Talk:Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland

Old talk

I am putting up a brief page on Neighbors, which deserves a page of its own, if any book ever did. There is, of course, much more that can be and ought to be written about this book and the degree to which it shook the nation of Poland. However, writing anything on Wikipedia about Gross is something of a fool's project since political extremists immediately rewrite every page related to Gross's work with racist nonsense and citations to crank scholarship. Elan26 (talk) 02:21, 9 May 2008 (UTC)Elan26

I think you mean that other editors have to rewrite unreferenced extremist nonecyclopedic nonsense into something reasonably neutral and encyclopedic, as we did with Fear :) --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:23, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

2000 or 2001?

Wasn't the Polish edition published in 2000, a year before the English edition? What are the differences? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:23, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the book was originally published in Poland in May 2000. --Lysy^talk 14:30, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Publishers Weekly quote

The quote is not very encyclopedic ("terrible outcry") and contains at least one evident error: "A government commission determined that not only did Gross get the story right but that many other cities had done precisely the same thing". First of all, Jedwabne was a village, not a city. Second, while the government's commission (presumably of Institute of National Remembrance) has indeed confirmed that there was a massacre in Jedwabne, it has also found Gross numbers - both for Jedwabne and for the wider anti-Jewish violence in Poland, 1944-1946 - exaggerated. Here is the official IPN statement with regards to casualties in Jedwabne ([1]) and here is discussion of this in English by a noted scholar ([2] and [3]); Gross gave the number of 1600, IPN - 340. Anti-Jewish violence in Poland, 1944-1946 has a well referenced criticism of the high number of Jewish casualties (~1500) as presented by Gross.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:49, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Ok Piotr, First of all, The Polish Government report doesn't state the actual number of victims. It states there were no LESS than 300 victims. They were unable to say the exact number due to religous sentimentalities on the burial place. There may have been more victims accounted for. Piotr did you expect that the bodies of these victims would be all lined up neatly in a pile for the commission to count. They were burned inside a building. some of their remains would have disappeared. They are in a mass burial. Kop on to yourself. There are records that show there were more Jewish people living in that town. What do you suppose happened to them. Maybe you believe an alien space ship came down and took the Jewish people with them. The citations you offer are not even the official reports but websites. Try and look up proper evidence before you want to make an argument. but this is getting off the point I want to make. it doesn't matter what the number of people killed in Jedwabne was. One person being killed under those conditions is disgusting and Poland should stand up and accept responsibility for their actions just as they expected Germans to.

Second of all, I was very interested to see that in the opening article that the book naighbors sparked debate abroad and then it uses a citation from Norman Davies who claims it was unfair to the Polish people. It only sparked debate within Poland where Poland had previously tried to avoid facing the world audience with the truth. They preferred to play the victims of WWII to the world. Now we know that some of them were the villians. As for Davies, his comments are his own personal views. He is comprimised. His main financial aid comes from Poland where he writes books about the history of Poland and Universities within Poland recommend students to buy his books. If one of his books were to have a section outlining Polish people attacking Polish Jews, then the Universities would stop recommending to students to buy his books. Also he lives in Poland and he has a Polish wife and this would also influence him not to write about such attacks on Polish Jews by Polish people. For further reading on Polish peoples attacks on not only Polish Jews but also Polish women and Second class citizens within Poland, then read Jacqueline Hayden's book Poles Apart: Solidarity and the New Poland (1994),Irish Academic Press —Preceding unsigned comment added by 156.17.164.155 (talk) 21:18, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Splendid Anti-smitic Filth

'Gontarczyk noted that Gross fails to inform the reader about Polish-Jewish relations in the Soviet-occupied Eastern Borderlands and the Jewish participation in the communist terror apparatus in Jedwabne preceding the German attack on the Soviet Union controlling the area since 1939'. Jews were not statistically overrepresented in the Soviet security organs in territories occupied by the in 1939 and 1940. Moreover they were pronouncedly underepresented in the senior ranks of said organs. The identification of Soviet rule, in all its manifestations, as jewish is an antisemitic fantasy which predated the Soviet occupation and was unrelated to it. claiming that this mythical 'Jewish crimes' were the cause of antisemitic outrages rather than one more symptom of antisemitic morbidity, is good Polano-Nazism but little more. 79.177.229.149 (talk) 10:34, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Polish courts

