| Comments on John Tomas Gross's Ghastly Decade 1939-1948 by Prof. C.I. Pogonowski |
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The ethnic Poles considered German and Soviet invaders as equally dangerous, while many Jews searched for security on Soviet side. The Poles were naturally preoccupied with saving their nation, which was exposed to massive executions starting two years before the Holocaust ... Widespread Jewish complicity in the Soviet terror apparatus installed in Poland speaks volumes about their lack of concern for the existence of a sovereign Polish nation. ... Today Jewish hatred of the Poles manifests itself in the use of generalisations when dealing with accusations. Jewish students are often taught that the Holocaust would not have taken place if the Poles did not want it. ... Unfortunately, Gross, despite his scientific credentials, is practicing propaganda in the spirit of the statements made by the Secretary General of the Jewish World Congress quoted at the beginning of this text. Gross' propaganda helps those who make demands for ransom to be paid by the Polish Government to compensate for crimes perpetrated in Poland by the Nazis, the Soviets, and by common criminals ... |
| THE IGNORED COLLABORATION - Prof. Dr. Tomasz Strzembosz |
We also know about a characteristic incident which took place in the Jewish town of Trzcianne, situated opposite Jedwabne but across the Biebrza river. ... In Trzcianne the Jews were preparing a welcome for the Red Army. Jewish militia patrols ventured out as far as Okragle... in the direction of Monki; they noticed a cloud of dust and, thinking it to be the Soviets, they went all the way back to the triumphal arch raised at the entrance to the village ... |
| JEDWABNE - AUSCHWITZ - SACHSENHAUSEN - Doctor Adam Cyra |
the author of "Neighbors" writes in detail about the trial of more than 20 inhabitants of Jedwabne in the Stalinist period, not stopping even for a moment to analyze its legality or the trustworthiness of the defendants' depositions recorded by the Lomza agents of the Security Office [UB]. One of the main defendants in the short trial in 1949, who was sentenced then to 15 years in prison, was a young man who was found guilty not of the participation in the murder of Jewish citizens, but of collaboration with the Nazi occupiers. After spending almost 8 years behind bars, this prisoner received an early release shortly after the "thaw" in October 1956 ... Mr. Jerzy Laudanski, an ex-member of ZWZ/AK [Home Army] and a former political prisoner of KL Auschwitz (he was brought there from the Pawiak prison in Warsaw on 15 September 1942 and received the serial number 63805; very few prisoners from his transport survived.) Later, he was also imprisoned in KL Gross-Rosen and KL Sachsenhausen ... |
| Gross versus the facts - Piotr Gontarczyk |
The author of "Neigbors" has used an extremely poor and tendentiously chosen selection of sources, nor did he undertake a critical analysis; he constantly introduces into his books ill-founded statements and facts; he omits or mangles whatever doesn't fit his preconceived theses; he constructs a historical narrative on the basis of stereotypes, prejudices and common gossip; in his reasonings he doesn't observe the rules of logic and/or scholarly objectivity; finally, he pronounces arbitrary metaphysical-ideological opinions which have no scholarly basis whatsoever ... Jan Tomasz Gross's book cannot form the foundation of any serious discussion about Polish history in general, and the crime in Jedwabne in particular ... |
| jedwabne_chodakiewicz.pdf |
| The President of IPN has already passed his judgment - KWM, PAP |
Professor Kieres stressed, as well, that the plans have been made to replace the existing plaque on the monument in Jedwabne, which indicated Germans as perpetrators of the murder ... |
| Quiet Over This Grave - Lech Walesa |
"Lets quiet down over this grave," Lech Walesa told Radio ZET, after being asked what the Poles should do about the murder in Jedwabne. He added that he had apologized to the Jewish nation during his visit to Israel, and now he expected an apology from the other side. ... Asked if President Kwasniewski should apologize for the murder in Jedwabne, Walesa replied: " He should start from an apology for communism, and that he backed it, and other matters should be left to God." ... |
| Between the hammer and the nail - Excerpt from the Mark Paul's book "The Story of Two Shtetls" |
