Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, by Jan Tomasz Gross. 2002. Penguin Books, London

Liar Jan T. Gross. Relies Primarily on One Source: Consider the Source! Ignored Jewish Sources (Quoted Below) Finger the Germans, and Not the Poles, as the Main Killers of Jews at Jedwabne

It is never wise to construct an account largely on one source, but that is what Jan T. Gross has done in his account of Poles killing the Jews of Jedwabne. And what a source: Shmul Wasersztajn (Wasserstein). Wasersztajn was not even an eyewitness.

Then again, so long as it serves a Jewish-victimization, anti-Polish agenda, what does it matter?

REPEATING POGROM HORROR PROPAGANDA

The phoniness of Gross’ narrative is shown by his regurgitation of old Jewish-persecution fantasies. Gross is obsessed about Poles cutting the heads off Jews (p. 59, 96, 103, 160, and 184). Unfortunately for Gross, the cutting off of Jewish heads, by those rascally Poles, has come up in other Holocaust-survivor tales. For instance, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/looting-jews-rob-poles-katz/

The lurid beheading-Jews storytelling was also used in the bogus NY pogrom of 1906. See:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2022/10/12/bogus-pogroms-how-pogrom-horror-stories-originate-lurid-antigoyism-holocaust-survivor-testimony-unreliable-ribak/

So Gross is not only dishonest: He is not even original.

IGNORED JEWISH SOURCES: THE SPECIFICS

Did you know that there are Jewish (never mind the Polish) sources that affirm the fact that Germans, not Poles, were the main killers of Jedwabne’s Jews? For example:

“Refugees from Jedwabne and Radzilow arrived, who were coincidentally saved from death, and who saw with their own eyes and felt the hell on their flesh. With the help of local farmers, the Germans gathered the Jews of these places, with the rabbi and leaders of the community at the front, in the market square. At first, they beat them cruelly and forced them to wrap themselves in their tallitot, to jump and dance, accompanied by singing. All this was done under an unceasing flood of lashes from cudgels and rubber whips. At the end, they pushed all the Jews, while beating and kicking them, into a long threshing house and set it on fire with them inside. This was the end of Jedwabne and Radzilow.” (pp. 38-39)

SOURCE: Michael Maik, Deliverance: The Diary of Michael Maik. A True Story (Kedumim, Israel: Keterpress Enterprises, 2004), 38-39.

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“Later on, some Jews who had fled Jedwabno [Jedwabne] for Derechin told us when the Germans first entered their town, they had herded all the Jews into a barn and set it ablaze. Anyone who tried to get out was cut down by machine-gun fire. Now, standing in lines in the church courtyard, we heard a German tell us in perfect Russian that anyone trying to escape would be shot.” (p. 42)

SOURCE: Harold Zissman Warriors, 2005, 42.

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An IPN investigation followed this highly touted book by Jan T. Gross and was said in the media to have “proved Gross right”. It did no such thing, and the original Pole-accusing investigation has since been extensively debunked. See:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2021/07/01/jedwabne-update-definitive-work-jedwabne-a-german-disguised-crime-long-suppressed-information-now-available-2000-2003-poles-are-guilty-ipn-commission-refuted-sommer-chodakiewicz-stankiewicz/

Despite this, the media and academic sources continue to display a shocking lack of integrity by repeating Gross as if he was right. Some things never change.

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THE SHOE ON THE OTHER FOOT

Then how about some equal time for Jewish crime:

The mass murder of Polish villagers by Jews at Koniuchy. See my review of  INTERMARIUM, by Chodakiewicz:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/atrocities-jewish-complicity-koniuchy-massacre-chodakiewicz/