The question is a difficult one, as Ida and Neighbors can be viewed as either complements or separate entities, and both answers can be argued with validity. However, it was very interesting to view the two pieces as complements. I was unable to attend the movie viewing on Sunday because I had a paper due at midnight, so I watched the movie on my own. I actually read Neighbors first, and it was hard not to see parallels. Neighbors mentions that a very small number of Jews survived the massacre, Ida can be seen as a possible life for one of the few Jews who escaped. While Ida does not directly explain how and why Ida’s parents were murdered, it does emphasize the fact that a family was killed by a trusted neighbor. Much like the killings in Neighbors, local Jews were killed not by uniformed Germans, but by young and familiar Poles.
However, it is important to acknowledge the differences, as well as the complements, from both of these stories. Ida is a hauntingly good movie, eliciting feelings of sympathy, despair, and at times, hopelessness. As noted in our Method’s book, a good movie intends to draw in an audience, and needs to keep viewers entertained, moving the plot forward, and following a general storyline that includes an exposition, rising actions, etc. While a historical account still needs to keep readers interested, it is not forced to fit a mold or plot line in the same way as a movie. There, Neighbors does appeal to emotions such as horror and outrage, it is done without the need to keep the reader entertained and in suspense in the same way as the maker of a movie. Neighbors sought to tell a forgotten and covered up horror of WWII, which was that the lives of many Polish Jews were lost not at the hands of the Nazis, but by their neighbors. The book includes quotations from depositions that describe with horrifying detail the massacre of the Jedwabne Jews. However, these accounts were often followed by describing the methods by which the sources were procured. While it is important to substantiate historical claims with evidence, this slowing down of the narrative proves to be a defining difference between Ida and Neighbors. Gross uses methodology and research to uncover an atrocity of the past. There is certainly a human aspect in history, although it is still largely based in facts. A film like Ida, however, is able to create a more relatable form of history. Rather than read scattered accounts, the viewer can follow the story of one Jew who survived, largely because she had no idea of her true identity. The power of Ida was its ability to cast a light on the personal effects felt by the war, while historical works such as Neighbors makes the creation of such movies a possibility.
Category: Week 7, History, Politics, and Film
After reading Neighbors and watching Ida, I feel like they generally serve as complimentary pieces. Both works shed light on the fact that Poles were just as guilty in the murder of local Jews as Germans were—perhaps, in some cases, even more guilty.
Ida, in a way, illuminates and confirms a particular anecdote included in Neighbors. Towards the end of the book, Gross includes the story of Aharon Appelfeld’s return to his hometown 50 years after the murder of 62 Jews there. When he tried to find where there were buried, many adults tried to keep from telling him. However, when he asked the children, it was clear that even they, who weren’t alive at the time of the killings, knew about them. Eventually the man who buried the bodies shows him where the grave is. A similar scene is depicted in Ida, when the man who killed and buried Ida’s parents and her aunt’s son is at first reluctant to admit knowledge of the grave (as are many in the town), but eventually takes the pair to where the victims were buried.
Although it seems, in some respects, that many Polish people mentioned in Neighbors are much more forthcoming with information about the murders than characters in Ida were, it should be noted that the characters in Ida had nothing to lose by concealing information from to random women. In contrast, the people interviewed in the trials mentioned in Neighbors probably stood to lose a lot if they lied and the court found out about it.
Both works show an interesting aspect of wartime Poland: the fact that many found hiding Jews unconscionable and unacceptable, but were perfectly willing to murder them to fix the situation. The killer in Ida killed the Jews his father was hiding, and on many occassions mentioned in Neighbors, citizens of a town turned upon those hiding Jews and pressured them to kill those Jews, demonstrating that pressure to kill Jews did not always come from the Nazis. It seems to me that Ida and Neighbors both serve to show both the guilt of the Polish people and their continuing knowledge of what happened during the war, although they may, at times, be reluctant to admit it.
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.
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.
By Madeline Kauffman
I believe Ida and Neighbors to be excellent pieces of work that compliment each other quite well. Both focus on the horrific events that occurred during World War II, in which the Poles committed horrible crimes against the Jewish population within their nation. The main difference between the two, however, is the use of scale. Gross’ Neighbors was useful to read first, as it concentrated on the entire town of Jedwabne and the pogrom that took place there. The reader obtains crucial knowledge in regards to what happened and how the Jewish population was murdered (and by who) within this specific town. Through the analysis of numerous sources, Gross essentially reveals the villains of these mass murders to be the Polish neighbors, rather than the German occupiers. The reader also understands that events similar to the one that occurred in Jedwabne happened throughout multiple towns within the Polish nation.
Ida goes on to focus on one particular family and explores the more personal aftermath of the tragic and hideous murders of the Polish Jews. From the movie, one can understand how the events that are described and analyzed in Neighbors, affected the survivors, family members, and friends of those who were killed. The narrowing of the scope to two individuals, Ida and her Aunt, provides a deeper look at how these people came to terms with the atrocities, and the difficulties they had with gaining information about their relatives. The difficulties they had along their journey ultimately reflects back to Neighbors, in which Gross explains the denial that was, and most likely is still, seen amongst the Polish people with regards to the acceptance of the murders and the role their people played in them.
