The Jewish community in Jedwabne was established in the 18th century . There were approximately 1,500 Jews out of a total population of 2,167 residing in Jedwabne in the 1930s . It was a typical shtetl , a small town with a majority Jewish community coexistent with its Polish minority and surrounded by majority Polish countryside , one of many such towns in prewar Poland . The region politically supported the National Democrats , who sought to counter what they said was Jewish economic competition against Catholic Poles , and opposed the Polish government of Józef Piłsudski and his successors . Nevertheless , there were good prewar Polish-Jewish relations in the town , possibly better than elsewhere in the country . At their most tense , a 1934 rumor that drew a connection between the killing of a Jewish woman and the killing of a Catholic man was quashed by a priest and a rabbi addressing the matter together , before it escalated . Older residents of the town had living memory of the nearby Białystok pogrom of 1906 , in which Russian Imperial forces sought to set Poles and Jews against each other
Białystok pogrom
Białystok pogrom
Jedwabne pogrom