Will the prayers of those who expect the Gross‘ book to start a serious discussion going to be answered? Is “Poland going to face its past“, as Elie Wiesel put it, thanks to the book? Or – in the slightly modest expectation verbalized by Henryk Woźniakowski, the editor of Znak Publishers – is Fear going to „make Poles think through the fact that after WWII Poland was the sole country where Jews were threatened physically as Jews”?
I seriously doubt it. And not only because Woźniakowski’s claim can be questioned. Each debate about national vices, stereotypes and prejudices – certainly including anti-Semitism – may be useful. However, to run such debate about faults and conscience, we need to have fundamental honesty, reliability, respect for facts, an understanding of historical processes, an ability to depart one’s own narrow perspective and notice, or at least an attempt to notice, historical context. Meanwhile all aforementioned features are missing in Gross‘ book. The first surprise for each Polish reader must be the limiting of all WWII terror exclusively to the Holocaust. In this book the suffering of non-Jewish victims disappears, whereas the issue of some Jews entangled with communism is treated as totally immaterial. We do not learn anything about exterminatory Nazi policy targeted at non-Jews, nor about communist crimes.
But not only that, what strikes one the most is the role assigned by Gross to the Polish population. While describing the process of the persecution of the Jews under German occupation, the author of Fear mentions in one breath consecutive orders of German occupation authorities and ... crime in the place of Jedwabne. This is not a coincidence. As it turns out „Poles in vast majority did not help, nor showed any compassion to fellow Jew citizens being murdered and frequently, in various ways, participated in the Extermination process”. It is hard to find another example of so far-fetched hatred and contempt. Most Poles – apart from small group of intelligentsia – are, according to Gross, a savage, greedy, bloodthirsty mob; a thick-headed, stupefied, sly rabble, driven by greediness and bigotry.
After reading Gross’ descriptions of Poles, a straightforward question must arise: if the majority of Poles were like those described by the author of Fear – an irrational, numb, rapacious and murderous mob manipulated by Roman Catholic clergy – then perhaps its categorization by the Nazis as subhumans (Untermenschen) was justified ? There is perhaps only one contemporary historian who described Poles under German occupation in a similar manner. His name is David Irving.
Fear does not start a discussion, nor build dialogue. On the contrary, using constant accusations, it creates an atmosphere of confrontation and hostility. It is the work of a propagandist and a radical. However, this book is worthwhile reading to see where a historian can arrive when he has surrendered to phobias and shows blind attitude to only one nation.
