A COSMOPOLITAN LAWYER: JUST SOME READINGS I HAVE ENJOYED LATELY

First, this blog replaces my previous blog, thecosmoplitanlawyerblogspot.com . Second, unlike that earlier blog, the present one is primarily meant as a record of my readings. It is not meant to suggest that others will be or should be interested in what I read. And third, in a sense, it is a public diary of one who is an alien in his own American culture. A person who feels at home just about anywhere, except in his birthplace . . . America.

Sunday, July 10, 2016

LET"S NOT FORGET DATES AND EVENTS SUCH AS JEDWABNE, POLAND, JULY 10, 1941

Anna Bikont, The Crime and the Silence: Confronting the Massacre of Jews in Wartime Jednabne (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015) (From the bookjacket: July 10, 1941: "On that summer day in 1941, residents of the Polish town of Jedwabne herded local Jews in to a barn and set it on fire. According to the historian Jan Gross, author of Neighbors, sixteen hundred men, women, and children perished in the blaze. But the massacre was a secret that was suppressed for so long that many of the details remained obscure and others were vehemently denied. Determined to excavate the truth of what happened in Jedwabne, the acclaimed Polish journalist Anna Bikont began reporting on the town. Despite warnings and threats from residents who insisted what she stay away, she combed sensitive archives and interviewed townspeople who lived through the turbulent period when the Nazis took control of Jedwabne. She discovered a community steeped in fear, residual guilt, and lies.").