Gross: I Hope that Poles will Clear Themselves

Professor, did you want to shock Poles with your book? 

I wrote from the bottom of my heart and my soul. Certainly the audience is also crucial. I wanted people to learn the history of our country. 

However, you raised a very touchy subject, putting forward very strong theses. Do you expect the same kind of storm that was caused by Sąsiedzi („Neighbors”)? 

Books live their own lives. It is very hard to predict what the reaction will be like. To be honest I do not think that the debate will be so big like a couple of years ago. Compared to „Neighbors”, „Fear” is a relatively difficult book: long, complicated, requiring a certain mental effort to go through. Additionally the dynamism in the scandal over „Neighbors” was created by the question „what happens if the book is published in English?“ In this case this is out of question, because the book was first published in English and nothing happened. 

A lot of people bear grudges against you because „Fear” was first published in America and the Poles learned about it from critical reviews in English. 

This comment seems to me pointless. The answer why it happened like that is trivial – pure coincidence. I simply wrote the book first in English. Meanwhile I published „Neighbors” first in Poland, because the murder in the place of Jedwabne was unknown and it was Poles who should have faced that matter in the first row. Meanwhile „Fear” does not contain any new facts. All events and facts were known in Poland earlier. 

However, in Poland you are accused of anti-Polish prejudice. 

This is the activity that has been carried out by the Roman Catholic National Democrats for a long time: accusing various people that they are prejudiced against Poland. Therefore the opinions you mentioned do not surprise me a great deal. I hope that people who have read my book will see that it is an ideological syndrome very harmful for Poland. 

How do you explain such reactions? 

Partially it is a defensive reaction. Apparently people find it hard to confront their own prejudice and to tell themselves that the ideological positions they represented were harmful and wrong. Because I believe that anti-Semitism was one of major poisons that were introduced into the bloodstream of Polish identity. National Democratic and Roman Catholic circles are responsible for that. And whether these people will be able to confess finally: mea culpa? We will see. 

So this is an ideological issue? 

This is also an issue of historiography. The period of WWII was key to forming the feeling of national identity. And the fundamental duty of historians is to say truth about what happened. And major event that happened at that time in Poland was Holocaust. The murder of Jews, the extermination of one third of population of the Polish cities, was witnessed by everybody. The history of occupation in which there would be no place for that would make no sense. I am telling you this based on my own experience. In my book, written many years ago, entitled Polish Society Under German Occupation (1979) I wrote two or three sentences about Jews. Meanwhile one has to tell a lot about it and to tell the truth. Though it is very painful. 

In „Fear” you write that we have to break up with the vision of the past where the Poles were only victims and heroes... 

This book describes many situations that do not match neither the first, nor the second model. The Poles similarly to the Ukrainians, the Lithuanians, the Byelorussians participated in the Holocaust. I am talking about communities where the Holocaust happened, to a large extent, by pure coincidence. Simply the Nazis believed that the Slavs were subhumans and they did not care what they thought about their [the Nazis’] behavior. Contrary to the developments in the West, here the Jews were murdered openly. And unfortunately the local people participated in the murders. The Poles murdered their fellow Jewish citizens. In the first chapter of „Fear” I described the events in a village in the Kielce region where the population from various villages by means of joint efforts and openly discussing the issue, murdered the Jews hiding in the area. It was a normal thing to do for them. 

You said that such behaviors we typical in the Eastern Europe occupied by the Germans. In the book you talk about typical Polish National Democratic and Roman Catholic supportive climate for the murders. But Ukraine is not Roman Catholic. 

But Lithuania is. Additionally Ukraine is Christian. The Jew was a devil in the Christian culture with all its variants, Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox. 

But the Nazi anti-Semitism, which is responsible for Holocaust, had a scientific, Darwinian nature. And here we talk about traditional, peasant version of prejudice against Jews. 

