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Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland

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While interesting reading, and somewhat overdone in terms of the gory detail, one is still lead to not fully take at face value all that is stated by Gross as "fact" in the book.

By his own admission in the chapter titled "New Approach To Sources", Gross offers us the new way of studying history by suggesting that we should accept "...what we read in a particular account as fact, until we find persuasive arguments to the contrary, we would avoid more mistakes than we are likely to commit by adopting the opposite approach, which calls for cautious skepticism toward any testimony until independent confirmation of it's content has been found".

If all "historians" were to follow that approach than our historical texts (which are based on empirical evidence) might be full of false information. I am not suggesting that the events described in the book did not happen at all (to the contrary there is independent confirmation of some of what is written), but I am suggesting that all historical subjects be treated with the same "cautious skepticism". The Holocaust of the WW II era should not be afforded any different treatment, just because it may be politically correct to do so.

Gross has cheated the process by which a historical thesis is made, investigated, proven, and documented, by simply taking a few uncorroborated testimonies at face value. As a respected historian and Professor at New York University, Gross should both know better, and should be ashamed of his behavior as a "historian" in the writing of this book.

Perusing the first few pages of Jan T. Gross' book "Neighbours" one's hopes rise that here we will learn the truth about the crime of Jedwabne. The author is being introduced as a noted historian (by education he is a sociologist), professor of political sciences of the University of New York and author of essays on the subject of Polish-German-Jewish relationships in the years 1939-1948.

Gross names various sources that he relied on. Unfortunately, as one reads his book, one is assailed by doubts whether the version presented in it is trustworthy. Although Gross mentions various sources and refers to numerous historians, yet in his argumentation he is relying on the statements of one man only - Szmul Wasersztejn, a Jew living in the town, but according to some witnesses, not present there during the massacre. (Teodor Eugeniusz Lusinski to the Institute of Jewish History, 20.03.95, according to Dr. Marek Jan Chodakiewicz). This crown witness of Gross, in Poland went under the name of Calka and not Wasersztein, who after the war had the rank of lieutenant in U.B. (dreaded Communist State Security Forces). This fact was established by Prof. Tomasz Strzembosz, who has been researching this period of Polish history for many years, based on depositions of two reliable witnesses who were interrogated by Wasersztein (Calka) at the UB after the war.

Another witness whose testimony is used by prof. Gross, Abram Boruszczak, never lived in Jedwabne, and another witness, Eljasz Gradowski, was sentenced by the Soviet authorities for stealing of some electrical equipment and deported to Soviet Union in 1940, well before the events in Jedwabne took place. He returned to Jedwabne in 1945 Prof. Strzembosz draws attention to the credibility of sources and witnesses on which Gross relies.

In the matter of the Polish witnesses' testimonies, Gross is extensively using the testimonies of people who were interrogated by the U.B. (Communist State Security) in 1949. That organisation was well known for extracting statements from the suspects by using such methods as torture, sleep depravation, beatings and the threat of deportation to Siberia, not only for the suspects, but also for their families.

Most of the accused recalled their "confessions" in front of the court. This was not only an act of self-defence. It was also a sign of bravery. After all, the accused were immediately returned to the "tender, loving care" of secret police officers, who had tortured the confessions out of them in the first place. Here I would like to remind, that prof. Gross's main witness was one of the functionaries in that apparatus. The confessions were in accordance with a preordained scenario, unofficially promoted by the Communist leadership who promoted the idea that Polish society was "fascist" and "reactionary", what was supposed to create an explanation for the repressive regime and an excuse for the West inaction.

Yet, it would appear that such facts have no meaning for Prof. Gross, because throughout his book he extensively uses the testimonies of Karol Bardon, originally sentenced to the death penalty, which was commuted to a 15 years prison sentence. Any man subjected to such circumstances would tell anything that the interrogating officer wants him to say, simply to survive. What sort of pressure did the interrogating officers exert on him?

Testimonies and confessions obtained by such methods wouldn't be admissible in any court of law in any democratic country.

When on the subject of the witness testimonies and methodology that a historian should use in analysing his sources and then disseminating his findings, I would like to mention the statement that Prof. Gross himself made in the book "Neighbours":

"As far as the craft of the historian who deals with the era of the gas ovens is concerned, I think we must radically alter our attitude toward the sources. Our initial attitude toward each testimony of near victims of the Holocaust should change from the inquisitive to the affirmative."

