Hello everyone,
Just a note that, because we have an essay due this week, you will not have to write up a blog post. See you tomorrow!
CJB
Category: Uncategorized (Page 1 of 3)
Although Jan Gross’ Neighbors and Pawlikowski’s Ida both speak to similar events surrounding the destruction and murder of Jewish communities perpetrated by Christian Poles during WWII, I beleive that Ida politicizes the issue in a way that Jan Gross purposely avoided in order to retain academic objectivity. The intent of Neighbors was to bring light to the fact that it was indeed communities of Christian Poles that had carried out town massacres of entire Jewish populations (sometimes) even before the Nazis had arrived to lay territorial claims after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and to make sure that Poland was able to constructively deal with its complicit past in a legitimate way. Ida, on the other hand, seems more concerned with the depth that religion is integrated into Polish culture and naming specific persons responsible and holding them accountable on an individual and societal level.
Ida herself is Jewish and even after we follow her during a “coming of age” style narrative she still chooses to remain in the nunnery. At one point in the film, Wanda tells Ida that her vows will mean nothing if she has never sinned and therefore nothing to repent. I believe that this line could have meant to implicate the Poles who carried out the massacres and sought protection in their religious communities and the unwillingness to admit these crimes. Wanda and Ida also personally seek out the family that was responsible for the death of Ida’s parents and brother in order to come to terms with their loss. Wanda was also a federal judge for the Soviet regime after the war and eventually kills herself. The film is multifaceted and speaks to many political and social dimensions that the book doesn’t although I believe part of Gross’ intention was to foster discussion in Poland about the events that took place and that this film is one of the responses.
Ida and Neighbors are arguably both complimentary and stand alone pieces. As compliments of each other, Ida’s story continues the timeline of events initiated in the story told in Neighbors. While Neighbors directly, and sometimes gruesomely educates readers of the physical horrors and torture that Jewish population at Jedwabne experienced, Ida follows up on the story and reveals to viewers that event’s aftermath did not end when the flames died out or last cries of victims’ agony were heard. By the end of the film, Ida is caught between two worlds; conflicted between a life with and without her nun’s habit. She staggers between two identities, one she once recognized without question, and other she never before contemplated. Neighbors’ Poles are arguably morphed to inflictors of violence that they most likely once did not want to be. Ida’s Feliks, once a murderous Pole, lives a relatively hidden and quiet life, but when Wanda, Ida’s aunt, seeks him out and reminds him of his violent past, he crumbles as well. Both Ida and Neighbors tell stories of individuals’ psychological and physical torment surrounding the events and aftermath of 1940s Poland.
Although Ida’s story focuses on the turmoil that ancestors of Jewish lost loved ones in World War II face, Ida’s personal story and journey throughout the film, involves both an identity epiphany and crisis. Anna, happily soon to be Catholic nun, suddenly becomes Ida a Jewish survivor of Polish violence in the Second World War. Naively happy in the convent, Ida’s world is suddenly shaken and stirred by her alcoholic, chain smoking aunt Wanda; a once famous prosecutor. After Wanda’s death, Ida takes pause and removes her nun’s habit for a night, experiencing what life would be like without a vow to God, but a vow to a husband and family (her epiphany that happiness does not have to come from a lifelong commitment to God). However, in the end, Ida dons the habit once again, but is no longer the same. Now caught between religious and secular, devout and sinful, Catholic and Jewish, Ida walks jarringly towards an unsatisfying life, cut off from the outside world and all the pain, but also love that it has to offer. Ida is between black and white, one life or the other, but are either of those lives as simple as black or white? What happens if to those that have experienced both worlds, like Ida; how are they went to chose one without ever being reminded of or tempted by the other?
I think that Ida and Neighbors, while complimentary, and certainly related, tell different stories,
Ida providing a human aspect that Neighbors lacks. The film creates a face and a story for the staggering statistics and numbers that make up the backbone of Gross’ book. While Neighbors is compelling in its own right, with snippets of personal anecdotes and half-included tales of a larger story, Ida provides the story the book presents evidence for. The film fills in the lacuna; Ida’s quest for her family’s history and her own story acts similar to my own quest for details while reading Neighbors. The book is wonderful in that it constructs a case with supporting evidence and testimony. However, the film follows a continuous storyline focused on one character, giving it a resolution I simply did not find in the book.
While I enjoyed the book (as much as a book about a massacre can be enjoyed), I found it difficult to wrap my head around. How could ordinary people, much like you or I, orchestrate the murder or an entire village of people, of their neighbors? Although Ida did not answer this question for me, it did provide me with a face to focus on, to represent a larger group. While it is hard to visualize the perpetrators of this violence, I found it similarly difficult to imagine the victims. Just as I could easily be the murderer, I could also be the murdered. In a situation so far removed from anything I have experienced, it is impossible to know which side I would stand on. I like to imagine I would stand on the side of justice and humanity, heroically saving the Jews, but history has proven this unlikely. It is far more plausible that I would either be killed, if I was Jewish, or partake in the massacre- although as a woman, my chances at simply being a bystander are higher (however, this is horrible in its own right).
I think the lesson here is that the book and the film need to be taken together. The book provides the hard knowledge, an accurate account of what happened, while the movie makes the massacre more relatable. Together, I questioned my role in history- who I would be if caught in a similar scenario. Neighbors made me curious for more information, while Ida made me question myself.
Reflection by Caly McCarthy
In large part I see Neighbors and Ida as compliments to the same story, just focusing on different scales. In this sense, they do tell different stories, but they trend in the same direction; Poles committed heinous crimes against their Jewish neighbors without acknowledgement from the wider world.
