Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz: An Essay in Historical Interpretation
by
3.79 · Rating details · 221 ratings · 21 reviews
Poland suffered an exceedingly brutal Nazi occupation during the Second World War. Close to five million Poles were killed. Of these, more than half were Jews killed in the Holocaust. Ninety percent of the world's second largest Jewish community was annihilated. But despite the calamity shared by Poland's Jews and non-Jews, anti-Semitic violence did not stop in Poland with the end of the war. Jewish Holocaust survivors returning to their Polish hometowns after the war experienced widespread hostility, including murder, at the hands of their neighbors. The bloodiest peacetime pogrom in twentieth-century Europe took place in Kielce, Poland, a year after the war ended. Jan Gross's Fear is a detailed reconstruction of this pogrom and the Polish reactions to it that attempts to answer a perplexing question: How was anti-Semitism possible in Poland after the war?
Gross argues that postwar Polish anti-Semitism cannot be understood simply as a continuation of prewar attitudes. Rather, it developed in the context of the Holocaust and the Communist takeover: Anti-Semitism eventually became a common currency between the Communist regime and a society filled with people who had participated in the Nazi campaign of murder and plunder, people for whom Jewish survivors were a standing reproach. The Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz said that Poland's Communist rulers fulfilled the dream of Polish nationalists by bringing into existence an ethnically pure state.
For more than half a century, what happened to Jewish Holocaust survivors in Poland has been cloaked in guilt and shame. Writing with passion, brilliance, and fierce clarity, Gross at last brings the truth to light. (less)
Gross argues that postwar Polish anti-Semitism cannot be understood simply as a continuation of prewar attitudes. Rather, it developed in the context of the Holocaust and the Communist takeover: Anti-Semitism eventually became a common currency between the Communist regime and a society filled with people who had participated in the Nazi campaign of murder and plunder, people for whom Jewish survivors were a standing reproach. The Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz said that Poland's Communist rulers fulfilled the dream of Polish nationalists by bringing into existence an ethnically pure state.
For more than half a century, what happened to Jewish Holocaust survivors in Poland has been cloaked in guilt and shame. Writing with passion, brilliance, and fierce clarity, Gross at last brings the truth to light. (less)
Hardcover, 336 pages
Published July 1st 2006 by Princeton University Press (first published June 27th 2006)
Original Title
Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz: An Essay in Historical Interpretation
ISBN
0691128782 (ISBN13: 9780691128788)
Edition Language
English
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Oct 16, 2010Mark Smith rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: holocaust-literature
This is not a beautifully written book . It more of an academic work, a hugely important one, that should be read by as wide an audience as possible. Readers should struggle through its painstaking prose to take on board its importance and its attempt to understand how most human beings will behave, given the right circumstances - in this particular case, under Nazi occupation and its immediate aftermath.
Fear by Jan Gross focuses tightly on the phenomenon of anti-Semitism in Poland after the Second World War. One cannot help but wonder how this phenomenon has evolved today in a nation that has not yet faced up to its own part in the murder of its Jewish population and in certain areas continues today to deny its own complicity in those murders.
This book is not an attack on Poland or its people, as many have claimed, but an attempt to understand why anti-Semitism was not extinguished – but rather increased - in Poland in the aftermath of the death camps and the brutal murder of three million Polish Jews on Polish soil and before the eyes of their ethic Polish neighbors.
During and after the nearly unthinkable pogrom of Kielce, the main event in this book, Holocaust survivor Jews were accused of killing Christian children to make matzo. Boy scouts, policemen, soldiers, mothers and fathers took part in the bloodshed and murder that occurred here. In fact, no one ever saw a Christian child murdered for their blood. If Hitler himself had cited this medieval rubbish during the Nuremberg rally he would have been ridiculed. Yet in Kielce, indeed throughout Poland, it was accepted by rational individuals. Did they really believe they were protecting Christian children by murdering their Jewish neighbors? Jews were also blamed for the Communism that oppressed Poland in the aftermath of WWII, even though proportionally few Jews held positions of authority. Communism was generally enforced by Polish thugs and Gross interesting points out that those who most compliant were those who had also collaborated with the Nazis. This fact was ignored in 1946 during the pogrom in Kielce and the murders throughout the rest of Poland, just as it is probably generally ignored today.
Gross works his argument methodically toward the main point and revelation of the book – that Polish atrocities in the aftermath of the death camps have at their root Polish complicity and Polish guilt.
The Roman, Tacitus, wrote: "It is human nature to hate the man whom you have injured." Jews were murdered, threatened and brutalised in Poland after Auchwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor and other hellish places not because they were a genuine threat but because of what the Poles had done to the Jews. The Nazi murdered their neighbors and most Poles did nothing, they stole and plundered their property, enriching themselves in the most opportunistic fashion. The Jews who returned from the flames of the Holocaust reminded Poles of their own sins.
