
The Crime and the Silence
Confronting the Massacre of Jews in Wartime Jedwabne
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $39.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
David Stifel
About this listen
A monumental work of nonfiction on a wartime atrocity, its 60-year denial, and the impact of its truth.
Jan Gross' 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 60 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 had 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.
A profoundly moving exploration of being Jewish in modern Poland that Julian Barnes called "one of the most chilling books", The Crime and the Silence is a vital contribution to Holocaust history and a fascinating story of a town coming to terms with its dark past.
©2004 Anna Bikont (P)2015 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Hitler's True Believers
- How Ordinary People Became Nazis
- By: Robert Gellately
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Understanding Adolf Hitler's ideology provides insights into the mental world of an extremist politics that, over the course of the Third Reich, developed explosive energies culminating in the Second World War and the Holocaust. Too often the theories underlying National Socialism or Nazism are dismissed as an irrational hodgepodge of ideas. Yet that ideology drove Hitler's quest for power in 1933, colored everything in the Third Reich, and transformed him, however briefly, into the most powerful leader in the world.
-
-
Fascinating listen
- By Amy Neff on 12-15-22
By: Robert Gellately
-
The Postcard
- By: Anne Berest, Tina Kover - translator
- Narrated by: Barrie Kealoha
- Length: 13 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
January, 2003. Together with the usual holiday cards, an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home. On the front, a photo of the Opéra Garnier in Paris. On the back, the names of Anne Berest’s maternal great-grandparents, Ephraïm and Emma, and their children, Noémie and Jacques—all killed at Auschwitz. Fifteen years after the postcard is delivered, Anne, the heroine of this novel, is moved to discover who sent it and why.
-
-
The author’s words deserve a better narrator
- By TK on 05-22-23
By: Anne Berest, and others
-
Masters of Death
- The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust
- By: Richard Rhodes
- Narrated by: Neil Hellegers
- Length: 14 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Masters of Death, Richard Rhodes gives full weight, for the first time, to the Einsatzgruppen's role in the Holocaust. These "special task forces", organized by Heinrich Himmler to follow the German army as it advanced into Eastern Poland and Russia, were the agents of the first phase of the Final Solution. They murdered more than one and a half million men, women, and children between 1941 and 1943, often by shooting them into killing pits, as at Babi Yar.
-
-
Good book...but...
- By Disintegrator on 08-26-19
By: Richard Rhodes
-
Hunt for the Jews
- Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland
- By: Jan Grabowski
- Narrated by: Charles Henderson Norman
- Length: 7 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Judenjagd, hunt for the Jews, was the German term for the organized searches for Jews who, having survived ghetto liquidations and deportations to death camps in Poland in 1942, attempted to hide "on the Aryan side." Jan Grabowski's penetrating microhistory tells the story of the Judenjagd in Dabrowa Tarnowska, a rural county in southeastern Poland, where the majority of the Jews in hiding perished as a consequence of betrayal by their Polish neighbors.
-
-
Highlights how quick people turn on each other.
- By The Bookwyrm Speaks on 09-26-16
By: Jan Grabowski
-
Ordinary Men
- Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
- By: Christopher R. Browning
- Narrated by: Kevin Gallagher
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ordinary Men is the true story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police, which was responsible for mass shootings as well as round-ups of Jewish people for deportation to Nazi death camps in Poland in 1942. Browning argues that most of the men of RPB 101 were not fanatical Nazis but, rather, ordinary middle-aged, working-class men who committed these atrocities out of a mixture of motives, including the group dynamics of conformity, deference to authority, role adaptation, and the altering of moral norms to justify their actions.
-
-
could've done without the afterword...
- By Andrew lester on 06-07-20
-
In the Midst of Civilized Europe
- The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust
- By: Jeffrey Veidlinger
- Narrated by: Leighton Pugh
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Between 1918 and 1921, over a hundred thousand Jews were murdered in Ukraine by peasants, townsmen, and soldiers who blamed the Jews for the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. In hundreds of separate incidents, ordinary people robbed their Jewish neighbors with impunity, burned down their houses, ripped apart their Torah scrolls, sexually assaulted them, and killed them.
