NEIGHBOURS: THE DESTRUCTION OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY IN JEDWABNE, POLAND PDF, EPUB, EBOOK

Jan T. Gross | 288 pages | 06 Feb 2003 | Cornerstone | 9780099441663 | English | London, United Kingdom Neighbors: the destruction of the Jewish community in Jedwabne, Poland

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. His investigation reads like a detective story, and its unfolding yields wider truths about Jewish-Polish relations, the Holocaust, and human responses to occupation and totalitarianism. It is a story of surprises: The newly occupying German army did not compel the massacre, and Jedwabne's Jews and Christians had previously enjoyed cordial relations. The single Jew offered mercy by the town declined it. As much as such a question can ever be answered, Neighbors tells us why. In many ways, this is a simple book. It is easy to read in a single sitting, and hard not to. But its simplicity is deceptive. It is an especially gruesome Holocaust horror story. But it is a tale that, 60 years later, has stunned Poland. For what Poles have learned recently is that the perpetrators in this case weren't Germans, though the Nazi occupiers clearly approved the slaughter. They were Poles, the Jedwabne neighbors of the Jews. And the revelation of their role has triggered a wave of agonized soul-searching since it emerged. The controversy over Neighbors is already spreading across the Atlantic. One Polish critic compares the gathering controversy to the uproar with which Germans greeted Hitler's Willing Executioners, Daniel Goldhagen's study of civilian participation in the Holocaust. The answer to this question is both startling and complex. A detailed account is provided by the sociologist and historian Jan T. Gross in his book. Gross's scrupulously documented study challenges another cherished myth: the noble attempts of most Poles to save Jews. They seem to have great difficulty abandoning the self-image of the Poles as heroes and victims and use strongly apologetic arguments. Gross defended the conclusions he drew from his use of testimonials, and insisted that he differentiated between types of testimony. He pointed out that Neighbors contained "an extensive justification why depositions produced during a trial conducted in Stalinist Poland, extracted by abusive secret police interrogators, are credible in this case. Alexander B. The result was a skewed history that did not investigate SS operations in the region or German interaction with the Polish population. However, this does not mean the book is flawless. The postwar accounts of some Jewish survivors, which were contradicted later; and records from the interrogations and trials of the Polish perpetrators by the communist "Security Office", which were often obtained by use of torture, have limited value and can be open to interpretations. Likewise the context of the crime—the unfolding Nazi Holocaust is missing largely from the publication. Stola questions Gross' assumption about lack of Jewish collaboration with the Soviets and the unorganised, spontaneous, "grassroots" nature of the pogrom. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved November 20, Archived from the original on Retrieved Michlic, eds. Princeton University Press, Stenograph, part 2. Donald Tusk presiding. In Michlic "Letter to the Editor. Michlic and Antony Polonsky. Letter to the Editor , History. January , Vol. Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland - Wikipedia

It's not about what war does to people or what traumatic experience does to people. Ultimately it is not about Jews or Nazis or anti-semitism. It is simply about people and what they are capable of if given the opportunity. The crushing truth of this story is that ordinary citizens killed of their neighbors simply because they could. Oct 24, Sam rated it it was ok. But Gross' bias is quite evident, and even distracting to the story and understanding the history. His attempt to correct the omission of Polish complicity to "the final solution" oversteps its usefulness by misrepresenting in the other direction. Mar 05, Elliot Ratzman rated it really liked it. What went wrong with Poland? The conventional story is that Poles were anti- Semitic because for them Jews ran Communism. When the Nazis invaded Poland, they were greeted as liberators. Gross argues this is not quite right. In the Catholic half of the town of Jedwabne murdered the Jewish half through obscene and proximate methods: decapitation, drowning, burning. Further, Polish rescuers were ostracized after the war; the only mass labor strike after the war was to support murderers of Jews, then standing trial by the Soviets. Polish society, even its historians, has been in denial for decades. What explains these inhumane attitudes? Gross offers some interesting suggestions, greed, the guilt of collaboration, residual pre-modern anti-Semitism. An excellent short work that amends our understanding of the Holocaust. View all 6 