President Aleksander Kwasniewski, an ex-communist, said last week he will issue a formal apology for Jedwabne on the 60th anniversary of the massacre in July, and change the inscription on the 1963 monument. We have to build a normal future inside Poland and with our foreign partners, with Jews all over the world and with Israel. Meanwhile, Poland's new National Remembrance Institute has opened its own investigation and is interviewing witnesses, which could lead to a trial of any participants still living. A communist-era court convicted 12 villagers of collaborating with the Nazis after a speedy trial and sentenced them to terms ranging from 8 to 15 years. As a Pole, I can't shake off the blame for what has happened.
Many questions remain.
But to understand Jedwabne we would have to know whether the murder was done spontaneously by the local residents with the agreement of the Nazi soldiers, or whether it was done by scum instigated by Germans who had sent a police battalion to clean the town of Jews. Until Hitler declared war on the Soviet Union, the Soviets controlled eastern Poland. Germans forced those people to do it. Many of them were hooligans, but they happen to be in every society. Academics and politicians love to tell us the answer to this question, but we're interested in how Canadians see themselves.