"An astonishing act of investigation and documentation . . . A terrifying and necessary book . . . deeply heartening as an act of historical reclamation." -Julian Barnes, Booker Award-winning author of The Sense of an Ending

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award

Jan Gross's hugely controversial Neighbors was a historian's disclosure of the events in the small Polish town of Jedwabne on July 10, 1941, when the citizens rounded up the Jewish population and burned them alive in a barn. The massacre was a shocking secret that had been suppressed for more than sixty years, and it provoked the most important public debate in Poland since 1989.

From the outset, Anna Bikont reported on the town, combing through archives and interviewing residents who survived the war period. Her writing became a crucial part of the debate and she herself an actor in a national drama.

Part history, part memoir, The Crime and the Silence is the journalist's account of these events: both the story of the massacre told through oral histories of survivors and witnesses, and a portrait of a Polish town coming to terms with its dark past. Including the perspectives of both heroes and perpetrators, Bikont chronicles the sources of the hatred that exploded against Jews and asks what myths grow on hidden memories, what destruction they cause, and what happens to a society that refuses to accept a horrific truth.

"Bikont combines the persistence and energy of a journalist with the humanity and care of a poet." -Timothy Snyder, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of On Tyranny

"The quality of [Bikont's] journalism is something very special. An extraordinary interviewer, she developed relationships with the most unlikely cast of characters." Marci Shore, The Wall Street Journal

Anna Bikont is a journalist for the Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland's main newspaper, which she helped found in 1989. For her articles on the crimes in Jedwabne and nearby Radzilów, she was honored with several awards, including the Press Prize for reportage in 2001 and the Polityka Prize for historical writing. In 2011 she received the European Book Prize for the French edition of The Crime and the Silence. In 2008-2009, Bikont was a fellow at the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library. Alissa Valles is the author of Orphan Fire and the editor and cotranslator of Zbigniew Herbert's Collected Poems 1956-1998 and Collected Prose 1948-1998.

Journal 1
Chapter 1
Lord, Rid Poland of the JewsOr, On Polish-Jewish Relations in Jedwabne in the Thirties

Journal 2
Chapter 2
I Wanted to Save her Life, Love Came LaterOr, The Story of Rachela Finkelsztejn and Stanislaw Ramotowski

Journal 3
Chapter 3
We Suffered Under the Soviets, the Germans, and People's PolandOr, The Story of the Three Brothers Laudanski

Journal 4
Chapter 4
You Didn't See That Grief in JewsOr, Polish and Jewish Memory of the Soviet Occupation

Journal 5
Chapter 5
I'll Tell You Who Did It: My FatherOr, The Private Investigation of Jan Skrodzki

Journal 6
Chapter 6
If I'd Been In Jedwabne Then
Or, The Story of Meir Ronen, Deported to Kazakhstan

Journal 7
Chapter 7
A Time Will Come When Even Stones Will SpeakOr, Soliloquies of Leszek Dziedzic

Journal 8
Chapter 8
Your Only Chance Was to Pass for a Goy Or, The Story of Awigdor Kochaw's survival

Journal 9

Chapter 9

Desperately Seeking Something Positive
Or, Soliloquies of Krzysztof Godlewski, Ex-Mayor of Jedwabne

Journal 10
Chapter 10
Only I Knew There Were Seven Of ThemOr, The Story of Antonina Wyrzykowska

Chapter 11
I, Szmul Wasersztejn, Warn YouOr, The Road from Jedwabne to Costa Rica
Journal 11

Chapter 12
They Had Vodka, Guns and HatredOr, July 7, 1941 in Radzilów
Journal 12

Chapter 13
The Dreams of Chaja FinkelsztejnOr, The Survival of a Radzilów Miller's Family
Journal 13

Chapter 14
Decent Polish Kids and Hooligans
Or, On the Murderers of Jedwabne, Radzilów, Wasosz and surroundings
Journal 14

Chapter 15 Strictly Speaking Poles Did ItOr, A Conversation with Prosecutor Radoslaw Ignatiew
Postscript
From the Ruins of a Lost WorldOr, The Names, Surnames and Addresses of the Jews of Jedwabne