Which courts? The IPN isn't a court.Xx236 (talk) 08:31, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Correcting. Don't be afraid of editing articles, they don't bite :) --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 11:41, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Article in Holocaust and Genocide Studies

https://muse.jhu.edu/demo/holocaust_and_genocide_studies/v017/17.1stola.html Xx236 (talk) 12:13, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

For the record this is: Dariusz Stola, Jedwabne: Revisiting the Evidence and Nature of the Crime. Polish Academy of Sciences. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 23:13, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Agnieszka Arnold

Gross used Agnieszka Arnold's work. Arnold preferred to talk to people of Jedwabne rather than accuse them. Xx236 (talk) 10:37, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

US reception

Similarly to the other WP article on Gross' Book, the US reception section is grossly inadequate. More than a half of it is actually a reception not in US but in Poland, despite there is a separate section for that. --Irpen 04:33, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

NPOV

This article is heavily slanted towards people who nay-say the book. For example, it mentions the report that only found several hundred bodies, but it does not mention that the exhumation was only done for several days before it was stopped for religious reasons, so it cant be considered a complete study of the area. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.177.83.113 (talk) 23:05, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Jerzy Robert Nowak

Jerzy Robert Nowak is an extremist and commentator for the antisemitic Radio Maryja. He was a featured speaker at a recent anti Jewish hatefest. Amongst his writinfs are slanderous garbage such as Jewish crooks from Jedwabne.He is not a reliable source for an encyclopedia. Boodlesthecat ^Meow? 23:35, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Antyk

Another fringe antisemitic source which is not a reliable source for an encyclopedia article. See here, here, Michlic, Poland's Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present: "This publishing house...sells various anti-Jewish works written in contemporary Poland and reprints of anti-semitic books published in the interwar period" p266, and here. Boodlesthecat ^Meow? 23:57, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

All right, with that I agree that use of sources publishing by Antyk should be limited. But if reliable shcolars are reprinted by unreliable sources, that doesn't make them antisemitic. Tomasz Strzembosz, for example, is a reliable historian, and his work should not be removed. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 00:12, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

You've been inserting material sourced to Geocities websites?[4] Seriously, this is getting embarassing. Jayjg ^(talk) 00:47, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

If a reliable scholars' work is reproduced there, so what? They are still reliable, even if they have homepages on geocities or such.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 01:35, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

The antisemitic bookstore that sells Holocuast denial crap and the guy who is the "Jewish affairs" expert for the antisemitic radio station are even more embarrassing as sources. Boodlesthecat ^Meow? 02:02, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

"the guy who is the "Jewish affairs" expert for the antisemitic radio station" - who would that be? Please note that appearing in an antisemitic radio does not prove one is an antisemtic - one may be trying to fight against antisemitism with such appearances and criticism of antisemitism, for example. Also, mind WP:BLP. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 03:39, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

That guy would be Nowack, and the notion that he is there speaking at a Jew bashing hatefest to fight anti-semitism is a howler even for you, Piotrus. Boodlesthecat ^Meow? 04:38, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

No, we don't trust geocities sites for anything. And that's not even getting into the sources themselves, which are dubious at best. Jayjg ^(talk) 23:50, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Reinstallment of anti-Semitic publications really must stop

And yet again, Piotrus reinstalls yet another anti-Semitic publication [5],[6]. "100 Falsehoods of J.T. Gross" by Nowak, was classified as anti-Semitic by prof. dr hab. Jerzy Tomaszewski [7], who was called in as an expert during court hearings.

