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The Nazis and “The East”: Jedwabne's Circle of Hell

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Norman M. Naimark
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Abstract

In this forum on Neighbors by Jan T. Gross (Princeton, 2001), four scholars respond to the book and to the issues of evidence, causality, and interpretation that it raises. Janine P. Holc summarizes the contents and the book's approach and explores the roles of individual choice, on the one hand, and ethnic identity categories, on the other, in Gross's presentation of the causes of the massacre of the Jewish residents of Jedwabne by their non-Jewish neighbors. She argues for an approach to reading Neighbors that links the emotive mode in which some of the narrative is expressed to a productive engagement with traumatic or violent historical episodes. This type of history resists finality and closure and creates an avenue for active engagement by members of ethnic (or other) communities with violent and traumatic pasts. Wojciech Roszkowski discusses three aspects of the debate on Neighbors in Poland: the credibility of the book, the facts of 10 July 1941 and their moral meaning, and the representativeness of the Jedwabne case and the question of “innocence” or “guilt” of nations. While arguing that the credibility of Neighbors is low and that Gross's thesis that “one half of the Jedwabne inhabitants killed the other half” has not been proven, he writes that it is impossible to deny Polish participation in the massacre. Yet, as with other documented cases of Polish wartime evildoing, it is unfair to blow this incident out of proportion and produce unwarranted generalizations. Past and present realities are always more complicated than simple stereotypes that “Poles” or “Jews” are to blame or that they have always been innocent. William W. Hagen argues that Gross vacillates between a robust positivism promising that “a reconstruction” of “what actually took place” is possible, such that guilt and motive may confidently be assigned, and an interpretive pessimism suggesting that “we will never 'understand' why it happened.” In his assignment of causality, Gross offers a largely unconnected, in part inferential or speculative, array of determinants and motives. Although some of the causes Gross adduces are certainly persuasive, his analysis does not address the Jedwabne perpetrators' and witnesses' perception of the cultural meaning of the inhuman violence their Jewish neighbors were suffering. Hagen offers some suggestive historical evidence on the Poles' subjective response to the Jewish genocide and to their own wartime fate, arguing that the Jedwabne Poles' participation in the mass murder of the Jews must be conceived as a response, mediated by the penetration of ideological anti-Semitism into the countryside, to profound anxiety over the individual and social death menacing Polish identity under Soviet and Nazi occupation. Norman M. Naimark argues that the appearance of Gross's Neighbors has created an entirely new dimension to the historiography of World War II in Poland. The book demonstrated, as has no other work, the extent to which the Poles were directly involved in the genocide of the Jews. The clarity and force of Gross's presentation provides Polish historiography with an unprecedented opportunity “to come to terms with the past.” The essay also suggests that the Jedwabne massacre needs to be looked at in the context of overall German policy “in the east” and in comparison to similar horrors taking place roughly at the same time in Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, and Latvia. The Nazis intentionally (and surreptitiously) sought to incite pogroms in the region, filming and photographing the horrific events for audiences back home. Their own propaganda about the “Jewish-Bolshevik” menace both prompted and was ostensibly confirmed by the pogroms. In his response, Jan T. Gross replies to Roszkowski's criticism concerning historical credibility.

Type
Discussion
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 61 , Issue 3 , Fall 2002 , pp. 476 - 482
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2002

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References

The author is grateful for the helpful comments and suggestions of Katherine R. Jolluck.

1 See my discussion of this decision in Naimark, Norman M., Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansingin Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, Mass., 2001), 74–81 Google Scholar.

2 Gross, Jan has written about this issue, as well. See his “War as Revolution,” in Naimark, Norman M. and Gibianskii, Leonid, eds., The Establishment of Communism in Eastern Eumpe, 1944-1949 (Boulder, Colo., 1997), 17–40 Google Scholar.

3 For a selection of this work, see Herbert, Ulrich, ed., Nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik 1939-1945: Neue Forschungen und Kontroversen (Frankfurt am Main, 1998)Google Scholar. See also Bartov's, Omer pathbreaking Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis and War in the Third Reich (New York, 1991)Google Scholar.

4 Weiner, Amir, “Saving Private Ivan: From What, Why, and How?” Kritika 2, no. 2 (2000): 305–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 See Browning, Christopher, The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution (Cambridge, Eng., 1992)Google Scholar.

6 Among the new efforts “to come to terms” with the past in the region, see those of the Latvians: The Issues of the Holocaust: Research in Latvia. Reports of an International Conference and the Holocaust Studies in Latvia, Symposium of the Commission of the Historians of Latvia, vol. 2 (Riga, 2001).

