The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, Book Review Example

Introduction

In the book titled Neighbors ” The destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland” Jan Gross reflects a story of summer day in the town of Jedwabne when a half of the population brutally murdered the other half. According to Jan, torturing and brutal killing of 1600 Jews in the small town of Jedwabne was not done by the newly deployed soldiers in the region as purported, they were, instead, the well versed residents of Jedwabne, who had stayed with the Jews and had been neighbors for a very long period of time(Gross, p.5). This book depicts existence of perpetrators among neighbors as it has an encircled manifestation of them being perfunctory and hasty as evident by the detailed hellish events that happened late June to early July of 1941 in small European town of Jedwabne.

Indeed the world is crooked; these categorical events illustrated by Gross happened in a set of contexts, it seems there was traditional animosity from the other half of population towards the Jews, (Gross, and p.99). The totalitarian authority headed by Stalin and Hitler gave Jews neighbors powers to exploit or capital on what seemed to be a division or resentment, they could endear the authority and get material benefits from whatever they could do. I stand to think that active pogrom participation had already capitalized on the resentment of leftover Jewish wealth since at the moment of tribal murder they were dealing with local peasant Jewish population, which is an aspect of traditional animosity.

According to Gross, it can be thought the Jews neighbors were settling scores with the ‘judeo-commune’  as there before had been indignities who had  undergone suffering during the Soviet occupation period (Gross, p.162). Indeed, this book is reflection of the uncertainty of our neighbors in a convincingly straightforward way

Works Cited:

Gross, Jan T. Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.