One of the earliest and most gruesome episodes was the "pacification" of Naliboki, whose aim was the liquidation of the nascent pro-Home Army underground organization in that townlet. The Polish and Byelorussian villagers had formed a self-defence unit to fend off Soviet and Jewish marauders ... One hundred and twenty-eight (or nine) innocent civilians, including women and children, were butchered in a heinous pogrom that lasted almost two hours. The Jewish factions that did most of the pillaging and murdering of entire families awakened from their sleep were the Bielski ("Jerusalem") and Zorin ("Pobeda") detachments ... |
| Murderers who take pride in their crime - by Krzysztof Janiewicz |
the Canadian Polish Congress wrote to Poland's Institute of National Remembrance/Memory (Instytut Pamieci Narodowej-IPN) to initiate an investigation into a mass murder perpetrated in the village of Koniuchy (now Kaniukai, Lithuania) during World War II. According to the count of the perpetrators themselves, some 300 defenceless Poles-mostly women and children-were massacred in that bloody orgy ... The massacre of the population of Koniuchy, including women and children, has been described by Chaim Lazar as an outstanding 'combat operation,' of which he is genuinely proud ... |
| Sasiedzi - response to Free Press |
Szmul Wasersztajn alias Calka - collaborated with the Soviets, despised his Polish neighbors, and was personally responsible for many tortures and deportations of Poles to Siberian gulags. He lied when he talked about the German rescue of Jews. The allegedly "easily reached agreement" between Nazi commanders and Poles in Jedwabne is a pure absurdity. Everybody knows that Germans, especially Nazi commanders, never made any agreements with Poles. They issued orders and executed them by force and killing ... |
| Jedwabne - Polish massacre of innocent Jews? - by Robert Strybel |
But will Poles ever live to hear "przepraszamy" ("we're sorry") for the pro-Soviet collaborators who betrayed Poland and welcomed the invading Red Army in 1920 and again in 1939? For the Bermans, R�zanskis, Fejgins, Romkowskis, Brytsygierowas, Minces, Borejszas and entire teams of other Jewish Communists who had Polish freedom-fighters jailed, tortured and killed after World War II, while Sovietizing Poland's economy, suppressing its Catholic Church and atheizing its education and culture. ... |
| Prof. Strzembosz: Germans forced Poles to participate in Jedwabne murder |
Professor Tomasz Strzembosz believes that the testimonies of witnesses in the 1949 trial in Lomza, on which Jan Gross has based his account in "Neighbors", indicate a direct German participation in the murder of Jews in Jedwabne. ... the Germans - Gestapo agents and gendarmes - appear frequently and in specific roles. They take an active part in the hunt for Jews all over the town, in guarding them at the market square and in escorting them to Bronislaw Sleszynski's barn, where they have been burned alive", states Professor Strzembosz. ... |
the story of a nation which fought on the Allied side in World War II but emerged from the war a loser, even though the Allies won. In 1945, Poland was reoccupied by its sworn enemy, Soviet Russia. Authentic Polish voices were silenced, and Polish scholarship on World War II was virtually gagged ... Poland had the largest, on a per-capita basis, and the most effective Resistance movement in Europe, and virtually no collaborators of any social stature. Poles are proud of not having produced a Quisling government or a Vichy government ... Before Jews became the primary target, Poles were shipped to Auschwitz by the tens of thousands.150,000 Polish Catholics went to Auschwitz. In Sachsenhausen, 20,000 Poles perished, in Mauthausen, 30,000, in Neuengamme, 17,000 (Lukas 38); 35,000 went to Dachau, 33,000 Polish women went to Ravensbrueck many of them to be experimented upon, with glass and other objects implanted in their uteruses ... Unlike the Jews, Poles were never individually compensated by Germans for forced labor and camp atrocities. Tens of thousands of Poles were executed for helping Jews ... |
| The Disabling Mode: Poles in Jewish Discourse |
The suggestion that it was Polish anti-Semitism that led to the creation of Auschwitz is an outrageous lie. For the first two years of its existence, Auschwitz was used primarily for the execution of Polish Catholics by the Germans. Over the years, Poles have suffered scores of such indignities with no attempt from the Jewish side to correct the mendacities of an anonymous provenance ... |
