Neighbours: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland [Paperback]

A good book to shake up the history genre with, though I disagree with its main conclusion. The book "Neighbours" by Jan Tomasz Gross accuses 1600 Poles of the town of Jewdwabne of, one day in July 1941 turning on their Jewish neighbours and in an outbreak of anti-Semtism murdering 1600 of their Jewish neighbours with no prompting by the occupying Germans. The author blames "traditional Polish Anti-Semitism". The main source for Gross's work is a person who was in the area at the time, but not a witness to the events. The fact that his statements were extracted from suspects by torture or that this person may have had a political agenda in presenting his own version of events, did not seem to bother the author.

Marek Chodakiewicz's work, "The Massacre in Jedwabne" .The Massacre in Jedwabne, July 10, 1941: Before, During, After, contains interviews with all known survivors of the event and all agree to the presence and an involvement of the German military in the town at the time of the massacre. All also agree on the presence of a limited number of Poles being coerced, some with threats, to take part in rounding up Jewish victims. None of these testimonies was used by Gross or even considered.

Marek Chodakiewicz's account takes a strictly academically rigourous approach, analysing all the available documents and records and using all these to construct a plausible account of what happened. Most of the criticism levelled at "Neighbours" is that this rigour is missing and Gross has concentrated on a few accounts which fit a certain viewpoint. More accurate research has shown the number of Jewish victims to number about 300, while the number of Polish participants to number 40-90.Himmler Order No.1 issued just after the outbreak of the German attack on the Soviet Union called for clandestine attacks against Jews to be made to appear as local initiatives. Himmler was in Bialystock when he issued this order, not far from Jedwabne. This order is not considered by Gross either.

This act was not spontaneous as there was no massacre of Jews when the Germans first entered Jedwabne, which would have been the most chaotic time. This is the time when a momentary political vaccum would have existed and the one when, by logic, any "score settling" would have taken place. In fact there was widespread "score settling" in the area with the majority of the victims being Poles. The massacre in Jedwabne took place some weeks later at a time when a number of similar incidences occured.

Some evidence of this massacre points to an action by the Nazi Einsatzgruppen which had attempted on this occasion to make use of limited local help, or as some witness have stated, to coerce locals - according to a Himmler order that stated that there should be an attempt to initiate local actions. As this was not repeated on any significant scale it would be safe to infer that it had been unsuccessful and far from being willing accomplices Poles were decidedly not willing to aid the Nazis in their murderous plans.

The Polish point of view is treated poorly. Few people have an understanding of the complex issues (including the catastrophic effect of conflict with Communism for 80 years on Poland) involved in recent East European history and still less bother to find out and look past the "official line" that they are spoon fed. There is no realisation of the conflict between minorities in Poland or how they took advantage of Soviet and Nazi invasions to turn on and murder or persecute Poles. The number of Poles murdered by members of the Polish minorities may number as much 300,000. Inter-ethnic strife is covered in detail in Tadeusz Piotrowski's Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918-1947. This book covers the behaviour and inter-action of Poland's minorities before during and after WW2 in detail.

The fact that the genocide of 3 million Poles (virtually all Catholic) by the Soviets, many of whom were family members of the Poles that served under British command in WW2, such as the Battle of Britain, Monte Cassino and The Desert War is not covered by the 1991 British War Crimes Act should be of serious concern. This has blocked any Polish attempts at justice in this country. I won't mention the fact that the Poles fate at the hands of the Soviets was covered up after the war.

The destruction of the Jewish community of Jedwabne has been a disturbing event in retrospect: innumerable Poles had participated in the deportation and elimination of the Jews in this small Polish town. Apart from moral issues, similar to pro-Antonescu Romanians who never waited for Hitler's henchmen to show up, there are serious problems concerning antisemitism and utilitarian opportunism in Jedwabne. Without giving away Gross' revelations, the book is a serious mindcracker for genocide scholars: when and why does a neighboring bystander community become a perpetrator, or a rescuer?

Jan Gross does not answer this disturbing question, but he DOES incite further research on this topic: why did some Hutus destroy their Tutsi neighbors? Why did Kurdish tribes participate in robbing and killing Armenians? Why didn't Bosnian Serbs or Croats hesitate to maltreat, rob and kill Bosnian Muslims?

The first step to answering these questions lies in reading Jan Gross' excellent study, "Neighbours".

I bought this book after having seen the play "Our Class" by Tadeusz Slobodzianek at the National Theatre. I went to the theatre with the standard expectations of anyone acquainted with holocaust history, i.e. that the play was about how the Jewish children who were all friends of their Catholic classmates, would end up dead.

As if that were not shocking enough, the play opened up a perspective which was even more shocking. It was based on the horrendous events researched and related in this book. The book is a difficult read, but it is very important for it to be read. By now, more than 60 years after the original event, unravelling the story was an extremely demanding task. Jan. T. Gross had to piece it together and at the same time cut through the many biases that overlaid it as a result of Poland's extremely complex and turbulent history.

I am not surprised that some of the Amazon reviewers are so hostile to Jan.T. Gross' account. Denial of responsibility is a standard response when favourite and widely held assumptions are challenged. A characteristic example of that response was the banning in France of Marcel Ophüls' documentary: "The Sorrow and the Pity". The Turkish government buried Franz Werfel's account of the genocide perpetrated against their Armenian population so successfully that it manages to deny it to this day. And so denial goes on, right now, in our time.

I do accept that the Poles have drawn a particularly short straw, having been mangled between the two totalitarian monsters of the 20th century. That makes it even more difficult for them to see themselves not only as victims but as perpetrators as well.

Even if this book is not likely to be widely read, it is important that the story has been told.