“Golden Harvest” – new book by Jan Tomasz Gross

His research, leading to the creation of this book, was inspired by the article of Piotr Głuchowski and Marcin Kowalski “Gold Rush in Treblinka”, published three years ago in “Gazeta Wyborcza”.

The journalists described how after the Second World War the whole area around the camp of Treblinka became a place where gold-diggers were searching for gold. They described how people seeking valuables were digging up ashes and corpses of the victims. This information opened the debate about the attitude of Poles towards the Holocaust.

Jan Tomasz Gross defined the field of his research by misquoting the words of Władysław Bartoszewski, who said that ten Poles had to participate in the rescuing of one Jew. Gross answers that murdering one Jew would not be possible if it weren’t for the help of many people.

Gross does not write about rescuing Jews but about the attitude towards the Jews in general, and he mostly tries to analyze  “inconvenient issues” and myths on which the Polish historical consciousness is based.

Gross explains that he describes the time of the war and reminds in what situation the Poles were at that time, but he focuses on those parts that remain unknown to this day and on the thing that are consciously concealed.