After being controlled by Russia for two years, Jedwabne, a small town in northeastern Poland, was captured by Germany on June 22, 1941. One of the first questions the Poles asked the Nazis, their new rulers, was if it was permitted to kill the Jews.
Brutal killings by the Poles immediately began, and included a Jew stoned to death with bricks as well as a Jew slashed with a knife, his eyes and tongue cut out. According to Jan Gross's book, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, the Nazis tried to persuade the Poles to keep at least one Jewish family from each profession, but the Poles responded, "We have enough of our own craftsmen, we have to destroy all the Jews, none should stay alive."
Gross writes that Jedwabne's mayor agreed to help facilitate a massacre and that Poles from local villages came in to watch and celebrate the event as a holiday. About half the men of Jedwabne's 1,600 Catholic community participated in torturing Jedwabne's 1,600 member Jewish community, corralling them into a barn, which was then set ablaze.
