the truth about the poles

books:


	• 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
	for more information click here

Love Thy Neighbor...

As thy self. A command so profoundly ignored on July 10, 1941 when the Christian half of Jedwabne, Poland murdered their Jewish neighbors. 1,600 of them. The elderly, the young, women, men, and children, all slaughtered with unfathomable barbarity.

Why and how did such an outburst of savagery happen amongst people who had lived together for centuries? Jan Gross' cathartic book, 'Neighbors' attempts to answer this question among others. More an academic dissertation than fully realized book, Gross' work deserves the highest praise for lifting the veil from a taboo topic in Polish history.

The book centers around two central questions. How could a people as brutalized by totalitarian regimes as were the Poles, eat their own children as it were? How could a nation so victimized by foreign powers turn upon itself? Gross' work examines these pressing questions and sheds light on possible answers. Poland is a country of extreme contradictions. Nowhere in Europe did Jews have so much freedom in setting up their own communities. By the 20th century, Poland had attracted the largest Jewish community in Europe. Centers of Talmudic learning flourished in Wilno, Warsaw, Lwow and Krakow. Every village had its own Jewish artisans, craftsmen, merchants and rabbinical schools. The borderlands with the Ukraine were home to the Hasidic movement of estatic, emotion-centered piety. Why then did a pogrom of Jedwabne's scale and horror take place in a nation which had offered the Jewish people such sanctuary over the years?

Gross' convincing answer is that Polish peasant society was rife with ignorance and hatred towards their Jewish neighbors. Rightly so, Gross places the largest portion of responsibility for such prejudice at the door of the Catholic Church. For hundreds of years, priests and church officials had spoonfed their uneducated parishioners a strong dose of crude Anti-Semitism. The standard charges were the same as in other parts of Central and Eastern Europe. Jews were the unrepentant killers of Jesus, greedy usurerers who added further burdens to the already impoverished peasantry, and most livid in the rural imagination, child-killers who used the blood of Christian children in ritual. Such heady charges were hardly to be challenged by the largely unschooled peasantry. No doubt the Catholic Church stirred up such resentment for economic reasons. The concentration of wealth in the cities was largely in Jewish hands and had it been spread more evenly amongst the Christian segments of the Polish population, the Church would no doubt have welcomed the increased income from tithes and gifts.

With such a smoldering trash-heap of resentment, only a spark was needed to start an inferno. Poland had always suffered from the occasional explosion of anti-Jewish resentment. Pogroms were a shameful reality of Poland's history up until the end of World War II. Yet, Gross' study asks the painful question as to why would Polish Christians, so humiliated and ravaged by both the Hitlerian and Stalinist death machines, gladly help their tormenters to destroy their fellow citizens? To this extremely complex question, Gross offers an intriguing answer. Their country devastated and basically a slave colony for their masters, Poles during the war experienced a level of physical deprivation and psychological terror exceeded only in the case of the Jews and Gypsies, groups singled out for immediate destruction. In such an atmosphere of humililation, Poles no doubt felt like abused children searching for their own 'victim' to kick. Seething with frustration, they took the knife to their fellow sufferers. Moreover, Gross points to an even more pathetic human failing. Fear. Those Poles caught harboring Jews had a direct ticket to the gallows. Communities could face murderous reprisals if they were known to safeguard Jews or partisans. Thus, many communities fell prey to the base survival instinct and took murder into their own hands, lest they be next. Yet, had any other country in Europe experienced the same daily terror and deprivation as did the Poles, I dare to think they would have behaved much the same.

Thus, Gross' book, while scrapping a very sensitive scar in Polish collective consciousness, makes a very believable (regrettably so) point. Yes, the victim CAN and very often DOES victimize. With this insight, Gross has popped a very bloated balloon. According to its national mythology, Poland has always seen itself as the martyr nation, constantly suffering harm but never inflicting any. Jedwabne proved that this mythology had painted over some horrible truths. Despite the many slanderous attacks against him and his book, Gross' ultimate goal is not to tar and feather his homeland. On the contrary, by coming to terms with the ugly spots in their nation's past, Poles can move forward to building a more inclusive Poland. 'Neighbors' is precisely the strong kind of antidote that many European countries could use in combatting their own poisonous self-delusions.

As a book, 'Neighbors' is not particularly exceptional. Too topical and limited, 'Neighbors' skirts over issues that could have warranted a much more in-depth analysis. For instance, Gross never really addresses a crucial question. To what extent were Polish Jews integrated into Polish society, into the concept of the Polish nation? Was post WW I, independent Poland one nation of Christian and Jewish citizens or was it more an ambiguous nation-idea of two separate peoples living next to one another, but not together? Addressing these questions could have made for a more comprehensive analysis, but in the end, 'Neighbors' is simply not a five-star scholarly, nor literary work. Rather, it deserves all five stars for reaching a higher goal, that of shattering a malignant taboo, of throwing a small ray of light into a very dark room. Therefore, those who love Poland, be they of whatever ethnicity or faith, should read Jan Gross' liberating work and know that the truth CAN indeed set us free.

for more information click here

the truth about the poles

To hear them tell the story, the Poles are the Christ of the Nations, the sacrificial lamb among Prussian and Russian wolves. The truth, however, is a bit different. The Poles suffered a great deal under Nazi occupation but they will never tell you that what they suffered from most was the Nazi unwillingness to let them help in making Poland Judenfrei. The Nazis did not think the Poles, whom they regarded as inferior, were good enough to help them kill Jews. The Germans even preferred the hardly human Ukrainians and Lithuanians. The Poles actually since the mid-19th Century, and certainly since they got back their independence in 1918-19, wanted to get rid of the Jews but did not have the stomach for it. "Rent a Nazi" was their ultimate solution. It worked well.

When the Poles got their chance, as at Jedwabne, they performed admirably.

for more information click here

reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

hot

not?

What's your opinion?

Write a review and share your thoughts!

recommendations

Marquita's Booklist of Useful Books About Jews and Judaism
HIST 635 - Nationalism and Communism in Eastern Europe
Holocaust Studies, Never Forget
History of Anti-Semitism
Polish Stuff for E

search for books
community, destruction, jedwabne, jewish, neighbors, poland

Impressum / about us