Regarding Jerzy Robert Nowak himself, I'm afraid, that to say that he "may be trying to fight against antisemitism" as Piotrus just put it is a stretch that goes bit too far. From his shenanigans I get quite an opposite view on his agenda:

"In September 2001, in Wroclaw, during a session of the Festival of Science entitled 'Poland: Poles and Jews in their common home', which took place in the town hall, one of the panellists, Jerzy Robert Nowak, provoked his co-panellists—Jerzy Kichler, president of the Union of Jewish Religious Communities, Konstanty Gebert, former editor in-chief of the Jewish monthly Midrasz, and Fr Michal Czajkowski, a well-known author of works on Jewish topics—by making antisemitic remarks. Nowak, a right-wing historian linked to Radio Maryja and known for a number of aggressively antisemitic and chauvinistic books, as well as articles published in Nasz Dziennik and Nasza Polska, said he did not want to participate in a debate with Gebert and Fr Czajkowski. After only a few moments, Kirchler and Gebert, together with some members of the audience, left the room. Despite his willingness to debate with Nowak, Fr Czajkowski also left the room, accompanied by shouts of 'Go to Israel!' Nowak said that one should not only talk about antisemitism, but also about the 'anti-Polonism' of the Jews. A large section of the audience, especially elderly and middle-aged people, applauded his remarks and, after the session, Nowak signed autographs in front of the town hall. The festival organizer responsible for inviting Nowak, Aleksandra Kubicz, said she had had no idea that Nowak was a well-known antisemite" [8]. M0RD00R (talk) 07:31, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't care that much about Jerzy Robert Nowak; I wanted to make sure that much more respectable and reliable professor Strzembosz isn't smeared alongside with him.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:21, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, sure, respectable and reliable. As described by Holocaust scholar Israel Gutman

It was with no small surprise and disappointment that I read an exhaustive article by Prof. Tomasz Strzembosz, the doyen of historians of the Polish underground, entitled: "Covered-Up Collaboration." He claims that: “the Jewish population, especially youths and the town dwelling poor, staged a mass welcome for the invading [Soviet] army and took part in introducing the new order, some with weapons in hand.” The Jewish poor with weapons... Strzembosz’s rumors and generalized accusations, which he lays on thick, are the products of fantasy and are not worth discussing. Although he does not say so clearly, these words suggest a certain tit for tat approach to Jedwabne - you hurt us, so now we’ll hurt you!

But the point, Piotrus, is that we don't use anti-semitic hate sites like Antyk even as a host for more "respectable" sources. Or do you think we should trust the accuracy of a translation carried by a website that peddles Holocaust denial literature? Boodlesthecat ^Meow? 17:58, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Tomasz Strzembosz died in 2004 so he isn't able to defend himself like some living persons who use this Wikipedia as free propaganda and PR tool. Xx236 (talk) 08:31, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

The number of victims

The article doesn't discuss the number of victims multiplied by JT Gross. Either his book is academic so such boring details should be corrected or the book is an ethical protest against situation in Poland around 2000.Xx236 (talk) 08:34, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

The impact

• Stola's text was published in 2002 so it didn't close the discussion.
• While Polish historians praised Gross - is it a summary of Stolas text (how many historians did?) or a general opinion supported by one source? Xx236 (talk) 13:51, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

External links modified (February 2018)

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External links

Preserving here; some may be appropriate as sources, but the number is clearly excessive. Some links are dead:

• Joanna Michlic, The Polish Debate about the Jedwabne Massacre
• Jedwabne, July 10, 1941: an Interview with Pawel Machcewicz, Director, Office of Public Education, Institute of National Memory [9]
• "An Inquiry Confirms a Massacre Of Jews by Poles in World War II", The New York Times, July 10, 2002.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill, Poles on Jedwabne, 34 articles (in English)[10]
• "Sixty years ago..." Address by Aleksander Kwasniewski, President of Poland at the July 10, 2001, ceremonies in Jedwabne marking the 60th anniversary of the Jedwabne tragedy.
• 'Neighbors' tells gruesome killing of Jews in Poland, USA Today, March 28, 2001.
• Adam Michnik. "Poles and the Jews: How Deep the Guilt?" The New York Times. March 17, 2001 (published simultaneously on March 17 by Gazeta Wyborcza).
• Robert S. Wistrich. The Jedwabne Affair.
• Abraham Brumberg. Poles and Jews. Foreign Affairs, September/October 2002.
• Poland's willing executioners. The Guardian by George Steiner.
• Prof. Tomasz Strzembosz, "A different picture of neighbors" (Ultimate debunking of Gross) translated by Mariusz Wesolowski (see also: Polish language original archived by Internet Wayback Machine on March 31, 2001.)
• Jan Gross, "Polish Anti-semitism after Auschwitz," joint seminar at Yale University's Antisemitism in Comparative Perspective. Video link.
• Rzeczpospolita, Links to many articles in Polish on Jedwabne Massacre [11]

