Fear. Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz

Poland suffered an exceedingly brutal Nazi occupation during the Second World War. Close to five million Polish citizens lost their lives as a result. More than half the casualtieswere Polish Jews. Thus the second largest Jewish community in the world- only American Jewry numbered more than the three and a half million Polish Jews at the time- was wiped out. Over 90 per cent of its members were killed in the Holocaust. Jan Gross's Fear attempts to answer a perplexing question: How was anti-Semitism possible in Poland after the war? At the center of this investigation is a detailed reconstruction of the Kielce pogrom and the reactions it evoked in various milieus of Polish society. How did the Polish Catholic Church, Communist party workers, and intellectuals respond to the spectactle of Jews being murdered by their fellow citizens in a country that had just been liberated from five-year Nazi occupation?