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Revision as of 18:57, 8 May 2008 by Piotrus (talk | contribs) (→Content: req citations)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Fear - Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz is a book by Jan T. Gross, published by Random House in 2006. In it, Gross explores the question of existence of postwar anti-Semitism in Poland.
Content
Gross is at pains to lay out the horrors suffered by Poland during World War II including the initial partition of the country between Stalin and Hitler, the subsequent Nazi crimes and the Katyn massacre of Polish army officers by the Soviets; the Warsaw uprising of 1944, as well as the Soviet decision to postpone entering Warsaw until the German army had defeated the Polish Armia Krajowa, which resulted in the destruction of Warsaw "reduced to a pile of rubble." And finally, the abandonment of Poland to half a century of Soviet communist domination prescribed by Britain and America at the Yalta Conference.
Gross estimates that 250,000 Polish Jews returned home at the end of the war. Approximately half of them came from internment camps inside Russia while others emerged from hiding. Gross' controversial claims include the assertion that because Poland had the largest Jewish population of any country conquered by the Third Reich, an unspecified number of Poles enriched themselves with the property of those who had perished. According to Gross, this served to frighten the Polish Jews who survived the Nazis and returned home. Another one of Gross' far-reaching allegations is that the Poles who were later regarded by the rest of the world as heroes for hiding Jews, begged them not to speak of their own sacrifice for fear of reprisals by their neighbors.
Gross makes additional claims about Kielce pogrom (see article for a more balanced analysis) arguing that the pogrom was initiated not by a mob of citizens, but by the police, and involved people from every walk of life except the highest level of government officials in the city (Fear, pp. 83-166).
Reception
Piast Institute, a Polish-American think tank, has carried out an analysis of the reception of Fear. It has concluded that "the reviewers in major newspapers such as the New York Times, The Baltimore Sun and the Los Angeles Times, none of whom has any expertise in Polish or East Central European history, have reacted to the book and its thesis with uncritical acclaim and considerable anti-Polish rhetoric".
Fear has caused much controversy in Poland (where it was published in 2008). It got mixed media reception nevertheless it contributed to a debate about the incidents of antisemitism in post war Poland. It has been welcomed by media such as "Gazeta Wyborcza" but at the same time sharply criticized in other papers and by historians accusing Gross of coming up with conclusions before completing full research, ignoring sources which did not confirm his own views, neglecting the wider context of the event, misinterpreting data (for example counting a traffic accident death as an antisemitic attack), using inflammatory language and propaganda tools in labeling all of postwar Polish society as antisemitic.
Polish historians from the Institute of National Remembrance pointed out that due to its serious methodological mistakes including the use of epithets the book does not stand a chance of being accepted (even conditionally) among the scientific community.
See also
Citations
- Symposium: Analysis of Fear - Introduction
- Craig Whitlock, A Scholar's Legal Peril in Poland, Washington Post Foreign Service, Friday, January 18, 2008; Page A14
- Marek Jan Chodakiewicz: People’s past has to be reviewed critically on individual basis, Rzeczpospolita, January 11, 2008 Template:En icon
- Piotr Gontarczyk, Far From Truth, Rzeczpospolita, January 12, 2008 Template:En icon
- Template:Pl icon Konrad Piasecki, "Gross to wampir historiografii," interview with historian Janusz Kurtyka, RMF FM, 10 January 2008