7 See Kunicki, Mikolaj, “Unwanted Collaborators: Leon Kozlowski, Wladyslaw Studnicki, and the Problem of Collaboration among Polish Conservative Politicians in World War II,” European Review of History 8, no. 2 (2001): 203–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 See the collection of essays: Polonsky, Antony, ed., “My Brother's Keeper“: Recent Polish Debates on the Holocaust (London, 1990)Google Scholar.

9 For some of this reaction in English, see Thou Shalt Not Kill: Poles onjedxuabne (Warsaw, 2001).

10 See Gross, Jan Tomasz, Revolution from Abroad: Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia (Princeton, 1988)Google Scholar.

11 Gross makes the case in his most recent work that there was most definitely not an over-representation ofjews in the Soviet occupation administration or police force. See his Upiorne dekada (Krakϕw, 1998), 61-92, and his “A Tangled Web: Confronting Stereotypes concerning Relations between Poles, Germans, Jews, and Communists,” in Deák, Istvan, Gross, Jan T., and Judt, Tony, eds., The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath (Princeton, 2000), 74–131 Google Scholar.

12 Musial, Bogdan [Musial], “Konterrevolutioncire Elemente sind zu ersrhiessen“: Die Brulalisierung des deutsch-soiujetischen Krieges im Sommer 1941 (Berlin, 2000), 57–74 Google Scholar. Musial specifically argues with Gross about the numbers ofjews in the Soviet administration, 305«74.

13 See Ulrich Herbert, “Vernichtungspolitik: Neue Antworten unci Fragen zur Geschichte des ‘Holocausts,'” in Herbert, ed., Nationalsozialislische Vernichtungspolitik 1939- 1945, 26.

14 “Excerpts from Report by SS Brigade Commander Stahlecker to Himmler, 15 October 1941,” in Nazi Germany's War against the Jews (New York, 1947), 111-64. See also Chiari, Bernhard, Alltag hinter der Front: Besatzung, Kollaboration und Widerstand in Weissrussland 1941-1944 (Dusseldorf, 1998), 237 Google Scholar, and Levin, Dov, BalticJeivs under the Soviets, 1940-1946 (Jerusalem, 1994), 381–85Google Scholar.

15 See Office of United States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (Washington D.C., 1946), 5:655, 768. See also Karel C. Berkhoff and Marco Carynnyk, “Iaroslav Stets'ko, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, and Their Attitude toward Jews in 1941,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies (forthcoming).

16 “Einsatzbefehl Heydrichs an die HSSPF in der Sowjetunion: Weisungen an die Einsatzgruppen und -kommandos, 2.7.1941,” and “Fernschreiben Heydrichs an die Einsatzgruppenchefs: 'Selbstreinigungsaktionen’ in der Sowjetunion, 29.6.1941,” in Longerich, Peter and Pohl, Dieter, eds., Die Ermordung der europäischen Juden: Eine umfassende Dokumentation des Holocaust 1941-1945 (Munich, 1989), 116–19Google Scholar.

17 Sandkühler, Thomas, “Endlösung” in Calizien: Der Judenmord in Ostpolen und die Rettungsinitiativen von Berthold Beitz 1941-1944 (Bonn, 1996), 118 Google Scholar.

18 Gerlach, Christian, Kalkulierte Morde: Die deutsche Wirtschafts- und Vernichtungspolitik in Weissrussland 1941-1944 (Hamburg, 1999), 542–43Google Scholar. Here, Gerlach is talking about the Biafystok killings of 27 June 1941. The Germans shot several hundred “Russian soldiers andjews.” At the same time, they herded more than 800Jews into the main synagogue and burned them alive. Those who tried to escape were shot. Photographs of these events were shown around the area; it is possible, of course, that the Radzilow and Jedwabne pogromists saw them. On the night of 8 and 9 July, Nazi security police murdered an additional 1,000 to 4,000 Biafystok Jews.

19 Sandkühler, “Endlösung” in Galizien, 118-19. See also Bartov, Hitler's Army, 83-92, and Heer, Hannes, Tote Zonen: Die deutsche Wehrmacht an der Ostfront (Hamburg, 1999), 21 Google Scholar.

20 Trials of War Criminals before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law no. 10 (Washington, 1949), 4:435-536. In June and July 1941, some 10,000 Jews were murdered in Kovno.

21 Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (New York, 1990), 2:898.

22 Stahlecker Report, in Nazi Germany's War against the Jews, 111-63.

23 See Weiner, Amir, Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton, 2001), 241–45Google Scholar.

24 Cited in Musial [Musiał], “Konterrevolutionäre Elemenle,” 113.

25 See Naimark, Fires of Hatred, 74-75.

26 See Szarota, Tomasz, U progu zagłady: Zajście antiiydowskie i pogromy w okupowanej europie (Warsaw, 2000)Google Scholar. Szarota compares the pogroms in Warsaw, Paris, Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Kovno (Kaunas).