I wonder how much this is at the root of modern Polish anti-Semitism. A woman I met a few years ago in Warsaw said to me: "If you ask me, all of Poland needs therapy." Somehow, after reading this book, I have the strongest sense that Poland, as a nation, cannot move forward to find its rightful place in Europe and the world until it faces up to its own past and is then able to move forward. Gross's work is but the first step. (less)
Fear by Jan Gross focuses tightly on the phenomenon of anti-Semitism in Poland after the Second World War. One cannot help but wonder how this phenomenon has evolved today in a nation that has not yet faced up to its own part in the murder of its Jewish population and in certain areas continues today to deny its own complicity in those murders.
This book is not an attack on Poland or its people, as many have claimed, but an attempt to understand why anti-Semitism was not extinguished – but rather increased - in Poland in the aftermath of the death camps and the brutal murder of three million Polish Jews on Polish soil and before the eyes of their ethic Polish neighbors.
During and after the nearly unthinkable pogrom of Kielce, the main event in this book, Holocaust survivor Jews were accused of killing Christian children to make matzo. Boy scouts, policemen, soldiers, mothers and fathers took part in the bloodshed and murder that occurred here. In fact, no one ever saw a Christian child murdered for their blood. If Hitler himself had cited this medieval rubbish during the Nuremberg rally he would have been ridiculed. Yet in Kielce, indeed throughout Poland, it was accepted by rational individuals. Did they really believe they were protecting Christian children by murdering their Jewish neighbors? Jews were also blamed for the Communism that oppressed Poland in the aftermath of WWII, even though proportionally few Jews held positions of authority. Communism was generally enforced by Polish thugs and Gross interesting points out that those who most compliant were those who had also collaborated with the Nazis. This fact was ignored in 1946 during the pogrom in Kielce and the murders throughout the rest of Poland, just as it is probably generally ignored today.
Gross works his argument methodically toward the main point and revelation of the book – that Polish atrocities in the aftermath of the death camps have at their root Polish complicity and Polish guilt.
The Roman, Tacitus, wrote: "It is human nature to hate the man whom you have injured." Jews were murdered, threatened and brutalised in Poland after Auchwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor and other hellish places not because they were a genuine threat but because of what the Poles had done to the Jews. The Nazi murdered their neighbors and most Poles did nothing, they stole and plundered their property, enriching themselves in the most opportunistic fashion. The Jews who returned from the flames of the Holocaust reminded Poles of their own sins.
I wonder how much this is at the root of modern Polish anti-Semitism. A woman I met a few years ago in Warsaw said to me: "If you ask me, all of Poland needs therapy." Somehow, after reading this book, I have the strongest sense that Poland, as a nation, cannot move forward to find its rightful place in Europe and the world until it faces up to its own past and is then able to move forward. Gross's work is but the first step. (less)
Sep 07, 2009George rated it really liked it · review of another edition
During WWII, ninety percent of Poland’s Jewish population disappeared – exterminated by the Nazis, primarily in their infamous death camps. This is the story about what happened to the surviving ten percent (approximately 200,000 – 300,000) when they returned to their native Poland after the war ended. They were greeted by a wide range of anti-Jewish practices: they were threatened, they were prevented from reclaiming their property, and, in one particularly violent episode – the pogrom in Kielce (July 1946) – many were killed, some with deliberate cruelty. “Whether at work or in a government office, in the street, on a train, or in a classroom, Polish Jews encountered hostility.” Most of these surviving Jews, gripped with terror, took the hint and fled to Palestine or to the west.
Courageous Poles, who had saved Jewish children, were also persecuted. They became social outcasts in their own communities. They were called “Jew lovers.” Most hid their identities to protect themselves and their families.
But this story of the returning Jews doesn’t begin until Chapter 2. In Chapter 1, called “Poland Abandoned,” Gross recounts the heartbreaking story of how Poland was torn apart by the war and then essentially abandoned, first by the Russians, when the Polish underground rose up to fight the Germans, and then again by the US and Great Britain when Stalin refused to honor his wartime pledge to hold free and unfettered elections in Poland as soon as possible following the end of hostilities. Chapter 1 alone made this book worth reading!
When the surviving Jews returned to their hometowns in Poland after the war ended, leading Polish intellectuals were shocked and scandalized by the recurring postwar manifestations of popular anti-Semitism. They saw it, not as an economic issue, not as a political issue, but as a moral failure, which touched some core of the collective being. Of course, Poland was firmly in the grip of Stalinism at this time, and Stalin’s rising anti-Semitic attitude clouds the issue. Nevertheless, Gross presents convincing evidence of widespread discrimination against the returning Jews.
The central event of "Fear" is the pogrom in Kielce. It’s a frightening story. On July 1, 1946, an eight-year-old boy disappeared from his home. It turned out that he had gone to visit a friend in a town from which his family had recently moved. When he returned, he made up a story saying that he had been kidnapped by Jews and kept in the basement of a building at 7 Planty Street, where approximately 180 Jews lived. The building, it was discovered later, had no basement. On July 4, 1946, a crowd gathered at 7 Planty Street. Police and soldiers arrived, but instead of saving the Jews, they participated in the action against the Jews. (The authorities were concerned that the public not accuse them of safeguarding the Jews.) Forty-two Jewish men, women and children were killed – shot, stabbed, or beaten to death. Another 30 were killed on the railroad. Eighty others were wounded.
