Undoing Poland’s Reckoning with the Holocaust

The Polish-American historian Jan Gross set off a fierce debate in Poland with his account of how the Christian residents of Jedwabne murdered their Jewish neighbors during World War II. (The English edition, Neighbors, appeared in 2001.) Although Gross’s findings were vociferously denied, and he was the object of ugly personal attack, the book led to much greater openness in Polish society concerning the Holocaust (a taboo subject until the fall of the Iron Curtain), and the Polish government even bestowed on him the Order of Merit, one of the country’s highest civilian honors. Now, however, Poland’s new president, Andrzej Duda, has called for the prize to be rescinded. Anna Bikont, the author of a book on the same subject, writes: