Polish anti-Jewish violence grew from projecting Polish collaboration onto Jews

Evidence

Historian Jan Gross (2001), however, found no evidence to support the claim that a disproportionate number of Jews cooperated with the Soviets. Instead, he found ample evidence for a different wartime collaboration. He concluded that in eastern Poland, “it is manifest that the local non-Jewish population enthusiastically greeted entering Wehrmacht units in 1941 and broadly engaged in collaboration with the Germans.” Gross goes on to say that “it appears that the local non-Jewish population projected its own attitude toward the Germans in 1941 … onto an entrenched narrative about how the Jews allegedly behaved vis-à-vis the Soviets in 1939.” — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2334

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is a concrete documented instance of the exact mechanism — projection — that the chapter is introducing via Allport.
• SEED: Article angle: ‘the accuser’s confession’ — how collective guilt gets displaced onto an out-group as a narrative of the other’s betrayal. The Gross finding is a strong historical anchor.