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A Monument of Words

Dariusz Stola

  1. Jan Tomasz Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001); originally published in Polish: Sąsiedzi: Historia Zagłady żydowskiego miasteczka (Sejny: Fundacja Pogranicze, 2000).
  2. Neighbors, p. 16.
  3. Neighbors, p. 94.
  4. Henry Abramson, A Prayer for the Government: Ukrainians and Jews in Revolutionary Times (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 119.
  5. Neighbors, p. 56.
  6. Neighbors, p. 97.
  7. Neighbors, p. 87.
  8. Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: HarperCollins, 1992). Browning’s outstanding book can be recommended to everyone moved by the story of Jedwabne.
  9. Neighbors, p. 78.
  10. An even more vexing lacuna is created by the absence of relevant German archival sources. So far no German sources relating to Jedwabne have come to light. It is ironic that a feverish search is going on for German testimonies in the context of the controversy about the Polish-Jewish past. The executioners are to arbitrate their victims.
  11. Neighbors, p. 75.
  12. I owe this observation to Krzysztof Persak, whom I would like to thank here for his critical remarks about this article.
  13. Christopher R. Browning, The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). See also Tomasz Szarota, U progu Zagłady. Zajscia antyżydowskie i pogromy w okupowanej Europie: Warszawa, Paryż, Amsterdam, Antwerpia, Kowno (Warsaw: Sic!, 2000), pp. 209-216; Christian Gerlach, “The Wannsee Conference. The Fate of German Jews and Hitler’s Decision in Principle to Exterminate all European Jews,” Journal of Modern History, vol. 70, no. 4 (1998), pp. 759-812.
  14. Anna Landau-Czajka, W jednym stali domu. Koncepcje rozwiazania kwestii żydowskiej w publicystyce polskiej lat 1933-1939 (Warsaw: Neriton, 1998).
  15. On the debate between “functionalists” and “intentionalists,” see Michael R. Marrus, The Holocaust in History (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1987).
  16. Excerpts from the report were published by Szarota, U progu, pp. 289-294. See also Yitzhak Arad, et al., eds., Documents on the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1981), pp. 389-393.
  17. Such cases are described by Szarota; ibid. The appraisal of the Polish “blue” police is still controversial.
  18. “Instrukcja nr 2” of June 23, 1941, and Biuletyn Informacyjny of March 6, 1941, see Dariusz Stola, Nadzieja i Zagłada: Ignacy Schwarzbart - żydowski przedstawiciel w Radzie Narodowej RP (1940-1945) (Warsaw: Oficyna Naukowa, 1995), p. 120.
  19. Z. Romaniuk, ed., Ziemia brańska (Brańsk: Tow. Przyjaciół Brańska, 1995), vol. 6, p. 118.
  20. Neighbors, p. 170.
  21. Jan Tomasz Gross, Revolution from Abroad. The Soviet Conquest of Poland’s Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).