Neighbors vs. Neighbors: Controversy in Poland

After reading Jan Gross’s book Neighbors I found myself asking what would I have done? Although I am not sure when my ancestors came to the United States, my mother’s family is Polish. I am not Jewish and after finishing Neighbors I was weighed down by the knowledge that it is possible, had I been living in Jebwabne in 1941, I would have been asked to participate in the massacre. I think Gross made a mistake when he did not include a discussion of fear and the will to survive that many must have had, as reasons why ethnic Poles may have turned on their Jewish neighbors. I know that these two entities can be powerful motivators, and are often behind acts which seem beyond comprehension. I think too that it is hard to understand all the circumstances surrounding the events, and that to unearth the facts is never going recreate the adequately.

Neighbors was so controversial in Poland when it was published because many believed it went too far in holding ethnic Poles responsible for the massacre at Jebwabne on July 10, 1941. Publish just over fifty years after the massacre occurred, there were many in Poland who had lived through the war, both Jewish and non-Jewish. Jan Gross, having never lived through the war (he was born almost twenty years after the end), may have found it easy to place blame whereas those ethnic Poles who had lived through the war were perhaps crying foul because Gross had not adequately explained what may have led the residents of Jebwabne to turn on their Polish neighbors; it was this and also the fact that Gross appeared to be placing the blame solely on Polish shoulders that many expressed anger at his book.

Historians also found the book controversial due to the sources that Gross consulted while writing the book. As a student of history I know the importance of documenting sources and also being certain that what is being written is the whole truth, however Gross in Neighbors, did not consult nearly enough sources to satisfy historians, and by his own admission his research was incomplete. Gross presents a single side of the story of the massacre at Jebwabne in Neighbors, one which is controversial and caused great controversy, but I think that was his point. I do not believe that Gross wished to be vicious and accuse every single ethnic Pole living in Poland during the war of war crimes, however I feel that he wrote Neighbors as a way of calling attention to an important, albeit forgotten part of World War II scholarship. If this was indeed his intention, we can say that he was successful because people such as historian Marek Chodakiewicz wrote responses to Neighbors immediately and in Neighbors itself, Gross writes how in 2000 the Institute of National Memory launched an investigation into the massacre at Jewbwabne; although people were reluctant to accept Gross’s book as true, it seems as if they are willing to sponsor investigations to discover the truth.