Racist anti-Semitism played certainly a decisive role in the Holocaust. The Hitler’s idea to exterminate physically the whole nation was totally innovative. However, the tragedy is that the Church and traditional anti-Semitic attitude of the local people coincided with the new reality, the reality in which the Nazis committed genocide on Polish soil. And it turned out that people were not ready for that. 

Why? 

The Roman Catholic and National Democratic syndrome instilled for years, described in my book, prevented people from seriously understanding that it was time to stop. An encouragement on the part of occupant opened up an opportunity for the people who had not liked the Jews before to join the ultimate persecutions. 

An accusation has been made that the cases of Jewish deaths you took out of context, which was the post-war chaos prevailing in the territory of Poland. Are you sure that all Jews died because they were Jews? 

Certainly there were cases where it is impossible to tell the difference between ordinary robbery that including murder and a racist murder. However, the anti-Semitic element of violence was very distinct and unambiguous in the period in question. Certainly everything happened in the setting of chaos and civil war; however, these murders were very peculiar. Certainly one could write a book about other acts of violence, but I was personally interested in the violence against Jews. Mainly due to the fact that just a while ago Holocaust was committed. How it was possible? 

But perhaps the Jews suffered from violence because of common belief that they were well-off? Perhaps they were killed not by anti-Semites but by ordinary robbers? 

This is also an element of the anti-Semitic syndrome: the fact that the Jews were associated with gold and affluence. 

What about an argument that the Jews died because they were communists? 

No, it was simply not like that. Similar theses are not true. Certainly it happened that some people were mugged believing that they were attacking secret police while it turned out that they were Jews. However, in most cases Jews were beaten and killed because they were Jews. Certainly from time to time it can be rationalized by saying that a certain Jew was a militiaman, but the sense of it would be the same as if we said that a certain Jew drank blood of Christian children. 

The Jews in fact did not drink blood – it is absurd, but in the Secret Police there were some Jews. 

This is again a manifestation of anti-Semitic vision of the world. A cluster of ideas dubbed Jews–Bolsheviks that has been used by anti-Semitic communities since the tsarist security authorities published the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. I studied the statistics about Secret Police personnel and it turned out that vast majority of secret police agents were Poles. 

I will ask you for the probably most touchy issue raised in the book. Did the Catholic Church pass the exam during the events you describe in the book? 

No, total failure. I am writing about it openly. One important bishop – Teodor Kubina from Częstochowa, did what had to be done. He announced that the accusations of ritual murder were madness. Meanwhile other bishops publicly pilloried miserable Kubina who talked about obvious and noble things! It was unprecedented that the bishops in the times when the Church was under the siege of the communism and the Stalinist order was being created – they publicly censored another bishop. Thus, the Church not only did nothing, but what it did was bad. 

During the debate on „Neighbors” you were frequently accused of uncritical approach to the account of the witnesses and the survivors. Similar objections are also raised with reference to „Fear”. 

This accusation does not make sense. My position was distorted. Whenever we have at our disposal various sources then it is certainly required to juxtapose and verify them. However, the specific feature of the Holocaust is that the Jewish communities were totally exterminated. And there are events or places from where no voices are heard. Sometimes one or two voices of the victims are available who tell us about terrible things. Speaking from experience those things which seem to be unbelievable really happed in the Holocaust reality. Therefore if we have such voice, the only one that survived, then we should treat it seriously. 

Today „Fear” will be available in the bookshops. What effects do you expect? 

I am happy that the book is published in Poland. I am glad that there will be debate about my book. For me most important audience are young people who do not have larger knowledge about this period, but at the same time they are not ideologically blind, nor they have fixed stereotypes. 

I hope that this book will simply help Poles to be themselves and to clear themselves. One would not have to wonder any longer: „who takes a dig at me“. Horrendous things happened, but once we have mentioned them and acknowledged their existence, then they become very simple. Possible to digest. A lot of people in may places around the world behaved in the same way as Poles did. In former Yugoslavia, in Rwanda. There is nothing extraordinary about it. The man has evil inside and under certain circumstances, when provoked, the evil may come out. 

Piotr Zychowicz, Rzeczpospolita, 31 January 2008