Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz: An Essay in Historical Interpretation [Hardcover]

The invasion of Poland by Germany and Russia in September of 1939 was an unprovoked partition of the country. It is understood that the Poles were not pleased by the Russian occupation, but it may be thought that the Russian occupation was a minor annoyance compared to the occupation by the Germans. In an earlier book Revolution from Abroad written in his pre-postmodern days, when Gross was an associate professor at Emory, Gross carefully and with excellent documentation shows how wrong this notion was. He wrote (Revolution from Abroad, Princeton Univ. Press, 1st ed., p. 229):

"These very conservative estimates show that the Soviets killed or drove to their deaths three or four times as many people as the Nazis from a population half the size of that under German jurisdiction. This comparison holds for the first two years of the Second World War, the period before the Nazis began systematic mass annihilation of the Jewish population."

Gross shows that, for Polish Catholics, the Soviets were even worse, indeed much worse than the brutal Nazis. Essentially all the Polish professional and semiprofessional classes (doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, managers, foremen, farmers with holding beyond a few acres, etc.) were rounded up by the Soviets and then either killed immediately or retained in prisons for shipments to slave labor camps in Siberia and Central Asia. Prison conditions were hellish, worse than those in the Nazi concentration camps. Gross writes (Revolution from Abroad, p. 161): "In Lwów, twenty-eight people living in a 11.5 sq. m cell relied on the geometrical skills of a gifted high school student who fitted them most ingeniously by size into an intricate pattern." Sanitary conditions were appalling, with inmates frequently forced to urinate and defecate on the floors of the cells.

What was the situation with the Jews in the lands occupied by the Soviets and what was their attitude to the occupiers? Gross writes (Revolution from Abroad, p. 32):

"What Poles and Ukrainians report, often with biting irony, the Jews do not deny: 'Jews greeted the Soviet army with joy. The youth was spending days and evenings with the soldiers. . . Jews received incoming Russians enthusiastically, they [the Russians] also trusted them [the Jews].'"

Again, Gross writes (Revolution from Abroad, p. 34, quoting Celina Koninska):

"It is hard to find words to describe the feeling -- this waiting and this happiness. We wondered how to express ourselves -- to throw flowers? To sing? To organize a demonstration? How to show our great joy? I think the Jews awaiting the Messiah will feel, when he finally comes, the way we felt. "

These warm receptions by Jews for the Soviets in eastern Poland were in September of 1939, when there were no Germans in sight. The Jews were rejoicing over the occupation of eastern Poland by the Russians. To Polish Catholics, this was simply treason, analogous to the occasional warm receptions in western Poland of the Germans by some Volksdeutsche.

Now, it is undeniable that in the German-occupied portion of Poland where the situation of the Jews was worse than that of the Catholics, many Polish families hid Jews from the Nazi occupiers. It is a matter of record that Poles are listed at Yad Vashem numerically first amongst the righteous Gentiles for risking their lives and those of their families for sheltering Jews from the Nazis. So, it is fair to ask the question, "When did Jews use their favored position in Soviet occupied eastern Poland to shelter Polish Catholics from the NKVD?" This reviewer regrets to say that he cannot find any instances of such assistance.

Up to the day (June 22, 1941) when Hitler broke his deal with Stalin and invaded Soviet-occupied Poland, Gross (Revolution from Abroad p. 194) estimates that 1.25 million people were transported into the Soviet Union from eastern Poland. The ghastly NKVD prisons in Poland were generally used as holding cells for Poles awaiting execution or prison train space for transportation to the gulags. When the Germans attacked the Soviets on June 22, 1941, the NKVD killed or moved to the east 150,000 prisoners from these holding cells. In the Brygidki prison in Lwów, on June 22, 1941, the NKVD killed almost all of the 13,000 inmates. (Revolution from Abroad, p. 179). This was recorded by Gross as a "massacre" rather than a pogrom.

After the Nazis occupied western Poland in 1939, they encouraged anti-Semitic acts by the Poles, including pogroms. The Germans had only the most minimal success. Polish Catholics were not inclined to participate in Nazi murders. Moreover, the Polish underground punished betrayal of Jews to the Nazis by death. In Fear, Gross eschews the careful data based arguments he gave in his earlier book Revolution from Abroad. What is substituted is the kind of postmodern sermonizing that appeals to Gross's anti-Polish, anti-Catholic choir.

I have been disturbed to read the acclaim for this book. I'd like to use someone else's words to give different perspective (Mark Kohan review): Calling post-war Poles property-grabbing murderers is racist. Were there Poles who resented Jews for what the Nazis had done to their country? Certainly. Does that make all Poles anti-Semitic? Certainly not. Were there Poles who, at the cost of their own lives, gave Jews food and shelter? Certainly. Does that make all Poles heroes? Certainly not. Why is blame not placed squarely on the occupying communist authorities, who--wishing to establish complete control over Poland--were the instigators of post-war pogroms? Gross and his ilk--writing as if obliged to deface Poland--refuse to see the truth, which is neither black, nor white, but a depressing gray." I have read enough history books to know that a book that villifies a whole nation has a squeued vision of what really happened.

In his new book, "Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz" (Random House), Jan T. Gross advances a novel thesis: "it was widespread collusion in the Nazi-driven plunder, spoliation, and eventual murder of the Jews that generated Polish anti-Semitism after the war." His case in point is the Kielce pogrom of July 4, 1946.

The Kielce pogrom was a horrific massacre; an uncontrolled mob of soldiers, policemen and civilians murdered 42 Jews. Gross devotes two chapters of his book to Kielce, but his narrative of the pogrom does not prove his thesis.

Nowhere does Gross show that the victims were former residents who had returned to Kielce to reclaim their property, or that the perpetrators held formerly Jewish possessions. It's doubtful he could: the victims had arrived from the Soviet Union, and presumably came from the eastern Polish borderlands, not Kielce.

Nor is the allegation of "widespread collusion" in plunder and spoliation substantiated. The over 20 million ethnic Poles in postwar Poland could not, as a whole or in major part, have plundered the limited amount of property the 3.3 million Jews in prewar Poland owned.

The "eventual murder" of Jews was a German crime without Polish participation, except in a few instances like Jedwabne. The Germans did not use Poles as death camp guards or SS-auxiliaries. It is illogical to claim that a postwar pogrom is proof of Polish behavior during the war.

Gross prefaces his theory with "Until someone offers an alternative explanation, we must consider that..." He makes bald assertions, with scant statistical data behind them.

Deborah Lipstadt mistakenly wrote in Publishers Weekly that a government investigation confirmed Gross's book "Neighbors" about the Jedwabne massacre. The investigation found about 400 victims, not 1,600, about 40 perpetrators, not half the town, and two other cities, not "many," with similar size massacres.