The Neighbors Respond
The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland
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- $40.99
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- $40.99
Publisher Description
Neighbors--Jan Gross's stunning account of the brutal mass murder of the Jews of Jedwabne by their Polish neighbors--was met with international critical acclaim and was a finalist for the National Book Award in the United States. It has also been, from the moment of its publication, the occasion of intense controversy and painful reckoning. This book captures some of the most important voices in the ensuing debate, including those of residents of Jedwabne itself as well as those of journalists, intellectuals, politicians, Catholic clergy, and historians both within and well beyond Poland's borders.
Antony Polonsky and Joanna Michlic introduce the debate, focusing particularly on how Neighbors rubbed against difficult old and new issues of Polish social memory and national identity. The editors then present a variety of Polish voices grappling with the role of the massacre and of Polish-Jewish relations in Polish history. They include samples of the various strategies used by Polish intellectuals and political elites as they have attempted to deal with their country's dark past, to overcome the legacy of the Holocaust, and to respond to Gross's book.
The Neighbors Respond makes the debate over Neighbors available to an English-speaking audience--and is an excellent tool for bringing the discussion into the classroom. It constitutes an engrossing contribution to modern Jewish history, to our understanding of Polish modern history and identity, and to our bank of Holocaust memory.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jan Gross's 2001 history Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (a National Book Award and an NBCC Award finalist) documented that the Jewish population of a small Polish town was barbarically slaughtered not by German troops but by their fellow-townspeople. Neighbors unleashed a series of popular and academic controversies not only because of his detailed narrative of the murders but because of the explicit charge that rife anti-Semitism allowed Poles to be complicit with the Holocaust. This comprehensive, compelling and thoughtful collection of articles, interviews, opinion pieces and transcripts of public discussions from Poland and elsewhere brings these controversies to a boil. Holocaust scholars Polonsky and Michlic have done a splendid job of collecting and arranging this material to highlight the inherent intellectual, moral and historical tensions. The editors lend context and clarity to a complex subject by breaking the controversy into seven sections including the primary source material, the debate with the Polish Catholic church and responses from Jedwabne residents. Most of the disagreement here centers on three questions: Polish "collective responsibility" for the murders; the role of entrenched popular anti-Semitism in Polish culture; and what, if any, role Polish Jews' sympathy for the Soviet Union played in these events. Debating essays between Leon Wieseltier and Adam Michnik are gripping, and others are frequently shocking as when Polish primate J zef Cardinal Glemp states, in a 2001 interview, that the Jews "knew how to take advantage of the Poles." This is a major addition to Holocaust studies for both popular and academic readers.
