Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland | Jan T. Gross

Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland | Jan T. Gross | The Fear That Still Haunts Poland

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Neighbors: The Des...

	Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland Jan T. Gross Penguin (Non-Classics), 2002 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 70 reviews view larger image
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On a summer day in 1941 in Nazi-occupied Poland, half of the town of Jedwabne brutally murdered the other half: 1,600 men, women, and children-all but seven of the town's Jews. In this shocking and compelling study, historian Jan Gross pieces together eyewitness accounts as well as physical evidence into a comprehensive reconstruction of the horrific July day remembered well by locals but hidden to history. Revealing wider truths about Jewish-Polish relations, the Holocaust, and human responses to occupation and totalitarianism, Gross's investigation sheds light on how Jedwabne's Jews came to be murdered-not by faceless Nazis, but by people who knew them well.

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A Book of Pain and Wonderment

I was assigned this book to read for a graduate seminar I'm taking in Eastern European History. I was reluctant to take on the assigment; the Holocaust has never been a topic which interested me greatly and, furthermore, I've never been enthralled by modern European History.
By the end of the book, I was left wishing I hadn't read it; not because it was bad but, on the contrary, because it was too good. It is not often that a book has left me reduced to tears, and of the few which have managed, none have been History books (the dispassionate tone of most historians goes against any real great emotional investment in the topic).
There are many, I'm sure, who wish to claim that the events which detailed within these pages did not occur or, if they did occur, did so in a very different situation that that described. It would be, if not comforting, than atl east less disturbing to be able to pass all of the blame for the massacre onto the heads of the Nazi occupiers. And, although they certainly do bear some responsibility, one can not escape the horrifying conclusion that a small village in Poland, where Jews and Poles had lived peacefully together for centuries, went mad for a day.
The reason there are so many one-star reviews for this amazing book seems fairly obvious. It simply asks far too many questions about our own humanity, and the true depth of our 'civilization'. It is easy to blame an atrocity on an organized political or military force, as doing so removes much of the humanity from the attackers; we can stare in horror at their deeds, but take comfort in the knowledge that some ideological force was at work.
However, to see how quickly friends and neighbors can be transformed into the 'other' with only the smallest nudge from outside forces is both humbling and intensly frightening.
This book, no matter how unpleasent it must be, should be a must read for men and women of all stripes. It will make you question your culture, your community and, most importantly, yourself.

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The Fear That Still Haunts Poland

This slim volume, and Professor Gross' fuller, follow-up book, "Fear," are a graphic portrayal of the specter that still haunts eastern Europe - not Marx, not Stalin, but its own heart of human darkness.

Like another reviewer, I feel "Neighbors" is too short, and I disagree somewhat with Prof. Gross' historiography. But this little book delivers a devastating punch out of all proportion to its size. Professor Gross has done his country a great service in unflinchingly exposing the soulless criminality of both Jedwabne and, in "Fear," of Kielce; but of course he is a prophet without honor at home, at least for the current generation, which prefers to wrap itself in comforting myths of Poland as "the Christ of Nations" - not the crucifier of others.

I vary with his historical analysis, however. Not that Poland is alone in this violent racism in eastern Europe. Every eastern European nation has given its own bloody form of expression to this sickness, against Jews and other convenient scapegoats. What makes it especially disturbing in Poland, however, is its coincidence with Poland's own myth of martyrdom, and the devastating reality of Nazi occupation and mass murder on Polish soil. How could Poles inflict such suffering, given their own great suffering, and turn a blind eye to it? The answer is in the blind eye that Poles have turned to much of their real history.

While bemoaning its partition at the hands of Hitler and Stalin, its partisans have nicely ignored Poland's own partitioning of the Ukraine, Belorussia, and Lithuania in 1920 - also in league with the USSR. It was at this time that the myth of "Zydokomuna" was fully galvanized, leading to the same kinds of atrocities which erupted after 1945. The events of "Neighbors" were not special to the post-WW II period, but were endemic in the unsettled period after WW I, as the Goodhart mission to Poland fully documented.

But of course the actors in Jedwabne and Kielce are not following a ghost-written script, but engaged in actions with deeply personal meaning for themselves. While Professor Gross rationally deconstructs the myth of Zydokomunism, he sees these atrocities as a function of guilt complexes. I do not get that feeling from these perpetrators (who are much like other perpetrators with whom I have direct exposure.) These people sincerely believed in that myth, and targeting Jews was a conscious act, so they felt, of getting back at the "Bolshevik regime" foisted on them from the East. Poland was still a society in flux, still in the grip of wartime psychoses and the throes of guerrilla resistance, with all the attendant terrorism. To stike out at Jews was to hit not only a soft target but the "Judeo-Bolshevik regime's" soft underbelly, and as such was consciously encouraged by all those hoping to defeat the new regime. That the Communist Party backpedalled from its official humanism, ultimately embracing this anti-Semitism, was actually a victory for these forces. In this sense, Communism was defeated in 1956, not 1989.

But while I may differ with Professor Gross on Polish history, no one with a sense of humanity or justice can dispute the moral power of his works on postwar Poland. They are warnings on the dark side of humanity that stand above time and place, and must be heeded by all.

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Book written with the scientific accuracy, uncovers what everybody in Poland knows and denies...

Poles did not need the Nazi's prodding to killed 1600 Jews". According to the evidence provided in the book, Poles needed no prodding, a permission at the best. The criminals exterminated Jews happily with the support of the MAJORITY of population. The few Jews who escaped the murder, were caught by the local peasants and brought back to Jedwabne to be murdered. The Polish woman hero, Pani Antonina Wyrzykowska, who saved a few Jews, was after the war beaten by the Polish antisemites and chased out of town, soon in the people of the second (larger) town, learned that she saved Jews during the war, and she was persecuted again. She moved to a larger town, a provincial capitol, however even there, after a few years the people learned that she saved Jews during the war and persecution started again. Only after she moved from her Polish motherland to Canada, was she able to find safety!

Neither was Jedwabne an isolated case. The book documents the murder of the Jews by the Poles in the neighboring Radzilow, and Lomza. Of course there was nothing special about the Jedwabne area, the Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians and other East-Europeans murdered Jews in multitudes of places. Unfortunately, there is a huge denial, of both antisemitism, and of the local complicity with genocide.

It is important to understand that Gross is not some "Poland-hating-Jew". His mother was ethnic Pole, both his parents fought against Nazis in the heroic Warsaw uprising. Gross grew up as a proud Pole, loving his country, it's heritage and the language. It is cheap and dishonest to dismiss Gross' scholarship calling him anti-Polish. The truth is that Poland (other East European countries) has centuries long history of intense antisemitism, pogroms and murder of Jews, only by facing the truth, can there be a change. Antisemitism is an illness of Polish soul, and this illness will continue until it is exposed to the full light.

Having spent my childhood in Poland I attest from personal experience that GREAT MAJORITY of Poland's population is from moderately to intensely antisemitic. Because of my Jewish descent, already as 6 years old child, I have been beaten by the older Polish kids, for the crime of "having murdered Jesus Christ". In my childhood in 1960s I have frequently heard Poles say that "Hitler was a monster, but he did one good thing: He cleaned Poland from Jews", and that "It's a shame that the war ended too soon not allowing Hitler to finish up the job of killing **ALL** the Jews."

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two-faced people--finks

This book is very informative and depressingly good. I read it twice, doing lots of underlying of important parts during the 2nd reading time.
I sent the book to a friend. Everyone should read this book. A must read

Ben Butler

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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