On a summer day in 1941 in Nazi-occupied Poland, half of the town of Jedwabne brutally murdered the other half: 1,600 men, women, and children-all but seven of the town's Jews. In this shocking and compelling study, historian Jan Gross pieces together eyewitness accounts as well as physical evidence into a comprehensive reconstruction of the horrific July day remembered well by locals but hidden to history. Revealing wider truths about Jewish-Polish relations, the Holocaust, and human responses to occupation and totalitarianism, Gross's investigation sheds light on how Jedwabne's Jews came to be murdered-not by faceless Nazis, but by people who knew them well.

Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland

History

Gross, Jan T.

Europe

Penguin??Books

One summer day in 1941, half of the Polish town of Jedwabne murdered the other half, 1,600 men, women, and children, all but seven of the town's Jews. Neighbors tells their story.
 This is a shocking, brutal story that has never before been told. It is the most important study of Polish-Jewish relations to be published in decades and should become a classic of Holocaust literature.
 Jan Gross pieces together eyewitness accounts and other evidence into an engulfing reconstruction of the horrific July day remembered well by locals but forgotten by history. His investigation reads like a detective story, and its unfolding yields wider truths about Jewish-Polish relations, the Holocaust, and human responses to occupation and totalitarianism. It is a story of surprises: The newly occupying German army did not compel the massacre, and Jedwabne's Jews and Christians had previously enjoyed cordial relations. After the war, the nearby family who saved Jedwabne's surviving Jews was derided and driven from the area. The single Jew offered mercy by the town declined it.
 Most arresting is the sinking realization that Jedwabne's Jews were clubbed, drowned, gutted, and burned not by faceless Nazis, but by people whose features and names they knew well: their former schoolmates and those who sold them food, bought their milk, and chatted with them in the street. As much as such a question can ever be answered, Neighbors tells us why.
 In many ways, this is a simple book. It is easy to read in a single sitting, and hard not to. But its simplicity is deceptive. Gross's new and persuasive answers to vexed questions rewrite the history of twentieth-century Poland. This book proves, finally, that the fates of Poles and Jews during World War II can be comprehended only together.

Princeton University Press

By combining historical and political analysis with a sophisticated sociological approach, Jan Gross offers a new interpretation of the German occupation of Poland during World War II. Based on his hypothesis that a society cannot be destroyed by coercion short of the physical annihilation of its members, his work has a twofold aim: to examine the model of German occupation in theory and in practice, and to identify the patterns of collective behavior that emerged among the Polish people in response to the social control exercised over them. The author argues that when an occupier provides no institutions through which a local population can at least minimally satisfy its social needs, the subjugated populace builds substitute institutions on the remnants of previous forms of its collective life. These substitutes constitute the society's self-defense, to which the occupier must in some way adjust if its goals of manipulation and exploitation are to be achieved. Professor Gross points out numerous ways in which the Poles under the Generalgouvernement circumvented the goals and authority of the German occupiers. Most significant was the emergence of the Polish underground, which took on the leadership, social welfare, political, and financial functions of an independent state. This phenomenon, he concludes, shows that resistance should not be conceived merely as a military movement but rather as a complex social phenomenon. Jan Tomasz Gross is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Yale University.

Polish Society Under German Occupation: The Generalgouvernement, 1939-1944 (Princeton Legacy Library)

Jan Gross describes the terrors of the Soviet occupation of the lands that made up eastern Poland between the two world wars: the Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia. His lucid analysis of the revolution that came to Poland from abroad is based on hundreds of first-hand accounts of the hardship, suffering, and social chaos that accompanied the Sovietization of this poorest section of a poverty-stricken country. Woven into the author's exploration of events from the Soviet's German-supported aggression against Poland in September of 1939 to Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, these testimonies not only illuminate his conclusions about the nature of totalitarianism but also make a powerful statement of their own. Those who endured the imposition of Soviet rule and mass deportations to forced resettlement, labor camps, and prisons of the Soviet Union are here allowed to speak for themselves, and they do so with grim effectiveness.

Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia - Expanded Edition

Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia

A landmark book that changed the story of Poland's role in the Holocaust On July 10, 1941, in Nazi-occupied Poland, half of the town of Jedwabne brutally murdered the other half: 1,600 men, women, and children--all but seven of the town's Jews. In this shocking and compelling classic of Holocaust history, Jan Gross reveals how Jedwabne's Jews were murdered not by faceless Nazis but by people who knew them well--their non-Jewish Polish neighbors. A previously untold story of the complicity of non-Germans in the extermination of the Jews, Neighbors shows how people victimized by the Nazis could at the same time victimize their Jewish fellow citizens. In a new preface, Gross reflects on the book's explosive international impact and the backlash it continues to provoke from right-wing Polish nationalists who still deny their ancestors' role in the destruction of the Jews.

