Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland
Encyclopedia
Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland is a 2001 book by Princeton University
historian Jan T. Gross
exploring the July 1941 Jedwabne massacre committed against Polish Jews in a village in Nazi-occupied Poland by their long-time neighbors.
At the time of the book's publication, the horrors of the Nazi program of extermination of the Jews were well known. The fact that ordinary Poles in Jedwabne
following Soviet–German invasion took it upon themselves to massacre their Jewish neighbors in the presence of Nazi German soldiers, was less known. The book has generated much controversy and vigorous debate in Poland and abroad, and led to more forensic studies and discussions with regards to Polish-Jewish relations.
According to Jaroslaw Anders, although the book has been met with criticism in Poland, it has also generated acknowledgment from leading Polish figures such as Józef Cardinal Glemp
who described it as “incontestable” and from Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski
who asked Poles to “seek forgiveness for what our compatriots have done.” Polish News Service is said to have reported that other Polish publications such as Nasz Dziennik
, Głos, Mysl Polska, and Niedziela accused it of being a "part of international campaign aimed at damaging the image of Poland and preparing ground for restitution of Jewish property."
Piotr Gontarczyk
of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance was one of the first Polish historians to publicize 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 1949. According to Gontarczyk Gross's narrative was uncritical in that regard. Plus, additional accounts used by Gross came from recollections of Jewish emigrants from postwar Poland (pg. 18) which since have been proven also to be factually inaccurate. Gontarczyk noted that Gross fails to inform the reader about Polish-Jewish relations in the Soviet-occupied Eastern Borderlands
and the Jewish participation in the communist terror apparatus
in Jedwabne preceding the German attack on the Soviet Union controlling the area since 1939. Gontarczyk writes that in Neighbours Gross "constructs a historical narrative on the basis of stereotypes, prejudices and common gossip... which have no scholarly basis whatsoever." Prof. Tomasz Strzembosz
wrote. "One cannot claim that for 50 years nothing has been written about the crime committed in the town of Jedwabne in Podlasie. There have been a number of articles in the press and references made in books on the Holocaust about the incident. Records utilized by Gross and made public only after the publication of his book reveal that the excessive use of physical torture during interrogation resulted in many persons admitting to made-up crimes, later renounced by them before the courts. Half of the accused retracted their earlier statements given during prolonged beatings by the Security Service. Ten of them were pronounced innocent and released by the judge. Out of 22 men tortured, half were wrongfully accused by a single Jewish individual. After analyzing documents Strzembosz concludes.
Father Stanisław Musiał, who had been a leading figure in advocating a Catholic-Jewish dialogue and Polish-Jewish reconciliation, wrote that Gross' book had shattered the myth that Poles were solely victims who "themselves never wronged anyone." Agnieszka Magdziak-Miszewska, a former deputy editor-in-chief of the Polish Catholic magazine Znak
and Polish consul-general, wrote
According to Joanna B. Michlic
, "Gross and his supporters referred to the Polish version of the notion of Judeo-communism
(see żydokomuna
) as an antisemitic cliché, whereas Gross’s opponents, to varying degrees, treated it as an actual historical fact. 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."
Gross responded by defending the veracity of the conclusions he drew from his use of testimonials, and insisted that he differentiated between types of testimony, and 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."
Finalist and a 2001 National Book Award
Finalist. The publication of Neighbors was credited with launching a debate about the Polish role in the Holocaust. Bernard Wasserstein
described the book as having “played a productive role in refreshing Polish collective memory of this aspect of World War 2.”
Alexander B. Rossino
, a research historian at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
in Washington, D.C.
wrote: "while Neighbors contributed to an ongoing re-examination of the history of the Holocaust in Poland
, Gross' failure to examine German documentary sources fundamentally flawed his depiction of the events. The result was a skewed history that did not investigate SS operations in the region or German interaction with the Polish population."
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
historian Jan T. Gross
Jan T. Gross
Jan Tomasz Gross is a Polish-American historian and sociologist. He is the Norman B. Tomlinson '16 and '48 Professor of War and Society and Professor of History at Princeton University.- Biography :Jan T...
exploring the July 1941 Jedwabne massacre committed against Polish Jews in a village in Nazi-occupied Poland by their long-time neighbors.
