{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.022727272727272728, 'fraction_numerical': 0.008869179600886918, 'mean_word_length': 4.97682119205298, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Return to Jedwabne

On 10 July 2002 an investigation initiated by the Polish government confirmed that a massacre of Jews which had taken place in Jedwabne during the Second World War had been committed by the town's Christian inhabitants (see Appendix for full text of conclusion of the investigation). Precisely 61 years earlier the 1,600 Jewish inhabitants of Jedwabne men, women and children had been beaten, herded into a barn, and the barn then set alight. 'The role of Poles in this criminal act was decisive,' announced Radislaw Ignatiew of the Polish Institute for National Remembrance (IPN), the official body that conducted the two-year enquiry, headed by the Institute's director, Leon Kieres. The publication of Professor Jan Gross's book Neighbours in 2000 had made such an investigation unavoidable: the Polish investigation could not have come to any other conclusion lest it be seen to be protecting those who sought to deny acts of murder in the face of overwhelming evidence. But those who had committed the crimes in Jedwabne were no longer alive: what was on trial before the IPN was unprecedented in the dock was a defective vision that the Polish nation had of itself, an image characterized by injustices done to it by others but failing to confront injustices it itself had committed. Nothing in the nation's hitherto heroic past had prepared it for such a confrontation. But now, with the Polish leaders mindful of the country's reputation within the developing comity of nations and contemplating entrance into the European Union, they sought a formula to put a decent end to one of the most indecent acts in Poland's history. The Polish President, Aleksandr Kwasniewski, concluded that the Polish nation should accept the 'very bitter' findings, which were 'quite burdensome'.