the story is based on incidents that took place in the Polish village of Jedwabne and, to a lesser extent, in nearby villages during World War II. In July 1941, the Jewish inhabitants of Jedwabne were rounded up, locked in a barn and set on fire by their Polish neighbours. The truth about this atrocity was covered up for over fifty years and the Nazis were blamed, but an investigation conducted in 2000 by Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance confirmed that the perpetrators were not Germans but Poles.
