"TRUTH SQUAD" CONFRONTS GROSS AT N.Y. LECTURE
NYU Professor Jan T. Gross received less than a friendly reception when he came to the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City on February 6th to promote his controversial book, "Neighbors."
His lecture there left no doubt he was intent on putting the blame for a 1941 wartime atrocity in the small Polish town of Jedwabne squarely on the local Polish population and not on the Germans who were in control there.
But a "truth squad" of New York Polish Americans were ready for him when a discussion period followed his presentation.
Charles Chotkowski, Director of Research for the Polish American Congress
Holocaust Documentation Committee, charged Gross with factual errors regarding
the Catholic Church and Lomza's Bishop Stanislaw Lukomski.
Gross's lengthy response appeared to be more a rationalization than an admission
of mishandling the historical record.
Dr. Jan Moor-Jankowski, a professor of forensic medicine and the only American
member of the French Academy of Medicine, then stunned Gross with a frontal
attack on the credibility of "Neighbors." He made a striking
comparison of it with another Holocaust book reviewed only a day
before in the Wall Street Journal.
The other book, "Fragments" was written by an imposter who claimed he
was a Jewish Holocaust survivor when, in fact, he was not. The Journal called it
a "fraud." Dr. Jankowski told Gross his book was the same.
Gross came in for another surprise when Boleslaw Domitrz spoke up to give his personal testimony as an eyewitness to the 1941 Jedwabne atrocity. Gross accused the Poles of putting all the town's 1600 Jewish residents into a barn and burning them alive.
To have Domitrz now to appear in New York and confront Gross added an
explosive sense of drama to the meeting.
Domitrz recalled what happened on the day the event in question took place. From
afar, he and two of his friends saw smoke rising from the burning barn. Out of
boyhood curiosity,Domitrz said, they walked through the town square until
they could get a good look at the barn.
There were no Poles around. Everyone seemed to have gone indoors, as if
from some dreadful and ominous fear. The only people the boys saw around
the barn were Germans in uniform. Nobody else.
"When we realized we were the only Poles out there," said
Domitrz, "we were so scared the Germans might see us and throw us
into the fire that we turned around and ran right back as fast as we
could."
When Domitrz finished his statement, Gross refused to respond. The moderator
then abruptly adjourned the session.
Contact: Frank Milewski Holocaust Documentation Committtee
Polish American Congress(718) 263-2700
Frank Milewski, Holocaust Documentation Committtee, 2002-02-08