Editing Jedwabne pogrom (section)

==Jan T. Gross's ''Neighbors'', 2000==
{{Main|Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland}}
[[File:Jan Tomasz Gross.png|thumb|upright|[[Jan T. Gross]], 2019]]

[[Jan T. Gross]]'s book ''Sąsiedzi: Historia zagłady żydowskiego miasteczka'' ("Neighbors: The Story of the Annihilation of a Jewish Town") caused a "moral earthquake" when it was published in Poland in May 2000, according to [[Piotr Wróbel]].{{sfn|Wróbel|2006a|p=387}}{{efn|In December 1966 [[Szymon Datner]] wrote an article for the ''[[Jewish Historical Institute|Bulletin of Jewish Historical Institute]]'' concluding that the Germans had moved through the area causing popular outbursts against the Jews without taking part in the killing themselves.{{sfn|Kaczyński|2003|p=55}}}} It appeared in English, German and Hebrew within the year. In English it was published in April 2001 by [[Princeton University Press]] as ''Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland''.{{sfn|Stola|2003|p=139}}

Writing that "one day, in July 1941, half of the population of a small East European town murdered the other half—some 1,600 men, women and children", Gross concluded that the Jedwabne Jews had been rounded up and killed by a mob of their own Polish neighbors.{{sfn|Gross|2001|p=7}} This ran contrary to Poland's official account that they had been killed by Germans.<ref name=Kauffmann19Dec2002>{{cite news|first=Sylvie |last=Kauffmann |url=https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/dec/19/highereducation.news |title=Poland faces up to the horror of its own role in the Holocaust|newspaper=The Guardian |date= 19 December 2002}}</ref> Political scientist Michael Shafir writes that the pogrom had been "subjected to confinement in the Communist 'black hole of history'".{{sfn|Shafir|2012|p=23}} While Gross recognized that no "sustained organizing activity" could have taken place without the Germans' consent,<ref>{{Harvnb|Gross|2001|p=77}}</ref> he concluded that the massacre had been carried out entirely by Poles from Jedwabne and the surrounding area, and that the Germans had not coerced them.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gross|2001|pp=86-87, 133}}</ref>

Gross's sources were Szmuel Wasersztajn's 1945 witness statement from the [[Jewish Historical Institute]]; witness statements and other trial records from the 1949–1950 trials; the ''Yedwabne: History and Memorial Book'' (1980), written by Jedwabne residents who had moved to the United States;<ref>{{harvnb|Holc|2002|p=3}}; {{harvnb|Musial|2003|pp=304, 316}}.</ref> and interviews from the 1990s conducted by Gross and a filmmaker.{{sfn|Wróbel|2006a|p=391}} While several Polish historians praised Gross for having drawn attention to the pogrom, others criticized him for relying too heavily on witness accounts, which they argued were not reliable, and—where conflicting accounts existed—for choosing those that showed the Poles in the worst possible light.<ref>{{harvnb|Chodakiewicz|2001}}; {{harvnb|Musial|2003|pp=323–324; 334}}; for not reliable, also see {{harvnb|Wróbel|2006a|p=391}}.</ref> He was also criticized for having failed to examine the pogrom within the context of German actions during the early stages of [[the Holocaust]].{{sfn|Rossino|2003}} According to [[Dan Stone (historian)|Dan Stone]], "some historians sought to dispute the fundamentals of Gross's findings by massive attention to minute details, burying the wider picture under a pile of supposed inaccuracies".{{sfn|Stone|2010|p=27}}

According to Ewa Wolentarska-Ochman, the publication of ''Neighbors'' "[left] young generations... unable to comprehend how such a crime could be generally unknown and never spoken about in the last 50 years."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Wolentarska-Ochman |first=Ewa |date=May 2003 |title=Jedwabne and the power struggle in Poland (remembering the Polish-Jewish past a decade after the collapse of communism) |journal=Perspectives on European Politics and Society |volume=4 |issue=2 |pages=171–189 |doi=10.1080/15705850308438859 |s2cid=145456528 |issn=1570-5854}}</ref>