The Crime and the Silence (77 page)

Listening to his disquisition, I was not yet aware—nor was he, in all probability—that his arguments go to the very heart of the problem that torments me. Even when you have all the information in hand, it's hard to grasp that a readiness to commit atrocities and a readiness to give one's life for the fatherland could flow from the same source—but a source that was poisoned somewhere along the way.

4.

On my very first visit to Jedwabne I came across the name of Jerzy Tarnacki, a man who participated in the killing of the Jedwabne Jews on July 10. Many of the witnesses I talked to had a vivid memory of him: as a member of the prewar nationalist squads (“He bullied and provoked young Jews, and when there was a wedding in the synagogue he caused as much disruption as he could”); as a common looter (“Even before they started killing Jews, he was already looting Szmul Wasersztejn's property”); as the man who drove Jews into the market square and who, with Józef Sobuta, made them destroy the Lenin statue (“He beat Jews and made them sing”); and, finally, as a
schutzmann
, a policeman under the Germans (“He was worse than many of the Germans, and when it was clear the Germans would lose, he went into the forest”).

He is accused in witness statements from the 1949 trial (“I saw with my own eyes how Jerzy Tarnacki took part in the killing of Jews. He was forcing a Jew into the market square and he had a stick in his hand; what he did to that man I don't know, I just saw him leading the aforementioned Jew in the direction of the fire”).

It is evident from the trial documents that he was not arrested and he did not stand trial, because he'd gone into hiding. He was sought by the militia.

We know that Tarnacki was part of the partisan group in the Kobielno wilds, and was active in the anti-Communist underground after the war.

The historian Tomasz Strzembosz refers to his correspondence with Tarnacki in articles describing the nefarious role of Jews during the Soviet occupation, and the selflessness of the Polish patriots whose partisan hideout was in the Kobielno wilderness. Of the Kobielno partisans, among them Jerzy Tarnacki, who is mentioned by name, Strzembosz wrote, “Those whom I managed to find, they are the ‘Last of the Mohicans,' the remainder of a battered generation of Fighting Poland. I bow my head low before these people.”

At the office of the Białystok branch of the Institute of National Remembrance I studied a microfilm with a security service docket dated 1952, written (with many mistakes) in the hand of Jerzy Tarnacki. In it he promises “to execute all tasks entrusted to him conscientiously, not hiding any actions hostile to People's Poland,” “not to speak of his collaboration with anyone, even the nearest of kin,” and also “to arrive punctually at the arranged meetings.” He makes it clear that he will only collaborate with those employees who recruited him and under no circumstance ask them to visit his house. He selects the alias “Above Board.”

The Jerzy Tarnacki who murdered Jews and went to work for the German police as a
schutzmann
, the Jerzy Tarnacki who joined the partisans in Kobielno and was active in the Home Army and the anti-Soviet underground, and, finally, the Jerzy Tarnacki who collaborated with the Communist secret police—they are all the same man.

5.

So, taking part in the murder of Jews didn't disqualify a person from being accepted into the ranks of the Home Army. Unfortunately there is absolutely no doubt about this—murderers could become soldiers in the Polish underground army, even if they had committed their crimes in broad daylight, in the center of town, in front of many witnesses.

In this area, every underground organization would have tolerated people in its ranks who were guilty of killing Jews. The difference was that with the National Armed Forces, having saved or helped Jews definitely disqualified you, while the Home Army opened its ranks to both killers of Jews and protectors of Jews. The same Zygmunt Mazurek who belonged to a gang that tormented Jews, proposed that the Home Army accept Stanisław Ramotowski, who he knew had saved a Jewish family, married a Jewish woman, and been in hiding with her.

6.

In the autumn of 1943, Józef Przybyszewski, who represented the National Party in the Polish government-in-exile based in London, became the regional delegate of the émigré government in the Białystok district. I decided to check to see if the similarity of surnames with the editor in chief of
Camp for a Greater Poland Youth
, the periodical of the anti-Semitic extreme right wing of the National Party, was coincidental. Przybyszewski was convicted by a prewar court and charged with being “morally responsible for the Radziłów pogrom” in 1933. I find out that they are one and the same man.

