Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History, by Steven J. Zipperstein. 2018

Jedwabne Pole-Blaming Narrative Inadvertently Discredited by Kishinev Pogrom Jewish Self-Defense

This most interesting part of this book deals with the way that Jews defended themselves when attacked at Kishinev. (p. 68, 86-91, 132). Some Jewish defenders used common objects (clubs, poles, etc.), while others used firearms. Other Jews fled.

At the pogrom at Gomel, the Jewish self-defense rendered more pogromists dead than Jews. (p. 86).

The facts are clear. At no time did Kishinev’s Jews obediently submit to the pogromchiks, as they were supposed to later have later done at Jedwabne!

JEWS DEFENDED THEMSELVES AT KISHINEV, SO WHY NOT AT JEDWABNE?

The myth of the violence-averse, helpless Jew has implications for the 1941 Jedwabne massacre, although not mentioned by Zipperstein. Writing in his NEIGHBORS, the media-acclaimed Jan T. Gross had us believe that, other than Germans taking photographs, Poles acted alone. This would mean that the Jews massively and dutifully obeyed their unarmed, tool-wielding Polish assailants, and astonishingly cooperated in the procession into the barn to be burned alive. Moreover, from the forensic evidence, this would also mean that the Jews freely allowed themselves to be sorted into groups, and that, during the entire pogrom process, not a single Jew resisted and got a skeletal injury! Although probably not intended as such, Steven J. Zipperstein’s analysis of the Kishinev pogrom in tsarist Russia further exposes the absurdity of Jan T. Gross and his Polonophobic tale.

The circumstantial evidence thus alone points to the Germans as the main killers at Jedwabne. They were armed, and thus able to cow the Jews to not fight back, and to cow the Jews to line up and proceed to the barn where they were burned alive.