Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz

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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 post-war Polish-Jewish relations, with particular focus on the anti-Jewish violence in Poland, 1944-1946. The book has been received international attention, with reviews in major newspapers, and has also been subject to much criticism, particularly from Polish historians.

Content

Gross starts by illustrating 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 their advance 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. Often, they found their property taken over by squatters or taken over by the communist government (which was nationalizing much of the Polish economy). He discusses the alienation, hostile atmosphere and even violence experienced that Jews experienced in postwar Poland, and failure of Polish elites to prevent them. 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). 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.

The book ends with the conclusion that the cause of postwar anti-Semitism in Poland was the wartime participation of Poles, especially in rural areas and small towns, in the Nazi effort to annihilate and despoil the Jews; the fear of responsibility for their crimes is what drove them to continue attacking Jews after the war (hence the title of the book).

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" but "the thesis of the book is highly controversial and many Poles and others also find it unfair and tendentious". According to the Piast Institute, some of the reviews in popular press were highly emotional and "even libelous", and might have damaged Polish-Jewish relations.

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 criticized by several historians (such as Paweł Machcewicz, Piotr Gontarczyk, Thaddeus Radzilowski, Janusz Kurtyka, Dariusz Stola and Marek Jan Chodakiewicz); accusing Gross of imperfect methodology, generalizations, stereotyping, ignoring works which did not confirm his own views, neglecting the wider context of the event (Jews were persecuted in other countries of post war Europe, and were not the only group that suffered such persecutions), misinterpreting or distorting data, relying mostly on Jewish sources, using inflammatory and emotional language and drawing unsubstantiated conclusions. 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.

Polish persecutors have reviewed the accusations that the book is slanderous against the Polish nations and rejected it, refusing to launch an investigation; this has been a subject to some additional media controversy. The article of the Polish law that allowed the accusation to be made in the first place has been criticized by some as infringing upon the right to free speech and will be reviewed by the Polish Constitutional Court.

Citations

^ Symposium: Analysis of Fear - Summary of the Essay
^ Piotr Gontarczyk, Far From Truth, Rzeczpospolita, January 12, 2008 Template:En icon
^ Symposium: Analysis of Fear - Introduction
^ Symposium: Analysis of Fear - Symposium's Purpose
^ Craig Whitlock, A Scholar's Legal Peril in Poland, Washington Post Foreign Service, Friday, January 18, 2008; Page A14
^ THADDEUS RADZILOWSKI, Review of FEAR
^ Template:Pl icon Konrad Piasecki, "Gross to wampir historiografii," interview with historian Janusz Kurtyka, RMF FM, 10 January 2008
^ Dariusz Stolam Review of Fear, in The English Historical Review 2007 CXXII(499):1460-1463; doi:10.1093/ehr/cem344
^ Marek Jan Chodakiewicz: People’s past has to be reviewed critically on individual basis, Rzeczpospolita, January 11, 2008 Template:En icon
Template:Pl icon Nie będzie śledztwa ws. książki Grossa Wprost 24

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