Reflection: Polish Controversy over “Neighbors”

When Neighbors was published in 2000, there was a wave of outcry from Poland. From intense criticism, such as doubt of Gross’s methodology, to public reminders of a shameful past. A past that was willing to be publicized by some and sought to be hidden by others.  The national identity of Poland was at stake and quickly questioned, painfully so. The Polish Institute of National Remembrance executed a forensic investigation due to all of the risen controversy. The results yielded that these acts were certainly committed by non-Polish community along with the collaboration of Germans. The critical forensic finding found Gross’s victim estimate rather ‘unlikely.’ (To me, how can such a thing be questioned with documented survivor accounts, and the fact that such a heinous and vicious crime was even committed). Polish president, Aleksander
Kwasniekwski, asked his fellow citizens to seek forgiveness of such crimes.
In terms of Gross’s methodology, the collection and utilization of testimonies received a great deal of backlash from many Polish scholars such as: claiming that many of the alleged victims retracted statements, or many accounts were left out. The major effect of this publication was most likely the
image of a non-Jewish Polish community having had the reputation of no major role played in the offensive side of the Holocaust being shattered.
Confronting the awful truth about history, however long ago is something that will never reach a ubiquitous agreement over responsibility taking, however the publication of Neighbors certainly provoked the debate. over guilt and liability.