This is a startling statement because it would be practically tantamount to abandoning the scholarly standard.

In each instance, if possible, historians must attempt to verify the sources, testimonies, recollections and memoirs against other documents. A history scholar needs to apply a rigorous litmus test to each testimony by checking it against other witness account and contemporary documents: Jewish, German, Polish, and Soviet. Finally, he has to divide recollections into first- and second-hand observations and classify their reliability accordingly.

The lack of scientific honesty on the part of prof. Gross, has been commented on by numerous historians, among others by Dr. Slawomir Radon, chairman of the College of IPN (Polish National Remembrance Institute) conducting the present investigation headed by the public prosecutor Radoslaw Ignatiew. They accuse prof. Gross of drawing premature conclusions without a solid research of Polish and German archives and following up all possible leads.

Unfortunately, Prof. Gross doesn't adhere to such standards in his book. That's why "Neighbors" should be classified as a literary work and not as historical research, ergo not factual in every aspect.

Chris Janiewicz

Despite the attempt to manipulate the record, this book is of such historical and social importance it will endure. There are two myths--One that the Poles did nothing to protect their Jewish neighbors and another that they did not collaborate with the Germans. No nation has more trees on the Avenue of the Just at Yad Vashem and no other nation has the need for antisemitism that Poland has exhibited. Nothing is simple and the impact of this book on the national character of Poland will be felt as the struggle to come to grips with the past continues into the future

OK, this book informs about the massacres of Jews in eastern Poland once Germany invaded. It describes the extremes the populations went to in ridding their villages of their Jewry.
Thus, the portrayals are obvious: Germans - they ordered it but didn't actively take part in it, so they're semi-innocent, semi-guilty; Jews - they were slaughtered, so they're innocent victims; Poles - they did the killing so they're heartless monsters.

I'm Polish and people may claim I'm biased.
But I've done a lot of reading about the topic of World War II Poland.
Now, I'm in no way condoning the massacres that occurred at places like Jedwabne. Those that participated in the slaughter are a huge black mark on Polish people. But they in no way represent all Polish people.

The context of the situation that befell the Jews in eastern Poland was this: When 2 years earlier, in September of 1939, the Soviets crossed the border and joined Germany in the partition of Poland, the Ukrainian, Byelorussian, and Jewish ethnic minorities in eastern Poland were largely ecstatic since they never really wanted to be part of Poland. Of course the question comes to mind "why would they want to be part of the Soviet Union when in areas like Soviet Ukraine and Soviet Byelorussia, there was constant starvation and repression on large scales during Stalin's reign even before the war?" Well, those minorities living in eastern Poland were fed by Communist propaganda that life would be so much better for them if they were rid of the Polish "nobles" and joined with the Soviet Union. The Communists in eastern Poland that had orders from Moscow did not tell about the starvations and repressions. Thus, when the Soviets finally did enter these territories, the minorities were welcoming them, according to some accounts, in cities they tore down Polish flags, ripped them in half, and hung the red portion to mimic the communist flag of the USSR. As some Polish troops tried to flee southeast into Romania, when some of the minority groups encountered groups of soldiers, they overwhelmed them and disarmed them. When the Soviets began deporting the Polish population to Siberia and Kazakhstan, many people of the minority groups collaborated with the NKVD agents in listing the intelligentsia and other potential targets, and denounced the Poles to the NKVD to deport them. Granted, the Jews themselves also would come to suffer under Soviet rule as well, but it was many of them and the Byelorussians and Ukrainians that denounced Poles to be deported. It was them that cheered and celebrated the arrival of the Red Army.
Thus, the remaining Polish population regarded them all as traitors, even though not ALL of them collaborated with the Soviets. This universal condemnation was wrong, but it is the context for the massacre at Jedwabne and other such places in eastern Poland. When the Germans invaded these areas, the Jews were no longer under "Soviet government protection" and Poles were no longer the bottom rung of society over there. Thus, when Germans encouraged and endorsed elimination of the local Jews, the Poles that were not deported in late-1939 and early-1940 had the perfect opportunity to vent their anger and exact revenge.
This was the contextual situation in eastern Poland. There particularly, the relationship in the inter-war years between Pole and Jew was tense because of the proximity of the Soviet Union which propagated that they would be better off without Polish rule.