These were not isolated actions of deviants or socially marginal individuals. As many as a quarter of the adult population of Kielce was actively involved in the assault on the Jews that day. Gross says that “What stands out on the gruesome occasion is the widely shared sense in Polish society that getting rid of the Jews, by killing them if necessary, was permissible.”
The question that Gross attempts to answer in the remainder of the book is: How was such virulent anti-Semitism possible after the Holocaust in Poland, of all places. In attempting to explain anti-Semitism in Poland after the war, Gross rejects, with well supported arguments, two common explanations: Jews were not killing Christian children for their blood, nor were Jews responsible for bringing Communism to Poland. (The chapter on this latter point is longer than necessary, in my opinion.) Gross also rejects, as an explanation, the historical roots of Polish anti-Semitism and the argument that Nazi policies simply rubbed off onto the Poles. Instead, his explanation is [Polish:] society’s opportunistic wartime behavior. “Jews were perceived as a threat to the material status quo, security, and peaceful conscience of their Christian fellow citizens after the war because they had been plundered and because what remained of Jewish property, as well as Jews’ social roles, had been assumed by Polish neighbors in tacit and often directly opportunistic complicity with Nazi-instigated institutional mass murder.” He also suggests an explanation from experimental psychology: people have a propensity to hate those whom they have injured. Many Poles could not bear the Jewish presence after the war because it called forth their own feelings of guilt and shame. A "New York Times" commentator, David Margolik, who reviewed the book, disagrees. Instead, he believes that “the Germans emboldened many Poles to act upon what they had always felt.”
Gross’s concluding chapter is quite compelling, but still not completely satisfying (and I think Gross would agree). What happened to Poland before, during, and after WWII is such a complex mixture of political, social, psychological, and religious factors, that a complete explanation of anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz may be too difficult a task to achieve. Indeed, one of the most accomplished historians of twentieth-century Poland, Dariusz Stola, says: “For me one of the greatest mysteries of our twentieth-century history is Polish attitudes toward the Jews after the Holocaust.” Nevertheless, Gross raises very serious and interesting questions about human action in stressful circumstances. I enjoyed the book and I recommend it.(less)
Courageous Poles, who had saved Jewish children, were also persecuted. They became social outcasts in their own communities. They were called “Jew lovers.” Most hid their identities to protect themselves and their families.
But this story of the returning Jews doesn’t begin until Chapter 2. In Chapter 1, called “Poland Abandoned,” Gross recounts the heartbreaking story of how Poland was torn apart by the war and then essentially abandoned, first by the Russians, when the Polish underground rose up to fight the Germans, and then again by the US and Great Britain when Stalin refused to honor his wartime pledge to hold free and unfettered elections in Poland as soon as possible following the end of hostilities. Chapter 1 alone made this book worth reading!
When the surviving Jews returned to their hometowns in Poland after the war ended, leading Polish intellectuals were shocked and scandalized by the recurring postwar manifestations of popular anti-Semitism. They saw it, not as an economic issue, not as a political issue, but as a moral failure, which touched some core of the collective being. Of course, Poland was firmly in the grip of Stalinism at this time, and Stalin’s rising anti-Semitic attitude clouds the issue. Nevertheless, Gross presents convincing evidence of widespread discrimination against the returning Jews.
The central event of "Fear" is the pogrom in Kielce. It’s a frightening story. On July 1, 1946, an eight-year-old boy disappeared from his home. It turned out that he had gone to visit a friend in a town from which his family had recently moved. When he returned, he made up a story saying that he had been kidnapped by Jews and kept in the basement of a building at 7 Planty Street, where approximately 180 Jews lived. The building, it was discovered later, had no basement. On July 4, 1946, a crowd gathered at 7 Planty Street. Police and soldiers arrived, but instead of saving the Jews, they participated in the action against the Jews. (The authorities were concerned that the public not accuse them of safeguarding the Jews.) Forty-two Jewish men, women and children were killed – shot, stabbed, or beaten to death. Another 30 were killed on the railroad. Eighty others were wounded.
These were not isolated actions of deviants or socially marginal individuals. As many as a quarter of the adult population of Kielce was actively involved in the assault on the Jews that day. Gross says that “What stands out on the gruesome occasion is the widely shared sense in Polish society that getting rid of the Jews, by killing them if necessary, was permissible.”
