The Crime and the Silence

Starred review from July 6, 2015
Polish journalist Bikont undertakes a thorough follow-up to Polish-American historian Jan Gross’s 2001 book Neighbors, about the July 1941 pogrom in the rural eastern Polish town of Jedwabne. Bikont spent several years tracking down and interviewing the few eyewitnesses to the event—as well as their children and other relevant parties—in Poland, Costa Rica, Israel, and the U.S. She goes well beyond Gross in marshaling information to counter persistent claims that the Jewish massacre was perpetrated by Germans: overwhelming historical evidence incriminates Poles. In the process of investigating, she learned that the July pogrom in Jedwabne wasn’t an isolated act; killings of Jews by Poles took place “in several dozen towns in the area.” Bikont also notes the near-ubiquity of anti-Semitism in the area at the time—such that protecting Jews was an unpopular, even dangerous act—and the persistence of anti-Semitism throughout Poland to the present day. The narrative is disrupted at times by digressions into relatively tangential matters, especially in more personal sections called “Journal.” Still, Bikont has performed an extraordinary journalistic feat in documenting this
terrible, historically contested atrocity. Illus.

Starred review from May 15, 2015
Polish journalist Bikont (editor: And I Still See Their Faces: Images of Polish Jews, 1996) delivers a daring exposure of the crimes of her countrymen in the first week of July 1941. At the time, the deaths of the Jews of Jedwabne and those of Radzilow and Wasosz were glossed over, until a book commemorating them appeared just before the 60th anniversary. Jan Tomasz Gross based her book Neighbors (2001) partly on the Jedwabne Book of Memory, edited by rabbis Julius and Jacob Baker. It was the first time the testimony of eyewitness Szmul Wasersztejn was published, a good first step for Bikont to begin her search for witnesses. Sixty years after hundreds of Jews were herded into a barn that was then burned to the ground, the author found a host of disturbing reactions from the local residents. There are blatant denials that any Poles took part and assurances that it was the Germans who forced locals to participate. Many told Bikont that since it occurred so many years ago, she should just leave it alone. Her persistence in chasing down those who might tell her the facts took her all over Poland and to Israel, the United States, Cuba, and Costa Rica. Her most shocking discovery was the still-virulent anti-Semitism in the area. For years, the Catholic Church had preached against the Jews, so when neighbors were exiled to Siberia during the Russian occupation of 1939-1941, the Jews were the best scapegoats, and it was a good excuse for the beginnings of the pogroms. The elements of competitive suffering that the author uncovered in her interviewees appear to be just more excuses. Bikont's fearless research-she even confronted the brothers known to have led the Jedwabne murders-makes this a fantastic book. It was first published in Poland in 2004, and the European Book Prize it won in 2011 (for the French version) should be only the first of many awards for this significant work.

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April 15, 2015

In 2001, Jan Gross's Neighbors brought attention to long-suppressed events in Jedwabne, Poland: on July 10, 1941, inhabitants rounded up their Jewish neighbors and burned them alive in a barn. Bikont has received Poland's highest journalism award for her coverage of the country's subsequent stuttering soul-searching.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2015

In Jan Gross's Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, the historian started an acrimonious debate in Poland about past and current Polish-Jewish relations. Journalist Bikont continues the discussion with this translation of her best-selling My z Jedwabnego, which investigates the 1941 massacres of Jewish communities in Jedwabne and Radzilow, Poland. Interwar attitudes of Poles toward Jews deteriorated with the urging of clergy and were further exacerbated by the 1939 takeover of the towns by the Soviet Union. When the Nazis invaded in 1941, many Poles welcomed them as liberators, setting the stage for the grisly mass murder of their Jewish neighbors followed by open looting of their belongings. Interviews with witnesses, perpetrators, and the few survivors and saviors of the genocides combined with an examination of historical documents, prove the long-suppressed truth--the killings were committed by local Poles. Interwoven is the author's own story of discovering her Jewish heritage as an adult. VERDICT Bikont's unflinching assessment of the anti-Semitism that is endemic even now in Poland will appeal not only to those with an interest in Polish-Jewish relations but anyone curious about the difficult process of a country coming to terms with its history of violence against a minority. [See Prepub Alert, 3/23/15.]--Laurie Unger Skinner, Coll. of Lake Cty., Waukegan, IL

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.