Note that there were no such events of Poles massacring Jews in western Poland and central Poland. Why? Because the central-Polish and western-Polish Jews didn't buy the Soviet propaganda of life being better without Poland. In western Poland (incorporated into Germany) and central Poland (made into the General Government, under virtually complete German rule since there were not enough Poles collaborating to create a stable Polish puppet state) the Poles and Jews shared the same fate right from the start - elimination.

So this in no way represents ALL Poles. Just as not ALL Jews collaborated with the Soviets during the Soviet annexation and deportation of Poles. Just as not ALL Germans were Nazis or aware of the mass murder.
I personally am outraged that anyone here would say that it shows how racist Polish people are and how deceitful Poles are in manipulating the world into thinking that Poland was always the victim and never the wrongdoer.
If anyone would make these generalizations about an American - that ALL Americans are stupid, or racist, or any other bunch of negative characteristics - there would be international outrage. If anyone would say all Russians are hardcore Communists or all Germans are hardcore Nazis, there would be international outrage. But yet it's completely OK to make these generalizations about Poles or any other ethnicity that isn't a major world power just because they're living in a small country?

People have to recognize that calling EVERYONE in an ethnic group a racist or any other kind of insult, IS racism.

This book would be so much better if it actually presented the context of the situation rather than just the situation. In the form it is currently, it's just the same as drawing conclusions from one sentence of an entire page-long essay without looking at the rest of the essay.

As a Catholic Pole, I must apologize for the embarassing ignorance and arrogance of my fellow countrymen, apparently so many of them antisemitic, who can't stand to hear anything but the usual story of the martyr nation. Real Poles, those in Poland, are better able to confront their past than ethnic Poles in this country. This is an excellent book, its findings cannot be denied, and even the Polish government now acknowledges this.

"Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne,
Poland" is a controversial book whose reputation suffers the more
independent research is done on it. Gross' number of 1600 victims has been reduced to 400 or less, as the mass graves were investigated by authorities with Rabbis standing by.

(In comparison 3,000,000 Polish-Jews were killed in the rest of Poland by Nazis. Notably also 2,000,000 (half by Soviets) non-Jewish Poles died at the same time. How many at the hands of the hundreds of (well documented) Jewish Commissars? Probably many times more than 400.)

By his own admission in recent interviews; Gross concludes that his exploration of the evidence was "incomplete", as the presence of German soldiers everywhere was brought out by witnesses some from as far away as Israel. What was the purpose of this book - one could speculate - self hatred?

It's a narrowly (amateurishly) researched book, long on drama short on verity. Many exist significantly more broadly based.

On a Summer day in 1941 in the small town of Jedwabne Poland another tale of the holocaust was told. This one however, was not produced solely by the acts of the antisemitic Germans, but by the town's Polish neighbors. It was on this frightful day that one half of the Polish town murdered the other half.
This historical novel is compiled by author Jann Gross. To truly understand what exactly happened on that horrible day in July 1941, Gross pieces together eyewitness accounts and other evidence into an encapsulating horror story. His focus on Jewish-Polish relations opens the readers mind to truths not yet perceived or dwelled upon simply because no one would think it possible. How the small town of approximately 3,200 people could be so influenced by the Nazis totalitarian rule and murder the other half of their town, and to do so by their own will.
The manner in which these assaults were carried out makes the story that much more difficult to comprehend. To think that 1,600 Jewish, men, women and children were murdered by being drowned, gutted, clubbed and mass burned in their neighbor's barn by those they shared conversations with every day and knew well. These innocent people were murdered by their neighbors and this book illustrates how and why.
A National Book Award nonfiction nominee. Jann Gross's Neighbors succeeds to enlighten the reader into another side of the horror witnessed and dispensed onto the Jews of Europe during the second World War. Not only is it a riveting story, but the style in which Gross presents it makes it quite easy for all, young or old, to read and gain a new view of one of the worst catastrophes known to this world.

