Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland

This guide is based on the first edition of Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, published in 2001 by Princeton University Press. Written by Jan Tomasz Gross, Neighbors is a critically acclaimed account of Poland’s role in the Holocaust. It inspired the 2012 film Aftermath, directed by Wladyslaw Pasikowski.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide include discussions of antisemitism, war, and the Holocaust.

On July 10, 1941, nearly two years after the German invasion of Poland initiated World War II, the non-Jewish citizens of a small Polish village called Jedwabne initiated a murderous attack against their Jewish neighbors, which culminated in the Jews being corralled to a barn and burned. Eight hours after this mass murder, frequently referred to as a “pogrom,” around 1,600 Jews were dead. Only seven Jews remained in town—those who were protected by the few Poles who abstained from the violence and dissented from the collective will. Nazis later seized those remaining Jews. The Jews who survived the war did not return to Poland.

Polish Gentiles committed this pogrom and several others independently. The Nazis consented to the pogrom, but no German soldier ever conducted murder or assisted in killing.