January 4, 2008
In Poland, fear of Jan Gross’ book?
Jan T. Gross’ 2006 book, “Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz” will soon appear in Polish translation and, over on Deborah Lipstadt’s blog, she says that a reporter from Rzeczpospolita, one of Poland’s leading dailies, described it to her thusly: “This may be the biggest event of the year.”
The book examines Polish treatment of Jews during and immediately after the Holocaust. Many people don’t know that Europe’s bloodiest peacetime pogrom of the 20th century took place in the Polish town of Kielce almost a year after the end of the Second World War. Gross investigates the circumstances of the Kielce pogrom and tries to answer the question of how anti-Semitism could persist in Poland in the years immediately following the Holocaust. According to the descriptions I’ve read, Gross has argued that the Communist regime used anti-Semitism as a tool for consolidating power.
Here is Lipstadt’s assessment of the book:
[Gross] has found some horrifying evidence. It is unclear just how widespread this antisemitic behavior was, but, according to Gross, it was not unique to Jedvabne [Yed-vab-nia] the town in which the Jewish residents were murdered in the period right before the entry of the Germans into the town. Gross wrote about that town in Neighbors.
I still remember reading an excerpt of “Neighbors” in The New Yorker and recall the sensation the book caused after its publication.
The book elicited strong reactions because many Poles want to think of themselves solely as victims of the war. But Gross’s work has demonstrated just the opposite by describing the mass murders committed by Poles against their Jewish neighbors.
As Lipstadt notes on her blog, it will be interesting to see the reception Gross’ book receives in Poland when it appears in translation.
Coincidentally, last night I discovered an essay by Dorothy Thompson titled, “Who goes Nazi?” posted on the Harper’s Magazine Web site.
Harper’s originally published the piece in August 1941 but they must have just added it to their Web site because it popped up on their RSS feed yesterday.
In any event, I think the essay is quite germane to Gross’ work on Polish anti-Semitism. Thompson, an American of German descent who championed the cause of Herschel Grynszpan (the Jewish man whose assassination of a German diplomat in 1938 became the pretext under which the Nazis organized Kristallnacht) and who later became a critic of Israel and Zionism, starts the essay with a description of a “macabre parlor game” in which you observe the guests at a party and try to guess which ones would “go Nazi” if the National Socialists came to power in this country.
But, the game just provides a framework for examining the psychology of those who would join the Nazi party. The analysis is surprising and the results are not what you would expect. She surmises that some Jews would join if given the chance and she gives a telling description of the types of people who would not and do not embrace Nazism.
Here’s a thought: Maybe Thompson’s essay should be translated into Polish also.
Unfortunately, the Polish public opinion has largely reacted with hysteria and denial to the facts presented in Gross’s book. As a Pole I am deeply shocked by those facts (majority of them I wasn’t aware of, which says volumes about the way history has been taught to me in school) and by the hatred and denial with which the truth about Poles’ past crimes has been met in Poland. There is something very wrong with my nation.