The question that Gross attempts to answer in the remainder of the book is: How was such virulent anti-Semitism possible after the Holocaust in Poland, of all places. In attempting to explain anti-Semitism in Poland after the war, Gross rejects, with well supported arguments, two common explanations: Jews were not killing Christian children for their blood, nor were Jews responsible for bringing Communism to Poland. (The chapter on this latter point is longer than necessary, in my opinion.) Gross also rejects, as an explanation, the historical roots of Polish anti-Semitism and the argument that Nazi policies simply rubbed off onto the Poles. Instead, his explanation is [Polish:] society’s opportunistic wartime behavior. “Jews were perceived as a threat to the material status quo, security, and peaceful conscience of their Christian fellow citizens after the war because they had been plundered and because what remained of Jewish property, as well as Jews’ social roles, had been assumed by Polish neighbors in tacit and often directly opportunistic complicity with Nazi-instigated institutional mass murder.” He also suggests an explanation from experimental psychology: people have a propensity to hate those whom they have injured. Many Poles could not bear the Jewish presence after the war because it called forth their own feelings of guilt and shame. A "New York Times" commentator, David Margolik, who reviewed the book, disagrees. Instead, he believes that “the Germans emboldened many Poles to act upon what they had always felt.”
Gross’s concluding chapter is quite compelling, but still not completely satisfying (and I think Gross would agree). What happened to Poland before, during, and after WWII is such a complex mixture of political, social, psychological, and religious factors, that a complete explanation of anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz may be too difficult a task to achieve. Indeed, one of the most accomplished historians of twentieth-century Poland, Dariusz Stola, says: “For me one of the greatest mysteries of our twentieth-century history is Polish attitudes toward the Jews after the Holocaust.” Nevertheless, Gross raises very serious and interesting questions about human action in stressful circumstances. I enjoyed the book and I recommend it.(less)
Sep 09, 2018Jan Peczkis rated it did not like it
Recycled Old Communist Propaganda from Polonophobic Jewish Author Shnayderman (Shneiderman)
The reader of this book will be hard-pressed to avoid thinking that he or she is reading Shnayderman's 1947 pro-Communist screed, BETWEEN FEAR AND HOPE.
See:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
JAN T. GROSS AND HIS SELECTIVE OMISSION OF MATERIAL FACTS
For all of the onetime media fascination with this book, little of its content is new. There are too many fallacies, non sequiturs, and ridiculous assertions in this book to even begin addressing here. Those readers familiar with some of the sources that Jan Tomasz Gross cites will notice immediately that he does so in a selective manner according to his Pole-demonizing agenda. Gross cites Jason Browning on rural Poles betraying Jews to the Germans--while conveniently omitting the fact that those Jews had been stealing food from the Poles (Browning, p. 126)(magnified by the near-starvation conditions under the brutal German occupation). As for Gross' expansive accounts of Polish-German collaboration in the killing of Jews (as at Jedwabne--itself a Gross exaggeration--pardon the pun), Gross tiptoes around Browning's paragraph (p. 52) on the Germans' dissatisfaction with the overall rarity of Polish collaborators and the need to replace them with Ukrainians and Baltics. (The latter subsequently became a mainstay in the roundup and killings of Jews throughout German-occupied Poland).
Elsewhere, Gross' citation of Yitzhak Zuckerman, on Jewish grief after Kielce, avoids mention of Zuckerman's statement (p. 661) on the disarming of Kielce's Jews the day BEFORE the pogrom (excellent evidence for well-preplanned Communist staging). Elsewhere, Gross' preoccupation with Poles rejoicing at Jewish sufferings conspicuously omits Zuckerman's (p. 374, 493) detailed description of Polish conduct during and after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. A few Poles, mostly underworld figures, did make cruel jokes. But masses of Poles watched "without a trace of spiteful malice", while other Poles cried. There was also widespread Polish admiration for Jewish bravery. (Of course, Jews had sometimes rejoiced at Polish tragedies in the past).
ACCUSATORY HEARSAY MASQUERADES AS FACT
Gross' tendentious use of readily-available sources destroys the credibility of his many obscure citations. To begin with, how many of them are Jerzy Kosinski (Lewinkopf)-style Polonophobic tall tales? In addition, almost all of Gross' accounts of in-war and postwar "Polish killings of Jews" occur in a contextual vacuum. They all automatically assume that: The killers were all ethnic Poles, anti-Semitism was always the sole or main motive, and extenuating circumstances were always absent.
THE MYTH OF THE MYTH OF THE ZYDOKOMUNA...YET AGAIN
Gross abandons all reality in his contentions that Poles should've overlooked the almost-completely Zydokomuna (Jewish Communist) leadership of the Soviet puppet state forced upon them. To say that they had nothing to do with Jews (since most Jews weren't Communists) is akin to saying that Einstein had nothing to do with Jews (since most Jews weren't and aren't exceptionally intelligent). Gross elaborates on the Communist persecution of Jews as "evidence" against the Zydokomuna. It is no such thing. Jews had persecuted Jews before, while Communists, ever the masters of duplicity, first played both ends and then eventually dumped the Jews altogether. Perhaps silliest of all of Gross' self-refuting statements is the one about Communism being imposed upon Poland even in the absence of Jewish Communists. Well, what about the fact that 5-6 million Jews would've been murdered by the Germans had not a single Polish anti-Semite ever existed and not a single post-Jewish property gone to the Poles?
