A Desperate Search for Something Positive
or, The Soliloquies of Krzysztof Godlewski, Ex-Mayor of Jedwabne
“In my office I found a letter from Montevideo, this was a year before Gross’s book came out:
“‘I, Esther Migdal, born in Jedwabnie. In 1937 I go to Uruguay. I, my sisters y brothers y my mama. My granny Chana Jenta Wasersztejn stayed there. I’m sorry, because I do not remember much in Polish, is already 62 that I do not speak Polish. I know Poles killed whole city of Jews, who killed my granny her daughters—whole family took the house now he lives in that house. You thugs. You criminals. What says your priest? now you have house it didn’t cost anything you can dance. What bad my granny do? Please sir, write how you killed whole city of Jews.’
“My first response was anger. I wanted to throw the letter away, but I hesitated. I wanted to reply, but I didn’t know what to say. The letter gave me no peace. When I read Neighbors I saw something had to be done.
“I understood that it was an atrocity and hushing it up is contemptible. But I also thought, Others will follow me and we will show the Jews that it was an incident, caused by subversive elements, and that we are a people who love, who feel compassion for others’ suffering. Stanisław Michałowski and I went to the monument on July 10, 2000, carrying a banner that said In memory of the murdered Jewish residents of Jedwabne, and as a warning to others. From the Community. We did it as representatives of the town authorities, but we paid for the banner with our own money. Somehow we could anticipate that the town council would not agree to that expense. But I believed it was just a matter of time.
Krzysztof Godlewski at the site of the monument in Jedwabne, 2001. (Photograph © Grzegorz Dąbrowski / Agencja Gazeta)
“I started to remember conversations I’d overheard as a child, though children were usually sent away when people talked about it. Sometimes it was said of one of the neighbors that ‘he was at the barn when the Jews were burned.’ But the word ‘Jews’ was still a complete abstraction to me at the time.
“I see how hard it is for the residents to live with the consciousness that Jedwabne is seen as a town of murderers. I had an idea for turning it around. The city should show that there were a few thugs in Jedwabne, but there were also Poles who saved Jews. I wanted to propose that the school in Jedwabne take the name of Antonina Wyrzykowska. I put the matter forward at a town council meeting. It wasn’t received very well.
“Jedwabne needs its people to show their best side, like a fish needs water. One of my friends said to me, ‘You’re right, your crown won’t fall from your head if you say you’re sorry,’ and it warmed my heart. I’m desperately searching for something positive. I tell people, ‘I’m not a public prosecutor. Let’s do what can be done and if it turns out the truth is otherwise, it’ll only be to the good.’ I’ve said again and again, ‘I’m only saying a massacre was committed and we must pay our respects to the victims.’ At council meetings I explain, ‘All we have to do is what any Christian should do, ensure them a dignified place of rest.’ The most important thing is that the families of the victims who are coming to the ceremony should see warmth in our hearts. Then they’ll understand that a handful of people were guilty, not the whole community.
“I can already imagine the ceremony. I’d like Rabbi Baker’s grandson and a grandson of one of the murderers to shake hands. Or at least I embrace the rabbi. Not a pompous welcome but the kind that might bring a tear to someone’s eye, something capable of moving people, bringing them to their knees. I’d like to say, ‘Brother Jews, you who were born here, we are deeply moved to have you here as our guests.’
“I confessed my hopes on a local TV program: that newlyweds would sometimes go to the cemetery to lay flowers, as they do in Katyń, where the Soviets killed thousands of Polish officers, and that the monument would become one of the Stations of the Cross. I said in the council that I’d go to the ceremony out of a heartfelt need. Many residents took that as an insult. I felt people looking at me with resentment. One man stopped me before the ceremony: ‘I’m going to fucking shoot anyone who tramples my rye.’
“Most of the residents know Poles took part in it. But they argue, ‘We can’t admit it, because the Jews want compensation, and it’ll be more than our children can afford.’ How to convince them otherwise if they get this kind of thing from their priest?
“I tried to create a lobby, but it didn’t happen. One of the councilmen told me stories he remembered hearing from family and neighbors about how and where they killed Jews. But after he was refused a visa to the United States, he started saying it was because of the massacre and he changed his tune completely. I keep hearing either that it’s not true about the Poles being responsible or that we shouldn’t let it drag on because the Jews will take advantage of us and loot all of Poland. They say, ‘Krzysztof, be careful. You’ll say something you shouldn’t. You may get hurt,’ but it’s not kind advice, it’s a threat. The most well-meaning comments I hear are like, ‘Why are you doing this? You’ll lose a good job.’ At a meeting of council members and mayors of the Łomża district someone once answered my ‘Good day’ with ‘Shalom,’ and everyone laughed. In stores I hear people call me ‘that Jew Godlewski’ behind my back. Other acquaintances, people from whom I wouldn’t expect it, also try to tell me it’s a Jewish conspiracy and it’s all for compensation. Lies started circulating about my father, who was in Wronki prison for a few years for being a member of the Home Army; people said that he took part in the killings, that he chopped a Jew’s head off, and that my mother-in-law, who lives in the USA, married a rabbi.
“All the time I was looking for the right tone. I tried to justify my fellow Poles by thinking what I had been like ten years ago. I was anti-Semitic. I was given a book about Jews wanting to buy up all of Poland and make us their slaves and I believed it. In school I accepted the propaganda. I believed the Russians were our friends and the Americans imperialists. And though when I was twelve I heard for the first time a conversation with horrifying descriptions of the atrocity, it didn’t sink in that it was our neighbors who had done this. It was a time of tough anti-German propaganda, I knew the Germans were bad, the Russians good, so I couldn’t get my head around people having collaborated with the Germans. When a classmate told me about the Katyń massacre of Polish officers by the Soviets I didn’t want to believe him, either. In time I changed my views, so I believed everybody had that chance. I kept thinking there would be a breakthrough by the time of the ceremony.
“On July 10, a councilwoman, watching the ceremony from behind the curtains of her window on the marketplace, snarled just before I was to speak, ‘So welcome them, fucking welcome them, you won’t have a job tomorrow.’ The next day I went to work and right on the front steps a visitor greeted me with the words ‘Still in Poland? Haven’t the Jews taken you off to America yet?’ I can’t cure them. I’ve had enough. People go on saying we’re making money, that the Jews are backing us. They’re convinced that Stanisław Michałowski and I are traitors, that we must be getting something out of this.
“For me the debate in Jedwabne can’t be reduced to Polish-Jewish relations; it forces us to ask difficult questions of ourselves as Catholics—about honesty, decency, about how many of us helped those in need of our help. Why were there so few Righteous Gentiles? Why are the Jews alleged to be responsible for every bad moment in our history? And so I stood up to the majority of townspeople.
“What hurt most was that when Stanisław Michałowski and I put in our resignations, no one defended us. I’m so depressed I’d take a train anywhere. I didn’t mean to insult anyone.
“What I’ve been doing in the last year has had no connection with my duties as mayor, and I wasn’t prepared for that, either spiritually or professionally. You become mayor to build roads, improve the way a health center works, not to teach people to love one another and weep over another’s death. For twenty years I planned to leave this town, I thought about how to get away, and now I know why I stayed. I’m glad fate granted me the honor of participating in the ceremony of July 10. After all, one can easily live out one’s life without leaving a trace of any kind.
“This year gave me a lot of strength. I thought a lot about suffering, pain, forgiveness. Once, I woke up terrified that I was in a burning barn. Maybe if I hadn’t met you, and Gross, I wouldn’t be the man I am today. I didn’t know I was so stubborn. I didn’t know I had so few good friends. I’m not the same person anymore. I was one of the boys and I estranged myself from them.
“My wounds are probably long-lasting, because—although it’s hard to admit—they were inflicted by people dear to me. I think any decent person would have done what I did, and I’m sad that my former friends are suspicious of me. I’d rather lick my wounds in solitude.”