Golden Harvest, a new book by Jan Tomasz Gross, was released in bookstores across Poland today. The event did not go unnoticed, however, and critics are divided on whether it is a positive addition to historical debate or a slander against the Polish nation.

In this audio report, Polish Radio reporter John Beauchamp met with people who either exclaim the book as necessary to provoke debate on Polish history, or who believe it is flawed.

Pawel Lisicki, editor-in-chief of the quality Rzeczpospolita daily, raises questions as to how the book was prepared and what it represents. Lisicki strongly criticises Gross’s methods, going so far as to say that Gross “is trying to change Polish history.”

On the other hand, Dr Edyta Gawron, head of the Department of Jewish Studies at Krakow’s Jagiellonian University believes that Gross’s books, including Golden Harvest, are there to bring the subject out into the open and provoke debate on the subject, which remained taboo in Poland for decades after World War II.

Following on that thought, Piotr Pazinski from the Polish-Jewish Midrasz monthly magazine based in Warsaw told us that “Gross writes about things that everybody knows, almost everybody knows in Poland - at least among the older generation - and almost nobody wants to speak about.”

Golden Harvest was released today, 10 March in Poland, and is expected to be published by Oxford University Press in the USA either at the end of this year or at the beginning of 2012.

Contributing editor: Nicholas Hodge

 

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Profile: Jan Tomasz Gross, thenews.pl, 8 Feb

Former Israeli Ambassador defends Gross, thenews.pl 24 Jan

Publishers ignore protest against Jan Gross’s Golden Harvest, thenews.pl, 11 Jan

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