-
-
Important and informative… Could have been cut by 1/3
- By Nathan Booth on 07-13-24
-
Hitler's True Believers
- How Ordinary People Became Nazis
- By: Robert Gellately
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Understanding Adolf Hitler's ideology provides insights into the mental world of an extremist politics that, over the course of the Third Reich, developed explosive energies culminating in the Second World War and the Holocaust. Too often the theories underlying National Socialism or Nazism are dismissed as an irrational hodgepodge of ideas. Yet that ideology drove Hitler's quest for power in 1933, colored everything in the Third Reich, and transformed him, however briefly, into the most powerful leader in the world.
-
-
Fascinating listen
- By Amy Neff on 12-15-22
By: Robert Gellately
-
The Postcard
- By: Anne Berest, Tina Kover - translator
- Narrated by: Barrie Kealoha
- Length: 13 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
January, 2003. Together with the usual holiday cards, an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home. On the front, a photo of the Opéra Garnier in Paris. On the back, the names of Anne Berest’s maternal great-grandparents, Ephraïm and Emma, and their children, Noémie and Jacques—all killed at Auschwitz. Fifteen years after the postcard is delivered, Anne, the heroine of this novel, is moved to discover who sent it and why.
-
-
The author’s words deserve a better narrator
- By TK on 05-22-23
By: Anne Berest, and others
-
Masters of Death
- The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust
- By: Richard Rhodes
- Narrated by: Neil Hellegers
- Length: 14 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Masters of Death, Richard Rhodes gives full weight, for the first time, to the Einsatzgruppen's role in the Holocaust. These "special task forces", organized by Heinrich Himmler to follow the German army as it advanced into Eastern Poland and Russia, were the agents of the first phase of the Final Solution. They murdered more than one and a half million men, women, and children between 1941 and 1943, often by shooting them into killing pits, as at Babi Yar.
-
-
Good book...but...
- By Disintegrator on 08-26-19
By: Richard Rhodes
-
Hunt for the Jews
- Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland
- By: Jan Grabowski
- Narrated by: Charles Henderson Norman
- Length: 7 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Judenjagd, hunt for the Jews, was the German term for the organized searches for Jews who, having survived ghetto liquidations and deportations to death camps in Poland in 1942, attempted to hide "on the Aryan side." Jan Grabowski's penetrating microhistory tells the story of the Judenjagd in Dabrowa Tarnowska, a rural county in southeastern Poland, where the majority of the Jews in hiding perished as a consequence of betrayal by their Polish neighbors.
-
-
Highlights how quick people turn on each other.
- By The Bookwyrm Speaks on 09-26-16
By: Jan Grabowski
-
Ordinary Men
- Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
- By: Christopher R. Browning
- Narrated by: Kevin Gallagher
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ordinary Men is the true story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police, which was responsible for mass shootings as well as round-ups of Jewish people for deportation to Nazi death camps in Poland in 1942. Browning argues that most of the men of RPB 101 were not fanatical Nazis but, rather, ordinary middle-aged, working-class men who committed these atrocities out of a mixture of motives, including the group dynamics of conformity, deference to authority, role adaptation, and the altering of moral norms to justify their actions.
-
-
could've done without the afterword...
- By Andrew lester on 06-07-20
-
In the Midst of Civilized Europe
- The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust
- By: Jeffrey Veidlinger
- Narrated by: Leighton Pugh
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Between 1918 and 1921, over a hundred thousand Jews were murdered in Ukraine by peasants, townsmen, and soldiers who blamed the Jews for the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. In hundreds of separate incidents, ordinary people robbed their Jewish neighbors with impunity, burned down their houses, ripped apart their Torah scrolls, sexually assaulted them, and killed them.
-
-
Important and informative… Could have been cut by 1/3
- By Nathan Booth on 07-13-24
-
Empire of Destruction
- A History of Nazi Mass Killing
- By: Alex J. Kay
- Narrated by: Tom Lawrence
- Length: 14 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nazi Germany killed approximately 13 million civilians and other noncombatants in deliberate policies of mass murder, overwhelmingly during the war years. Almost half the victims were Jewish, systematically destroyed in the Holocaust, the core of the Nazis’ pan-European racial purification program. Alex Kay argues that the genocide of European Jewry can also be examined in the wider context of Nazi mass killing.
