Jan Gross’s book Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, was a highly controversial book when it came out in 2001. Up to that point, a national narrative in Poland rested upon the claim that German Nazis had been solely responsible for the killing of the millions of Polish people, Jewish or otherwise, during the war. Gross’s book attempted to undermine that claim, and in the process inaugurated a nation-wide soul searching about Poland’s culpability in the Holocaust. That soul searching continues to this day, mostly clearly seen in the international success of the movie Ida, which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 2015.
Below are links to additional resources on this text and the debate it started, including a substantial rebuttal/reply, the edited volume by Polonski and Michlic. As well are some reviews and discussions of Ida.
Steven Erlanger, “Hitler’s Willing Executioners,” New York Times, April 8, 2001.
George Steiner, “Poland’s Willing Executioners,” The Guardian, April 7, 2001.
Janine Holc, “Working Through Jan Gross’s Neighbors,” Slavic Review 61, no.3 (2002): 453-59.
A.O. Scott, “An Innocent Awakened,” New York Times, May 1, 2014.
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