In a rare display of genuine scholarship, Gross (pp. 228-230) cites various estimates (13%, 24.7%, 30%, even 50%--probably top leadership) of the Jewish share of the leading positions in the Bezpieka (UB: Communist security police). But Gross fails to "connect the dots". A conservative 20% share means that Jews were twenty times more common as leaders in the hated police than in the general population, and were responsible for at least 16,000--60,000 of the 80,000--300,000 Polish victims of the Communist terror. The clear, inescapable fact is that Jews killed more Poles than Poles killed Jews. Of course, the reader can guess which side is called upon to "come to terms with the past", "do a moral reckoning", "confront dark chapters in one's history", all in accordance with the standard Holocaustspeak.
KIELCE THE CLUB WIELDED YET AGAIN
True to his neo-Stalinist character, Jan T. Gross dusts off anti-Catholic Stalinist propaganda when he accuses the Church of a "tardy" response to the Kielce tragedy. Who is holding the stopwatch? And what about the shoe on the other foot? How many influential Jewish religious (and secular) leaders had promptly, loudly, and specifically condemned Jewish Communists for their torture and murder of Poles?
THE MYSTIFICATION OF THE HOLOCAUST TAKEN TO NEW ABSURD EXTREMES
Gross engages in imaginative "psychoanalysis" of Polish thinking (pp. 246-249), accusing postwar Poles of murdering Jews out of a guilt complex over the earlier purchase of post-Jewish properties in Nazi-sponsored auctions. His egregious thesis begins with Polish "opportunistic complicity" in the Holocaust based solely on these acquisitions. Gross' bizarre reasoning implies that anyone who acquires the property of a murder victim thereby becomes complicit in the murder (and, what's more, also a "plunderer" and "exploiter" of the victim), regardless of the circumstances surrounding the acquisition and the fact that the recipient had nothing to do with the murder itself! Considering the massive loss of Polish life and property, and the destitution and desperate housing shortage during and after the war, what were Poles supposed to do? Let the Jewish properties stand vacant in reverence for Jewish deaths, and on the outside chance that the owners may return?
Let's also have a little perspective on the 600 Jewish postwar deaths (p. 35; somewhat higher quoted figures are unproven) in the light of the 300,000 returning Jews. This amounts to a small fraction of one percent! Some effort of Poles to "finish Hitler's work"! Some mini-Holocaust! Some Polish guilt complex!
HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY ALERT! THE PEDAGOGIKA WSTYDU (POLITICS OF SHAME) IN ACTION
The perceptive reader can see through Gross' preposterous equation (pp. 248-249) of the Kristallnacht-related looting of Jewish properties with Polish post-Jewish property acquisitions. Decades after the former, a woman expressed guilt over an ill-gotten pillow, and asked the Jewish owners' descendants what to do. The moral of the story is obvious: The Poles, "suffering from a long-repressed guilt complex", can finally resolve it by paying massive tribute ("restitution") to Jewish organizations (part of the Holocaust Industry). The plot gets even thicker: Gross discards WWII completely and actually equates the Polish acquisitions of post-German properties with the post-Jewish ones (p. 248)! It sure sounds like a veiled reference to a Jewish/German-revanchist alliance for the coming shakedown of Poland?
BETTER BOOKS AVAILABLE
Want to read a much deeper and more objective book on post-WWII Polish Jewish relations--one that was ignored entirely by Gross for obvious reasons? Please read (see also the Peczkis review of): After the Holocaust. Although the Judeocentric detractors of this historian, predictably, have attacked him personally, they, equally predictably, have presented no facts to contradict his claims. Furthermore, the author Chodakiewicz finds fault with both Poles and Jews. (less)
The reader of this book will be hard-pressed to avoid thinking that he or she is reading Shnayderman's 1947 pro-Communist screed, BETWEEN FEAR AND HOPE.
See:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
JAN T. GROSS AND HIS SELECTIVE OMISSION OF MATERIAL FACTS
For all of the onetime media fascination with this book, little of its content is new. There are too many fallacies, non sequiturs, and ridiculous assertions in this book to even begin addressing here. Those readers familiar with some of the sources that Jan Tomasz Gross cites will notice immediately that he does so in a selective manner according to his Pole-demonizing agenda. Gross cites Jason Browning on rural Poles betraying Jews to the Germans--while conveniently omitting the fact that those Jews had been stealing food from the Poles (Browning, p. 126)(magnified by the near-starvation conditions under the brutal German occupation). As for Gross' expansive accounts of Polish-German collaboration in the killing of Jews (as at Jedwabne--itself a Gross exaggeration--pardon the pun), Gross tiptoes around Browning's paragraph (p. 52) on the Germans' dissatisfaction with the overall rarity of Polish collaborators and the need to replace them with Ukrainians and Baltics. (The latter subsequently became a mainstay in the roundup and killings of Jews throughout German-occupied Poland).