By combining historical and political analysis with a sophisticated sociological approach, Jane Gross offers a new itnerpretations of the German occupation of Poland during World War II. Based on his hypothesis that a society cannot be destroyed by coercion short of the physical annihilation of its members, his work has a twofold aim; to examine the model of German occupation in theory and in practice, and to identify the patterns of collective behavior that emerged among the Polish people in response to the social control exercised over them.The author argues taht when an occupier provdies no institutions through which a lcoal population can at least minimally satisfy its social needs, the subjugated populace builds substituted institutions on the remnants of previous forms of its collective life. These substitutes constitute the society's self-defense, to which the occupier must in some way adjust if its goals of manipulation and exploitation are to be achieved.Professor Gross points out numerous ways in which the Poles under the General gouvernement circumvented the goals and authority of the German occupiers. Most significant was the emergence of the Polish underground, which took on the leadership, social welfare, political, and financial functions of an independent state. This phenomenon, he concludes, shows that resistance should not be conceived merely as a military movement but rather as a complex social phenomenon.Jan Tomasz Gross is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Yale University.Originally published in 1979.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

By combining historical and political analysis with a sophisticated sociological approach, Jane Gross offers a new itnerpretations of the German occupation of Poland during World War II. Based on his hypothesis that a society cannot be destroyed by coercion short of the physical annihilation of its members, his work has a twofold aim; to examine the model of German occupation in theory and in practice, and to identify the patterns of collective behavior that emerged among the Polish people in response to the social control exercised over them. The author argues taht when an occupier provdies no institutions through which a lcoal population can at least minimally satisfy its social needs, the subjugated populace builds substituted institutions on the remnants of previous forms of its collective life. These substitutes constitute the society's self-defense, to which the occupier must in some way adjust if its goals of manipulation and exploitation are to be achieved. Professor Gross points out numerous ways in which the Poles under the General gouvernement circumvented the goals and authority of the German occupiers. Most significant was the emergence of the Polish underground, which took on the leadership, social welfare, political, and financial functions of an independent state. This phenomenon, he concludes, shows that resistance should not be conceived merely as a military movement but rather as a complex social phenomenon. Jan Tomasz Gross is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Yale University. Originally published in 1979. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Un día de julio de 1941, la mitad de los habitantes de la población polaca de Jedwabne se levantó contra la otra mitad. En una enloquecida cruzada, a la que el ejército alemán de ocupación asistió como mero espectador, acabaron con la vida de casi todos los judíos del pueblo: mil seiscientas personas entre hombres, mujeres y niños. No fueron nazis anónimos quienes apalizaron, acuchillaron, estrangularon o prendieron fuego a los judíos de Jedwabne, sino sus propios vecinos con los que hasta entonces habían convivido normalmente, gentes de nombres y rostros conocidos, viejos compañeros de escuela, sus tenderos, sus clientes, aquellos con los que solían pararse a charlar en las calles. Vecinos nos cuenta esta historia brutal y estremecedora que nunca antes se había narrado y que había sido ignorada por la historia oficial. Es el estudio más revelador que se ha publicado sobre las relaciones entre polacos y judíos en tiempos de ocupación y que, por las apasionadas polémicas que ha levantado en la prensa internacional, se está convirtiendo ya no sólo en un clásico de la literatura del Holocausto, sino también en una contribución de primer orden a la historia universal de la infamia.\nBook Description\nCon prólogo de Jorge M. Reverte.

Vecinos: El exterminio de la comunidad judía de Jedwabne (Polonia)

Editorial Crítica.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gross, Jan T.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Gross, Jan T.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gross, Jan T.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland

Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland

Polish Society Under German Occupation: The Generalgouvernement, 1939-1944 (Princeton Legacy Library)

Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia - Expanded Edition

Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia

Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland

Polish Society Under German Occupation: The Generalgouvernement, 1939-1944 (Princeton Legacy Library)

Polish Society Under German Occupation: The Generalgouvernement, 1939-1944 (Princeton Legacy Library)

Vecinos: El exterminio de la comunidad judía de Jedwabne (Polonia)