The Crime and the Silence (42 page)

In 1945, the deaconry in Jedwabne was headed by Father Antoni Roszkowski, who before the war had edited
Common Cause
and then
The Catholic Cause
, which made the battle against Jews their leading theme. Which means that immediately after the atrocity the church sent a priest to Jedwabne whose work was partly responsible for Jews being killed without a pang of conscience. Father Orłowski has held sway in Jedwabne since 1988; before that he was the parish priest of nearby Drozdowo, a hotbed of nationalism, where National Party leader Roman Dmowski spent the last years of his life. As if nothing had changed.

JUNE 11, 2001

I visit Antonina Wyrzykowska at her son's apartment in Milanówek, a Warsaw suburb.

“Do you feel satisfaction now that the truth about the massacre in Jedwabne has been revealed?”

“Why would I, I just feel afraid.”

“Will you come to the memorial ceremony in Jedwabne?”

“There's no way. I won't show my face anywhere around here again. My dear, I've really had enough. I used to come to visit from time to time, but afraid, God, I was always afraid.”

She hasn't read Gross's book, because she doesn't read books either. She left school after the second grade.

JUNE 12, 2001

I go to Konstancin to take Stanisław Ramotowski back to my house, where he is to be interviewed by prosecutor Ignatiew. In the end I managed to persuade Stanisław to do it, though he's sworn a dozen times that he's “only doing it for me.” His health is deteriorating. He has fainting spells, high fever, he coughs up blood. On the way from Konstancin I tell him what I discovered on my excursion to Radziłów with Jan Skrodzki, including the fact of the Mordasiewicz brothers being killers. Stanisław interrupts me.

“Just make sure you write there was a completely different Mordasiewicz family in Radziłów. Stanisław Mordasiewicz is still alive and he's a very fine man.”

Similarly, the name Ramotowski is common in the area. In Jedwabne one Ramotowski helped round up Jews in the marketplace, and in Radziłów another Ramotowski lived, no relative of Stanisław's, who participated in the looting of Jewish homes. In Jedwabne I found out that there were two Łojewski families, Poles who took part in the atrocity, and a Jewish blacksmith named Łojewski whose family died in the flames. None of this makes my job any easier. I have to remain vigilant, because the same problem keeps returning: some people killed, others saved, others were Communists, and still others didn't do anything, and they all have the same name.

JUNE 14, 2001

My last conversation with Leszek Dziedzic before the family leaves for the States. If they manage to get the necessary papers, they won't come back. There were three houses in Jedwabne where I could always drop by at any time and be fed: Joanna and Krzysztof Godlewski, Jadwiga and Stanisław Michałowski, Ewa and Leszek Dziedzic. I'm left with two.

 

7

A Time Will Come When Even Stones Will Speak

or, The Soliloquies of Leszek Dziedzic

“I read Gross's book as soon as it came out. Once, a friend came by and spent the whole evening reading it. He said, ‘I have to know if anyone in my family has blood on his hands.' Some of the names in the documents are misspelled; I want to look into it properly. My father's away, and when I ask my mother she bursts into tears and won't say anything.

“On July 10, a mob killed the Jews. But if at that time the priest had barred the way and said, ‘You'll go to hell for this and the devil will settle scores with you,' they would have listened to him and held back, with the possible exception of a few thugs already deep in their cups.

“My father was friends with Szmul Wasersztejn from before the war. Szmul took him along to temple once, although Dad's friends had said when you went in there you had to step on the cross. Dad took him along to church once. I always knew Szmul was hidden with us at first. But I also knew I shouldn't tell anyone about it. One day in the eighties a Fiat 125 drove up in front of our house and there was a stranger on our doorstep. My grandmother Leokadia Dmoch had passed away, and my parents were out. But I remembered Grandmother talking about Szmul's ears sticking out, so I recognized him at once. ‘My granny called you Staszek but you are Szmul,' I welcomed him, and I showed him pictures of Grandmother in our family album. He kissed them and cried like I'd never seen any child cry. He said, ‘My mother gave me life, but she couldn't help me save it, and this woman risked her life and the lives of her eight children to save my poor Jewish life.'

Leszek Dziedzic in front of his house in Methuen, Massachusetts, 2012.
(Courtesy of Leszek Dziedzic)

“The killing was all about Jewish property, but ever since Gross's book came out I keep hearing people say the Jews had it coming to them, because they denounced Poles. When our neighbors were rounded up for deportation my granny ran out to give them dry rusks for the journey. She didn't see any Jews there. In Przestrzele where we lived it was a Polish woman who betrayed her neighbors to the Soviets, and in the next village it was a Pole. I know the names of five Poles from this area who denounced people. I'm sure some Jew did, too, because there are lowlifes among any people.

“I was crossing the marketplace with my family when a Western TV crew was setting up equipment. My son's friend pointed at the cameraman: ‘That tall guy is Jewish.' I asked him, ‘How do you know?' ‘He's well-dressed and he's got a camera.' He's got stuff, so he must be a Jew. That boy must have heard that at home. When people were going to market and a child was nagging them to take him along, people around here would say, ‘I'm not taking you, because children have to kiss the Jewish lady's beard at the entrance.' And when a child wouldn't go to sleep his parents said, ‘The Jews will turn you into matzo.' That's how they brought up children, even after the war. How is a kid like that supposed to respect another people? When I read an interview with Rabbi Jacob Baker, I thought, He, whose people we helped to destroy, is able to speak of Poland with such feeling, and how do we speak of Jews?