K.e.coffman (talk) 01:24, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Terrible misquotation

In the introduction to "The Neighbors Respond", Antony Polonsky and Joanna B. Michlic note that the harshest critics of Gross, such as Tomasz Strzembosz, have also rejected earlier description of anti-Jewish attitudes and actions on the part of Polish military organizations and the civilian population during the sixty-three-day Warsaw Uprising launched against the Germans on 1 August 1944. In particular, he described individual and group murders of several scores of Jews, by the National Armed Forces (Narodowe Sily Zbrojne), and by some units of the Home Army such as that detailed by Michal Cichy's Poles and Jews: Black Pages in the Annals of the Warsaw Uprising. They note that "Many of those who have espoused what Andrzejowski describes as a "defensive open" stance in the controversy came to adopt quite extreme positions, as has been the case with Tomasz Strzembosz. They seem to have great difficulty abandoning the self-image of the Poles as heroes and victims and use strongly apologetic arguments."

The actual quote is a bit different: The first of these was the controversy initiated by the publication in Gazeta Wyborcza on 29-30 January 1994 of an article by a young (non-Jewish) journalist, Michal Cichy, entitled "Poles and Jews: Black Pages in the Annals of the Warsaw Uprising." In it, Cichy discussed anti-Jewish attitudes and actions on the part of Polish military organizations and the civilian population during the sixty-three-day Warsaw Uprising launched against the Germans on 1 August 1944. In particular, he described individual and group murders of several scores of Jews, by the National Armed Forces (Narodowe Sily yZbrojne), and by some units of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa [AK]). Although Cichy's revelations were confirmed by three leading historians of the Second World War in Poland-Andrzej Paczkowski, Andrzej Friszke, and Teresa Prekerowa-a majority of discussants (including Tomasz Strzembosz, who has played a large role in the discussion of Neighbors) refused to accept them.'' This is on page 16. You will note that there is no quote that was added to the first part. It is actually on much later page, page 37

Certainly dispassionate historical investigation is a better way than well-intentioned moral statements and apologies. But the historical debate about the Jedwabne massacre has thus far been disappointment. Many of those who have espoused what Andrzej Paczkowski describes as a "defensive open" stance in the controversy has copme to adopt quite extreme positions, as has been the case, for example with Tomasz Strzembosz. They seem to have great difficulty abandoning the self-image of the Poles as heroes and victims and use strongly apologetic arguments.

This is a bit too much SYNTH and NPOV for my liking, it might give an impression that somehow Strzembosz is justifying mass murder of Jews, in any case it doesn't seem to directly reference to the book discussed and to Chichy's article which is described in a manner that describes Warsaw Uprising as mass murder of Jews.

In any case Michal Cichy has apologized for the tone of the article mentioned and said its publication was a mistake, while he became very critical of the environment that encouraged him to publish this[12]. --MyMoloboaccount (talk) 20:11, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

References

Are newspapers reliable sources for attributed statements?

Before we even begin fixing the references here, we have to get a consensus on whether we can cite newspaper reviews here or not. Or opinions of historians published in newspapers. A bunch of sources here seem to be based on that level of sourcing. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:33, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Stanisław Musiał seems to be writing AGAINST the basic facts of the book

I don't have Stanisław Musiał's book, but just from this I think I can deduce that he is not on his way to praise any fact in the book. Especially not that Poles took any part in what ensued. פשוט pashute ♫ (talk) 02:35, 28 July 2021 (UTC)