But so what. The bottom line is this conclusion by Rossino:
In other words, Rossino is saying that, if the peoples who had experienced Soviet rule, including Poles, had not been ready, willing and able to take revenge on their Jewish neighbours when Soviet rule was overthrown by the Germans, the huge massacre of Jews that occurred under German occupation would not have been possible.It is safe to say, however, that the dynamic of agitation, pogrom, and reprisal would not have developed were not a considerable number of Lithuanians, Latvians, Poles, Ukrainians, Belorussians, and Romanians prepared to join in the destruction of Jewish communities. By mid-summer 1941 intense anti-Jewish feeling in Eastern Europe was set to explode in the wake of the Soviet occupation, but in the final analysis it was the SS that struck the match and lit the fuse.
It should be remembered that the first report by Karski to the Polish Government-in-Exile in Angers, in 1940, predicted that the Poles living under Soviet occupation would take a bloody revenge on the Jews for their collaboration with the Soviet oppressors. The events at Jedwabne were an example of that revenge predicted by Karski.
Even earlier, in 1919, the Anglo-Jewish leader, Lucien Wolff, had predicted that if ever Bolshevik rule were overthrown in Russia, there would be a huge pogrom of Jews, the like of which had never been seen before. How right he was.