Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland

Gross considers what happened to Jewish property after the pogrom. Even those who survived the war lost everything. Józef Sobuta and Karol Bardón were among those who confiscated property. Sobuta and his wife, Stanislawa, moved into a home that once belonged to the Stern family. Stanislawa claimed that “the surviving son of the owner” asked the couple to move in because “he was afraid to live there alone” (79). However, another witness to the pogrom claimed that people commonly took over Jewish property “without anybody’s permission” (79). Gross concludes that those who organized the pogrom later confiscated Jewish property. Mayor Karolak and Sobuta, in fact, organized the transportation of Jewish property to a local warehouse shortly after the town had murdered most of its Jewish neighbors.

On January 11, 1949—shortly after the authorities arrested participants in the pogrom—the Lomza Security Office received a letter from Henryk Krystowczyk. In the letter Krystowczyk wrote that his brother, Zygmunt, had been killed in April 1945. Zygmunt was a member of the Polish Worker’s Party (PPR), which was how the Polish Communist Party identified itself at the time. Zygmunt had been tasked with organizing “a peasant cooperative” (80), which he did before being elected its chairman.