Analyzing Jan Gross' Neighbors

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Analyzing Jan Gross' Neighbors Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland is a publication by Jan Tomasz Gross. The book analyzes the events in the small town of Jedwabne around 1941. This was during the time when the Germans occupied Poland. The book looks at the manner in which the Polish non-Jewish ethnic poles, on their own volition, decided to exterminate their Jewish neighbors during the year 1941. The author presents the causes of the massacre against the Jewish residents in Jedwabne by the neighbors who were non-Jews. In narrating the causes of the Jedwabne Jewish massacres, Gross takes two approaches that explore the ethnic identity categories that persisted at the time of holocaust and the role of individual choices. In early 1939 in the Jedwabne town, a few kilometers from the historical province of Mazowsze, the police arrested and detained fifteen people. The names of the detainees were recorded in a liquidated report commonly referred to as the control-investigative files. These files were maintained by the police in a bid to track the progress of their investigations regarding various cases. Among the eight people that were detained included seasonal workers, farmers, a mason, two shoemakers, a letter carrier, two locksmiths, a former town hall receptionist, and a carpenter. Some of the detainees were family men and the youngest of the detainees was 27 years or age while the oldest was 64 years old. Basically, the detained men were persons of ordinary means. The inhabitants of Jedwabne who totaled about two-thousand noticed the simultaneous arrests of what appeared to be numerous native inhabitants. They could not understand the meaning of the arrests until the detainees were arraigned in the District Court at Lomza. The opening phrase of the indictment shed light on
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