-
-
Bleak, terrifying. Plumbs the depths
- By Dr Philip N Best on 11-22-22
By: Alex J. Kay
-
The Forgotten 500
- By: Gregory A. Freeman
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here is the astonishing, never-before-told story of the greatest rescue mission of World War II: when the OSS set out to recover more than 500 airmen trapped behind enemy lines. During a bombing campaign, hundreds of American airmen were shot down in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia. Local Serbian villagers risked their own lives to give refuge to the soldiers, and for months the airmen lived in hiding, waiting for rescue.
-
-
an amazing tale
- By Ron on 10-28-07
-
Bloodlands
- Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
- By: Timothy Snyder
- Narrated by: Ralph Cosham
- Length: 19 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single history, in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands will be required listening for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history.
-
-
a warning for the future
- By judith on 11-06-19
By: Timothy Snyder
-
Neighbors
- The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland
- By: Jan T. Gross
- Narrated by: Rory Barnett
- Length: 3 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One summer day in 1941, half of the Polish town of Jedwabne murdered the other half, 1,600 men, women, and children, all but seven of the town's Jews. Neighbors tells their story. This is a shocking, brutal story that has never before been told. It is the most important study of Polish-Jewish relations to be published in decades and should become a classic of Holocaust literature. Jan Gross pieces together eyewitness accounts and other evidence into an engulfing reconstruction of the horrific July day remembered well by locals but forgotten by history.
-
-
interesting
- By A. Adams on 10-11-20
By: Jan T. Gross
-
Black Earth
- The Holocaust as History and Warning
- By: Timothy Snyder
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 16 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this epic history of extermination and survival, Timothy Snyder presents a new explanation of the great atrocity of the twentieth century, and reveals the risks that we face in the twenty-first. Based on untapped sources from eastern Europe and forgotten testimonies from Jewish survivors, Black Earth recounts the mass murder of the Jews as an event that is still close to us, more comprehensible than we would like to think and thus all the more terrifying.
-
-
Tough book but worth it!
- By Amazon customer on 11-20-15
By: Timothy Snyder
-
Hitler
- By: Joachim C. Fest, Richard Winstton - translator, Clara Winstton - translator
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 41 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This masterful biography by one of Germany’s best known journalists was the leading nonfiction best seller in Germany. Fest shows Hitler as the receptacle of the dreads and resentments of a shaken social order, gifted with an uncanny instinct for all that was hollow behind the appearance of power, at home and abroad. Though a warped human being, he was neither clown nor puppet, as many liked to think; Hitler appears here as an enormously astute politician, impressing and hypnotizing Germans and foreigners alike with the scope of his projects and the theatricality of their presentation. Fest uncovers in Hitler a constantly destructive personality....
-
-
Should be part of high school education
- By Rex Riethmeier on 12-25-18
By: Joachim C. Fest, and others
-
The Forgotten Soldier
- By: Guy Sajer
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 21 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Guy Sajer joins the infantry full of ideals in the summer of 1942, the German army is enjoying unparalleled success in Russia. However, he quickly finds that for the foot soldier the glory of military success hides a much harsher reality of hunger, fatigue, and constant deprivation. Posted to the elite Grosse Deutschland division, he enters a violent and remorseless world where all youthful hope is gradually ground down, and all that matters is the brute will to survive.
-
-
A Beautifully Written Heartrending Tragedy
- By Gillian on 03-31-17
By: Guy Sajer
-
In Order to Live
- A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom
- By: Yeonmi Park
- Narrated by: Eji Kim
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In In Order to Live, Yeonmi Park shines a light not just into the darkest corners of life in North Korea, describing the deprivation and deception she endured and which millions of North Korean people continue to endure to this day, but also onto her own most painful and difficult memories. She tells with bravery and dignity for the first time the story of how she and her mother were betrayed and sold into sexual slavery in China and forced to suffer terrible psychological and physical hardship before they finally made their way to Seoul, South Korea - and to freedom.
