 | |
| Author | Anna Bikont |
|---|---|
| Original title | My z Jedwabnego |
| Language | Polish |
| Subject | Jedwabne pogrom |
| Genre | Journalistic investigation, historical studies |
| Publisher | Prószyński i S-ka |
Publication date | 2004 |
| Pages | 417 |
| Awards | European Book Prize (2011) |
| ISBN | 9788373376946 |
The Crime and the Silence: Confronting the Massacre of Jews in Wartime Jedwabne is a 2004 book by Polish journalist Anna Bikont on the Jedwabne massacre, a 1941 pogrom of Polish Jews in Jedwabne, German-occupied Poland.
The book was first published in Polish as My z Jedwabnego (2004, "Jedwabne: Battlefield of Memory"). [1] [2] It was next published in French under the title Le Crime et le Silence: Jedwabne 1941, la mémoire d'un pogrom dans la Pologne d'aujourd'hui (2011) which won the European Book Prize. [3] The English translation by Alissa Valles was published in 2015. [1] [4] Other translations include: in Swedish as Vi från Jedwabne (2015); in Hebrew as Anaḥnu mi-Yedṿabneh : ha-peshaʻ ṿe-ha-hashtaḳah (2016); in Dutch as De misdaad en het zwijgen : Jedwabne 1941, de levende herinnering aan een pogrom in Polen (2016); in Chinese as Zui xing yu chen mo : Zhi mian ye de wa bu nei you tai ren da tu sha (2018); in Italian as Il crimine e il silenzio: Jedwabne 1941 - Un massacro in cerca di verità (2019), and; in German as Wir aus Jedwabne: Polen und Juden während der Shoah (2020).
In writing her book Bikont was inspired by Jan. T. Gross' pioneering study on the subject ( Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland , 2001). One of the novel areas she explores is the reaction of Jedwabne villagers to Gross' revelations, what one of the reviewers called "the early stage of the Jedwabne debate". [5] One of the themes of her book is the lingering antisemitism present in modern-day Jedwabne, where a number of inhabitants were unwilling to take part in her research project and yet others were afraid to be seen speaking to her. [1] [2] [6] Readings of her book in Poland have been picketed by Polish nationalists. [7]
The book is structured with interposing chapters of Bikont's diary (written in the years 2000–2003) and journalistic reportage. [6] [8] Pursuing some leads and interviews, Bikont traveled among others to United States, Israel, Costa Rica and Argentina. [1] [6]
Louis Begley in his review for The New York Times wrote that the book is "beautifully written, devastating and very important". [1] A reviewer for The Guardian likewise called the book "a powerful and important study of the poisonous effects of racism and hatred within a community". [4] Sinclair McKay reviewing the book for The Telegraph noted that the book "is a hauntingly human study of the nightmare of persecution", though criticized it for insufficient historical background and lacking a map that many readers would find useful. [2]
Joanna Michlic reviewed the Polish edition, praising it as "a first-class journalistic account" recommended for students, scholars of the 20th century genocides as well as to those interested in the Polish-Jewish history, noting that the book's main contribution is to be found in the "investigation of contemporary memory of these crimes" among the survivors, perpetrators, rescuers and their descendants. She calls the book "an anthropological and a psychological study of a deeply troubling memory of the darkest crimes in the history of Polish-Jewish relations" and notes that while the author is a journalist, it is an exemplary journalistic study that is valuable to scholars pursuing historical studies in this topic area. [5]
Yves Gounin reviewed the French edition for Médiations. He compared the book to The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million by Daniel Mendelsohn, noting that Bikont's account in French unfortunately suffers from translation problems. [8]
Reviewing the book for the Jewish Quarterly , Jennifer Weisberg calls the book a "masterpiece", praising Bikont for her efforts to gather numerous testimonies from surviving witnesses. [6]
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, children, and elderly, many of whom were locked in a barn and burned alive.
A pogrom is a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews. The term entered the English language from Russian to describe 19th- and 20th-century attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire. Similar attacks against Jews which also occurred at other times and places became known retrospectively as pogroms. Sometimes the word is used to describe publicly sanctioned purgative attacks against non-Jewish groups. The characteristics of a pogrom vary widely, depending on the specific incident, at times leading to, or culminating in, massacres.
Jedwabne is a town in northeast Poland, in Łomża County of Podlaskie Voivodeship, with 1,942 inhabitants (2002). It is notable for the Jedwabne pogrom of 10 July 1941, during the World War II German occupation of Poland.
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.
Szymon Datner was a Polish historian, Holocaust survivor and underground operative from Białystok, best known for his studies of the Nazi war crimes and events of The Holocaust in the Białystok region. His 1946 Walka i zagłada białostockiego ghetta was one of the first studies of the Białystok Ghetto.
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.
The Kraków pogrom was the first anti-Jewish riot in post World War II Poland, that took place on 11 August 1945 in the Soviet-occupied city of Kraków, Poland. The incident was part of anti-Jewish violence in Poland towards and after the end of World War II. The immediate cause of the pogrom was a blood libel rumour of a ritual murder of Polish children by Jews in the city. A false allegation that a child had been abducted by a Jewish woman had grown to allegations that Jews had killed up to 80 children over the course of weeks. These allegations led to attacks on Jews, as well as some Poles mistaken for Jews, in the Kazimierz quarter, and other parts of the Old Town, and the burning of the Kupa Synagogue. At least one person was killed and an unknown number were injured.
The Wąsosz pogrom was the World War II mass murder of Jewish residents of Wąsosz in German-occupied Poland, on 5 July 1941. The massacre was carried out by local Polish residents without participation of Germans.
The mass murders in Tykocin occurred on 25 August 1941, during World War II, where the local Jewish population of Tykocin (Poland) was killed by German Einsatzkommando.
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.
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.
Joanna Beata Michlic is a Polish social and cultural historian specializing in Polish-Jewish history and the Holocaust in Poland. An honorary senior research associate at the Centre for Collective Violence, Holocaust and Genocide Studies at University College London (UCL), she focuses in particular on the collective memory of traumatic events, particularly as it relates to gender and childhood.
Anna Bikont is a Polish journalist for the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper in Warsaw. She is the author of several books, including My z Jedwabnego (2004) about the 1941 Jedwabne pogrom, which was published in English as The Crime and the Silence: Confronting the Massacre of Jews in Wartime Jedwabne (2015). The French edition, Le crime et le silence, won the European Book Prize in 2011.
Szczuczyn pogrom was the massacre of some 300 Jews in the community of Szczuczyn carried out by its Polish inhabitants in June 1941 after the town was bypassed by the invading German soldiers in the beginning of Operation Barbarossa. The June massacre was stopped by German soldiers after Jewish women bribed them to intervene.
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.
The Radziłów pogrom was a World War II massacre committed on 7 July 1941 in the town of Radziłów, in German-occupied Poland. Local Poles, under SS orders or with German encouragement, forced most of the Jews of the town into a barn and set it on fire, Jews were also murdered in surrounding villages. Death toll estimates vary between 600 and 2,000; only some 30 Jews survived the massacre due to help from local Poles.
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.
Wojciech Sumliński is a Polish psychologist, investigative journalist, publicist and film director. He worked for the Polish magazines, including: the daily newspaper Życie and the weekly magazines Gazeta Polska and Wprost. Sumliński made also documentaries for Telewizja Polska. In his career he has written about the death circumstances of priest Jerzy Popiełuszko, history of the Polish communist secret service, Polish politics and the country's justice system.