Content and controversy
The book described how the massacre was perpetrated by non-Jewish civilians and not by the German invaders, as previously assumed. This prompted a forensic murder investigation by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), which partly confirmed Gross's findings but stated that depositions "made by witnesses confirm complicity of both Germans and Polish inhabitants of the town.". The IPN investigation concluded that "residents of Jedwabne and its environs, of Polish nationality, committed these acts," although Gross's estimate of 1,600 victims "seems highly unlikely." The IPN found evidence only for a range of 250 to 340, while other Polish estimates suggested from 600 to close to 1,000.At the time of the book's publication, the horrors of the Nazi program of extermination of the Jews were well known. The fact that ordinary Poles in Jedwabne
Jedwabne
Jedwabne is a town in Poland, in the Podlaskie Voivodeship, in Łomża County, with 1,942 inhabitants .- History :First mentioned in 1455, Jedwabne received city rights on July 17, 1736, from the Polish king August III, including the right to hold weekly markets on Sundays and five country fairs a...
following Soviet–German invasion took it upon themselves to massacre their Jewish neighbors in the presence of Nazi German soldiers, was less known. The book has generated much controversy and vigorous debate in Poland and abroad, and led to more forensic studies and discussions with regards to Polish-Jewish relations.
Reception in Poland
As noted by Joshua D. Zimmerman Neighbors inspired a wide-ranging debate in Poland on its release in 2000 and that, while there was a consensus in the mainstream Polish press regarding the basic accuracy of Gross's findings, specific details and questions about Gross's methodology were debated by Polish scholars.According to Jaroslaw Anders, although the book has been met with criticism in Poland, it has also generated acknowledgment from leading Polish figures such as Józef Cardinal Glemp
Józef Cardinal Glemp
Józef Glemp is a Polish Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He was Archbishop of Warsaw from 1981 to 2006, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1983.-Early life and ordination:...
who described it as “incontestable” and from Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski
Aleksander Kwasniewski
Aleksander Kwaśniewski is a Polish politician who served as the President of Poland from 1995 to 2005. He was born in Białogard, and during communist rule he was active in the Socialist Union of Polish Students and was the Minister for Sport in the communist government in the 1980s...
who asked Poles to “seek forgiveness for what our compatriots have done.” Polish News Service is said to have reported that other Polish publications such as Nasz Dziennik
Nasz Dziennik
Nasz Dziennik is a Polish daily newspaper, published in Warsaw since 1998 by Spes Ltd., with the circulation of about 150,000 as of 2007. Alternate sources have listed its 1999 circulation at 250,000; and its 1998 readership at 600,000...
, Głos, Mysl Polska, and Niedziela accused it of being a "part of international campaign aimed at damaging the image of Poland and preparing ground for restitution of Jewish property."
Piotr Gontarczyk
Piotr Gontarczyk
Piotr Gontarczyk is a Polish historian with a doctorate in history and political science.Gontarczyk is employed by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance and specializes in history of the Polish communist movement during the World War II and in contemporary history...
of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance was one of the first Polish historians to publicize 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 1949. According to Gontarczyk Gross's narrative was uncritical in that regard. Plus, additional accounts used by Gross came from recollections of Jewish emigrants from postwar Poland (pg. 18) which since have been proven also to be factually inaccurate. Gontarczyk noted that Gross fails to inform the reader about Polish-Jewish relations in the Soviet-occupied Eastern Borderlands
Kresy
The Polish term Kresy refers to a land considered by Poles as historical eastern provinces of their country. Today, it makes western Ukraine, western Belarus, as well as eastern Lithuania, with such major cities, as Lviv, Vilnius, and Hrodna. This territory belonged to the Polish-Lithuanian...
and the Jewish participation in the communist terror apparatus
Extrajudicial punishment
Extrajudicial punishment is punishment by the state or some other official authority without the permission of a court or legal authority. The existence of extrajudicial punishment is considered proof that some governments will break their own legal code if deemed necessary.-Nature:Extrajudicial...
