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Three surviving Jedwabne-born brothers were young men barely in their 20s at the time of the massacre. Their father was a member of Poland's right wing political party which before the war had campaigned for a boycott of Jewish shops. Two of the brothers and their father were among those arrested by the communist authorities in 1949 and charged with carrying out the Jedwabne massacre. The father was acquitted because of lack of evidence. The brothers were jailed. They claim that they were framed, and that the investigators who brutally questioned them after arrest were Jewish communists. One still maintains that he was not even present, but he recalls 'heavy black smoke everywhere. It swept over our parents' home and smelt horrible...like burning meat.' Their elder brother says he was not in the village at all on July 10. But he remembers, he says, how the whole region was furious with the Jews: they were believed to have collaborated with the Soviets who harshly mistreated Poles. 'It was a sacred anger. Revenge was the duty of every patriot.'
A journalist visited Jedwabne and its neighbourhood. and had a number of conversations. One retired lawyer said, 'Please don't mention my name. Some of those people are still alive and living where I do my shopping. I don't want any trouble. Maybe this fear has been with me since 1941, but even now friends warn me about talking with you....I was 10 years old, and I saw it with my own eyes. There was a crowd of about 50 men. The one who led the crowd when the Jews were made to carry Lenin's statue, who'd beaten them the hardest and was going round the houses to find the ones still trying to hide, so he could finish them off with a bayonet - he was there. He was throwing children into the burning barn. A terrible crime was committed by Polish hands. I left Jedwabne as soon as I was old enough, and I don't want anything to do with the place.' The journalist writes: 'After many conversations in Jedwabne I noticed that those who now accuse the Jews of collaborating with the Soviet Secret Service during the Soviet occupation (and with the Soviet authorities after the war) saw lots of Germans on the scene of the massacre. Those who feel sorry for their murdered neighbours didn't see a single German taking part in the round-up of the Jews that day. They don't question that the murder took place with the Germans' consent or at their suggestion, just that they didn't participate directly, but just took a photograph or two.'
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