comments. This is not as incredible as it sounds. This Poland community turned in the favor of the Nazis, with the common man your neighbor jumping in to do there bidding against the Jews. This is a true story. A very quick read, but "a must" if you want to understand human behavior durnig the worst of times. The Jewish population of the town of Jedwabne disappear This is one of the most horrific books I have ever read. This is not historical fiction or narrative non-fiction. The author's objective is, using fact-based academic methodology, to expose the lie of conventional wisdom that in WWII the ordinary people Poland were forced by the Nazis to take part in the killing of Poland's Jews. He takes one particularly horrific incident, the murder of the Jews of Jedwabne, and weaves together primary sources to This book is not intended to be edu-tainment such as Schindler's List or The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. He takes one particularly horrific incident, the murder of the Jews of Jedwabne, and weaves together primary sources to show that the Catholic Polish residents of Jedwabne viciously murdered their Jewish neighbours with very little encouragement from their Nazi overseers. The Nazi invasion of Poland, or 'liberation' from the Soviets as so many non- Jews seemed to consider it, gave the perpetrators the reassurance that their actions would not be punished but the initiative, the stimulus, the enthusiasm with which they undertook this pogrom was theirs alone. And it was not simply a desire to get rid of the Jews, to remove 'the other' from their town: they stationed guards around the town so that Jews could not escape. In the space of one day they swept through the town killing the Jewish residents in cruel and violent ways and when such methods were not deemed sufficiently efficient they locked the rest of the Jewish residents in a barn and burned them alive. The author adds the minimum of narrative necessary to connect the various testimonies and offers little analysis or personal supposition as to the murderers' motivations. Greed, deeply-seated anti-Semitism and the need to blame the other seems to be the general conclusion. This is not particularly satisfying or specific but it is the truth as we can understand it from the sources provided. Any further exploration of this phenomenon would require the skills of a psychologist or a novelist and would lead us into the realms of conjecture and imagination. Following the war the pogroms continued through Poland and the families that had protected Jews were persecuted. In addition to the ancient Semitic trope of blood libel was added resentment that the Jews had brought such shame on Poland, after all if there had been no Jews there would have been no Holocaust. To be honest this was not news to me. As a Jew in Israel I have heard many times from Polish Holocaust survivors, include those from my husband's family, how their Polish neighbours were more than willing to lend the Nazis a helping hand in solving "the Jewish Problem'. However until this book and the contemporaneous documentaries produced on the subject it seems Poland was unwilling to face this aspect of their history and the rest of the world was willing to let them ignore it. For me the unique value of this books is that it offers primary sources, witness testimonies and it forces us to examine the society in which we live where ordinary people can turn against their neighbours and kill men, women and children just because they can. View all 3 comments. Apr 14, Melody Boggs rated it it was amazing Shelves: books-i-own , wwii-holocaust-history , big-people-books. It's hard to process that, in such a slim volume, Jan T. Gross thoroughly debunks the myth of innocence, ignorance, and "forced" killings that so pervades public understanding of the Holocaust. But the author accomplishes it, weaving historical records with brief narration to give new meaning to the terms "perpetrator" and "collaborator. Gross' argument that half of the Jedwabne communi It's hard to process that, in such a slim volume, Jan T. Gross' argument that half of the Jedwabne community murdered its Jewish half primarily for economic purposes is a strong one that is backed up by the evidence of not only this narrative but also of so many other studies like it, such as Hitler's Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State by Gotz Aly. More than anything, this book is so frighteningly human in its depravity, a notion that casual readers may not understand without emerging themselves into more Holocaust scholarship. Jul 05, Betsy rated it really liked it Shelves: holocausthistory. Very interesting, very sickening. Beware when picking this up - graphic and disturbing. Side note: Jews living in Poland have recently told me that - while his facts are absolutely correct - they felt the book itself has given an overall inaccurate impression of Polish anti-Semitism and has implied that this continues, at the same level, today. That