Ida and Neighbors, though separate pieces of work created by separate individuals, work together to provide the important context needed to understanding Poland during World War II, and offer different perspectives and levels of scale to aid in one’s overall comprehension of the massacre of the Polish Jews.
Gross’ Neighbors and Pawlikowski’s Ida both examine the legacy of the horrors of the Holocaust in Poland, albeit in different ways. In the film, Ida and her aunt look back twenty years after the massacre of Polish Jews to determine the fate of Ida’s family. Ida and Wanda must act like historians, pursuing the testimony of her parent’s neighbors and examining these primary sources critically for bias and incentive. Similarly, Gross performs a more traditional historical analysis as he too pursues court documents and other remnants of this era to discover the true role of the Polish in these massacres.
It is helpful to use some of Gaddis’s concepts in The Landscape of History to compare these two works. Neighbors and Ida demonstrate the concept of self-similarity across scale; although Gross is looking at an entire town and Pawlikowski’s focus is on a single family, the incentives and behaviors at play are very similar. While the book has a much larger scale, the two function as complements because a greater understanding of the individual experience is crucial to making sense of the larger phenomenon. Similarly, the context of the largely phenomenon is an important part of understanding the significance of these small-scale stories. While the message and research behind Ida and Neighbors may differ on the surface, both are historical accounts of the same historical period that reach parallel conclusions.
After reading Gross’ Neighbors and watching Pawlikowski’s Ida, I believe that the pieces of work compliment each other while sharing two different stories related to the horrific events that occurred during a time in history. While sharing two different stories related to World War II Poland, each work is able to share different details from different perspectives. Although both Neighbors and Ida give a fresh perspective to the horrors of World War II Poland, Neighbors seemed to read more like a secondary source to the events of the Jedwabne massacre. After explaining the events that took place leading up to the massacre, Gross proposes the argument that the Jedwabne massacre was committed by the Polish against their neighbors, the Polish Jews. Gross is then able to defend his argument with details of the massacre that he discovered through his historical research. In Ida, Pawlikowski uses the main character to reflect the effects of certain events like the German occupation of World War II on an individual. In the film, Ida is a young woman about to take her vows as a nun in the Polish Catholic Church in 1962. Before she becomes a nun, she must locate her aunt which takes her on a journey to locate the graves of her Jewish parents that were murdered during the German occupation of Poland. This journey of discovery leaves a long term effect on Ida and her identity. Although Pawlikowski’s Ida is more fictional and focuses on the story of one girl, I believe that it reflects the similar stories of the struggles of the small group of Poles affected by World War II Poland. By reading Gross’ Neighbors and watching Pawlikowski’s Ida, I am able to gain a more historical context on World War II Poland and the causes of the Jedwabne massacre while gaining a more personal and individual context on the effects of these events.
Kyle Donahue
Neighbors, and Ida both provide a story that needs to be told, but I think they each tell the same story in a dramatically different way. Neighbors by Jan Gross, I believe points to the huge massacres happening in the town of Jedweben and what that said about a nation. Gross is trying to paint a picture unlike any ever told before. The awful crimes against humanities that occurred were always done by the Nazis, but Gross is pointing to the nation of Poland as the evil, along with the Nazis. This picture must be hard to swallow because I can only imagine the shock this piece brought. Ida on the other hand is a smaller story. The story that effects a small family, and provides a smaller scope. Ida does a crazy thing, by bringing in a nun as the main character, because the Catholic Church in both stories becomes the main villain. They wanted the Jews out, and that is as far as the similarity goes for me because Ida brings in the close relationships of a family torn apart by these horrific crimes. Neighbors grander scale approach succeeds in making it easy to know, “Ok the polish did some awful things too and they need to be punished”, where Ida brings the confusion into the question. You see people who are a part of the groups who are responsible, Anna the nun who is catholic, and Wanda who is a judge for the Polish government. It makes them both reevaluate what happened and who is to blame, but it doesn’t give you a clear answer. Which is what makes the two stories different and to me Ida provides a more realistic feeling of the people of Poland. Although it would be easier to make a scapegoat and blame a group or specific identity it isn’t what is happening. Confusion is my guess of the general feeling of Poland and confusion is good because it makes people reevaluate and ask questions.
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?
For this week, we have a slightly different set of texts/film than what we have been used to.
Gross’ Neighbors and Pawlikowski’s Ida both deal with the traumatic events of WWII Poland, but one focuses on the events of the war (the mass killing of the Jewish population in Jedwabne) and the other on a small group of Poles roughly twenty years after the event. Do you think that the book and the film work best as complimentary pieces—that Ida is a sequel to Neighbors—or do you think that Ida is doing something different than Neighbors, that it has a different, possibly even alternative, story to tell?