“I always liked going around with my father and listening to grown-ups talk. Jews were respected in our home. Granny told us about not having money to bury her husband before the war; she had been left with eight children. She went to Father Szumowski, who said, ‘If you don't have money, bury him in the cabbage patch.' A Jewish acquaintance lent my grandmother the money without interest or a date by which it had to be returned. Granny managed to pay him back in full before the war broke out. After the war you could get a perpetual lease on land, but my family weren't tempted, because it had all been Jewish land.

“Look at the slogans in the tabloids: ‘If you're Polish you're with us'; ‘Buy Polish products, remember that buying from Poles means Poles live well.' They were handing them out in front of the church when Bishop Stefanek was celebrating Mass. Nowadays we're seeing a replay of the same thing we had in the thirties, when the nationalists were sowing hatred. They can't even come up with anything new. A strange way to show your patriotism, destroying and murdering other peoples.

“I don't remember when I realized that Jews had made up half of our town. I'm sure I knew that there was one Jewish woman left in town, she had been baptized, Miss Helena. We used to leave the truck in her courtyard when we drove into Jedwabne. I also knew where the grounds of the Jewish cemetery were, though it wasn't enclosed. Once I was driving past and somebody was driving around on an excavator. I said, ‘What are you doing here with an excavator, these are human remains.' He knew it, too, but it evidently didn't bother him.

“On the day of the massacre my grandmother didn't let any of her children go out. She always said a day would come when they'd say who was responsible for Katyń, and who killed the Jews. She didn't live to see either.

“They showed a TV report on Jedwabne where one of the townspeople, Damazy Kiełczewski, was shouting: ‘Let them come from Israel and take away their ashes. We'll help them load up.' I heard similar words at a gas station. I'm ashamed for the people of Jedwabne. The Polish Republic was a homeland to many peoples, and a pogrom was an act against the Polish state, it was Poles killing Poles—it was just that some were of the Jewish faith. Jews had their own material and cultural achievements, and they paid taxes like everyone else in Poland. They weren't ‘parachutists' who appeared during the Soviet occupation, though I heard that version from someone in town recently, too. My great-grandfather settled in the Borderlands, and when the revolution came they fled and they had just enough money to buy a house in Przestrzele. We've lived here for eighty years. Many of the Jews killed were from families who had lived here for hundreds of years.

“There were a lot of killings after the war, people were scared of visitors at night, afraid they'd come, smash things up, steal things, murder you. Father said you had to have a good sense of who was coming; they came at night and asked, ‘Who do you support?' If they were National Armed Forces, and you said you supported the Home Army, they could kill you. The National Armed Forces were fighting, but only to rape women and rob their husbands. It would help not only if Poles apologized to Jews, but if Poles apologized to Poles for everything that was looted in these lands.

“It's a certain kind of people here. Whatever bad happens, it turns out the Jews are to blame. I've been hearing it from the day I was born. Whether it's bad government, or bad weather, or a cow dies, it's always a Jew who's to blame. Dad had money because he was a good provider and he saved, Mama would get up at night to gather strawberries to take them to sell in the morning. When I got home from school I'd go to the neighbors and cut wood for them for a zloty, or pick black currants for them, and the money I made I gave to my dad. It's interesting that they always envied us our money, never our hard work. They said, ‘The Dziedzic family have Jewish money.' Anyone who's got money is either a Jew or he got it from a Jew. I got Jewish money, as they say here, once in my life: a hundred dollars from Szmul for my son. People here live on the pensions of their parents who handed on their farms. There's a saying: ‘Lord, give me a family with four pensioners and one cow.' Cows take some work, whereas pensions just flow into your pocket.

“For ages I asked my father about the massacre, but he was evasive. He'd say it was better to keep very quiet about all that. Sometimes he would sit on the porch for a bit and cry, and the family would say, ‘Papa's remembering the Jews.'

“There's a lot of hate around here now. It seems God has given us all the talk about Jews to try us. There's no other subject of conversation—whether you're in the hospital or in a government office. I went to Łomża to put an ad in the paper, I have silage for sale—Jews is the only thing people wanted to talk about. I heard from one guy, not even the dumbest in town, that the pope is a Jew. I responded, ‘It's not for nothing they wear yarmulkes from the bishop upward.' I'm in a store, the owner's mother comes in and says, ‘We should kick out all those Jews coming here for interviews.'

“I've been trying to piece together conversations I overheard by chance. My grandmother couldn't forgive her son for marrying into ‘a family like that' after the war. I couldn't tell you at what point I realized she called it ‘a family like that' because Uncle Klemens's wife's father and brother had a hand in the destruction of Jews.

“When someone tells me the Germans did it, I ask them, ‘And when a Jew was lying by the fence, clubbed to death, was it a German who did that, too?' When they talk about the deportations, I can't even bring myself to say again that Poles denounced people, too. I just ask, ‘And what had the children done wrong?'

“I passed a neighbor on the road whose uncle was one of the killers. He recognized my car and said, ‘I feel like throwing up.' Then he spat. But I was never afraid of anything. That's why I can talk plainly in Jedwabne about what the Poles did to the Jews.

“There are names that come back all the time. The Laudańskis first, lame Stanisław Sielawa,
he
was terrible, and then there was Mariak, Genek Kalinowski, who was killed right after the war, Czesław Mierzejewski, Józef Kobrzyniecki, Sobuta, Trzaska, Piechowski, Marian Żyluk, Bolesław Ramotowski the glassmaker, a drunk who beat his horse and his father with the same stick, Władysław Łuba, the one who inherited his blacksmith's tools from the Jews he drowned. It's hard to hide, many people saw them killing. Jews didn't only die in the barn, there were private reckonings with Jews in ponds, in their own courtyards. The killers had learned their trades from them and now they wanted to take over their workshops.