is, they felt it's not as primitive and prevalent and that this book has somehow supported that thought. I can see how it supports it but tried mysel Very interesting, very sickening. I can see how it supports it but tried myself to read it as an isolated case study, too. Just interesting to think about Polish Jews and their issues with it. View 2 comments. Oct 11, Saul rated it it was amazing. But it appears that they only watched as the villagers and others from nearby villages orchestrated and carried out the humiliation, torture, stoning, drowning, rape and mostly burning of nearly all of the town's 1, Jews. What set the stage for this? A mix of traditional anti-semitism, anti-Soviet fervor, SS occupation, unconfirmed rumors of collaboration between Jews and Soviets, real non-Jewish collaborators who wanted to hide their collaboration by making scapegoats of the Jews, lust for money and property, nationalism, base banditry, etc. Every one of these stones is turned over. Gross gets about as close as one can to understanding what is impossible to fully understand: how neighbors and former friends can so easily be turned into mass slaughterers. The atmosphere conveyed herein sounds more like Rwanda in than the traditional telling of the Holocaust, with its methodological killing systems. This is the world of pitchforks and scythes and primitive slaughter. Sep 17, Jay McCue rated it really liked it. I was completely blown away by this story. The fact that something as horrific as what this book describes happened is really terrible, but the fact that it was almost forgotten by history altogether is just another tragedy. This book provides a particular insight into the very worst that humanity is capable of. The author gives answers to the who, how, and why questions of this tragedy. Let more be aware of this story so that something like this can be avoided in the future and never repeated. Jun 19, Christine rated it it was amazing Shelves: history-wwii. What makes people kill those they live next to? Not sure, but this book does a close up of the question. Gross' book apparently raised quite a discussion in Poland. It is short and despite the subject matter, rather easy to read. It is as if Gross knows that if he goes too emotional, the reader will have to put the book down. The most haunting section is the last section which is simply pictures. The book is important because it does showcase how history can be forgotten or overlooked. It also sh What makes people kill those they live next to? It also shows that our understanding of war isn't quite the way it should be. Grim read but essential to see what was happening Aside from the resistance narrative in Nazi occupied Europe. Nov 12, Dallas rated it really liked it Shelves: Neighbors is less of a comprehensive narrative history and more of a historiography of how a horror gets told, covered up, silenced, questioned, and ultimately excavated. It's fairly short, covering only the most basic information to make the case for his historical argument for Polish responsibility. It's opened my eyes to how little I know about antisemitism in Eastern Europe, and unfortunately still thrives today. Jun 16, Jodi rated it it was amazing. Neighbors literally bludgeoned each other to death, corralled Jewish neighbors in a barn and burned them to death, and many other atrocities. The author examines what caused people to turn so violently and vehemently against their neighbors. I found this book disturbing, and fascinating. I also found many parallels between this situation and the Rwandan Genocide. Jul 30, Mae Dunne rated it it was ok Shelves: This book is a long academic paper. What actually happened was terrible and heart-rending, so I was surprised at how momentously unmoving a read Neighbors was. I don't think I need a book to be overly flowery or sentimental, but the actual text was so academic it was difficult to pay attention to. A lot of analysis of the various merits of different kinds of sources, and conclusions being back up with words like "furthermore" and "secondly. Not for me. Jul 03, Eric rated it really liked it Shelves: nonfiction. A couple weeks after the Nazis invaded the Soviet half of Poland, the Poles of the small town of Jedwabne took it upon themselves to murder the Jews who lived there--their neighbors. This is one of the creepiest historical accounts I've ever read. Jul 03, Mateusz rated it liked it. The resulting work is a powerful indictment of the Polish population of Jedwabne. Gross concludes that the atrocities they perpetrated were unprovoked by the Jews, not particularly encouraged by the Germans, and displayed a level of shocking brutality towards the Jewish inhabitants who for centuries lived as their neighbours in a tight-knit, almost idyllic Gross calls it exactly that community. Gross has a number of theses he wishes to convey in his brief book. Under the existing model the lives of the Poles and Jews in occupied Poland were treated as largely disengaged and affected by very different forces. Gross rejects this assumption, claiming that events such as Jedwabne were proof of a very close interdependence of the histories of the two people. In other words he rejects the approach that Polish-Jewish relations during World War II were always mediated by Nazis and Soviets, stating that direct interaction played a huge role and form part of the story of the Holocaust. Finally, Gross rejects the notion that the idea that the belief in Judeo-Bolshevism was a driving factor in creating antagonism between the Poles and the Jews, and in fact reverses the argument claiming that a large portion of the post-war Stalinist core in Poland after the war consisted of former anti-Semites. For the first time the work of a Polish historian disclosing the ugly face of Polish behaviour during the war told the story so directly and without caveats. He walks away from the popular image that the worst crime of some of the Poles was keeping quiet for the fear of their lives at the sight of Jewish suffering, and points out that many Poles were in fact happy to become perpetrators of the suffering themselves, without any rational justification. A nation that selects only those elements of its past that are commendable, it engages in self-indulgence rather than honest identity- formation. However, despite being a doubtlessly important inclusion in Holocaust historiography, as well as in the shaping of modern Polish identity, the book comes short on some of the more prosaic aspects of coherent argumentation and methodology. On the other they are shown as in essence having nothing to profit from the pogroms, doing it more or less for pleasure as illustrated by the examples of people coming in from adjacent villages to join in , as a group of people powerless in the face of the occupying forces drunk with the absolute power they held over the Jews, as victims becoming victimisers. Due to the limited length of his book Gross provides little detail about significant aspects of the Polish-Jewish attitudes, such as what the relations between the two groups in Jedwabne were before the war. Gross also very often takes a speculative tone, his book resembling more a work of investigative journalism than history. The evidence he uses for this is extremely anecdotal in nature in essence he relies on the case of one of the Jedwabne perpetrators who became a member of the NKVD. We also now know that Gross simply got some of his facts wrong. In May , the Institute of National Memory conducted excavations of the site of the massacre. The results offered contradictions of some aspects of Gross's account. In addition, some ammunition of German manufacture was discovered at the site, posing new questions as to the real German involvement in the crime. Gross is honest in admitting the limitations of his sources and methodology. He admits that specifics of the Jedwabne case will never be known, and that sources are scant. Not so a civilian, killing another human being is of his own free will- such an evildoer is unequivocally but a murderer. Apr 16, Nicole rated it it was amazing Shelves: recommended-by-professors. I am incredibly impressed with the use of one horrific incident as a lens in which to view the more widespread antisemitism and complex issues of Polish nationialism during WWII. On July 10, , half of the population of Jedwabne, Poland murdered the other Jewish half. Approximately 1, Jewish men, women and children were killed. This is the shocking and brutal story of what happened that day. This story — another in a growing list of books and articles about Polish-Jewish relations, especially in the years before, during, and after WWII — seems to have been forgotten On July 10, , half of the population of Jedwabne, Poland murdered the other Jewish half. This story — another in a growing list of books and articles about Polish-Jewish relations, especially in the years before, during, and after WWII — seems to have been forgotten by history. Gross asks some difficult questions: How is it possible that ordinary, Polish Christian citizens — farmers, carpenters, tailors, shoemakers, municipal workers — could torture, humiliate and then murder 1, of their Jewish neighbors? Citizens of many other European nations were guilty of similar crimes, but this event is a particularly shocking mass murder because of the large numbers and brutality involved, and because these people Jewish victims and Christian perpetrators grew up in this town together and had previously enjoyed cordial relations. The Jedwabne Jews were clubbed, drowned, gutted, and then burned alive in a barn not by faceless Nazis, but by people they knew well: their former schoolmates and those who sold them food, bought their milk, and chatted with them in the street. Gross rejects some standard arguments, such as the cllaim that Nazis and the Soviets were calling the shots. True, he says, but there were things Poles could have done at the time and refrained from