In my notes on the prewar period I find quotes from Przybyszewski's programmatic article “Our Position on the Jewish Question”: “The Greater Poland movement will endure so long as there are Poles in Poland who sell their country into Jewish hands, consider giving Lvov to the Ukrainians or Vilnius to the Lithuanians. Poland must be nationalist, and Jews are a race unsuited to assimilation.” And also notes from Interior Ministry reports: “On December 13, 1932, a meeting took place in Radziłów of members and sympathizers of the National Party numbering about 60 persons. The National Party secretary from Łomża, Józef Przybyszewski, gave a speech arguing that Jews are the most privileged people in Poland, crowding all Polish schools, growing so arrogant that they go so far as to murder Polish fellow students. He called on those gathered to boycott Jewish merchants and to organize themselves under the flag of the National Party, which, as he put it, would soon take power in the country after the fall of the current government.”

Why did the Polish government in London choose a rabid anti-Semite as their representative in the region? They knew the local population had joined with the Germans in persecuting and killing Jews. Not only did the underground authorities refuse to support this, they warned people loud and clear not to succumb to German propaganda. However, they evidently thought—surely with some grounds—that one could build networks of resistance in this region only on the nationalist movement, with its powerful anti-Semitic coloring. Chaja Finkelsztejn, who heard singing from her hiding place, wrote, “The youth marched through the village singing of the fall of Warsaw. They sang with such pain, those same people who had bathed in the blood of innocents.”

Jan Gross in his book wrote that the murderers were “just like anybody else, quite ordinary people,” using a phrase from Christopher Browning. In the discussion about the book it was often said that it was the underclass who took part in the killing. A prominent sociologist, Antoni Sułek, wrote, “The most active participants in the atrocity were not ‘ordinary people' but people from the margins of society, from the lower rungs of the social hierarchy, unsettled, unfettered by bonds of family. Not the kind of people who had their own houses but the kind who hoped to get housing and property from Jews; not farmers thinking of the approaching harvest but idle village ‘youth,' not fathers but overgrown boys and loners.”

In fact, Jews were killed both by “quite ordinary people” (in Tykocin, as Menachem Turek testified, “the lives of Jews were put in the hands of a former shepherd, Antek Jakubiak, who became the commander of the newly minted police force”) and by “people from the margins” (like Józef Kubrzyniecki of Jedwabne, known before the war as a local hood who stole for a living).

Jews were killed by people ready to serve any power, like the brothers Jerzy and Zygmunt Laudański in Jedwabne or Władysław Grodzki, the teacher from Jasionówka. Grodzki was in the National Party before the war, worked for the NKVD during the Soviet occupation, and, as soon as the Germans entered, began killing and robbing Jews, then joined the auxiliary police force (he was condemned to death after the war).

“Quite ordinary people,” including people with stable lives, spouses, and numerous offspring, killed Jews—this emerges unambiguously from the investigation papers.

Unfortunately, there was also a whole other category, the local patriotic elite, raised in a nationalist and extremely anti-Semitic spirit by the local organs of the National Party and by their own priests.

7.

I heard stories more than once about meetings of the Home Army after the war where plans were made to kill surviving Jews.

The best-known case in the region involves the Dorogojs, Mordechaj and his son Akiwa (called Icek). They came out of hiding on January 23, 1945, right after the Soviets turned up. By January 28 they were dead. The open secret among the locals was that they had been killed by Antoni Kosmaczewski, who earlier had murdered Mordechaj's daughter, Dora.

At his trial, Kosmaczewski claimed that he had received permission from his Home Army superiors to kill the Dorogojs, who—as he testified—had threatened to kill him in revenge for his killing Dora. “So I was terrified and I went to my company leader, since I belonged to the illegal Home Army, to ask them what to do about those Jews … My leader told me that ‘if you have witnesses to it, get rid of them.' The leader's name was Bujnarowski; he was from Radziłów, but now he's dead.”

What to think of an accused man explaining that his Home Army leader was responsible for his killing of Jews after the war?

