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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 existence of postwar anti-Semitism in Poland.
Context
In his first chapter, Gross is at pains to lay out the horrors that Poland suffered during WWII including the initial division 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.
The Unwelcoming of Jewish Survivors
Gross estimates that 250,000 Polish Jews attempted to return home at the end of the war. Approximately half returned from internment camps inside Russia while others emerged from hiding. One of the more far-reaching claims in Fear is that Poles later regarded by the rest of the world as heroes for hidding Jews begged them not to speak of it for fear of reprisals by their neighbors.
Gross argues that the homes, property, occupations and businesses of Polish Jews had been taken over by their neighbors during the Nazi occupation, with the result that Jews returning to their former homes in the hope of finding their relatives and rebuilding their lives were warned that they would be wise to leave. Property belonging to the Jewish community, including not only synagogues, but office buildings and schools, became the property of local governments which could continue in possession only if no Jewish community was reestablished.
In addition to more isolated murders of individuals and family groups, there were pogroms in Krakow (the Kraków pogrom), Rzeszów (the Rzeszów pogrom), and in several smaller towns. Gross makes several particular claims about the largest of them in Kielce (see article Kielce pogrom for a more detailed description). The pogrom was initiated not by a mob of citizens, but by the police, and involved people from every walk of life except - Gross asserts - the highest level of government officials in the city.
Gross' controversial claims include the assertion that because Poland had the largest Jewish population of any country conquered by the Third Reich, a proportionately large part of the Polish population had enriched themselves with the property of murdered Jews. According to Gross, this served to frighten most of the 250,000 Polish Jews who had survived the Nazis and returned home.
Reception
Piast Institute, a Polish-American think tank, has carried out an analysis of the reception of Fear. It has concluded that while "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 and began a debate about antisemitism in post war Poland. It has been welcomed by some historians and media, e.g. "Gazeta Wyborcza" but at the same time was 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) to reach his conclusion, using inflammatory language and labeling all of postwar Polish society as antisemitic.
See also
Citations
- Fear, p. 81-2
- Fear, pp. 73-80
- Fear, pp. 83-166
- 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