Neighbors, the Jedwabne Massacre of Jews and the Controversy that Changed Poland

There are not many other cases when one single book about history, written by an academic, not only provoked a massive and stormy nationwide debate involving mass media, political leaders and bishops, but also unleashed processes that strongly influenced the self-perceptions of a nation, opening the way for ground-breaking new historical research and, at the same time, for political responses which had a tangible impact on the direction in which the whole country moved. It was all achieved by a not very long historical essay (around 100 pages in Polish, 170 pages in the subsequent English-language edition, excluding photographs, maps, indexes) by Jan Tomasz Gross.1 Its subject was the massacre of almost all Jews (the number is still debatable: between several hundred to 1,600 – the latter number claimed by Gross) living in the small town of Jedwabne in German-occupied Poland, committed by their Polish neighbours in July 1941. After its Polish debut, the book was translated into thirteen languages.