Jedwabne Massacre eyewitness testimony.
On 10 July 1941 Ms. Hieronima Wilczewska was 8 years old when she saw the massacre in Jedwabne, in German-occupied Poland.
The 1941 massacre in Jedwabne in German-occupied Poland was committed by Germans, on their own initiative and under their sole supervision like thousands of similar German crimes in Poland.
Imputing the commission of this crime to the Polish population of Jedwabne is equally absurd as speaking of "Polish concentration camps".
Considering the German rule of terror in the occupied Poland, where even owning a radio receiver could result in imprisonment and death, it would have been physically impossible for the Polish inhabitants of a town to possess weapons or to be able to organize and independently conduct any armed or pacificatory action without Germans' consent and control.
Dissemination of such absurdities bespeaks their author's ignorance, ill will, or an intent to falsify history based on ulterior motives.
Out of all German-occupied countries, in Poland alone any form of aid extended to people of Jewish descent carried a death sentence. The punishment was dealt out immediately, most often without a trial, not only to the helper but also to his or her entire family.
In other words, the whole family would be stood against the nearest wall and shot.
In this context, and as defined by Germans - “help" meant any assistance, in the broadest sense of the word: from hiding Jews through giving them clothes, food or water. The punishment was carried out on Poles with the utmost severity.
In German-occupied Poland Germans annihilated, in most cases through bestial murders, over 5 million Polish citizens, including over 2,5 million Poles of Jewish descent. Over 2 million Polish non-Jews were subjected to genocide in German concentration and death camps or killed as a result of various forms of terror and repression.
Out of the total of 25,685 people who have to this day been granted the highest civilian award of the State of Israel, i.e. the title of "Righteous Among the Nations"
of the Yad Vashem International Institute for Holocaust Research based in Jerusalem, 6,532 were Poles.
The title of "Righteous Among the Nations", the highest civilian award in Israel, is granted in recognition of documented cases where non-Jews risked their lives to help Jews. This means that the State of Israel has acknowledged that, of all the nations engulfed by the war waged by the German Third Reich, out of all 21 German-occupied countries, non-Jewish Poles are credited with as much as 25 percent of all documented cases of aiding Jews at the peril of death to the helper and his or her family. However, it needs to be added that the number of over 6,000 awards is only symbolic. Historical estimates indicate that the total number of Poles engaged in organizing clandestine help for Jews in occupied Poland was as high as 2 million. For instance, securing help for a single Jew in the German-occupied and terrorized country required the concerted, clandestine and life-threatening effort of 20 non-Jewish Poles.
Unique among the occupied countries, both the Polish Underground State during WWII and the Polish Home Army - also unparalleled in the occupied Europe and Asia established official administrative, financial and organizational structures whose task was to help and protect Jews in German-occupied Poland. This was perfectly executed, using all available means in the time of terror and oppression, at the cost of incarceration, bestial torture and death of thousands of non-Jewish Poles at German hands. From the Jewish Department set up specifically to this end in the Department of Information of the Bureau of Information and Propaganda at the Polish Home Army HQ, through the Provisional Committee to Aid Jews, to the Council to Aid Jews operating through the Polish Government Delegation for Poland - this effort was initiated, organized, managed, implemented and led at the peril of death by the clandestine structures of the Polish Underground State and the Home Army (yes, the "anti-Semitic" Home Army - as it is portrayed in some of today's Polish and international "newspapers", "scientific papers", according to "historians", “journalists" or German TV miniseries "Unsere Muetter, Unsere Vaeter" - “Generation War”).
Acting on the order of the Polish Underground State and the Home Army, underground armed forces heroes, like Rittmeister Witold Pilecki, voluntarily infiltrated German death camps to document the decimation of the Polish population and the extermination of Jews. The report, entitled "The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland", was officially introduced to all nations of the world on 10 December 1942, at the League of Nations forum in Washington, and later presented directly, in person, to US President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The message was completely ignored both by the leaders and their nations.
