The Jedwabne pogrom was a massacre of Polish Jews in the town of Jedwabne, German-occupied Poland, on 10 July 1941, during World War II and the early stages of the Holocaust. Estimates of the number of victims vary from 300 to 1,600, including women, elderly and children, many of whom were locked in a barn and burnt alive. At least 40 ethnic Poles carried out the killing; their ringleaders decided on it beforehand with Germany's Gestapo, SS security police or SS intelligence and they then cooperated with German military police. According to historian Jan T. Gross, "the undisputed bosses of life and death in Jedwabne were the Germans," who were "the only ones who could decide the fate of the Jews."
Marek Jan Chodakiewicz is a Polish-American historian specializing in Central European history of the 19th and 20th centuries. He teaches at the Patrick Henry College and at the Institute of World Politics. He has been described as conservative and nationalistic, and his attitude towards minorities has been widely criticized.
Jan Tomasz Gross is a Polish-American sociologist and historian. He is the Norman B. Tomlinson '16 and '48 Professor of War and Society, emeritus, and Professor of History, emeritus, at Princeton University.
Żydokomuna is an anti-communist and antisemitic canard, or a pejorative stereotype, suggesting that most Jews collaborated with the Soviet Union in importing communism into Poland, or that there was an exclusively Jewish conspiracy to do so. A Polish language term for "Jewish Bolshevism", or more literally "Jewish communism", Żydokomuna is related to the "Jewish world conspiracy" myth.
Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski was a Polish-born polymath and inventor with 50 patents to his credit. He was a civil and industrial engineer by profession, educated in Poland, Belgium, and the United States. He was also a writer on Polish and European history, author of historical atlases, and a lexicographer.
Nasz Dziennik is a Polish-language Roman Catholic daily newspaper published six times a week in Warsaw, Poland. It is connected to the Lux Veritatis Foundation. Its viewpoint has been described as right-wing to far-right, and is supportive of the Traditionalist Catholicism "closed church".
Stanisław Andrzej Michalkiewicz is a Polish far-right political commentator, lawyer, former politician, opposition activist in the communist Polish People's Republic, and book author. Michalkiewicz is known for making antisemitic comments involving the Holocaust.
The Naliboki massacre was the 8 May 1943 mass killing of 127 or 128 Poles by Soviet partisans in the small town of Naliboki in German-occupied Poland.
Gunnar Svante Paulsson is a Swedish-born Canadian historian, university lecturer, and author who has taught in Britain, Canada, Germany, and Italy. He specializes in history of The Holocaust and has been described as "an expert on that period". He is best known for his 2002 book, Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw 1940-1945.
Ryszard Janusz Bender was a Polish right-wing politician and historian. He is noted for his characterization of Auschwitz as a "labour camp", attracting allegations of Holocaust denial.
Anti-Jewish violence in Poland from 1944 to 1946 preceded and followed the end of World War II in Europe and influenced the postwar history of the Jews as well as Polish-Jewish relations. It occurred amid a period of violence and anarchy across the country, caused by lawlessness and anti-communist resistance against the Soviet-backed communist takeover of Poland. The estimated number of Jewish victims varies and ranges up to 2,000. In 2021, Julian Kwiek published the first scientific register of incidents and victims of anti-Jewish violence in Poland in 1944-1947, according to his calculations, the number of victims was at least 1,074 to 1,121. Jews constituted between 2% and 3% of the total number of victims of postwar violence in the country, including the Polish Jews who managed to escape the Holocaust on territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union, and returned after the border changes imposed by the Allies at the Yalta Conference. The incidents ranged from individual attacks to pogroms.
Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz: An Essay in Historical Interpretation, is a book by Jan T. Gross, published by Random House and Princeton University Press in 2006. An edited Polish version was published in 2008 by Znak Publishers in Krakow as Strach: antysemityzm w Polsce tuż po wojnie: historia moralnej zapaści. In the book, Gross explores the issues concerning incidents of post-war anti-Jewish violence in Poland, with particular focus on the 1946 Kielce pogrom. Fear has received international attention and reviews in major newspapers; receiving both praise and criticism.
Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland is a book published in 2000 written by Princeton University historian Jan T. Gross exploring the July 1941 Jedwabne massacre committed against Polish Jews by their non-Jewish neighbors in the village of Jedwabne in Nazi-occupied Poland.
Piotr Gontarczyk is a Polish historian with a doctorate in history and political science.
Monsignor Waldemar Chrostowski is a Polish Catholic priest, Bible scholar, and theologian. He is a professor of theology at the Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw.
Ewa Kurek is a Polish historian specializing in Polish-Jewish history during World War II. She has been associated with the far-right, and her revisionist views regarding the Holocaust in Poland have been widely categorized as indicative of antisemitism and Holocaust denial.
Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw 1940–1945 is a 2002 book by Gunnar S. Paulsson. It was translated to Polish in 2008. Secret City is a social history of the Jews who escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto and tried to survive, living illegally "on the Aryan side". The book has received mostly favourable reviews, with several historians calling it "significant", "a milestone" and “riveting study".
Mieczysław Kosmowski was a Polish Nazi collaborator, Gestapo agent and war criminal. He is responsible for Wąsocz Pogrom in Jedwabne Pogrom, Szczuczyn Pogrom and Pogrom in Łomża.
Joanna Sabina Tokarska-Bakir is a Polish cultural anthropologist, literary scholar, and religious studies scholar. She is a full professor and chair of the ethnic and national relations study at the Polish Academy of Sciences's Institute of Slavic Studies. She specializes in blood libel, historical anthropology and in particular violence, and Holocaust ethnography.
The program of the Polish Law and Justice (PiS) party has chapters on "identity" (tożsamość) and "history policy". The implementation of the PiS history policy consists in promoting, in Poland and internationally, a version of history based on a policy of memory that focuses on protecting the "good name" of the Polish nation.