Elsewhere, Gross' citation of Yitzhak Zuckerman, on Jewish grief after Kielce, avoids mention of Zuckerman's statement (p. 661) on the disarming of Kielce's Jews the day BEFORE the pogrom (excellent evidence for well-preplanned Communist staging). Elsewhere, Gross' preoccupation with Poles rejoicing at Jewish sufferings conspicuously omits Zuckerman's (p. 374, 493) detailed description of Polish conduct during and after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. A few Poles, mostly underworld figures, did make cruel jokes. But masses of Poles watched "without a trace of spiteful malice", while other Poles cried. There was also widespread Polish admiration for Jewish bravery. (Of course, Jews had sometimes rejoiced at Polish tragedies in the past).
ACCUSATORY HEARSAY MASQUERADES AS FACT
Gross' tendentious use of readily-available sources destroys the credibility of his many obscure citations. To begin with, how many of them are Jerzy Kosinski (Lewinkopf)-style Polonophobic tall tales? In addition, almost all of Gross' accounts of in-war and postwar "Polish killings of Jews" occur in a contextual vacuum. They all automatically assume that: The killers were all ethnic Poles, anti-Semitism was always the sole or main motive, and extenuating circumstances were always absent.
THE MYTH OF THE MYTH OF THE ZYDOKOMUNA...YET AGAIN
Gross abandons all reality in his contentions that Poles should've overlooked the almost-completely Zydokomuna (Jewish Communist) leadership of the Soviet puppet state forced upon them. To say that they had nothing to do with Jews (since most Jews weren't Communists) is akin to saying that Einstein had nothing to do with Jews (since most Jews weren't and aren't exceptionally intelligent). Gross elaborates on the Communist persecution of Jews as "evidence" against the Zydokomuna. It is no such thing. Jews had persecuted Jews before, while Communists, ever the masters of duplicity, first played both ends and then eventually dumped the Jews altogether. Perhaps silliest of all of Gross' self-refuting statements is the one about Communism being imposed upon Poland even in the absence of Jewish Communists. Well, what about the fact that 5-6 million Jews would've been murdered by the Germans had not a single Polish anti-Semite ever existed and not a single post-Jewish property gone to the Poles?
In a rare display of genuine scholarship, Gross (pp. 228-230) cites various estimates (13%, 24.7%, 30%, even 50%--probably top leadership) of the Jewish share of the leading positions in the Bezpieka (UB: Communist security police). But Gross fails to "connect the dots". A conservative 20% share means that Jews were twenty times more common as leaders in the hated police than in the general population, and were responsible for at least 16,000--60,000 of the 80,000--300,000 Polish victims of the Communist terror. The clear, inescapable fact is that Jews killed more Poles than Poles killed Jews. Of course, the reader can guess which side is called upon to "come to terms with the past", "do a moral reckoning", "confront dark chapters in one's history", all in accordance with the standard Holocaustspeak.
KIELCE THE CLUB WIELDED YET AGAIN
True to his neo-Stalinist character, Jan T. Gross dusts off anti-Catholic Stalinist propaganda when he accuses the Church of a "tardy" response to the Kielce tragedy. Who is holding the stopwatch? And what about the shoe on the other foot? How many influential Jewish religious (and secular) leaders had promptly, loudly, and specifically condemned Jewish Communists for their torture and murder of Poles?
THE MYSTIFICATION OF THE HOLOCAUST TAKEN TO NEW ABSURD EXTREMES
Gross engages in imaginative "psychoanalysis" of Polish thinking (pp. 246-249), accusing postwar Poles of murdering Jews out of a guilt complex over the earlier purchase of post-Jewish properties in Nazi-sponsored auctions. His egregious thesis begins with Polish "opportunistic complicity" in the Holocaust based solely on these acquisitions. Gross' bizarre reasoning implies that anyone who acquires the property of a murder victim thereby becomes complicit in the murder (and, what's more, also a "plunderer" and "exploiter" of the victim), regardless of the circumstances surrounding the acquisition and the fact that the recipient had nothing to do with the murder itself! Considering the massive loss of Polish life and property, and the destitution and desperate housing shortage during and after the war, what were Poles supposed to do? Let the Jewish properties stand vacant in reverence for Jewish deaths, and on the outside chance that the owners may return?
Let's also have a little perspective on the 600 Jewish postwar deaths (p. 35; somewhat higher quoted figures are unproven) in the light of the 300,000 returning Jews. This amounts to a small fraction of one percent! Some effort of Poles to "finish Hitler's work"! Some mini-Holocaust! Some Polish guilt complex!
HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY ALERT! THE PEDAGOGIKA WSTYDU (POLITICS OF SHAME) IN ACTION
The perceptive reader can see through Gross' preposterous equation (pp. 248-249) of the Kristallnacht-related looting of Jewish properties with Polish post-Jewish property acquisitions. Decades after the former, a woman expressed guilt over an ill-gotten pillow, and asked the Jewish owners' descendants what to do. The moral of the story is obvious: The Poles, "suffering from a long-repressed guilt complex", can finally resolve it by paying massive tribute ("restitution") to Jewish organizations (part of the Holocaust Industry). The plot gets even thicker: Gross discards WWII completely and actually equates the Polish acquisitions of post-German properties with the post-Jewish ones (p. 248)! It sure sounds like a veiled reference to a Jewish/German-revanchist alliance for the coming shakedown of Poland?
BETTER BOOKS AVAILABLE
Want to read a much deeper and more objective book on post-WWII Polish Jewish relations--one that was ignored entirely by Gross for obvious reasons? Please read (see also the Peczkis review of): After the Holocaust. Although the Judeocentric detractors of this historian, predictably, have attacked him personally, they, equally predictably, have presented no facts to contradict his claims. Furthermore, the author Chodakiewicz finds fault with both Poles and Jews. (less)
Sep 09, 2015Karo rated it it was amazing
Many reviewers have found Gross' writing unattractive, but I have to disagree. I thought he did a marvellous job, writing in a balanced way about instances of inexplicable horror after WWII had ended. Again and again he points out that Poland had suffered greatly during the war, was let down by the Allied forces and sold into a Soviet rule that its population opposed but had no chance to escape. Gross never lets the reader forget about those circumstances, and you get the impression that the aut ...more
Dec 15, 2009Anna rated it it was ok · review of another edition
Przeczytałam tą książkę długo po gorącej dyskusji wokół niej, która odbyła się z dwa lata temu. Jest to głównie przedstawianie relacji świadków, głównych bohaterów wydarzeń, dokumentów urzędowych przeplatanie formami interpretacji. Nie zachwyciła mnie mimo całej swojej otoczki. Książka Wokół strachu. Dyskusja o książce Jana T. Grossa tego samego autora jest dużo lepsza i zawiera jedynie cytaty z artykułów, dokumentów i relacji bez żadnych komentarzy.
Feb 28, 2012Steve rated it it was ok
I had to stop reading about half-way through the book, as I didn't think it was particularly well written. Gross seems so determined to cast Poles collectively as evil anti-Semites that he takes several unconnected events and tries to create an organized anti-Jewish program out of them. Perhaps he connects them later in the book and I should give it a second chance, but I'm not particularly inclined to do so.
May 29, 2018Julie rated it really liked it
This is a long and difficult read, and at times, mentally draining. One simply cannot fathom the following two things-that pogroms and anti-Semitic attacks occurred literally when the true monstrous extent of the Nazis' actions was still being revealed to the world and that non-Jewish Poles who had hidden Jews during the war had to keep secret their heroic actions for fear of violence against them. And to think the appalling actions the Polish government has taken recently to further remove itself from being labeled as complicit with the Nazis even though many Poles were in the annihilation of Polish Jews. (less)
Nov 21, 2018Yossi rated it really liked it
Wow! I like to think of myself as well read and not easily shocked, yet this was a terrifying read describing the moral breakdown of an entire country. This is a must read for people interested in the Holocaust.
Oct 12, 2018Theresa Kulenkamp rated it liked it · review of another edition
Very scholarly. Lots of repetition, but it is a story that needs to be told.
Jan 24, 2009Caro rated it it was ok · review of another edition
Recommends it for: Nobody, is a waste of time...
Shelves: history
I listen a lot about this book, how controversial, how terrible it is...
This book pretend toput polish people in shame, to make them feel bad...
And in some extend he made it... I am half polish and when I just start to read the book I was thinking that I may feel bad about it that maybe, polish people are not that great, and more of the opposite...
But the book was dissapointing inseveral ways, first, the way was written, is very unconfortabble to read that have foodnots, and notes at the end, and the worse, important ones, you have to stop every 5 minutes to go to some notes and turn back... Some are short some are long, but they were far away too much notes...
In the other side the arguments of the author in this case is weak. With this I am not pretending to deny what happen at Kielce, not at all, but the author took an attitude to polish people compleatly unvalid. Arguments such as the polish people from that time where normal...
The more that I think it, the more that It lost validity... I want to know what he was thinking when he say that. Who is normal after the II World War?
Arguments at the poles have the antisemitism throught the milk of our mothers?
They are a few more arguments that I don´t agree. With this I don´t pretend to say that it was not a crime that some poles were antisemitics, but the author goes far beyond and instead of that is blind by the fact that since he is sensitive to the story (let´s remember that he is a jew that emigrate from Poland to US)he transform what could be a very good book from a well done research in to a book that is more directed by the heart. Almost a novel...(less)
This book pretend toput polish people in shame, to make them feel bad...
And in some extend he made it... I am half polish and when I just start to read the book I was thinking that I may feel bad about it that maybe, polish people are not that great, and more of the opposite...