doing; and there were things they did not have to do but nevertheless did. He also rejects the argument that, at the beginning of the war, Jews enjoyed a privileged relationship with the Soviet occupiers and collaborated with the Soviets at the expense of the Poles and therefore an outburst of brutal Polish anti-Semitism may have come as a response to this experience. He suggests that plunder, along with atavistic anti-Semitism, may have been a motivating factor, at least for some of the murderers. Gross asks, too: What, if anything, can be learned from history about a nations character? Some readers refused to accept it as a factual account of the Jedwabne pogrom. While Polish historians praised Gross for drawing attention to a topic that had received insufficient attention for a half-century, [18] Marek Jan Chodakiewicz and Tomasz Strzembosz criticized Neighbors for including accounts they considered uncorroborated, and for editorial decisions they believed Gross had made, such as favoring testimonies that presented the Poles in the worst possible light when there were conflicting accounts. As noted by Joshua D. Zimmerman in his book about contested Polish history, Neighbors inspired a wide-ranging debate in Poland on its release in While the mainstream Polish press expressed consensus regarding the basic accuracy of Gross's findings, specific details and questions about Gross's methodology were debated by Polish scholars. Tomasz Strzembosz criticized the fact that the often contradictory testimonies on which the book was based were extracted from Polish witnesses in pre-trial beatings conducted by the Security Office UB in [25] as well as selection and exclusion of specific testimonies. Facing up to the painful truth of Jedwabne is, in my conviction, the most serious test that we Poles have had to confront in the last decade. According to Joanna B. In the latter group, Judeo-communism served the purpose of rationalizing and explaining the participation of ethnic Poles in killing their Jewish neighbors and, thus, in minimizing the criminal nature of the murder. Michlic state about the that the harshest critics of Gross, such as Tomasz Strzembosz : "Many of those who have espoused what Andrzejowski describes as a "defensive open" stance in the controversy came to adopt quite extreme positions, as has been the case with Tomasz Strzembosz. They seem to have great difficulty abandoning the self-image of the Poles as heroes and victims and use strongly apologetic arguments. Gross defended the conclusions he drew from his use of testimonials, and insisted that he differentiated between types of testimony. He pointed out that Neighbors contained "an extensive justification why depositions produced during a trial conducted in Stalinist Poland, extracted by abusive secret police interrogators, are credible in this case. Alexander B. The result was a skewed history that did not investigate SS operations in the region or German interaction with the Polish population. However, this does not mean the book is flawless. The postwar accounts of some Jewish survivors, which were contradicted later; and records from the interrogations and trials of the Polish perpetrators by the communist "Security Office", which were often obtained by use of torture, have limited value and can be open to interpretations. Likewise the context of the crime—the unfolding Nazi Holocaust is missing largely from the publication. Stola questions Gross' assumption about lack of Jewish collaboration with the Soviets and the unorganised, spontaneous, "grassroots" nature of the pogrom. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved November 20, Archived from the original on Retrieved Michlic, eds. Princeton University Press, Stenograph, part 2. Donald Tusk presiding. In Michlic "Letter to the Editor. Michlic and Antony Polonsky. Letter to the Editor , History. January , Vol. Neighbors | Princeton University Press

It is a story of surprises: The newly occupying German army did not compel the massacre, and Jedwabne's Jews and Christians had previously enjoyed cordial relations. After the war, the nearby family who saved Jedwabne's surviving Jews was derided and driven from the area. The single Jew offered mercy by the town declined it. Most arresting is the sinking realization that Jedwabne's Jews were clubbed, drowned, gutted, and burned not by faceless Nazis, but by people whose features and names they knew well: their former schoolmates and those who sold them food, bought their milk, and chatted with them in the street. As much as such a question can ever be answered, Neighbors tells us why. In many ways, this is a simple book. They were Poles, the Jedwabne neighbors of the Jews. And the revelation of their role has triggered a wave of agonized soul-searching since it emerged. The controversy over Neighbors is already spreading across the Atlantic. One Polish critic compares the gathering controversy to the uproar with which Germans greeted Hitler's Willing