| Diffrent versions of crime - MJO |
You wrote that Germans were not present at the scene of pogrom yet there were plenty of Germans forcing Poles with their whips to guard Jews at the main square - said, , on Friday in Ksieznica Podlaska, clearly upset, Irene Chrzanowska, family name Reniewska, who as 16 years old girl witnessed the pogrom of Jewish people in Jedwabne ... The book has much to be desired, the source material is treated selectively, and now it will go into the world, and people will not be studying details, but will claim that Poles are co-responsible for the Holocaust - some of the historians from Bialystok talked about it ... |
| Documents found in the archives in Ludwigsburg - PAP, "Donosy" |
Documents found in the archives in Ludwigsburg indicate that in 1968, six former SS officers and police were tried in a German court for participating in the massacre at Jedwabne ... |
| Search in the aim to localise the exact place where the Jedwabne tragedy did happen - PAP |
Prof. Strzembosz is of the opinion, that the witness testimonies from the 1949 court case in Lomza, used to the large extend by prof. Gross in his book, indicate that the Germans were directly involved in the murder of the Jews in Jedwabne ... |
| "Neighbours", history or literature - Krzysztof Janiewicz |
According to Gross the bishop promised them such protection ... The only problem with this testimony is that bishop Lukomski went into hiding in the distant countryside in October 1939, because of threats from the Soviet NKVD, and emerged from his hiding place in August 1941 ... Now, after the archaeological research done on the site of the massacre, team of the Polish archaeologists lead by prof. Andrzej Kola, arrived to the conclusion that the mass grave is approximately 5 meters long and 2 meters wide ... |
| A MURDERER RECEIVED THE VIRTUTI MILITARI?! - Andrzej Kumor |
The chief of the Soviet band, Genrikas Zimanas [in Polish Henryk Zyman], has been decorated by the People's Republic of Poland for his "internationalist achievements" with the Virtuti Militari [the highest Polish decoration for bravery]! ... A crime is a crime, even if it is committed in wartime. In the case of Koniuchy, known are the names of victims, the location of their graves, the identities of murderers, and the circumstances of this event. Reports about that "pacification" still exist in Lithuanian and German archives ... |
| LIES AND DISTORTIONS - prof. JERZY ROBERT NOWAK |
A tide of anti-Polish campaign has swept through Polish media over the recent months that fell in line with the attempts to hold all Polish people accountable for the mass murder perpetrated on the Jews of Jedwabne in July 1941. The publication of 'Neighbours', an extremely biased and deceitful book by the Jewish American sociologist Jan Tomasz Gross, served as pretext. The Jewish author, disregarding the findings of the prosecutor's office, cramming lots of lies and distortions of truth in his generalisations based on a few twisted and dubious testimonies, sets out to put the blame for the massacre on the local Poles and play down the German involvement ... |
| In a shadow of Jedwabne - dr hab. Pawe� Machcewicz |
However assertion that more widespread help for the Jews would tie down Gestapo and prevent its repression, in the light of the politics of extermination of Poles, seems to belong to the political science fiction ... The duty of the researcher - especially in such a delicate matter - is precision of his formulations and responsibility for each world. And these are often missing in the books by Gross ... |
| Secrets in the archives - Wojciech Kami�ski, pap |
The Jews which asked for reparations to German authorities for the suffering caused by Nazis , has not mentioned about participation of Poles in the crime of the Bialystok region - asserts Heins-Ludger Borget of Ludvisburg. In those archives there are documents about murder in Jedwabne ... There was not any suggestion about the participation of Polish civilians in the massacre, say the manager of the regional branch of the German Federal Achieves, Heinz-Ludger Borgert ... |
| Why didn't Gross come to Jedwabne? - K.A.I. |