My first impulse is not to believe that the Home Army could have had anything to do with it. But here the Institute of National Remembrance finds a document.

LIQUIDATION REPORT, FEBRUARY 1945

Date of liquidation: January 28, 1945

Who carried out the liquidation and how: Home Army patrol

Surname and first name of liquidated person and place of residence: Dorogoj Mordechaj, Radziłów

Reason for liquidation and who suffered from his hostile activity: Soviet snoop, threatened the entirety of the organization's work

Make press announcement (Yes/No): No

A second identical report concerns Dorogoj, Icek.

The documents are signed by Lieutenant Franciszek Warzyński “Wawer” and Major Jan Tabortowski “Bruzda.” Both are legendary heroes in these parts.

8.

“The priest stood at the gate. Jews came to be baptized but the priest stood there and said nothing.” This is the scene described by Janina Biedrzycka, daughter of the owner of the barn in Jedwabne, who saw the priest's behavior with her own eyes in Jedwabne on July 10, 1941.

Before the war, priests in the Łomża district often headed boycotts, and the vicar of Radziłów, Władysław Kamiński, smashed the windows of Jewish shops together with nationalist squads. There are no reports of priests taking part in the pogroms and murders of 1941, but we know that most of them took a passive stance, and sometimes even a permissive one. Many testimonies relate that a pogrom started after Mass (“On a bright Sunday Poles prepared sticks spiked with sharp thorns, bound with rope and barbed wire,” Mendel Mielnicki of Wasilków testified. “Coming back from church, all of them headed for the Jewish quarter and Jewish homes, and a pogrom began, with beatings and looting”).

There were, however, some exceptions. Father Aleksander Pęza of Grajewo called on his parishioners to come to their senses, appealing to them not to collaborate with the Germans or to succumb to anti-Jewish provocations (testimony of Nachman Rapp, recorded in 1948).

A priest from Rutki, together with the local school head, tried to restrain a group of men who'd been in hiding under the Soviet occupation and came out of the forest to settle scores with the Jews (testimony from Rutki, from the Ghetto Underground Archive).

Father Cyprian Łozowski of Jasionówka beat with a stick those of his parishioners who plundered Jewish homes and threatened them with damnation (testimony of Jehoszua Bernard, recorded in a Budapest refugee shelter in 1945).

We know of one documented case of local elites who defended Jews. In Knyszyn, after the German invasion, “Doctor Nowakowski, pharmacist Rzeźnicki, and the local priest intervened with the authorities, who stopped the persecution. The Jews went on living where they always had.” The Knyszyn priest and the local elite intervened a second time when the pogrom was being planned: “In July 1941 criminal elements in the Polish population got together. They were headed by the policeman Stach Bibiński, among others. They marked Jewish houses with a Star of David and Polish ones with a cross. The Jews lived in terror that night. The next day it was quiet, and that was thanks to the local intelligentsia, who had restrained the mob. The priest himself chased away a boy who was about to break windows. The same priest told the faithful in his weekly sermons not to persecute Jews but to help them, because no one knew what time would bring” (testimony of Samuel Suraski for the Białystok Institute of National Remembrance, 1948).

Was any authority capable of restraining the pogrom fever among the local population as June turned to July in 1941? It is difficult to know. The fact remains that few tried. They deserve all the more praise for having done so.

 

Journal

JANUARY 10, 2003

I listen to a cassette tape sold outside a Białystok church: it has a talk on it given in Częstochowa, at Jasna Góra, the most sacred place for Polish Catholics.

“I would like to share with my fellow chaplains and my bishop some reflections on the Catholic-Jewish dialogue. For today we are dealing with Talmudic Judaism, which has nothing in common with Biblical Judaism. Jewish thinking, Jewish attitudes come from there, from the Talmud. We find it in
The Painted Bird
, in the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer, in the recent reports on Jedwabne. It's all made-up.”

The name of the speaker is never mentioned, but I recognize the voice of the priest and professor Waldemar Chrostowski, vice president of the Catholic University in Warsaw.