in Jedwabne preceding the German attack on the Soviet Union controlling the area since 1939. Gontarczyk writes that in Neighbours Gross "constructs a historical narrative on the basis of stereotypes, prejudices and common gossip... which have no scholarly basis whatsoever." Prof. Tomasz Strzembosz
Tomasz Strzembosz
Tomasz Strzembosz was a Polish historian and writer who specialized in the history of Poland during World War II. He was a professor at the Polish Academy of Sciences' Institute of Political Studies in Warsaw; and, at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin...
wrote. "One cannot claim that for 50 years nothing has been written about the crime committed in the town of Jedwabne in Podlasie. There have been a number of articles in the press and references made in books on the Holocaust about the incident. Records utilized by Gross and made public only after the publication of his book reveal that the excessive use of physical torture during interrogation resulted in many persons admitting to made-up crimes, later renounced by them before the courts. Half of the accused retracted their earlier statements given during prolonged beatings by the Security Service. Ten of them were pronounced innocent and released by the judge. Out of 22 men tortured, half were wrongfully accused by a single Jewish individual. After analyzing documents Strzembosz concludes.
Jan Tomasz Gross left out several dozen testimonies of various persons - witnesses, defendants, etc., who talked about the role of Germans as the causative agents; he only quoted the testimonies which mentioned the participation of Poles. He relied, among others, on an initial testimony of cook Julia Sokolowska, which was later withdrawn, and the material written by Karol Bardon, a German gendarme who, being sentenced to death, tried to dilute his responsibility by blaming the inhabitants of the town. Professor Gross has never explained the reasons for such selection. He has never explained why he accepts some documents and rejects other ones.
Father Stanisław Musiał, who had been a leading figure in advocating a Catholic-Jewish dialogue and Polish-Jewish reconciliation, wrote that Gross' book had shattered the myth that Poles were solely victims who "themselves never wronged anyone." Agnieszka Magdziak-Miszewska, a former deputy editor-in-chief of the Polish Catholic magazine Znak
Znak
Znak was an association of lay Catholics in Poland, active between 1956 and 1976. It was the only Catholic organisation that was tolerated by the PZPR Communist party and supported the Catholic hierarchy....
and Polish consul-general, wrote
I am convinced that Neighbors is a book which had to be written and which is needed. 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. Michlic
Joanna B. Michlic
Joanna B. Michlic was a professor of Polish-Jewish history at Lehigh University, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.-Selected works:*Poland's Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present, 2006, ISBN 0803232403...
, "Gross and his supporters referred to the Polish version of the notion of Judeo-communism
Jewish Bolshevism
Jewish Bolshevism, Judeo-Bolshevism, and known as Żydokomuna in Poland, is an antisemitic stereotype based on the claim that Jews have been the driving force behind or are disproportionately involved in the modern Communist movement, or sometimes more specifically Russian Bolshevism.The expression...
(see żydokomuna
Zydokomuna
Żydokomuna is a pejorative antisemitic stereotype which came into use between World Wars I and II, blaming Jews for the rise of communism in Poland, where communism was identified as part of a wider Jewish-led conspiracy to seize power....
) as an antisemitic cliché, whereas Gross’s opponents, to varying degrees, treated it as an actual historical fact. 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."
Gross responded by defending the veracity of the conclusions he drew from his use of testimonials, and insisted that he differentiated between types of testimony, and 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."
Reception in the United States
Neighbors was a 2001 National Book Critics Circle AwardNational Book Critics Circle Award
The National Book Critics Circle Award is an annual award given by the National Book Critics Circle to promote the finest books and reviews published in English....
Finalist and a 2001 National Book Award
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
Finalist. The publication of Neighbors was credited with launching a debate about the Polish role in the Holocaust. Bernard Wasserstein
Bernard Wasserstein
Bernard Wasserstein is a professor of history. Wasserstein was born in London, and educated at the High School of Glasgow and at Wyggeston Boys' Grammar School, Leicester. He gained a BA in Modern History at Balliol College, Oxford University in 1969.Wasserstein's main area of interest is Jewish...
described the book as having “played a productive role in refreshing Polish collective memory of this aspect of World War 2.”
