Talk:Jedwabne pogrom

Stachura in Glaukopis

The article currently includes:

Stachura took exception to their letter. History declined to publish his reply; instead, it was posted on the website of Glaukopis, a right-wing Polish journal.Stachura, Peter (6 February 2008). "Jedwabne: A reply to Antony Polonsky & Joanna Michlic" (PDF). Glaukopis. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 May 2017.

References

Glaukopis is a problematic publication, whose web site moreover only hosts the letter, after History declined to publish it. Finding this statement to be undue, I suggest it be removed. -- K.e.coffman (talk) 20:09, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Entirely agree. "Glaukopis, a journal which caters to, and is led by, the Polish extreme nationalistic right. Its long-time editor-in-chief, Wojciech Muszyński (an employee of the IPN), openly praises the ONR, one of the most militant, rabidly antisemitic organizations of prewar Poland." There's no place for use of publications associated with anti-semitism as secondary sources on Wikipedia, and this one would almost certainly fail a WP:RS review. Any editors who disagree, I invite them to take it up at WP:RSN for community discussion. In the meantime, I am WP:BOLD removing it as a matter of urgency. -Chumchum7 (talk) 06:59, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. When I initially encountered this, I thought this was an article published in a reliable outlet. Forward a decade, I concur this has issues with BLP / RS and does not meet our modern standards. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:18, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Hasten to add that the quote I used above is from the widely respected Polish chapter[1] of the International Council of Christians and Jews, their website publication of Jan Grabowski's controversial essay, "Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust". In that essay he makes wide-ranging allegations against Wikipedia that AFAIU Wikipedia has contested in part and responded to. Still, I treat his opinion about Glaukopis as a noteworthy mainstream-academic observation, one that crosses our threshold for source reliability and minority view concerns. -Chumchum7 (talk) 07:26, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Recent edits to the lede

After I removed Glaukopis per above, having seen it is associated with anti-semitism, now I see more discussion is needed about the lede. This once-volatile article has just had it's longest period of stability for ages, lasting for many months of peace and WP:CONS. But looking at the lede after this recent round of good faith edits [2] the tell-tale WP:HOWEVER looks like a return to impassioned editorializing. Edit summary shows this is possibly a result of an honest misperception of bad faith in our article: "The selective quotation of an extract from Gross fundamentally distorts the main point of his book - to draw attention to the co-responsibility of sectors of the Polish population in the Holocaust." That's going too far about the use of a verifiable quote. In fact, it's partly there because anti-semitic Polish nationalists falsely accuse Gross of having an unbalanced approach to Polish responsibility in the Jedwabne pogrom; contrary to what the anti-semites say, it's verifiable in Gross's text that he's very balanced in terms of the Polish and German joint roles, particularly with reference to the Polish murderers' pre-massacre conference with the German "Gestapo" and the 'order' to carry it out, and that in no way undermines the fact that the Polish murderers carried out the murders of their own free will. This article says the Polish murderers of Jews cooperated with the Germans; it does not say they were coerced, indeed I have removed that exact WP:OR in the past. Thoughts? Chumchum7 (talk) 15:22, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm glad you acknowledge that Gross's text is balanced in terms of Polish/Germans responsabilities; along with WP:V, this is why we shouldn't unbalance the article by misrepresenting the source. Your edit restores a version of the article that misrepresents Gross by selectively quoting from his book. You mention the tell-tale WP:HOWEVER, but the "however" was already there in the source, and omitting it distorst Gross's findings. Gross says

Now, let us understand the broader context in which the murders took place. At the time the overall undisputed bosses over life and death in Jedwabne were the Germans. No sustained organized activity could take place there without their consent.13 They were the only ones who could decide the fate of the Jews. It was within their power also to stop the murderous pogrom at any time. And they did not choose to intervene. If they suggested that some Jewish families be spared, they must have done so without serious conviction, for all the Jews on whom the murderers lay their hands were killed in the end. And, ironically, on that day the outpost of the German gendarmerie was the safest place in town for the Jews, and a few survived only because they happened to be there at the time. But it is also clear that had Jedwabne not been occupied by the Germans, the Jews of Jedwabne would not have been murdered by their neighbors. This is not a gratuitous observation—the tragedy of Jedwabne Jewry is but an episode in the murderous war that Hitler waged against all Jews. As to the Germans’ direct participation in the mass murder of Jews in Jedwabne on July 10, 1941, however, one must admit that it was limited, pretty much, to their taking pictures

Gross's point is quite clear: the Germans could have prevented the pogrom, and they didn't, they were the necessary condition and triggering factor of the pogrom; however, the pogrom was carried out by the Poles on their own initiative: the so-called local population involved in killings of Jews did so of its own free will (p. 133). We shouldn't misrepresent the main thesis of the book by including in the lead only that According to historian Jan T. Gross, "the undisputed bosses of life and death in Jedwabne were the Germans," who were "the only ones who could decide the fate of the Jews." This is also contrary to WP:MOS, since the body of the article reports that While Gross recognized that no "sustained organizing activity" could have taken place without the Germans' consent, he concluded that the massacre had been carried out entirely by Poles (section Jan T. Gross's Neighbors, 2000).

I agree that WP:BRD must be followed here and I won't restore my bold edit, but per WP:V and WP:ONUS and I'm now removing the contentious quotation/misrepresentation of Gross until a consensus is reached. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 09:34, 10 March 2023 (UTC)