But the book was dissapointing inseveral ways, first, the way was written, is very unconfortabble to read that have foodnots, and notes at the end, and the worse, important ones, you have to stop every 5 minutes to go to some notes and turn back... Some are short some are long, but they were far away too much notes...
In the other side the arguments of the author in this case is weak. With this I am not pretending to deny what happen at Kielce, not at all, but the author took an attitude to polish people compleatly unvalid. Arguments such as the polish people from that time where normal...
The more that I think it, the more that It lost validity... I want to know what he was thinking when he say that. Who is normal after the II World War?
Arguments at the poles have the antisemitism throught the milk of our mothers?
They are a few more arguments that I don´t agree. With this I don´t pretend to say that it was not a crime that some poles were antisemitics, but the author goes far beyond and instead of that is blind by the fact that since he is sensitive to the story (let´s remember that he is a jew that emigrate from Poland to US)he transform what could be a very good book from a well done research in to a book that is more directed by the heart. Almost a novel...(less)
Apr 23, 2013Liam rated it it was amazing
"One of the paramount underlying reasons of conflict between Poles and Jews after the war had to do with the illicit transfer of material property from Jewish ownership during the war." (39)
"The conceptual and emotional fog veiling this story lifts somewhat only after we recognize that Jewish survivors were an unbearable sore spot because they had been victimized by their Polish neighbors -- for centuries, but especially during the Nazi occupation." (164)
"[T]he local population enthusiastically welcomed and collaborated with the German 'liberators'; and it participated in mass killings of Jews." (185)
"'What do you want with these special Jewish pains? I feel as close to the wretched victims of the rubber plantations in Putumayo and the blacks of Africa. ... I have no special corner in my heart for the ghetto: I am at home in the entire world, where there are clouds and birds and human tears.'" (Rosa Luxemburg to Mathilde Wurm, 195)
"Eastern European Communists wanted to authenticate themselves as the only organizational embodiment of true national interest in the societies where they were politically active. To reach this goal they did not shy away from playing on xenophobia and ethnic prejudice." (239)
"Living Jews embodied the massive failure of character and reason on the part of their Polish neighbors and constituted by mere presence both a reminder and a threat that they might need to account for themselves." (248) (less)
"The conceptual and emotional fog veiling this story lifts somewhat only after we recognize that Jewish survivors were an unbearable sore spot because they had been victimized by their Polish neighbors -- for centuries, but especially during the Nazi occupation." (164)
"[T]he local population enthusiastically welcomed and collaborated with the German 'liberators'; and it participated in mass killings of Jews." (185)
"'What do you want with these special Jewish pains? I feel as close to the wretched victims of the rubber plantations in Putumayo and the blacks of Africa. ... I have no special corner in my heart for the ghetto: I am at home in the entire world, where there are clouds and birds and human tears.'" (Rosa Luxemburg to Mathilde Wurm, 195)
"Eastern European Communists wanted to authenticate themselves as the only organizational embodiment of true national interest in the societies where they were politically active. To reach this goal they did not shy away from playing on xenophobia and ethnic prejudice." (239)
"Living Jews embodied the massive failure of character and reason on the part of their Polish neighbors and constituted by mere presence both a reminder and a threat that they might need to account for themselves." (248) (less)
May 03, 2013Howard added it
A good academic analysis by Professor Gross himself of Polish origins of the Polish peoples antisemitism and its facilitation in its butchery by the Germans during WWII. Something to learn as the Jewish people were residents in Poland for over a 1000 years! How can Fear be used as a political weapon of control of a population, that is the premise of this very depth analysis. Modern uses of these truths are very evident today in the aftermath of 9/11 and the economic 9/11 of 2008. The "Boogeyman" ...more
The absolute worst in human capacity for cruelty and violence. Very well written, very interesting, very disturbing.
Same basic side note as with "Neighbors": Jews living in Poland have recently told me that - while his facts are absolutely correct - they felt his books have given an overall inaccurate impression of Polish anti-Semitism and that the books have implied that this continues, at the same level, today. That is, they felt it's not as primitive and prevalent but that this book has somehow supported that thought. Just interesting to think about Polish Jews and their issues with it. (less)
Same basic side note as with "Neighbors": Jews living in Poland have recently told me that - while his facts are absolutely correct - they felt his books have given an overall inaccurate impression of Polish anti-Semitism and that the books have implied that this continues, at the same level, today. That is, they felt it's not as primitive and prevalent but that this book has somehow supported that thought. Just interesting to think about Polish Jews and their issues with it. (less)
Jul 11, 2012Gary rated it it was amazing
An astounding and painful read; one long argument that leads to an utterly convincing and unforgettable conclusion. Although this is specifically about atrocities committed by the Polish people,there is no doubt that the darkest corners of human nature are not limited to one nationality or period of history. This scrupulously researched book should be read by a wider audience. I plan on reading "Neighbors" and a few of the books referenced in the notes. The footnotes may put off some readers but they can be skipped during the first read to keep the argument moving.
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