Ghosts of a Massacre

For years, the stone tablet stood on the outskirts of Jedwabne, a memorial to the former Jewish residents of the small Polish town who were killed by the Nazis in World War II. But the memorial was a lie. On a July day in 1941, 1,600 Jews were murdered in Jedwabne in a swift, brutal and barbaric pogrom. Some were clubbed to death, others drowned; the head of one young Jewish girl was cut off and kicked. Mothers were beaten to death with their babies in their arms. As darkness fell, 1,500 Jews were forced into a barn, which was then...