-
-
Wow. What a story!
- By Jfm on 02-01-16
By: Yeonmi Park
-
Twelve from Hell
- The Ultimate True Crime Case Collection
- By: Ryan Green
- Narrated by: Ernie Sprance, Steve White
- Length: 37 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This Ultimate True Crime Case Collection contains disturbing accounts of some of the most brutal and bizarre true crime stories in history. Often told from the killer’s perspective, Green’s riveting narratives draw the listener into the real-life horror experienced by the victims with all the elements of a classic thriller. This collection includes the stories of Harold Shipman, Fred and Rose West, the Kurim case, the Mockingbird Hill massacre, the Truro Murders, Herb Baumeister, Katherine Knight, Henry Lee Lucas, and Nannie Doss.
-
-
HeLLa GooD Listening!
- By SisterSeven on 10-22-22
By: Ryan Green
-
KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps
- By: Nikolaus Wachsmann
- Narrated by: Paul Hodgson
- Length: 31 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In KL, Wachsmann fills this glaring gap in our understanding. He not only synthesizes a new generation of scholarly work, much of it untranslated and unknown outside of Germany, but also presents startling revelations, based on many years of archival research, about the functioning and scope of the camp system.
-
-
Narrator warning!
- By S R L COTTERILL on 04-24-15
-
Pogrom
- Kishinev and the Tilt of History
- By: Steven J. Zipperstein
- Narrated by: Barry Abrams
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
So shattering were the aftereffects of Kishinev, the rampage that broke out in late-Tsarist Russia in April 1903, that one historian remarked that it was "nothing less than a prototype for the Holocaust itself." In three days of violence, 49 Jews were killed and 600 raped or wounded, while more than 1,000 Jewish-owned houses and stores were ransacked and destroyed.
-
-
good analysis of the 1903 event
- By John Newquist on 08-10-19
-
The Betrayal of Anne Frank
- A Cold Case Investigation
- By: Rosemary Sullivan
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over thirty million people have read The Diary of a Young Girl, the journal teen-aged Anne Frank kept while living in an attic with her family and four other people in Amsterdam during World War II, until the Nazis arrested them and sent them to a concentration camp. But despite the many works—journalism, books, plays and novels—devoted to Anne’s story, none has ever conclusively explained how these eight people managed to live in hiding undetected for over two years—and who or what finally brought the Nazis to their door.
-
-
A very interesting summary of how a cold case investigation is performed
- By Poli V. on 01-26-22
What listeners say about The Crime and the Silence
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- A.K.
- 08-12-22
A masterpiece
As the headline says, this is a masterwork of journalism and history. I could not praise a book more.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Constance
- 10-06-17
Tough subject!
Very difficult to listen to but important in understanding what happened in 1941. Narration was excellent.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- J.Brock
- 10-17-18
Nothing like you expect. And that’s not a good thing.
I was looking so forward to listening to this book when I found it. This chronicles one of the most atrocious periods in history, and you go into this book thinking it will be an account of what happened. It’s nothing like that. It’s a warbling mess, flashing back and forth from 2001 to accounts from the Jedwabne massacre. And other events that aren’t related. And the listener has no idea what is going on. It’s impossible to follow.
I’m so sad because I just couldn’t finish the book. I hate not finishing one I’ve started. I would have loved to give it a five star rating. Maybe in book form it easier to follow. The narrator is okay, but the problems are not of his making.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Michelle
- 08-19-16
So bad I stopped listening
What disappointed you about The Crime and the Silence?
I couldn't figure out when things were happening. The narrative kept jumping back and forth like the author couldn't decide how to organize the story.
Would you be willing to try another one of David Stifel’s performances?
I would be willing to listen to another of Stifel's performances. He wasn't the best narrator ever, but he was pretty good.
Any additional comments?
I really wanted to like this book and was looking forward to listening to it. I almost never quit on a book, but after 3 hours, I stopped listening. I couldn't follow what was going on or when things were happening. I think the book would have been better without all of the jumping back and forth in time.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful