Massacre in Jedwabne

The Jedwabne pogrom (Polish: Pogrom w Jedwabnem pronounced [jɛdˈvabnɛ]) was an atrocity committed on July 10, 1941, during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. Described as a massacre or a pogrom by postwar historians, it resulted in the death of at least 340 Polish Jews of all ages, locked in a barn later set on fire. A group of at least 40 Polish males was involved, after being summoned in Jedwabne by a German paramilitary group known as the Ordnungspolizei. These are the official findings of the Institute of National Remembrance, "confirmed by the number of victims in the two graves, according to the estimate of the archeological and anthropological team participating in the exhumation," wrote prosecutor Radosław J. Ignatiew, who headed an investigation in 2000–2003 ordered by the Polish government.

In 1949 the Communist People's Republic of Poland launched a treason and murder trial which was later condemned as a miscarriage of justice because suspects had been tortured during interrogation. After a fresh investigation, concluded in 2003, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance stated that the pogrom was committed by Polish inhabitants of the town, with the complicity of the German Ordnungspolizei. The involvement of German paramilitary forces of the SS and Gestapo remains the subject of debate, especially the role of the Einsatzgruppe Zichenau-Schroettersburg. According to some later commentators, many people were shocked by the findings, which contrast with the rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust.

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