Unfortunately, as one reads his book, one is assailed by doubts whether the version presented in it is trustworthy. Although Gross mentions various sources and refers to numerous historians, yet in his argumentations he is relying on the statements of one man only - Szmul Wasersztajn, a Jew living in the town. This crown witness of Gross in Poland went under the name of Ca�ka and not Wasersztajn, who after the war was an agent of U.B. ... |
| New findings in Jedwabne investigation - Radio ZET |
The Central Directorate of State Archives, together with the Council forPreserving the Memory of Struggle and Martyrdom, make public the so farunknown documents related to the crime in Jedwabne.These documents reveal that the crime was part of the German policy toexterminate the Jewish population. Mrs. Daria Nalecz, from the Directorateof Archives, also has stressed the fact that in Jedwabne some Poles werekilled as well ... |
| sovocc.pdf |
| INVESTIGATION OF THE NALIBOKI MASSACRE - PAP |
The [Polish] investigation of this crime has been conducted since April 1996 by the District Commission for Prosecuting Crimes against the Polish Nation in Lodz. The Lodz IPN reopened it on March 20, 2001. The crime has been brought again to light recently by the Polish Canadian Congress ... Note: The circumstances of the Naliboki massacre, in which participated the Jewish units "Jerusalem" (commander Bielski) and "Pobeda" (commander Zorin) are described at http://www.kpk.org/KPK/toronto/koniuchy.pdf (pages 24-25 and footnotes) ... |
| Professor Finkelstein Upholds His Objections ! |
Doctor Brozik, in his article presented at "Die Welt", has endeavored to clear up the misapprehensions related to the "would-be" (in his opinion) findings about still living Jewish victims. Also he has denied the alleged JCC's money embezzlement, transferred as a compensation in 1950 s' ... In spite of the numerous misapprehension clearing-up attempts by the German JCC Section, Norman Finkelstein has uphold upon the whole the presented earlier objections. In his "Berliner Zeitung" interview, he has accused JCC of appropriation of compensations obtained by negotiations in 1950 s'. Also, he has warned that a similar appropriation may take place at the currently being conducted negotiations. At his spacious interview given for the mentioned newspaper he has incriminated JCC for an unfair course of action ... He has maintains that in order to obtain possible highest compensations, the number of still living Jews - the III-rd Reich victims, is deliberately exaggerated ... |
| UNKNOWN DOCUMENTS FROM THE LOMZA ARCHIVES |
Dawid M., 31: "In July 1942 Germans ordered all the Jews of Jedwabne to come to the market place ... Hercek C., 32: "In July 1941 Germans murdered all the Jews of Jedwabne by burning them in a barn ... Jankiel B., 46: "On 10 July 1941 I saw how the Germans herded all the Jedwabne Jews into a barn and fired it up. [...] I was then hiding from the Germans at the cemetery, and I saw everything." ... |
| IT WAS PART OF A GERMAN-PLANNED ROUND OF EXECUTIONS - Aneta Gryczka |
"These documents must be carefully analyzed. However, they seem to indicate that the German participation was very likely, if not essential," said Professor Nalecz. [...] "If it was part of a German-planned round of executions ... |
The above testimony of Finkelstein and Wasersztajn it should be remembered occurred in a period when unlimited raw power lay in the hands of people like Jacob Berman and Hilary Minc, and the courts and prosecutors were controlled by the bloody and intimidating Rozanski and Swiatlo (all four of the above were Jewish communists). But, even bypassing this issue for now, it ought to be noted that the statements of Wasersztajn and Finkelstein are confused and frequently conflicting ... |
| Ultimate debunking of Gross - prof. Tomasz Strzembosz |
The fact that the depositions of Szmul Wassersztajn (...), Abram Boruszczak and Eljasz Gradowski have been practically disavowed is also worth attention. It happened because of the testimonies of the Jedwabne inhabitants which clearly proved that Boruszczak never lived in Jedwabne and Gradowski, jailed by the Soviets for theft, had been already in 1940 deported into the interior of the Soviet Union. He returned to Poland only in 1945, so he couldn't witness anything ... All three accusers had been treated by the court as people who heard something but who never directly witnessed the events at Jedwabne. (...) It is exactly from such relation of Szmul Wassersztajn that Prof. Gross has taken the most drastic fragments of his book. These shocking facts have not been confirmed by any other sources ... |
