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

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

Jan T. Gross
$17.00
Publication Date: October 29th, 2002
Publisher:
Penguin Books
ISBN:
9780142002407
Pages:
240

Description

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 comprehensive 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.

About the Author

Jan T. Gross is a professor of politics and European studies at New York University. He has written numerous academic and historical studies, including Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia. He is coeditor of The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath.

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

"An important contribution to the literature of human bestiality unleashed by war." —The New York Times Book Review

"Like an oral tale transcribed by a folklorist, it has the ring of the eternal to it.... Hatred like this runs deep in human nature and is ever ready to erupt again. Be warned." —Los Angeles Times

"Extraordinary." —New Republic