Describe your latest book/project/work. I've been studying the life and work of photographer W. Eugene Smith for 13 years. My first book (Dream...
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"The bloodiest peacetime pogrom in twentieth-century Europe took place in the Polish town of Kielce one year after the war ended, on July 4, 1946"
Although the statement above is untrue, for the bloodiest was in Kishinev in 1903, the thesis of book is an interesting one. It analyses the state of mind of Poles and Jews after the 2nd World War. When the picture of Jews who came back to Poland after the Holocaust is very true, deep and eloquent, it is not so with depicting Poles. An idea that anti-Semitism and pogroms after the Shoah were fueled mainly by Polish obsession of Jewish richness seems to me too Marxist.
The previous publications on the subject by different authors stressed on Communist apparatchiks' insiration to the pogrom. Gross shows us an alternative view.
I believe that a specific religiosity, a typical Polish Catholic ignorance of Old Testament, lack of an egalitarian tradition, and identification of Jews and the Soviet regime in eyes of the public - so ideological reasons - might give a more precise description to what happened in town of Kielce in 1946. (BTW: Adam Michnik tried to follow this thinking in his June 2006 essay published in Polish in the 'Gazeta Wyborcza' daily).
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Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz by Jan T. Gross
Lobelio Kozicki, July 4, 2006
"The bloodiest peacetime pogrom in twentieth-century Europe took place in the Polish town of Kielce one year after the war ended, on July 4, 1946"Although the statement above is untrue, for the bloodiest was in Kishinev in 1903, the thesis of book is an interesting one. It analyses the state of mind of Poles and Jews after the 2nd World War. When the picture of Jews who came back to Poland after the Holocaust is very true, deep and eloquent, it is not so with depicting Poles. An idea that anti-Semitism and pogroms after the Shoah were fueled mainly by Polish obsession of Jewish richness seems to me too Marxist.
The previous publications on the subject by different authors stressed on Communist apparatchiks' insiration to the pogrom. Gross shows us an alternative view.
I believe that a specific religiosity, a typical Polish Catholic ignorance of Old Testament, lack of an egalitarian tradition, and identification of Jews and the Soviet regime in eyes of the public - so ideological reasons - might give a more precise description to what happened in town of Kielce in 1946. (BTW: Adam Michnik tried to follow this thinking in his June 2006 essay published in Polish in the 'Gazeta Wyborcza' daily).
(26 of 39 readers found this comment helpful)