| Jedwabne - ein anderes Bild der Nachbarn - Professor Tomasz Strzembosz |
Man sollte auch die Aufmerksamkeit darauf lenken, dass der Bericht des vom Gericht nicht vernommenen Szmul Wasersztajn, sowie die Aussagen der Anklagezeugen Abram Boruszczak und Eljasz Gr�dowski faktisch missbilligt wurden. Es stellte sich n�mlich aus den Aussagen der Einwohner von Jedwabne heraus, und ganz besonders aus der Aussage des polnischen Staatsb�rgers j�discher Herkunft Jozef Gr�dowski, dass Abram Gr�dowski nie in Jedwabne wohnhaft gewesen war, und Eljasz Gr�dowski wegen Diebstahl von der sowjetischen Macht zur Gef�ngnisstrafe verurteilt und noch 1940 weit in die UdSSR verschleppt wurde. Er kam erst 1945 nach Polen zur�ck, sah also nichts. Jozef Gr�dowski sagte auch, dass er dank der Hilfe eines ihm nicht n�her bekannten Polen aus deutschen H�nden am Tag des Mordes fliehen konnte ... |
| Why didn't Gross come to Jedwabne? - K.A.I. |
Unfortunately, as one reads his book, one is assailed by doubts whether the version presented in it is trustworthy. Although Gross mentions various sources and refers to numerous historians, yet in his argumentations he is relying on the statements of one man only - Szmul Wasersztajn, a Jew living in the town. This crown witness of Gross in Poland went under the name of Ca�ka and not Wasersztajn, who after the war was an agent of U.B. ... |
| Polish historians question credibility of witnesses cited in 1941 pogrom book - BBC |
Polish historians have questioned the credibility of witnesses cited in a book on the July 1941 pogrom in Jedwabne, northeastern Poland ... Prof Tomasz Strzembosz is seeking is undermining the credibility of the witnesses who are cited by Prof Jan Gross in his book "Neighbours" Sasiedzi on the extermination of the Jews of Jedwabne northeastern Poland, in July 1941 ... |
| JEWS MURDERING POLES - prof. JERZY ROBERT NOWAK |
The magnitude of cynicism and chutzpah on the part of this Jewish sociologist from the USA in distorting the truth about the Polish history and Polish-Jewish relations is outrageous. In his most recent publications Gross consistently promulgates a picture of a profound dichotomy between the two Nations, the Jews being like angels, who always fall prey to the 'fanatical and ignorant' Polish rabble surrounding them who, in turn, as a nation are guilty of complicity in the genocide of the Jews ... |
| 100 Falsehoods of J.T. Gross (1) - dr. Jerzy Robert Nowak |
Couple of times before, I quoted statements of a Jewish friend of Poles - professor Norman Finkelstein from USA, warning us against claims and blackmail of few large Jewish organizations. N. Finkelstein said that those organizations want to extort from a poor Poland about 60 billion US dollars as a compensation for Jewish property. In order to intensify pressure on Poland in the matter, and to blacken her image in the eyes of other nations, vicious anti-Polish propaganda-which attempts to portray Poles as alleged partners of the Nazis in murdering Jews-is constantly being pumped out by such ignoble parties. In such propaganda, a particular role is played by biased, Pole-eating texts of a Jewish sociologist Jan Tomasz Gross ... |
| THE SILK ROAD OF LIES - A historian Leszek Zebrowski about Gross's "Neighbors" |
I don't agree with the concepts of collective guilt and collective punishment. These are criteria used by totalitarian states! It is absurd to accuse even all the inhabitants of Jedwabne (because, contrary to Gross's opinion, only individuals took part in those events), not to mention the whole nation, and equally absurd is to apologize in the name of everybody ... |
| WHO HINDERS THE DIALOGUE? An interview with the Reverend Professor Waldemar Chrostowski by Pawel Paliwoda |
Our ways parted when I clearly told some people engaged in that dialogue that the Catholic participation in the Council couldn't be limited to repeating and presenting Jewish demands to the Polish Catholics ... Right after the war it was said that the Germans were persecutors, Jews and Poles victims. About 20 years later that paradigm changed: Germans were persecutors, Jews - victims, and Poles - witnesses. In the 1990s this interpretation changed again: the Germans - persecutors, Jews - victims, Poles - persecutors. The Poles have been put into the category labelled by the Jewish historiography as "the Nazis and their allies" ... |
| Comment on the article titled "Revisiting a Massacre" |
