BOOK
Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in
Jedwabne, Poland
Gross, Jan T. Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland. New York: Penguin Books, 2002. 200 pages. ISBN: 0142002402.
REVIEW
From the Introduction:
Twentieth-century Europe has been shaped decisively by the actions of two men. It is to Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin that we owe totalitarianism – if not its invention, then certainly its most determined implementation. The loss of life for which they are jointly responsible is truly staggering. Yet it is not what happened but what has been prevented from ever taking place that gives a truer measure of totalitarianism’s destructiveness: “the sum of unwritten books,” as one author put it. In fact, the sum of thoughts unthought, of unfelt feelings, of works never accomplished, of lives unlived to their natural end (xv).
And from the back cover:
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 detailed 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.
Jan Gross’s book flat-out knocks the reader down. It is an emotionally draining read, one that will force the reader to push away from the table, or set the book on the arm of the chair and just reflect – reflect on one’s own neighbors, on who is called friend, on the clerks at the stores we frequent, our barber/hairstylist, our children’s teachers. Reflect on one’s own prejudices, on folks we may have mistreated, and on those who have mistreated us. Jan Gross makes us think of these people, because these are the kinds of people we encounter every day, who, on July 10, 1941 rose up and slew their own townsfolk. Slew people they’d done business with and with whose children their children had played with or attended school. The human capacity for callousness and brutality is truly frightening...
I purchased Neighbors at the Museum Shop at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in May 2003 and consumed it on the flight home to Chicago (around 90 minutes). Only 124 pages (with notes, it is 200 pages), I found it to be a “page-turner”. I simply did not want to put the book down. Meticulously researched from first-hand interviews and exhaustive court records, et al., Gross has given us a thorough case study of a horrific event. He does an excellent job of building up to the events of the massacre, discussing both Polish/Soviet relations, and then Polish/German relations. The complexity of this history, with the Jews caught in the middle no matter to which side they or the Poles leaned (or perhaps were forced to show allegiance), is a complex backdrop to the crime under discussion. The Soviets were sometimes welcomed by Jews, if only it appears out of fear. Some who had Communist loyalties played those up in an effort to gain favor with the new rulers (as of August 23, 1939 and the signing of the German/Soviet non-aggression pact (21)). Others stayed away due in part to their fear. As the German war machine approached in June 1941, they were in many cases welcomed as liberators by the Poles. If only the Poles had realized what the Nazis’ future plans were for the Slavs. Did they act against the Jews to “impress” the Germans? Or, was it an acting out of centuries of Polish antisemitism? Gross set out to find those answers, from the perpetrators themselves. We are the recipients of his findings – the backslide of man to his primal state: hunting, consuming, acting on emotion, remorseless for his evil deeds, protecting his territory and destroying his enemy. Gross pulls no punches in detailing the slaughter, at times premeditated, sometimes spontaneous. But always vivid, and scary.
PASSAGE/QUOTE FOR CLASSROOM USAGE
Read aloud or copy to a sheet and distribute the following passage from the beginning of the 13th chapter, “Collective Responsibility”:
Even though the Nazi-conceived project of the eradication of world Jewry will remain, at its core, a mystery, we know a lot about various mechanisms of the “final solution.” And one of the things we do know is that the Einsatzgruppen, German police detachments, and various functionaries who implemented the “final solution” did not compel the local population to participate directly in the murder of Jews. Bloody pogroms were tolerated, sometimes even invited, especially after the opening of the Russo-German war – a special directive was issued to this effect by the head of the Main Reich Security Office, Reinhardt Heydrich. A lot of prohibitions concerning the Jews were issued as well. In occupied Poland, for example, people could not, under penalty of death, offer assistance to Jews hiding outside the German-designated ghettos. Though there were sadistic individuals who, particularly in camps, might force prisoners to kill each other, in general nobody was forced to kill the Jews. In other words, the so-called local population involved in killings of Jews did so of its own free will.
And if in collective Jewish memory this phenomenon is ingrained – that local Polish people killed the Jews because they wanted to, not because they had to – then Jews will hold them to be particularly responsible for what they have done. A murderer in uniform remains a state functionary acting under orders, and he might even be presumed to have mental reservations about what he had been ordered to do. Not so a civilian, killing another human being of his own free will – such an evildoer is unequivocally a murderer (87-88).
We can do a lot with this text. First, I think having groups of students break it down into smaller sections would be a great idea. Let them work together to analyze the source material. Start by dissecting it into ideas – clauses or groups of sentences. Then have them find the impact, hidden meaning, thought that provokes another thought, etc. in each of the subsections they’ve created. Next, have them categorize their subsections under headings such as LEGALITY, MORALITY, and UNIVERSALITY. They might consider various statements, such as “A lot of prohibitions concerning the Jews were issued as well.” What will your students do with that statement? Prohibitions certainly fall under legality. Adhering to the law falls under morality. That everyone would follow the law means it has a sense of universality for those citizens. But, are there any hidden meanings or assumptions?
After they have their discussion ideas on paper, come together as a big group and discuss on the chalkboard. I sometimes give kids a small amount of extra credit for coming up to write on the board. Perhaps each group would like to select a spokesperson. It’s a simple way to coax some students out of the comfort zone of their chair/desk. As a conclusion to your discussion, ask if this passage is stuck in its context, or if it is applicable anywhere in the world today.
RATIONALE FOR USAGE/UNIT RELEVANCE
Neighbors fits into teaching about bystanders, collaborators, treatment of the Jews, group behavior (if you take a sociological slant), the early stages of Operation Barbarosa, post-war trials, and the destruction of Polish Jewry specifically.
