10.4 Amok Time - What If Your World Goes Crazy?

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4. Danger Situation - Update 20 Septr 2021.  What I call “one's world gone mad”; on 23 June 1941 the German Army entered the town of Jedwabne in Poland. It had been under Russian control since September 1939 when Poland was partitioned between Germany and Russia. On that day, for Jews in Jedwabne, the world suddenly went mad. They were killed by their Polish Christian neighbors running amok. The gory story is told in 12 March 2001 The New Yorker. Here is a court deposition from an onlooker:

“As early as the 25^th, local(s) … from the Polish (Christian) population started an anti-Jewish pogrom. Two …, Wacek Borowski with his brother Mietek, walked from one Jewish dwelling to another together with other bandits playing accordion and flute to drown out the screams of Jewish women and children. I saw with my own eyes how these murderers killed Chajcia Wasersztein, 53 yrs old, Jakub Kac, 73 yrs old, and Eliasz Krawiecki. Jakub they stoned to death with bricks, Krawiecki they knifed and then plucked his eyes and cut off his tongue. He suffered terribly for 12 hours … . On the same day … Cahja Kubrzanska, 28 yrs old, and Basia Binztejn, 26 yrs old, both holding newborn babies, when they saw what was going on, … ran to a pond in order to drown themselves with the children rather than fall into the hands of the murderers. They put their children in the water and drowned them …, then Basia jumped in and immediately went to the bottom, while Chaja suffered for a couple of hours. Assembled hooligans made a spectacle of this. They advised her to lie face down in the water so that she would drown faster. Finally … she threw herself more energetically into the water and drowned, too. …” 
He goes on to say that of 1600 Jewish inhabitants, only seven survived.

This is meant as example for a student who studies how to achieve long life: it depicts the risk factor of your world gone mad. It could be Armenians at hands of Turks; or Korean minority in Tokyo right after 1923 earthquake. The point is how to maximize survival as potential victim in a one's "world gone mad” scenario.

Denial: The Pogrom should have been no surprise: Poland was invaded on 1 September 1939 and the only thing that saved Jedwabne's Jews from the antisemitism was Russia's occupation of the eastern half of Poland. From then, a nearly 2-year window of escape existed for a person interested in his long life. The non-survivors practiced denial, as the following shows:

Both Dvojra Pecynowicz and Mietek Olszewicz, who survived the war in hiding were warned by Polish Christian friends of the impending catastrophe. When they also urged relatives to take note of these constant warnings and hide, the relatives were dismissive, pointing out that Jews had lived in Warsaw under the German occupation for 2 years already. And they did not believe that Jedwabne of all places could have a pogrom, saying ‘We in Jedwabne are safe because the Bishop promised to protect us’. (All murdered shortly after.)

Falling into the hands of older Poles was better than being caught by young hooligans.

Some survived because their sex caught a German eye. From court testimony: “The Germans … brought 3 Jewish women to the gendarmerie (police) outpost and said to make sure they didn't get killed. … When all was over and things calmed down, these women were let go, and they lived in a house nearby and worked for the Germans.

A young wife, Rivka, survived because she disbelieved when hooligan Poles came to her family’s house with false explanation that all Jews were being pressed into labor to clean the town square, “My husband took our 2 children and went there … I stayed at home for a while trying to put things in order and lock the windows and doors properly.” But instead with a Jewish neighbor woman she hid in a nearby nobleman's estate garden and lasted the war out with partisans. (Here is example of independent-minded survival – a usual wife would want to join husband and children in death.)

Apropos the question of honor, the following: “Michal Kuropatwa, a Jewish coach driver, who earlier had helped a Polish Army officer hide from Soviet pursuers was among those herded into a barn. When the leaders of the pogrom noticed him in the crowd, he was taken out and told that, because he helped a Polish officer, he could go home. He refused, choosing to share the fate of his people.” (Honor vs. Longevity)

A rare survival is of teaching value: “At the last moment, 4 persons inside the barn managed to escape. A surge of hot air may have blown a door open. A young Jew, Janek Neumark, was standing right next to it. A man, Stanislaw Sielawa barred his exit, wielding an ax. (The Sielawas were a family the Neumarks had shown an act of kindness to when they were starving several years before and this may explain Stanislaw’s inability to stop Janek’s escape.) Neumark wrestled the ax away from him and managed to flee and hide and survived the war.”

An important lesson from the Janek Neumark anecdote is cultivating good relationship with people of other types.

Summing up the Jedwabne pogrom, one big lesson is not to stand out as different from neighbors. (Obviously there are limits to this.)

A prevention used by many European Jews was escape from where vicious, violent antisemitism is increasingly tolerated. Thus many immigrated to America over previous century.

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