Reflections Upon the Jedwabne Massacre: Eighty Years On

On July 10 1941, catastrophe overwhelmed the Jewish community of Jedwabne.

I am Yoav Aran. My great grandmother, Sarah Schwimmer nee Kosacki Z"L left Jedwabne for Eretz Yisrael in the 1930s. Her immediate family were victims of the infamous Jedwabne massacre. They were murdered by their Polish neighbours.

Why am I writing this on a sunny afternoon in Jerusalem?

First, to say thank you. Jared Goldfarb, a tsadik, looked for Sarah Schwimmer's headstone in Kiriyat Shaul cemetery in Israel. He sent me a picture of the headstone which proved to be of great personal and genealogical value. Before we received it, we basically knew nothing about my great grandmother Sarah’s family. To start researching this line, I called my grandmother (Sarah’s daughter) who lives in Israel. Sarah Kosacki died young, at the age of 41, from sickness. It appears that she, like so many of her generation, "did not talk” about what they and their families had experienced in Europe. And so, my dear grandmother, along with her generation, did not have knowledge of details regarding their family’s fate in the Holocaust.

I write this today, July 10th 2021, as this day marks exactly 80 years since the massacre of Jedwabne's Jews. On 10th July 1941, all Jews were ordered to leave their homes and marched into the market square, where they were beaten and humiliated. Invoking the anti-Semitic "Judeo-communism" stereotype, Poles forced dozens of Jews to destroy a statute of Lenin. These innocent people were then murdered and buried in Bronisław Śleszyński’s barn. Later that day, the remaining Jews were marched from the market square to the same barn. The barn was set on fire with the people locked inside.²

Third, as a Jedwabne descendant, I am compelled to examine the story and present the evidence that relates to my family’s fate. I have found three sources which I will present below. They help us determine, or at least suggest, what happened to my family on July 10th 1941.

Here we go.

1. Yadvashem Pages of Testimony

There are six pages of testimony on Yadvashem's website with the Kosacki name that were submitted by Rav Jacob Baker Z"L . Rav Jacob Baker was a Jew who emigrated from Jedwabne to America before the war. He and his brother Julius were devoted to commemorating their family and friends from Jedwabne. They co-edited the Jedwabne Yizkor book: Sefer Jedwabne; Historiya ve-zikaron (Jedwabne: History and Memorial Book). Rav Jacob Baker also filled out 39 Yadvashem pages of testimony to honour the memory of Jedwabne's Jews. Here are six pages that pertain to my family.

Three names Rav Baker writes in his pages of testimony stand out: Avraham Yitzchak, Etka and Chaim Kosacki.

Why do these names stand out? Read on!

2. Sarah Schwimmer nee Kosacki's headstone

Sarah Schimmer nee Kosacki was my great grandmother. The text on her headstone is what made the names in Rav Baker’s pages of testimony noticeable to me.

The text on the headstone reads in Hebrew: "Here lies...Sarah Schwimmer, daughter of Avraham Yitzchak, of the Kosacki family from Jedwabne. At its base, there is a commemoration with these words: "To the eternal memory of her parents and family that were murdered by the Nazis in the days of the Holocaust. Avraham Yitzchak Kosacki and his wife Bracha. Sarah's brother Chaim and her sister Elka". These are the names of members of my family who remained in Poland and were burnt alive in Śleszyński’s barn. The names are an absolute match with those in Rav Baker's pages of testimony.

3. Post-war investigations on the Jedwabne massacre

As well as testimonies made by Jews on the Jedwabne massacre at Yadvashem, there is valuable information in the documents used for post-war investigations on the crime that took place. Specifically, the records of an investigation carried out in 1968 in Germany. These papers were found in the Ludwigsburg archives. Among them is the account of an eyewitness to the crime.³ It states:

“During the German occupation I lived in Jedwabne. Soon after the township's occupation by the Germans, a gendarmerie post was set up. I do not remember the exact date but it could have been July 1941, when some uniformed officers came to the post. People said that these were Gestapo functionaries. I cannot say how many there were. That day I was working on the maintenance of the machinery of the mill. At one point I observed that on the road by the mill the gendarme and the Gestapo functionaries I mentioned were herding Jews. It was men, women, and children, the entire Jewish population of Jedwabne. It could have been about a thousand Jews. I looked but did not count them and I don't know whether it was 500 or 1000. The gendarmes were herding them to a barn belonging to Bronislaw Sleczynski located outside the village. At some point I saw smoke arising from the barn and then flames. I must add that my hearing [has always been] defective and I suppose that because of that I did not hear the cries of those being immolated. The fact is that the Germans burnt the Jewish population in that barn.

"I remember that probably the following Jews were burned with their families: Limmy Wolf, Ebensztejn Mordechaj, Sini Limny, Szmul Wasersztein, Chonek Goldberg, Abram Ibram, Fajbu Dziodziak, Krzywonos, Calka Strzyakowski, Gutman, Chaim Kosacki [my bolding], I don't remember (the) other(s). Some of the Jews managed to save themselves but the number was not large. What happened to them, I don't know, but I know they were arrested and neither came back nor gave any sign of being alive." ⁴

Here we read that an eyewitness remembers seeing my great great uncle, Chaim Kosacki [my bolding], and his family being burnt alive in the barn.

There is another post-war account that describes my family’s fate in the Jedwabne massacre. In Anna Bikont's book, The Crime and The Silence , I found a testimony made by Stanislaw Zejer. According to Bikont (p.125)⁵ "Zejer, a suspect, testified that Jerzy Laudański and Bolesław Rogalski, a postal worker,

'having got themselves poles … went to drive six families into the market square, they were Kosacki Mendel [my bolding] (family of four); Szymborski Abram (family of six); Gutko Josel (family of four)—I, Zejer, don’t remember the names of the other families'. "

We see here further corroboration that the Kosacki family were victims of the Jedwabne massacre. Mendel Kosacki was my 3rd great grandfather and his name is also mentioned in Rav Baker's Yadvashem testimony, as Avraham Yitzchak Kosacki's father⁶.

As I write, Shabbat is approaching in Jerusalem. It is the 9th of July. I plan to publish this tomorrow, 10th July, exactly eighty years since my grandmother's family were murdered. For being Jews.

I would like to thank both my grandmothers, Atalia and Shai-Sarah, as well as my cousin Thea for helping me with this blog.

Footnotes

1. A stark, vertical, engraved stone monument, at the site of the massacre, bears an inscription in Polish, Hebrew and Yiddish.

The inscription reads: "To the memory of the Jews of Jedwabne and the neighbouring villages; men, women and children who dwelled in this land. And who were murdered. And who were burnt alive. In this place, on July 10th 1941."

Small stones can be seen above the monument. These are traditionally placed by visitors as a mark of silent grief.

2. https://polin.pl/en/the-jedwabne-pogrom

3. http://info-poland.icm.edu.pl/classroom/J/Gestapo.html

4. Ibid.

5. Bikont, Anna (2004) The Crime and the Silence: A Quest for the Truth of a Wartime Massacre, Penguin, Random House UK

6. https://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetails.html?language=en&itemId=1249543&ind=1