Gross challenges the victim status of Poland when he asserts that individual citizens willfully participated in the pogrom against the Jews of Jedwabne. This narrative lent itself to a national identity crisis as more and more towns were shown to mirror the pattern of Jedwabne, and the reality became known that neighbors killed neighbors, not under the threat of totalitarian leaders, but by their own volition.
Ida, on the other hand, examines the story of one family. It surveys the legacy of pain caused by the mass murder of Jews, as experienced as an affront to personal identity. On the eve of taking her vows to become a Catholic nun, Ida learns that she is Jewish, and that her family had been killed by its neighbors for their religious identity.
One apparent difference between Neighbors and Ida was the reticence for locals to speak out regarding what they witnessed/participated in. According to Gross, there was a wide-spread awareness in Poland about citizen-led pogroms, even if it was not widely known outside Polish borders. Gross identifies a host of valuable sources that attest to this, including: Agnieszka Arnold’s documentary, Where Is My Older Brother Cain?, a memorial book of Jedwabne Jews, and records from court proceedings. In Ida, however, residents were very reluctant to even acknowledge that they knew Ida’s family, let along that they had harmed them. Perhaps this is because Ida and her aunt posed a threat to them? How, though, could they be more threatening than a court of law?
Gaddis proposed several different ways to view history, whether it is the recognition that there is never a single independent variable in historical study, or a single cause of a war or catastrophe, social movement or triumph in history. The rule of thumb not to look to the future to understand history, or use history to definitively predict the future is another way we can “see” history.
Gaddis’ use of Friedrich’s painting, The Wanderer above a Sea of Fog, and Shakespeare In Love’s Viola are the metaphors he uses to explain historical study that stood out the most to me. Interpreting a piece of artwork, or predicting what lies in someone’s future relies on the same strategies as when analyzing a historical artifact. You can ask, what is the context? Why did the creator choice to create the piece that they did? What has the piece come to symbolize? All of it is a bit of a guessing game, with more than one answer. However, artistic interpretation, rather than scientific conclusion is what Gaddis suggests is the sound way to analyze history. And if history is meant to be approached with interpretation rather than by conclusion, than “seeing like a historian” means that there must be several different lenses to aid vision. For, no two historians are going to see exactly alike, just like one viewer may be watching Viola walk towards her future, or the wanderer brace for what is to come, another may be see her in the past, or the wanderer survey one last time, the land he has already conquered.
As someone who is drawn to art more than science, I find Gaddis’ use of art as metaphors particularly useful as an approach to my own analysis and study of history. I have noticed that during the past several weeks working with an Dickinson Archives collection that I have used a similar interpretative approach without realizing it until now, as I reflect on Gaddis’ thoughts.
Before reading Gaddis’ text, I had a rather linear way of thinking about history. When learning history in middle school and high school, teachers always told students that one event, X, was the cause of Y, which eventually led to Z. In other words, I was always taught that history had one, “right” answer.
Gaddis took this teaching and flipped it on its head. He mentions the importance of multiple causality in history, which I had never even heard before. Gaddis claims that multiple factors can be responsible for an event occurring. Maybe X was partially responsible for Y, but what if U also played a part? Maybe a third factor, T, also played an important role? When we consider multiple causality, the equation becomes much more complicated.
But this allows for greater freedom for historians. Instead of taking the progression of history for granted, historians can research different events, form opinions, and craft arguments. Going back to the math analogy I started in the previous two paragraphs, a historian can theoretically argue that U was more influential in the occurrence of Y than either X or T, and as long as that historian has sufficient evidence to support their argument, they can be considered “correct.” Likewise, another historian can propose another argument, and say that T was the most influential factor that resulted in Y, and they would also be correct, granted again, that they had enough evidence to support their argument.
Gaddis’ argument made me very happy as a history student. The idea of multiple causality makes history a much more entertaining subject than people may initially be led to believe. It is not just memorizing facts: it is a conversation, one that requires critical thinking and close attention to the subject one is studying.
Hello everyone,
For this week, we have continued to read Gaddis’ intriguing discussion of historical method. He ends our reading for this week with a vision of “seeing like an historian.” What do you think has been the most interesting or insightful part of Gaddis text on “seeing like an historian,” and why do you think that it is so important?
To be perfectly honest, my approach for tackling a research project is scatterbrained at best. When I have an idea for the topic I intend to research, I will immediately go to the library and search the catalog for relevant books and utilize the online databases to find scholarly articles. This type of research will occupy the majority of my time as I often feel the need to try and fully understand my area of study before I feel confident enough to begin the writing process. This step is often supplemented with excessive Googling to fill in any gaps.
The Methods and Skills of History workbook has certainly made me more aware of my own biases, author biases, and my reliance on secondary sources. I think it is rather easy to pick up an impressive looking book or scholarly article and blindly trust that what they are saying is true. Before this year I had also never visited the Dickinson College Archives. This class and the workbook has helped me to reevaluate and relearn the approach to scholarly research by emphasizing primary sources, independent original research, and critical thinking.
When I write research papers I begin with trying to find out as much background information as possible. Like many other people I just use google and find out the basics. After I think I have a good sense of the material I then try to find out what the argument or problem is and find out both sides. This helps me create an argument of my own. After this I tend to then go to class notes because this reveals exactly what the professor finds important and steers me in the right direction. I then find my main points. This is the hardest part, because this will be the main chunk of my paper and choosing wrong can cause a paper to stink. Like I said I go back to class notes and then check sources to see what has the most material. This whole process is tricky and one mistake can cause you to have to go back to the beginning.
While reading Methods and Skills I realized a huge mistake I make while writing papers: I tend to use arguments and make them facts. I should know that even when I make an argument I take the facts I need and use them to my advantage, even if it stretches out the actual point. While researching I need to find more primary sources because those can’t be argued with and that is where a huge improvement can be made in my writing.