page_title: Jedwabne pogrom
section_title: Jedwabne
hierarchical_section_title: Jedwabne pogrom / Background / Jedwabne
caption_attribution_description: Polski: Stara Synagoga w JedwabnemEnglish: Old Synagogue in Jedwabne, Poland; destroyed in an accidental fire in 1913
context_page_description: 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.
  At least 340 men, women and children were murdered, some 300 of whom were locked in a barn which was then set on fire. About 40 non-Jewish Poles were implicated as being perpetrators of the massacre. German military police were present in the town at the time.
  The massacre occurred among many others in the Podlasie region with the arrival of German troops shortly after their 21 June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, which had until then occupied Jedwabne in an 20-month reign of terror since the Hitler-Stalin Pact divided Poland in 1939. The killers at Jedwabne used the negative stereotype of "Jewish Communism" against their victims. Prior to the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland, Jedwabne had been located in an area which favored the National Party, an anti-Semitic bloc opposed to the prewar Polish government, which outlawed its radical violent wing in 1934.
context_section_description: The Jewish community in Jedwabne was established in the 17th or 18th century. In 1937, 60 percent of the population were ethnic Poles and 40 percent Jewish. In 1939 the total population was around 2,720 to 2,800. (At the time about 10 percent of the population of Poland—35 million—was Jewish; it was the largest Jewish population in the world.)
  The region supported the right-wing National Party of the National Democracy movement, which sought to counter what it said was Jewish economic competition against Catholics, and opposed the Polish socialist government of Józef Piłsudski and his successors. Prewar Polish-Jewish relations in the town were relatively good before 1939. At their most tense, when a Jewish woman was killed in Jedwabne and a Polish peasant in another town was killed a few days later, a rumor began that the Jedwabne Jews had taken revenge. The Jews anticipated a pogrom, but the local priest and rabbi stepped in, addressing the matter together.
  According to Anna Bikont, residents of Jedwabne knew of the 1933 Radziłów pogrom that took place in the nearby Radziłów, which was organized by National Democracy's far-right faction, the Camp of Great Poland (OWP). The organization referred to the violence as a "revolution" against the Polish state, which it saw as a protector of Jews. One Jew was killed by the pogromists and four pogromists were killed by the Polish police; the OWP was then banned by Poland for anti-state and racist activities.  Archival documents show Poland's government at this time was hostile to the Polish nationalist movement, because of the latter's attacks on Jews as well as its opposition to the Polish state; the government felt responsible for Jews and tried to protect them (arresting violent nationalists) and it perceived Jews as trying to show loyalty to the Polish state.
caption: The Jedwabne synagogue was burned down in an accident in 1913.
exif: {}