Gross' principal source for "Neighbors" - Szmul Wasersztajn alias Calka - collaborated with the Soviets, despised his Polish neighbors, and was personally responsible for many tortures and deportations. After the war, he served the Polish communist Soviet regime as an officer in the secret police. Therefore his maliciously anti-Polish testimony is not credible at all and it is surprising Gross sympathizes with his account ... |
There seems to be a pattern of alleging murders of Jews in areas of Poland, which shifted from Soviet to German control in- June of 1941. The widespread collaboration of some Jews in fingering priests, schoolteachers, Landowners, physicians, sat other professionals (spoken of by Gross in his earlier works) certainly led to retribution against the guilty dining Soviet withdrawals ... |
| Letter to Princeton Univ. Press - POLISH-AMERICAN PUBLIC RELATIONS COMMITTEE |
The charges by Mr. Gross that Polish citizens, in 1941, took part in a massacre of Jews at Jedwabne have yet to be investigated forensically. To date, Mr. Gross has been discredited by Polish scholars. In spite of the fact that the charges are unsubstantiated, they have been prematurely broadcast worldwide by the media and Jewish establishment. If anything can be termed as "hate speech" this matter certainly can ... |
| Search in the aim to localise the exact place where the Jedwabne tragedy did happen - PAP |
Prof. Strzembosz is of the opinion, that the witness testimonies from the 1949 court case in Lomza, used to the large extend by prof. Gross in his book, indicate that the Germans were directly involved in the murder of the Jews in Jedwabne ... |
| Letter to the Editor of TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT - prof. Norman Davies |
He then goes on to accuse Jan Nowak, whose standing in these matters is incomparably higher than his own, of writing "Absurdities". Nowak holds that Brumberg makes "inflammatory statements" and "generalizations that lie at the root of all ethnic and racial hatred". And Nowak is absolutely right ... |
| Second letter to the Princeton University Press - Dana I. Alvi |
We are providing additional reasons why the publishing of NEIGHBORS must be delayed. The main premise of Mr. Gross' book is that Poles perpetrated the massacre of Jews in the town of Jedwabne. Enclosed, is a German document translated into Polish which negates Mr. Gross' premise. The document was compiled by Jews in the 1970s for the purpose of Holocaust documentation. Jews made the sworn statements in the complete safety of Canada and the United States. The 1970s were a time when the Jews were engaging in a frenzied orgy of Poland bashing, making the most of a strictly inter Jewish Communist party dispute in the 1960s which resulted in immigration from Poland of members of one of the quarreling Jewish factions ... |
| Letter to Princeton Univ. Press - Anna R. Dadlez, Ph.D. |
Another worrying point is his almost breakneck pace in trying to make the book ready for print. He himself admits that he did not make a thorough investigation of the case (Jan Tomasz Gross's letter to Gazeta Wyborcza, November 27, 2000.) The question arises why didn't he? What was the need for using such a sloppy methodology on a subject of tremendous historical importance? Was he perhaps influenced by the present negotiations in New York where Jewish American groups are attempting to get war reparations from Poland? ... |
| Letter to the newspaper "The Age", Victoria, Australia - Christopher Janiewicz |
The above mentioned article is prejudicial and slanderous towards Poland and the Polish people in general, and the population of the town of Jedwabne in particular ... |
| Protest letter to "The Observer" - Chris Janiewicz |
I would like to voice my strong objections regarding the article "Poland's willing executioners" by George Steiner Sunday April 8, 2001 in "The Observer" ... The above mentioned article is prejudicial and slanderous towards Poland and the Polish people in general, and the population of the town of Jedwabne in particular. I would even call it racist against Polish people ... |
| Letter to "The New York Times" |
The multitude of errors and distortions contained in Gross' book makes it a worthless secondary source in Holocaust studies. However, we are afraid, its publication and promotion could further deteriorate Polish-Jewish relationships and provoke mutual animosity. Is it the intent of New York Times to play into such a sinister role? ... |