The claims of this book must be neither blindly accepted (as a host of TV programs have done) nor blindly rejected. Having read it, I have also interviewed some near-witnesses living in the Chicago area (they lived several kilometers away from Jedwabne). While none of them are direct eyewitnesses to the Jews being pushed into the local barn and burned there, neither are any of Gross' "witnesses", one of whom was a Communist with an obvious axe to grind. This itself says something about the quality of Gross' book! My sources of indirect information are UNANIMOUS in their immediate word-of-mouth reports implicating the Germans, and NOT the local Poles, as the killers of Jedwabne's Jews. These sources also report the local Poles being FORCED to participate in the roundup of Jews. So either all of my sources of information are lying, or Gross' tendacious sources are lying. Which is it? Now, as a Polish-American, I have no problem admitting Poles' faults if they are true, but will NEVER accept a false or questionable accusation as truth. I urge the same to the professional Polonophobes, as well as those Poles (including those in the present government, and even in the investigating commission) who are evidently more interested in political correctness than in arrival at the truth. I also urge that the FULL story be told. Gross' denials to the contrary, the Jewish collaboration with the Soviet Communists was large, and certainly existed as a major provocation in Polish-Jewish relations then. BOTH sides were capable of resorting to murder: Hundreds of Polish civilians, including women and children, were killed by bands of Jews in the villages of Naliboki and Koniuchy. Perhaps it is no surprise that Gross fails to discuss these facts at all. Let us hear only the truth and the full truth of these tragic events which affected both Poles as well as Jews.

Read this book, but look at all the available documentary evidence that is also available. Bear in mind that J.T G's main witness was a member of the Stalin's Gestapo (UB) in communist occupied Poland at the time of the trial against the Poles that were supposed to have been involved. His secound main witness turned out not to be an eye-witness at all, but had been in the Soviet Union under arrest for theft. Himmler was in Bialystok near Jedwabne, on July 1st he issued Himmler order no2- instigate actions against the Jewish population and make them appear as if they are local initiatives. If everybody thinks the Poles did it, maybe that is what everyone was intended to think. No explanation has been given by J.T.G. of the spent German cartridge cases littered around the area of the barn entrance. The main victims of communist and nazi at the outset of the war were Catholic Poles. By the time of the invasion of the Soviet Union 1.6 million had been deported from Poland's eastern territories and half were already dead. These people were being deported from areas around Jedwabne and all across Poland's eastern borderlands. Add to this the tens of thousands of Poles killed by the invading Germans and the tens of thousands that were being arrested and sent to concentration camps in western Poland you may begin to see a picture, if you want to, of a Poland that J.T.G will not show you. The shocking picture that J.T.G. conjures up for readers of Poles this case 'helping' nazis, takes readers eyes off the bigger picture in eastern (and western ) occupied Poland at this time which even J.T.G. wrote about in his earlier books. That some Jews collaborated with the Soviets. Two million Poles were murdered by the communists and the country only regained its freedom 10 years ago. Despite this the ordinairy people never accepted the values that the communists tried to impose. There is little written about their sacrifices. Read the book, but look at the bigger picture to get a better understanding.

In Neighbors, Jan Gross tells the story of a summer day when "half the population of a small East European town murdered the other half" (7). The author, a Polish Jew who now teaches at Princeton, gives special attention to the question of "who did what in the town of Jedwabne [Poland] on July 10, 1941, and at whose behest" (10).

As the subtitle intimates, the evidence points to a shocking conclusion. Those who tortured and slaughtered nearly all of the 1,600 Jews of Jedwabne were not the soldiers of the recently-arrived German army. They were, instead, the Polish residents of the town, the long-time neighbors of the victims.

The report of the trial of 22 people accused in 1949 as perpetrators has every
appearance of being perfunctory and hastily done. By contrast, the 1945 testimony of Szmul Wasersztajn--one of only seven Jewish survivors of the massacre--provides many details of the hellish events that took place in Jadwebne in late June and early July of 1941. Gross insists that the first-person accounts of Waserztajn and others must be taken seriously. The speakers, he points out, have few if any reasons to lie. Their stories corroborate one another and match up well with what the people of the region still say about that time.

Of course, the specific events described in the book took place within a set of
contexts. The author is careful to mention and discuss them as well. The totalitarian regimes of Stalin and Hitler made every effort to exploit any sort of division or resentment. In that world, says Gross, a person living in a place like Jedwabne, completely disoriented by the events of the Second World War,

"could simultaneously endear himself to the new rulers, derive material benefits from his actions (it stands to reason that active pogrom participants had first pick in the division of leftover Jewish property), and go along with local peasants' traditional animosity towards the Jews."

Gross goes on to say that if

"we add to this mix encouragement by the Nazis and an easily whipped-up sense that one was settling scores with the `Judeo-commune' for indignities suffered under the Soviet occupation--then who could resist such a potent, devilish mixture?" (162).

That someone of his background could make such an observation indicates that in this book we have not only the work of a fine historian. We also have the mature and thoughtful reflections of someone who has managed to tell about a crooked world in a remarkably straightforward way.