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

Gross wonders, considering the “national martyrology [sic]” that arose during World War II, if it’s possible for “a group with a distinctive collective identity” to be both “a victim and a perpetrator” (104). When the Allies, for instance, “[confronted] every German with knowledge of Nazi crimes” (104), the Germans responded by characterizing themselves as victims of war. This collective position among the Germans “alleviated […] the burden of responsibility for the war” (104). Some Jews joked that they were the ones who would require the Germans’ forgiveness for what the Nazis had done to them. Similarly, there was strong “[a]ntipathy toward the Jews in Poland after the war” (106). Gross explains that “postwar antisemitism was widespread [and] firmly rooted in medieval prejudice about ritual murder” (109).

Polish Gentiles, like the Wyrzykowski family, were largely hated and feared “as embarrassing witnesses to crimes that had been committed against the Jews” (109) as well as for being witnesses to the plunder of Jewish property.

In June 1941 the local populations in former Polish territories incorporated into the Soviet Union received the Nazis “as an army of liberators” (110). In several towns citizens handed Nazi soldiers flowers to welcome them, “not realizing that [the Germans were] the most serious enemy of Polishness [sic]” (110).