Executioners, Daniel Goldhagen's study of civilian participation in the Holocaust. The answer to this question is both startling and complex. A detailed account is provided by the sociologist and historian Jan T. Gross in his book. Gross's scrupulously documented study challenges another cherished myth: the noble attempts of most Poles to save Jews. Neighbors tells a story that has long been known in Poland but one that has shocked the rest of the world and even, it seems, the Poles themselves. But if the screams of those burning alive at Jedwabne are heard at last, they may not have been completely in vain. Neighbors tells a compelling story admirably. It should be widely read and discussed, for the complex, unsettling issues it raises still need to be fully explored. Rosenfeld, The New Leader. Why did the murderers do it? Jan Gross of New York University may not fully realize he has found the answer. It is in his astonishing little book. The result was a skewed history that did not investigate SS operations in the region or German interaction with the Polish population. However, this does not mean the book is flawless. The postwar accounts of some Jewish survivors, which were contradicted later; and records from the interrogations and trials of the Polish perpetrators by the communist "Security Office", which were often obtained by use of torture, have limited value and can be open to interpretations. Likewise the context of the crime—the unfolding Nazi Holocaust is missing largely from the publication. Stola questions Gross' assumption about lack of Jewish collaboration with the Soviets and the unorganised, spontaneous, "grassroots" nature of the pogrom. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved November 20, Archived from the original on Retrieved Michlic, eds. Princeton University Press, Stenograph, part 2. Donald Tusk presiding. In Michlic "Letter to the Editor. Michlic and Antony Polonsky. Letter to the Editor , History. January , Vol. Princeton, N. Archived from the original PDF on Tablet Magazine. The New York Times.

Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland by Jan Tomasz Gross

Rosenfeld, The New Leader. Why did the murderers do it? Jan Gross of New York University may not fully realize he has found the answer. It is in his astonishing little book. The title, Neighbors , is an ice dagger to the heart, but only after the book has been read. Will, Newsweek. Neighbors is possessed of the key virtues: moral energy, commitment to accuracy, and the maintenance of a continuing open dialogue between historian, sources, and reader. Jan Gross has a shattering tale to tell, and he tells it with consummate skill and control. The impact of his account of the massacre of the Jews of Jedwabne by their Polish neighbors is all the greater for the calm, understated narration and Gross's careful reconstruction of the terrifying circumstances in which the killing was undertaken. But this little book is much, much more than just another horror story from the Holocaust. In his imaginative reflections upon the tragedy of Jedwabne, Gross has subtly recast the history of wartime Poland and proposed an original interpretation of the origins of the postwar Communist regime. This book has already had dramatic repercussions in Poland, where it has single-handedly prised open a closed and painful chapter in that nation's recent past. But Neighbors is not only about Poland. It is a moving and provocative rumination upon the most important ethical issue of our age. No one who has studied or lived through the twentieth century can afford to ignore it. But the questions it raises are of universal significance: How do 'ordinary men' turn suddenly into 'willing executioners? Hearing what shtetl life was like in such detail before the war and the witness testimonies of what happened during the pogram itself was helpful in furthering my understanding of what life was like for my family. While difficult at times to read, I'm happy to have read it. As the author says in the forward, this is not a book that will bring closure or any answers upon finishing it. Obviously not a pleasure read, but acts as a chronicle of a senseless act of history. I do not know of any other books published on this specific event, so this may be the best monument to the victims of Jedwabne that exists. View 1 comment. Dec 14, Nancy rated it it was amazing. This is a true and terrifying book I did not want to read The brief description of the book below is taken from the Princeton Review. 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. It is a story of su This is a true and terrifying book I did not want to read It is a story of surprises: The newly occupying German army did not compel the massacre, and Jedwabne's Jews and Christians had previously enjoyed cordial relations. Jedwabne's Jews were clubbed, drowned, gutted, and burned not by faceless Nazis, but by people whose features and names they knew well: their former schoolmates and those who sold them food, bought their milk, and chatted with them in the street. As much as such a question can ever be answered, Neighbors tells us why. It's not about what war does to people or what traumatic experience does to people. Ultimately it is not about Jews or Nazis or anti-semitism. It is simply about people and what they are capable of if given the opportunity. The crushing truth of this story is that ordinary citizens killed of their neighbors simply because they could. Oct 24, Sam rated it it was ok. But Gross' bias is quite evident, and even distracting to the story and understanding the history. His attempt to correct the omission of Polish complicity to "the final solution" oversteps its usefulness by misrepresenting in the other direction. Mar 05, Elliot Ratzman rated it really liked it. What went wrong with Poland? The conventional story is that Poles were anti-Semitic because for them Jews ran Communism. When the Nazis invaded Poland, they were greeted as liberators. Gross argues this is not quite right. In the Catholic half of the town of Jedwabne murdered the Jewish half through obscene and proximate methods: decapitation, drowning, burning. Further, Polish rescuers were ostracized after the war; the only mass labor strike after the war was to support murderers of Jews, then standing trial by the Soviets. Polish society, even its historians, has been in denial for decades. What explains these inhumane attitudes? Gross offers some interesting suggestions, greed, the guilt of collaboration, residual pre-modern anti-Semitism. An excellent short work that amends our understanding of the Holocaust. View all 6 comments. This is not as incredible as it sounds. This Poland community turned in the favor of the Nazis, with the common man your neighbor jumping in to do there bidding against the Jews. This is a true story. A very quick read, but "a must" if you want to understand human behavior durnig the worst of times. The Jewish population of the town of Jedwabne disappear This is one of the most horrific books I have ever read. This is not historical fiction or narrative non-fiction. The author's objective is, using fact-based academic methodology, to expose the lie of conventional wisdom that in WWII the ordinary people Poland were forced by the Nazis to take part in the killing of Poland's Jews. He takes one particularly horrific incident, the murder of the Jews of Jedwabne, and weaves together primary sources to This book is not intended to be edu-tainment such as Schindler's List or The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. He takes one particularly horrific incident, the murder of the Jews of Jedwabne, and weaves together primary sources to show that the Catholic Polish residents of Jedwabne viciously murdered their Jewish neighbours with very little encouragement from their Nazi overseers. The Nazi invasion of Poland, or 'liberation' from the Soviets as so many non-Jews seemed to consider it, gave the perpetrators the reassurance that their actions would not be punished but the initiative, the stimulus, the enthusiasm with which they undertook this pogrom was theirs alone. And it was not simply a desire to get rid of the Jews, to remove 'the other' from their town: they stationed guards around the town so that Jews could not escape. In the space of one day they swept through the town killing the Jewish residents in cruel and violent ways and when such methods were not deemed sufficiently efficient they locked the rest of the Jewish residents in a barn and burned them alive. The author adds the minimum of narrative necessary to connect the various testimonies and offers little analysis or personal supposition as to the murderers' motivations. Greed, deeply- seated anti-Semitism and the need to blame the other seems to be the general conclusion. This is not particularly satisfying or specific but it is the truth as we can understand it from the sources provided. Any further exploration of this phenomenon would require the skills of a psychologist or a novelist and would lead us into the realms of conjecture and imagination. Following the war the pogroms continued through Poland and the families that had protected Jews were persecuted. In addition to the ancient Semitic trope of blood libel was added resentment that the Jews had brought such shame on Poland, after all if there had been no Jews there would have been no Holocaust. To be honest this was not news to me. As a Jew in Israel I have heard many times from Polish Holocaust survivors, include those from my husband's family, how their Polish neighbours were more than willing to lend the Nazis a helping hand in solving "the Jewish Problem'. However until this book and the contemporaneous documentaries produced on the subject it seems Poland was unwilling to face this aspect of their history and the rest of the world was willing to let them ignore it. For me the unique value of this books is that it offers primary sources, witness testimonies and it forces