhile neighbors to the communists for interrogation, deportation and death. Well, that is not worth talking about, is it ... The victims were merely Poles.

There is no question that Jews were mercilessly murdered at Jedwabne. There should also be no question that the relatively few participating Poles did so in revenge, providing a motive other than mere prejudice and hate. As is almost always true in Polish history, the problems that arose between Poles and Jews in their shared homeland were occasioned by political, rather than religious or racial, motives. Having been murdered, the Jedwabne victims surely do not care about the motivation, but it does explain a great deal about what happened there.

We make no apology for murderers. As every Pole we have heard, we condemn the vicious, mindless slaughter that occurred in Jedwabne. If any of the Polish perpetrators are still living, they should be exposed and punished. At the same time, we deplore the use of the incident for the promulgation of anti-Polonism or national extortion. Those, too, in our eyes, are disgusting crimes for which those responsible should be held exposed and held accountable.

Original

T. Ron Jasinski-Herbert, Polonia Today, 0000-00-00

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