Abstract
One day in July, 1941, half of the population of the Polish village of Jedwabne murdered the other half. Until Polish-born historian Jan Gross described this, the accepted truth was described on a plaque in Jedwabne as the work of the Gestapo and Nazi occupation police. Gross concluded, however, that the Polish villagers had willingly tortured and murdered some 1,600 Jews of their village. Only a handful of the village’s Jews survived (Gross 2001).
We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.
—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
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© 2007 Kristina E. Thalhammer et al.
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Thalhammer, K.E. et al. (2007). Ordinary Persons Doing Extraordinary Evil. In: Courageous Resistance. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230607460_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230607460_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-4039-8498-2
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-60746-0
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