Synopses & Reviews
On a summer day in 1941 in Nazi-occupied Poland, half of the town of Jedwabne brutally murdered the other half: 1,600 men, women, and children-all but seven of the town's Jews. In this shocking and compelling study, historian Jan Gross pieces together eyewitness accounts as well as physical evidence into a comprehensive reconstruction of the horrific July day remembered well by locals but hidden to history. Revealing wider truths about Jewish-Polish relations, the Holocaust, and human responses to occupation and totalitarianism, Gross's investigation sheds light on how Jedwabne's Jews came to be murdered-not by faceless Nazis, but by people who knew them well.
Review
"The author has no facile answers to these problems, but his story asks us to think about them in new ways." David Engel, author of The Holocaust: The Third Reich and the Jews
Synopsis
On a summer day in 1941 in Nazi-occupied Poland, half of the town of Jedwabne brutally murdered the other half: 1,600 men, women, and children-all but seven of the town's Jews. In this shocking and compelling study, historian Jan Gross pieces together eyewitness accounts as well as physical evidence into a comprehensive reconstruction of the horrific July day remembered well by locals but hidden to history. Revealing wider truths about Jewish-Polish relations, the Holocaust, and human responses to occupation and totalitarianism, Gross's investigation sheds light on how Jedwabne's Jews came to be murdered not by faceless Nazis, but by people who knew them well.
About the Author
Jan T. Gross was a 2001 National Book Award nominee for his widely acclaimed Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland. He teaches history at Princeton University, where he is a Norman B. Tomlinson '16 and '48 Professor of War and Society.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Outline of the Story
Sources
Before the War
Soviet Occupation, 1939-1941
The Outbreak of the Russo-German War and the Pogrom in Radzilow
Preparations
Who Murdered the Jews of Jedwabne?
The Murder
Plunder
Intimate Biographies
Anachronism
What Do People Remember?
Collective Responsibility
New Approach to Sources
Is It Possible to Be Simultaneously a Victim and a Victimizer?
Collaboration
Social Support for Stalinism
For a New Historiography
Postscript
Afterword
Notes
Index