If studying the historical method has taught me anything, it is that there are multiple ways of telling a story. The way in which an event is presented depends on how the historian wishes to present the event. Jan Gross, in his controversial and highly influential book Neighbors, decides to present the killing of Jews by their Polish neighbors during the Holocaust in a factual light, whereas Pawel Pawlikoski decided to portray a more personal version of this atrocity in his film Ida. Although the two accounts discuss the same topic, one focuses on the event itself while the other focuses on the potential consequences the event could have had for individuals. Despite the two different approaches, both are necessary for study if one wants a full grasp of the horrors of the pogroms in Poland during the Holocaust.
Gross, in Neighbors, raises the argument that the Polish, not German Nazis, were the ones who massacred 1,600 Jews in the Polish town of Jedwabne on July 10, 1941. He provides chilling eyewitness accounts, court records, and other forms of evidence to expose the brutal killings of these people. Gross goes into disturbing detail when he describes Jews being beaten, humiliated, and eventually herded into a barn and burned to death. While his bluntness in describing the killings makes the book hard to stomach for those with good consciences, he does not describe in-depth any singular victim, but rather, explains the fates of multiple Jews who died that day. While this technique of focusing on the event as a whole and describing multiple victims rather than just one creates a vivid image of the tragedy, it does not allow the reader to form a deep connection with any singular person who suffered from the pogrom.
Ida enters the discussion of the Polish killings of Jews in a completely different manner. The movie centers on a young nun who, upon learning that she is a Jew, follows her aunt to the town where her parents died, and slowly learns the details of their deaths. In addition to learning how Ida’s parents and cousin were violently killed by the son of the man who was protecting them, we also see how the trip affected her and her aunt, Wanda. Wanda’s distress over the loss of her sister and son, as well as her disappointment with Ida’s becoming a nun rather than returning to her old identity, drives her to commit suicide. Ida, meanwhile, begins to lose her Christian faith and experiments with her aunt’s promiscuous lifestyle before she is able to go back to the convent. The audience grows to pity Ida and Wanda, and forms an emotional connection with them. However, the movie leaves out many of the historical facts surrounding the Holocaust and the pogroms.
The stark differences between Neighbors and Ida make them perfect complements to each other, especially for people studying the pogroms of Poland. In order to truly grasp the importance of a historical event, it is not enough to just know the facts: one has to understand the consequences of such events, on both grand and small scales. If people were unable to form any emotional attachments to a historical tragedy, then nothing would be learned from it: people would ignore the travesty and possibly allow it to happen again. However, one also cannot ignore facts, since they are important in understanding how and why something happened, which will allow posterity to avoid repeating any of the same mistakes.