CLASSROOM METHOD OF USAGE
Notable passages can be distributed or read aloud. Of particular interest, after some introduction by the instructor, might be the 8th chapter, “The Murder” (pp. 56-65). In addition, the instructor can pass out the following reading:
Miriam Margoshes 1
Anti-Semitic attacks against Jews has been going on for centuries...
In the Spring of 1648, the Cossacks under the leadership of Bogdan Chmielnicki massacred the Jews of Nemirov, Poland. The Jews of the town and the outlying areas had run for refuge to the fortified castle overlooking the town.
But the Cossacks, flying stolen Polish flags, deceived them into opening the castle gates. Pouring into the castle, swinging their swords, the Cossacks cut down men, women, and children without mercy. Women and girls jumped from the castle walls into the surrounding moat to drown, rather than be captured alive. Young men who could swim also jumped into the moat in a desperate attempt to escape, but they were pursued and killed. On that day, the moat ran red with Jewish blood. Estimates of the dead range from 3,000 to 10,000.
Nemirov was only one of 140 Jewish communities destroyed by the Cossack hordes. Some say there were as many as 700. The total number of victims will never be known for sure, since the killing machine wasn't efficient enough yet in those days to compile statistics -- but estimates range between 100,000 and 670,000 dead. Elegies ("Kinot") written by [great rabbis of the time] compare this tragic epoch to the destruction of the Holy Temple.
BACKGROUND TO THE TRAGEDY
Early in the 16th century, the king of Poland (which then included both Lithuania and the Ukraine) offered economic privileges and some civil rights to Jews. As a result, Jews from lands where life had become difficult, like the provinces of Germany to the west, began migrating eastward to Poland.
For the next hundred years, the Jews prospered in Poland. The Jewish population reached between one and 1.5 million; Jews made up nearly a majority in many of the smaller towns. The Jews were mostly business people -- merchants and traders. Many became agents on the noblemen's estates, collecting taxes, rents and road-tolls for the noble landowners.
This was an excellent source of income for Jews, although it had an unfortunate side effect: It caused the lower classes -- the peasants and the craftsmen, who had to pay those taxes and tolls -- to transfer their hatred of the oppressive noblemen to the Jewish agents. Frequent attacks by the clergy, competing merchants, and envious peasants were a part of life for the Jews. However, the king did provide them with some protection.
That era was a radiant time for Torah in Poland. Many Jewish sages lived there and produced immortal works in that period, amongst them the Rama -- the codifier of all Jewish law for Ashkenazi Jewry.
TOWN AFTER TOWN
But the good times were not destined to last.
Across the Dnieper River from Poland proper, in what is today the eastern Ukraine, there lived a tribe called the Cossacks, a proud and nationalistic people who were legendary horsemen. Although they were subjects of the king of Poland, the Cossacks had their own chief (the "hetman"), whose name strikes terror into every Jewish heart to this day: Bogdan Chmielnicki.
Chmielnicki was a man of large ambitions. One day, he revealed that he was in secret contact with the Khan of the Crimean Tartars, planning a revolution against Poland. The Jewish agent of the Polish landowner overheard and reported the plot; Chmielnicki was led to prison in chains and sentenced to death for treason.
It was 1648. In that fateful and terrible year, before the verdict against Chmielnicki could be carried out, King Vladimir of Poland suddenly died. Chmielnicki escaped with his life and the Cossacks rebelled against their Polish overlords, defeating the Polish army and even capturing the commanding general, Graf (Count) Potocki.
The Cossacks soon crossed the Dnieper and penetrated Poland proper, raiding every town and village in their path. Supposedly, they were out for revenge against the detested Polish noblemen and their families, and against the Catholic priests who had persecuted them for their Greek Orthodox faith. But wherever they rode, in town after town, the Cossacks swooped down and attacked the defenseless Jews.
Thousands of Jews fled from their homes before the violent Cossack hordes, leaving everything behind. But where could they go? They hid out in forests; they tried to reach some border. While on the run, families were split up -- many fathers and mothers lost track of their children, and even of one another. Whoever managed somehow to sneak across the border into Germany, Bohemia, Austria, Holland or Italy was a broken, penniless refugee, dependent on the local Jewish communities for bread.
GRISLY MASSACRES
Two historic enemies of Poland had joined Chmielnicki in his rebellion, the Crimean Tartars and the Turks. Those Jews who fell into Turkish hands were lucky, relatively speaking; they were "only" carried away on ships to be sold as slaves in Constantinople and Salonika, where the Sephardic communities would come to their rescue and redeem them from captivity.
But whoever fell into the clutches of the Cossacks themselves was doomed. The Cossacks massacred Jews with grisly tortures that read like a handbook for Hitler. Scholars and laymen, rich and poor, old and young, women, even children, were mutilated and killed. The Cossacks also ran their swords through Torah scrolls and tefillin, and plundered and burned down the houses...
"Tach V'Tat" is the transliteration for the
Hebrew years 5408 and 5409 (1648-9). It remained the most bitter time for
Polish Jewry for 300 years... until 1942.
SOURCE:
1. Jewish Observer magazine (Summer 1999);
published by the Agudath Israel of America: INNERNET MAGAZINE;
[http://innernet.org.il]
FROM: http://www.jdstone.org/cr/files/therampagingcossacksof1648.html. Accessed April 15, 2005.
STUDY QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION GUIDE
Assuming all students have access to the preceding texts, have them answer the following questions for later classroom discussion; points per question are in parentheses: