Gross versus the facts
("Zycie", 1 February 2001) - selected fragments |
translated by: Mariusz Wesolowski
The first installment of translations.
Piotr Gontarczyk
"Gross versus the facts"
("Zycie", 1 February 2001) - selected fragments "One of the most important sources for Gross's
findings has been the materials from the investigation conducted by the Security
Office (UB) in 1949.
It is important to know that some of the people who were subject to this investigation later on in the courtroom gave completely different testimonies, stating that the previous ones had been forced out of them them by beatings... In the context of the realities of the 1940s in Poland, such recanting was an act of courage. Futile, alas; having the choice between the testimonies coerced during the investigation and the ones from the courtroom, Gross chose those that better fitted his conclusions, i.e., the former. The second source of knowledge of the author of
"Neighbors" is reminiscences of Holocaust survivors.
It has been already stated many times that these testimonies were gathered after the war by various historical committees which sometimes cared less for the truth than for some political and propagandistic agendas. People familiar with these sources know that they often contain a huge emotional baggage and hasty opinions resulting from dramatic experiences. Yet other accounts, especially the ones deposited after the war in the United States, seem to be not descriptions of the past but just pretexts to present their authors' dislike or simply hostility toward Poland and the Poles, commonly known as antipolonism. This extremely complicated and varied problem Gross
has summed up in two sentences: "Of course, every witness can be wrong, and
every testimony, if possible, should be compared with the knowledge obtained
from other sources. But we have no reason to suspect the Jews of any ill-will
toward their Polish neighbors [sic]" (page 18 of the Polish edition). Such
statements simply avoid the issue at hand. What's also interesting, Gross not
only didn't keep the necessary objective distance to the testimonies used by
himself, but also - contrary to his own postulate - didn't attempt to compare
them with other sources. The results are clearly visible in numerous fragments
of "Neighbors".
On page 49 [of the Polish edition], in one of the
quoted testimonies, there appears the bishop of Lomza who, in exchange for
material benefits, had promised the Jews that he would prevent the pogrom. The
context of this event is unpleasant because the prelate accepted the tribute
(silver candlesticks) but did not keep his promise. The author of "Neighbors"
did not even give the name of the said bishop, not to mention any attempt on his
part to investigate that occurrence.
It is very unlikely that the then-bishop of Lomza,
Stanislaw Lukomski, could take any bribe from the Jews. Not only for ethical,
but first of all for technical, reasons. During the entire Soviet occupation he
remained in hiding, returning to his palace... in August 1941. Hence the visit
of the Jewish delegation to the bishop, which - according to the testimonies
quoted by Gross - has taken place "some time" before the Jedwabne tragedy (in
the first half of July 1941), is very unlikely to have happened, just like many
other events described in "Neighbors".
...Gross's book is based on a poor and biased
selection of sources. This applies mainly to the problem of Polish-Jewish
relations in Jedwabne and the environs during the Soviet occupation. The author
of "Neighbors" stated that he had found only one (!) testimony related to this
subject, so he drew the conclusion that nothing significant had happened during
that period between the local Jews and the rest of the population.
It is pointless to list here literally hundreds of
documents which univocally contradict such a conclusion. The article by
Prof. Tomasz Strzembosz, recently published in "Rzeczpospolita", is an
excellent refutation of Gross's theories. More interesting, in the context of
the structural analysis of "Neighbors", there seem to be observations about the
specific methodology used by Gross in his employment of sources. On page 32...
the author... referred to Michal Gnatowski's work "W radzieckich okowach...".
Gross did not mention, however, that this book contains interesting information
about the feelings among the Polish population in the Jedwabne region, derived
from Soviet documents. We find there, for example, the words of one Jan Gosek
who on October 20, 1940, stated: "Now we have here a Jewish empire. They
are being elected [to official positions] everywhere, and the Pole is like a
horse, only he is pulling the cart and only he gets the whip" (page 159 of
Gnatowski's book).
On page 21 of "Neighbors" there is a brief note
about the results of Gross's research in the archives of... the Hoover
Institution. Gross writes that he has found there "...three general remarks
about the Jews in Jedwabne suggesting their overeagerness toward the new regime"
(page 31). He also added in a footnote: "Mention of Jews in Jedwabne, in which,
by the way, no specific persons are named, can be found on pages 14, 45 and 99
of the typescript about the Lomza district".
Well, we have to state that nothing is correct
here. The documents contain not general remarks but specific descriptions, they
are much more numerous and appear on many other pages as well, and they give
specific information about specific persons. [an example follows.] There are
more such examples. They prompt us to ask a question: How come in books and
documents known to Gross there obviously are sources which his book says don't
exist?
The absence of a discussion of Polish-Jewish
relations under the Soviet occupation constitutes one of the greatest
shortcomings of Gross's book. And these relations were very tense. The picture
presented in the preserved Polish (and also some Jewish!) testimonies is rather
dramatic: the humiliating treatment of Poles, denunciations to the NKVD,
participation in the Soviet repressions of the "red militia" consisting of Jews
from Jedwabne. There are also descriptions of the instances when Jews ripped off
the clothes of their Polish - nomen-omen - neighbors who were being deported to
Siberia. The problem seems to be truly important, and it cannot be limited
merely to the distorted perception of the Poles. According to the latest
findings of the Byelorussian historiography - based on the extant documents from
the 1939-41 period - the Soviet administration, especially in the economic
sector, contained a high percentage of Jews, sometimes exceeding 70%. It is
worth remembering that often the Jews took over the positions of the arrested or
deported Poles. Evgenii Rozenblat, a historian from Minsk, stated that the
participation of the Jewish population in the establishment of the Soviet rule
had been so substantial and visible that the definite increase of anti-Jewish
sentiments among the Poles was only a consequence of their rejection of
communism.
It seems that in the Lomza district - due to the
highly developed national consciousness among the local Poles and the absence of
other minorities - the Soviets relied heavily precisely on the Jewish
population. In other parts of the Eastern Borderlands the situation was more
complex (because of the interplay of three nations: Poles, Jews
and Byelorussians/Ukrainians); here the subjective perception of reality
was more distinct: we, the Poles, the conquered population; they, the
communists, the persecutors and their helpers, Poland's traitors, the Jews. We
know from numerous testimonies that, after the experiences of the years 1939-41,
a substantial portion of Polish society simply seethed with hatred toward
the Jews. It would be worthwhile to analyze what role such emotions have played
in the minds of not only Poles, but also Ukrainians, Latvians and Lithuanians
after the arrival of the Germans.
I fully share the opinion that even the Jewish
participation in Soviet repressions cannot be used as an excuse for the
[Jedwabne] crime. But the point is not to "excuse" anybody. The duty of a
historian is to investigate the circumstances which had taken place -
chronologically and logically - before the described event. Otherwise any
conclusions about the genesis of the events at Jedwabne will be left dangling in
the air, without any serious scholarly foundations...
Many facts described by Gross can be considered
dubious. In other cases, in which a cautious approach would be most advisable,
... the author of "Neighbors" uses presumptuously the words "probably" and "must
have". Some of his statements seem to be just an outflow of ignorance or
prejudice mixed up with a swarm of shallow stereotypes.
Such, for example, is the fragment on page 29,
where (on the basis of another testimony of dubious value) the author states
that in the prewar Jedwabne the parish priest accepted material benefits for
stopping an impending - according to rumors - pogrom. The taking of
tributes/bribes by Catholic priests (see the case of bishop Lukomski) became in
Gross's book a sort of norm. However, it is worthwhile to quote the description
of the method by which the author of "Neighbors" has verified this
information:
"This episode fits perfectly into the norm of the
Jewish fate ... the endangered community ... accepted as absolutely natural the
fact that in such a situation the secular or religious powers had to be given
protection money" (page 29).
Such proofs, i.e., the verification of facts
through one's own imaginings, I consider incompatible with a sound
historical methodology...
Other bits of information given by Gross are more
serious. For example, on page 53 he holds that the town council of Jedwabne
had... signed an agreement with the Germans re the murder of Jews. The source of
this story is a relation of a person who had heard about it "from some people".
This is not the first time that Gross presents sheer gossip instead of facts.
What's interesting, he supports this practice with a thesis that the lack of
better information about the whole thing shouldn't trouble us too much:
"Our ignorance about the precise content of the agreement doesn't make a big difference. Some kind of agreement between the Germans and the immediate organizers of the Jedwabne murder, that is, the town council, must have been concluded" (page 53). A statement that something must have happened even
though we know nothing about it does not fit even in the widest definition of
scholarly methodology. Just like so many other yarns by Gross.
It is a platitude to say that Poles and Jews - as
any two nations - differ from one another, if only by culture and religion. In
Gross's historiography, however, these differences are much deeper: Different
are the criteria of judgment, different are civic duties and different are
responsibilities. This inequality holds even in the discussion about the common
past... Ethnic criteria also apply to Gross's methodology: "...Our initial
approach to every testimony coming from a near Holocaust victim should change
from sceptical to affirmative. Simply because if we accept the fact that the
contents of such a testimony have really happened, and that we are ready to
acknowledge the error of such evaluation only after finding convincing proofs to
the contrary, we will save ourselves from many more mistakes than the ones we
have committed by taking the opposite stance." ("Neighbors", page 94.)
In short, a testimony from a Holocaust survivor has
to be automatically trustworthy... Other testimonies - not so.
Gross's postulates run contrary to the most basic
rules of the historian's craft. The latter insist on an objective analysis of
each and every source, the ethnic origin of its author
notwithstanding...
The inequality of the two nations in Gross's
historical narrative is very obvious: Whatever bad has been done to Jews by some
group of Poles, he turns this event into a universal paradigm, surrounded with
quasi-religious theories and mystical judgments. In "Neighbors" we thus read
about "the participation of the ethnically Polish population in the annihilation
of Polish Jews" (page 95), and about "the responsibility of the Polish society
for the magnitude of the crime of the Holocaust" (page 19)...
A completely different style of narrative applies
to the other side. There are no simplistic generalizations or hasty moral
verdicts there. There is no mention of collective responsibility, either. Every
single motif which could become uncomfortable or not fit into the
"oppressor-victim" dichotomy is either minimalized or completely skipped. Just
like, for example, the question of Polish-Jewish relations in the
Soviet-occupied Eastern Borderlands. And this is the rule in Gross's
writing.
Already in "Upiorna dekada" he mentioned the issue
of Jewish participation in the communist terror apparatus. This is a delicate
question because, according to the available statistics, persons of Jewish
origin constituted over 30 percent of the functionaries in the central office of
the Ministry of Public Security. If Gross applied here the same tools which he
applies to the Poles, this could turn into a horror (the responsibility of the
Jewish society for the crimes of communism, etc.).
In this instance the author's approach is much more
balanced: "The statement that a disproportionate number of Jewish Communists
worked in the political police does not yield itself to a clear
interpretation"("Upiorna dekada", page 93). Instead of trying to figure out the
meaning of this, let's quote the final sentence of this argument: "In the light
of this knowledge [i.e., the contemporary knowledge about communism, PG],
therefore, to the question why Jewish Communists were present in the security
apparatus, the only sensible answer may be: and why not?" ("Upiorna dekada",
page 94). The very strange style of the narrative, combined with the evident
lack of accountability for his words, makes numerous fragments of Gross's books
ambiguous, unintelligible or totally devoid of any scholarly
characteristics...
The picture painted in "Neighbors" is truly
unsettling. It seems that the Poles are Nazi collaborators who sign an agreement
with the Germans regarding the murder of Jews. The Germans want to save a few
Jews but the Poles disagree and in a bestial way murder almost all their Jewish
neighbors. And, generally speaking, the only place to provide shelter for the
Jews against the bloodthirsty Polish mob was the Nazi gendarmerie post. In fact,
there should be no question about the criminal nature of Poles, since their
spiritual guidance was in the hands of Catholic priests. Gross mentions only two
of them, and they are both common criminals...
Because of all these shortcomings,
Piotr Gontarczyk
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