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 | | Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland by Jan T. Gross ISBN-10: 9780691086675 ISBN-10: 0-691-08667-2 ISBN-13: 9780691086675 ISBN-13: 978-0-691-08667-5 Hardcover 2001-04-01 Princeton University Press Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description One summer day in 1941, half of the Polish town of Jedwabne murdered the other half, 1,600 men, women, and children, all but seven of the town's Jews. 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. 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. It is easy to read in a single sitting, and hard not to. But its simplicity is deceptive. Gross's new and persuasive answers to vexed questions rewrite the history of twentieth-century Poland. This book proves, finally, that the fates of Poles and Jews during World War II can be comprehended only together. | ||
Amazon.com Review "One day, in July 1941, half of the population of a small east European town murdered the other half--some 1,600 men, women and children." This short sentence summarizes the subject of Neighbors, historian Jan Gross's account of a massacre that occurred in Jedwabne, in northeastern Poland. Gross describes the atrocities of Jedwabne in almost unbearable detail. Men and women were hacked to death with knives, iron hooks, and axes. Small children were thrown with pitchforks onto a bonfire. A woman's decapitated head was kicked like a football. Historians before now have blamed the massacre on the Nazis--whose participation in and responsibility for these crimes has been exaggerated, Gross says. In fact, he argues, a virulent Polish anti-Semitism was liberated by German occupation. Instead of explaining the horrors of Jedwabne, which would be impossible, Neighbors sets the record straight as to the identity of the criminals. In doing so, Gross has ensured that future histories of the Holocaust, particularly in Poland, will be more honest, because future historians will be answerable to his argument that the evil of the Nazis was not only forced on the Poles. In places such as Jedwabne, it was welcomed by them. --Michael Joseph Gross | ||
Reviews | ||
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 | ||
A NOVEL WITH FOOTNOTES; GROSS REFUSES TO RECOGNIZE RECENT FINDINGS: APPROX 1-200 BODIES EXHUMED,IE.PROVEN GERMAN CRIME PERIOD First, Gross' racism and hypocrysy is unprecedented A deafening silence: in Israel, is it now okay to kill Americans? (Peacemaking).(implications of recent death and injuries of peace activists in Israel): An article from: Sojourners Now the Review... A couple of years ago or so, Israel and Poland organized a joint exhumation at Jedwabne. Nearly 200 bodies were exhumed. Ashe was also weighed per average to small body size,i.e., slightly overestimating the count up to approx. 200 bodies. The bodies in this 2 foot deep grave were drenched with German bullets, Germans knives, German bayonets, German gas cans and German pistols and German rifles were also exhumed. The Massacre in Jedwabne, July 10, 1941: Before, During, After This was and always will be a German-Nazi crime. Were some Poles forced to help - perhaps, but Jews were also forced to help, and did! Very few know that most Kapos were Jews. Kapos were Nazi helpers - Kapos helped kill Jews and Poles. Read God's Playground: A History of Poland, Vol. 2: 1795 to the Present and Between Nazis and Soviets: Occupation Politics in Poland, 1939-1947 The Poles know first hand what the Palestinians are going through RIGHT NOW! The Nazi's did to the Poles, what(some) Israelis are doing to the Palestinians. Are there any reighteous in Israel to help save the Palestinians from the present day Holocaust? The Israeli Holocaust Against the Palestinians The Germans did Jedwabne, adding these 200 deaths to their total murdering spree of: 6 Million Jewish, 3 million Polish-Catholics and 2 million Gypsies and Homosexuals and 'undesirables' in the eye of the German. The Germans murdered some 11 million innocent people, mostly Jewish and Polish. Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation 1939-1944 When the Germans were being pushed back, Stalin continued the horror on a doomed Poland by murdering another 2 million Poles in his terror Gulags. Gulag: A History Thus, another 50 years of hell for the Polish nation. Poles were betrayed by 'all' around them, even Polish Jews were Finking on the Poles, thus getting many Poles murdered by Jews betraying Poles to Stalin's Communists. Yes this betrayal was devastating to the Poles and Poland,i.e., Poland had taken the Jews in, as they fled from all other countries that were persecuting the Jews. The Polish Way: A Thousand-Year History of the Poles and Their Culture Poles and jews lived together for almost a millenium(no other country has done that and ever will, now that Israel is an established nation). Jews in Poland: A Documentary History Truth gets us to a better place quicker. You get more to like you with truth and none/zero with vinegar(this book of drudgery). gross is singlehandedly upsetting many decent people who suffered horribly. What does this achieve: just more hate and more delay in getting to a true place. More and more and more Anti-Semitism thanks to Gross and his cronies The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, New Edition 2nd Edition This book is 98% Novel and 2% not. Again, for an objective read on this topic, read Chodakiewicz, he writes calmly, truthfully, objectively with no ridiculous sensationalisms - just pure proven and documented FACT! Is Gross' hate foe Gentiles embetted in his warped soul Jewish History, Jewish Religion New Edition: The Weight of Three Thousand Years (Get Political) Peace | ||
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." | ||
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. | ||
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. | ||