by Jan Gross
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Product Description
Poland suffered an exceedingly brutal Nazi occupation during the Second World War. Close to five million Polish citizens lost their lives as a result. More than half the casualties were Polish Jews. Thus, the second largest Jewish community in the world–only American Jewry numbered more than the three and a half million Polish Jews at the time–was wiped out. Over 90 percent of its members were killed in the Holocaust. And yet, despite this unprecedented calamity that affected both Jews and non-Jews, Jewish Holocaust survivors returning to their hometowns in Poland after the war experienced widespread hostility, including murder, at the hands of their neighbors. The bloodiest peacetime pogrom in twentieth-century Europe took place in the Polish town of Kielce one year after the war ended, on July 4, 1946.
Jan Gross’s Fear attempts to answer a perplexing question: How was anti-Semitism possible in Poland after the war? At the center of his investigation is a detailed reconstruction of the Kielce pogrom and the reactions it evoked in various milieus of Polish society. How did the Polish Catholic Church, Communist party workers, and intellectuals respond to the spectacle of Jews being murdered by their fellow citizens in a country that had just been liberated from a five-year Nazi occupation?
Gross argues that the anti-Semitism displayed in Poland in the war’s aftermath cannot be understood simply as a continuation of prewar attitudes. Rather, it developed in the context of the Holocaust and the Communist takeover: Anti-Semitism eventually became a common currency between the Communist regime and a society in which many had joined in the Nazi campaign of plunder and murder–and for whom the Jewish survivors were a standing reproach.
Jews did not bring communism to Poland as some believe; in fact, they were finally driven out of Poland under the Communist regime as a matter of political expediency. In the words of the Nobel Prize—winning poet Czeslaw Milosz, Poland’s Communist rulers fulfilled the dream of Polish nationalists by bringing into existence an ethnically pure state.
For more than half a century, what happened to the Jewish Holocaust survivors in Poland has been cloaked in guilt and shame. Writing with passion, brilliance, and fierce clarity, Jan T. Gross at last brings the truth to light.
Praise for Fear
“You read [Fear] breathlessly, all human reason telling you it can’t be so–and the book culminates in so keen a shock that even a student of the Jewish tragedy during World War II cannot fail to feel it.”–Elie Wiesel, The Washington Post Book World
“Bone-chilling . . . [Fear] is illuminating and searing, a moral indictment delivered with cool, lawyerly efficiency that pounds away at the conscience with the sledgehammer of a verdict. . . . Fear takes on an entire nation, forever depriving Poland of any false claims to the smug, easy virtue of an innocent bystander to Nazi atrocities. . . . Gross’ Fear should inspire a national reflection on why there are scarcely any Jews left in Poland. It’s never too late to mourn. The soul of the country depends on it.”–Thane Rosenbaum, Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Provocative . . . powerful and necessary . . . One can only hope that this important book will make a difference.”–Susan Rubin Suleiman, Boston Globe
“Imaginative, urgent, and unorthodox . . . The ‘fear’ of Mr. Gross’s title . . . is not just the fear suffered by Jews in a Poland that wished they had never come back alive. It is also the fear of the Poles themselves, who saw in those survivors a reminder of their own wartime crimes. Even beyond Mr. Gross’s exemplary historical research and analysis, it is this lesson that makes Fear such an important book.”–The New York Sun
“After all the millions dead, after the Nazi terror, a good many Poles still found it acceptable to hate the Jews among them. . . . The sorrows of history multiply: a necessary book.”
–Kirkus (starred review)
“Gross illustrates with eloquence and shocking detail that the bloodletting did not cease when the war ended. . . . This is a masterful work that sheds necessary light on a tragic and often-ignored aspect of postwar history.”–Booklist (starred review)
“[Fear] tells a wartime horror story that should forces Poles to confront an untold–and profoundly terrifying–aspect of their history.”–Publishers Weekly (starred review)
From the Hardcover edition.
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Average Customer Review:
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
 Gross capitalizing on Nazi hate, 2008-10-09
This is all about Gross capitalizing on Nazi hate and having to blame the Poles to make his money.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
 Courage to face the truth of almost universal antisemitism, 2008-05-23
Many of the reviews, and the responses to it are full of logical errors.
Here is just one constantly repeated: "Poles could not have been so antisemitic, since so many Poles have risked their lives to save Jews."
Indeed Poland leads the Righteous Among Nations with 6066 hero's!
These heroic Poles bring tears to my eyes, many of them took much greater risk than their counterparts in Holland, France, of Belgium. There are two reasons for that: First of all, Germans killed the Poles, (and Ukrainians) and in some cases their whole family if they found them hiding Jews. Second reason is much more scary: The poles who hid the Jews, were in danger from their fellow Poles. The great majority of Poles were so intensely antisemitic, that these Polish hero's were ostracized, and often physically attacked by other Poles, if it was discovered that they helped the Jews. Pani Wykszykowska, who saved lives of several Jews from Jedwabne, had been beaten up by the Polish bandits after the war. As the harassment intensified, she moved to another town, where unfortunately people learned about her saving Jews and she had to move again, this time to a bigger town. This heroic and patriotic, woman, had eventually had to flee Poland into safety in Canada.
This is example illustrates the superhuman integrity of the Just Poles. They stood up not only against the German occupier, but against the prevailing sentiment in their own country. Such integrity and courage is indeed rare. Tragically, for each of these 6066+ hero's, there have 6066 been between hundreds and thousands, Jew-hating antisemites, actively supporting, or passively approving the genocide, (while in the process benefiting from the stolen Jewish property).
Based on my own experience of growing up in Poland shortly after the war (as a child of Polish-Jewish parents who returned from Russia), I testify that I have met with almost universal antisemitism, with only few noble exceptions.
Antisemitism was intense in Poland all the time and my parents were finally forced to leave their motherland, Poland, in 1968-69.
2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
A STALINIST CRIME UNFAIRLY BLAMED ON THE TORTURED POLES., 2008-05-22
Bottom line here is that after years of Soviet Communist and Jewish collaboration against Poland, the Communists betrayed the Jews, and wanted them out of the Soviet Union and Stalin controlled Poland. This was ans still is pure Communist propagada against the Polish Nation.
5 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
Disturbing book, a noble effort which failed, 2008-02-04
I have read "Fear" with much pain. As a Pole, each time Gross wrote about how my compatriots killed and robbed their Jewish neighbours, my heart ached. The facts presented in this book have not been unknown to historians, but they were not publicly discussed in Poland for decades. Learning the extent of brutal, murderous Polish anti-semitism during and after WW II was a huge shock for me. For this reason, this an important book. Many people have accused Gross of a "one-sided view". Well, it seems to be done on purpose. We Poles like to talk about Polish priests and nuns who hid Jews during the war, about who has the most trees in Yad Vashem, and so on. It is the public discourse on Holocaust in Poland which is one-sided -- a veil of silence is held over Polish anti-semitism and Polish murdering of Jews during and shortly after WW II. Gross aimed to break this silence, and I think he partially succeeded. The book is worth reading but is not an easy, nor a comfortable reading.
8 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
Shameful and false book, 2008-01-17
Although there were some anti-semitic acts in post-war history of Poland, how does this compare to so many Judes saved by Polish People in the times of World War II????
If Gross calls Polish People anti-semitic because of these FEW tragic events, his book is nothing more than a way to express his own hatred. Misery and shame.
If you have doubts:
Yad Vashem: http://www1.yadvashem.org/righteous/index_righteous.html
Examplary story:
http://www1.yadvashem.org/righteous/bycountry/poland/irena_sendlar.html
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