Jan Gross’s Neighbors exposes the tensions, or lack thereof, between the people that lived in the town of Jedwabne, Poland by using true stories from people in the town as evidence of the cruelty and hatred that was there. Neighbors is a book that challenges what many people take as the truth about what happened in July 1941 in Jedwabne, Poland and instead gives us the reality that Jedwabne was a place where neighbors turned on each other and mayhem ensued. Gross’s Neighbors dramatically alters our understanding of the Holocaust because he gives us a look at what nobody was willing to accept as the truth. The Germans were pitting everyone against the Jewish people, using anything they could. Ther Germans pointed out, to the Christian Poles, …show more content…
This is an example of how manipulative the Holocaust was. Gross’s Neighbors drastically changes how people think of the Holocaust by showing us a different side of the Holocaust that most people do not get the opportunity to see. In Gross’s book Neighbors, people get to hear eyewitness reports of what happened in the town of Jedwabne during and around the year 1941. In the book Neighbors, people also hear about how neighbors essentially turned their backs on their friends and potentially even turned their backs on their family in order to save themselves from a horrible fate. On April 5, 1945 Szmul Wasersztajn gave a testimony to the Jewish Historical Commission in Bialystok. He said, “Beards of old Jews were burned, newborn babies were killed at their mother's breasts, people were beaten murderously and forced to sing and dance. In the end they proceeded to the main action - the burning. The entire town was surrounded by guards so that nobody could escape; then Jews were ordered to line up in a column, …show more content…
In reality the Polish citizens killed the 1,600 Jewish people of Jedwabne. This fact drastically changes how people think about history. If someone were a Jewish descendant from Jedwabne then this fact will most likely change who they blame for this horrendous act. One of the people that still claim that the Germans killed the Jews in Jedwabne was Father Edward Orlowski. In the movie “Legacy of Jedwabne” the Father says, “It is all being done to obscure the real picture, make it unclear to make it look as if the Poles were the murderers. It is not true, the Poles did not murder… The Germans decided to shoot or kill anywhere from 40 to 50 young Jews based on an official order which was read to them… all remaining Jews, going back three generations, were all burned; and that is what happened everywhere. It happened here, in the Synagogue in Bialystok, and all around the area. Young Jews were shot, the others burnt.” There is no historical evidence to back up the Father’s claims. Therefore all of his opinions on what happened are just unsubstantiated claims and can not be actually regarded with solid fact because it is just one man’s views regarding a tragedy that he was forced to live through. While there are people that feel the way the Father does, there are eyewitnesses that