Alexander B. Rossino
Alexander B. Rossino
Alexander B. Rossino , is a research historian at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. with Doctor of Philosophy from the Syracuse University in New York. He is best known for writing about Nazi Germany in World War II, the...
, a research historian at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust history...
in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
wrote: "while Neighbors contributed to an ongoing re-examination of the history of the Holocaust in Poland
Holocaust in Poland
The Holocaust, also known as haShoah , was a genocide officially sanctioned and executed by the Third Reich during World War II. It took the lives of three million Polish Jews, destroying an entire civilization. Only a small percentage survived or managed to escape beyond the reach of the Nazis...
, Gross' failure to examine German documentary sources fundamentally flawed his depiction of the events. The result was a skewed history that did not investigate SS operations in the region or German interaction with the Polish population."
Further reading
- Antony Polonsky and Joanna Michlic (eds) The Neighbors Respond (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004)
- Marek Chodakiewicz, The Massacre in Jedwabne July 10, 1941. Before, During and After (Boulder CO: East European Monographs, 2005)
External links
- Joanna Michlic, The Polish Debate about the Jedwabne Massacre
- Jedwabne, July 10, 1941: an Interview with Pawel Machcewicz, Director, Office of Public Education, Institute of National Memory http://info-poland.buffalo.edu/search-all/classroom/J/Mach.html
- An Inquiry Confirms a Massacre Of Jews by Poles in World War II The New York Times, July 10, 2002.
- Thou Shalt Not Kill, Poles on Jedwabne, 34 articles (in English)http://wiez.free.ngo.pl/jedwabne/main.html
- Sixty years ago...Address by Aleksander Kwasniewski, President of Poland at the July 10, 2001, ceremonies in Jedwabne marking the 60th anniversary of the Jedwabne tragedy.
- 'Neighbors' tells gruesome killing of Jews in Poland, USA Today, March 28, 2001.
- Adam MichnikAdam MichnikAdam Michnik is the editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, where he sometimes writes under the pen-names of Andrzej Zagozda or Andrzej Jagodziński. In 1966–1989 he was one of the leading organizers of the illegal, democratic opposition in Poland...
. Poles and the Jews: How Deep the Guilt? The New York Times. March 17, 2001 (published simultaneously on March 17 by Gazeta WyborczaGazeta WyborczaGazeta Wyborcza is a leading Polish newspaper. It covers the gamut of political, international and general news. Like all the Polish newspapers, it is printed on compact-sized paper, and is published by the multimedia corporation Agora SA...
). - Robert S. WistrichRobert S. WistrichRobert Solomon Wistrich is the Neuburger Professor of European and Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the head of the University's Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism. Wistrich is "a leading scholar of the history of antisemitism."-Early...
. The Jedwabne Affair. - Abraham BrumbergAbraham BrumbergAbraham Brumberg was a Jewish American writer and editor. He is known for writing about the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and Jewish issues...
. Poles and Jews. Foreign Affairs, September/October 2002. - Poland's willing executioners. The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
by George SteinerGeorge SteinerFrancis George Steiner, FBA , is an influential European-born American literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist, translator, and educator. He has written extensively about the relationship between language, literature and society, and the impact of the Holocaust...
. - Prof. Tomasz StrzemboszTomasz StrzemboszTomasz Strzembosz was a Polish historian and writer who specialized in the history of Poland during World War II. He was a professor at the Polish Academy of Sciences' Institute of Political Studies in Warsaw; and, at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin...
, "A different picture of neighbors" (Ultimate debunking of Gross) translated by Mariusz Wesolowski (see also: Polish language original archived by Internet Wayback Machine on March 31, 2001.) - Jan Gross, "Polish Anti-semitism after Auschwitz," joint seminar at Yale University's Antisemitism in Comparative Perspective. Video link.
- Rzeczpospolita, Links to many articles in Polish on Jedwabne Massacre http://www.rzeczpospolita.pl/tematy/jedwabne/