us to examine the society in which we live where ordinary people can turn against their neighbours and kill men, women and children just because they can. View all 3 comments. Apr 14, Melody Boggs rated it it was amazing Shelves: books-i-own , wwii- holocaust-history , big-people-books. It's hard to process that, in such a slim volume, Jan T. Gross thoroughly debunks the myth of innocence, ignorance, and "forced" killings that so pervades public understanding of the Holocaust. But the author accomplishes it, weaving historical records with brief narration to give new meaning to the terms "perpetrator" and "collaborator. Gross' argument that half of the Jedwabne communi It's hard to process that, in such a slim volume, Jan T. Gross' argument that half of the Jedwabne community murdered its Jewish half primarily for economic purposes is a strong one that is backed up by the evidence of not only this narrative but also of so many other studies like it, such as Hitler's Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State by Gotz Aly. More than anything, this book is so frighteningly human in its depravity, a notion that casual readers may not understand without emerging themselves into more Holocaust scholarship. Jul 05, Betsy rated it really liked it Shelves: holocausthistory. Very interesting, very sickening. Beware when picking this up - graphic and disturbing. Side note: Jews living in Poland have recently told me that - while his facts are absolutely correct - they felt the book itself has given an overall inaccurate impression of Polish anti-Semitism and has implied that this continues, at the same level, today. That is, they felt it's not as primitive and prevalent and that this book has somehow supported that thought. I can see how it supports it but tried mysel Very interesting, very sickening. I can see how it supports it but tried myself to read it as an isolated case study, too. Just interesting to think about Polish Jews and their issues with it. View 2 comments. Oct 11, Saul rated it it was amazing. But it appears that they only watched as the villagers and others from nearby villages orchestrated and carried out the humiliation, torture, stoning, drowning, rape and mostly burning of nearly all of the town's 1, Jews. What set the stage for this? A mix of traditional anti-semitism, anti-Soviet fervor, SS occupation, unconfirmed rumors of collaboration between Jews and Soviets, real non-Jewish collaborators who wanted to hide their collaboration by making scapegoats of the Jews, lust for money and property, nationalism, base banditry, etc. Every one of these stones is turned over. Gross gets about as close as one can to understanding what is impossible to fully understand: how neighbors and former friends can so easily be turned into mass slaughterers. The atmosphere conveyed herein sounds more like Rwanda in than the traditional telling of the Holocaust, with its methodological killing systems. This is the world of pitchforks and scythes and primitive slaughter. Sep 17, Jay McCue rated it really liked it. I was completely blown away by this story. The fact that something as horrific as what this book describes happened is really terrible, but the fact that it was almost forgotten by history altogether is just another tragedy. This book provides a particular insight into the very worst that humanity is capable of. The author gives answers to the who, how, and why questions of this tragedy. Let more be aware of this story so that something like this can be avoided in the future and never repeated. Jun 19, Christine rated it it was amazing Shelves: history-wwii. What makes people kill those they live next to? Not sure, but this book does a close up of the question. Gross' book apparently raised quite a discussion in Poland. It is short and despite the subject matter, rather easy to read. It is as if Gross knows that if he goes too emotional, the reader will have to put the book down. However, this does not mean the book is flawless. The postwar accounts of some Jewish survivors, which were contradicted later; and records from the interrogations and trials of the Polish perpetrators by the communist "Security Office", which were often obtained by use of torture, have limited value and can be open to interpretations. Likewise the context of the crime—the unfolding Nazi Holocaust is missing largely from the publication. Stola questions Gross' assumption about lack of Jewish collaboration with the Soviets and the unorganised, spontaneous, "grassroots" nature of the pogrom. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved November 20, Archived from the original on Retrieved Michlic, eds. Princeton University Press, Stenograph, part 2. Donald Tusk presiding. In Michlic "Letter to the Editor. Michlic and Antony Polonsky. Letter to the Editor , History. January , Vol. Princeton, N. Archived from the original PDF on Tablet Magazine. The New York Times. The Observer.

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