Jan T. Gross Neighbors Chapter Summary

Benjamin Errickson

Dr. Varner

HI115

4/18/17

Book Review on Jan T. Gross’ novel, Neighbors

Jan T. Gross introduces a topic that concentrates on the violent acts of the Catholic Polish to the Jewish population of Poland during World War II. Researched documentation uncovered by Gross is spread throughout the whole book which is used to support the main purpose of this novel. The principal argument of Neighbors is about the murdering of Jews located in a small town, called Jedwabne, in eastern Poland. During this time, Poland was under German occupation. With an understanding of the that are occurring during this era, readers would assume that the Nazis committed these atrocious murders. Unfortunately, that is not the case in this book. The local

non-Jewish Polish residents of the town completed these killings. Gross trials the notion that the non-Jewish Poles had little involvement with the massacres of the Jewish people in Poland during the 1940’s.
With the creation of Neighbors, Poland has been under heavy debate. The goal for Gross was to fix the hesitation of Poland when it comes to its involvement with anti-Semitism. To achieve his what he wanted, Gross recounts harsh elements of violence while applying his own feeling of complete disgust and resentment towards the entire act. Neighbors generated many emotional responses by Polish inhabitants. People inside and outside Poland already knew of events like Jedwabne before Gross but labeled the subject taboo. The novels intention was to place Jews and the Catholics of Jedwabne into a perspective that placed consideration of one’s actions and one’s ideology of community. This was done by an unpleasant yet straightforward evaluation of the past and present influence of identities, privileges, and motivations. What is great about this book is that it doesn’t favor Jewish side or the Polish side, but introduces the readers to an understanding of the functions between the decisions of individuals and identity in a period of upheaval.
The massacre in Jedwabne took place on July 10, 1941.

The scene for the event was created by several factors that include political tension during the prewar years, the exiting of the Soviet Union, and the new management of the entering Nazi party. Non-Jewish citizens understood the system of these the new occupiers and that they would not be punished if they committed violent deeds against Jews and took their property. They saw this as their chance to get revenge on their Jewish neighbors, without getting in trouble for the crimes against them. Microassaults by Non-Jewish Polish citizens started on June 25, 1941. By July 10, 1941, the whole Jedwabne's Jewish population became the next victim. The Jewish residents were called to the town square and individual acts of humiliation and violence erupted. The single largest event of that day was the forcing of 1,600 Jews, men, women, and children, into a barn and setting it on fire which killed all 1,600 individuals. The events after July 10, which Gross describes, incorporates the disposal of the corpses, the disbursing of Jewish property, and the fate of families who were caught hiding Jews. In 1953, a trial was held against those who participated in the murdering of Jews during World War II. By using the evidence of survivor testimony and court documents during the 1953 trial, Gross discovered that German police were present during the massacre and that the Polish citizens did it. Specified by Gross, he brings the idea that

resentment towards the Jews was built upon the constant change of occupiers, but this idea is not followed throughout the book.
With the evidence that Gross offers in this book, he provides the readers' multiple ways that it can be interpreted by giving them unsatisfying facts but encourages readers to be involved with the hidden truths.

The reader is confronted with an interpretation of life in Jedwabne as a shared experience. With the town population of 2,500 and about two-thirds of the residents are Jewish and the rest Polish and Catholic, it was hard for anyone to participate in the economic, social, and political area without inflicting conflict on people with different ideas. Although, Gross claims that religious or ethnic difference did not partake in a role of the engagement between the Non-Jewish and Jew individuals of Poland. He avoids situating the Jedwabne experience among other anti-Jewish mass murders. The Jedwabne experience is represented by Gross's reliance on individual testimonies by direct interviews, interviews done by other interviewers, and memoirs. Court documents from the 1953 trial such the recounts from perpetrators and memoirs from survivors or family of the survivors assist in further evidence of the event. Although, the reliance on testimonials clearly highlights the issue of responsibility. Put another way, rather than providing a clear choice by disregarding the massacre as a hate crime, Neighbors gives the reader the ability to interpret the actions done by the Non-Jewish Poles was completed due the belief of kill or be killed. When a community is demoralized by war,

individual decisions become foggy.
In Jedwabne, the Catholic Polish population provided to the eradication of Jewish population. With this, the Holocaust did not happen in certain areas, but possibly in many small communities throughout Poland to which Jews had been targeted for a long time. Gross's text completely readjusts the Catholic-Jewish relations in Poland during World War II as part of the Holocaust. Ultimately in the process, uprooting the question of how the history of Poland should correctly position where the extermination of Europe's Jews concludes and where so-called regular clash between Polish Jews and Polish non-Jews originates.