On July 10, 1941, several days after the Soviet troops withdrew and the city was occupied by the Germans, around 10 o’clock the Polish inhabitants of Jedwabne and nearby towns began to order Jews from the town to the market square. There, they beat, humiliated and killed several of them. They selected several dozen people, including Rabbi Avigdor Bialostocki, and forced them to destroy the monument to Lenin located at Dworna Street. The group was there taken outside the city, murdered and buried together with Lenin’s bust in the previously dug hole inside the Śleszyński family barn. A few hundred Jews remaining in the market square were driven to the same barn, doused with kerosene and set on fire.

These crimes were committed by several dozen residents of Jedwabne and of the surrounding area and witnessed by many local residents. The German troops present in Jedwabne observed the events, most likely inspired by the Reinhard Heydrich’s directive encouraging populations in the newly occupied areas to anti-Jewish pogroms, but their participation was limited.