Heroes and Victims  Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish
Community in Jedwabne, Poland  Jan T. Gross Princeton University
Press, 261 pp., $19.95   Cooper Square Press, 304 pp., $27.95
In 1941 Polish townspeople and farmers who had been persecuted
by the Soviet occupation forces took their revenge on their
innocent Jewish neighbors by torturing them and burning them
alive. In 1943 Bulgarian right-wing politicians saved virtually
all the Jews in their country and were later rewarded for their
efforts by execution or imprisonment under the Communist
government. Throughout the war German religious zealots refused
to say “Heil Hitler,” preferring to be guillotined by the Nazis
to serving in the war.  Such are the major themes of the three
books under review. They raise questions that defy clear
answers. Why did Poles, who had suffered badly under the Soviet
occupiers, choose to kill those even more downtrodden than they
were? Do murders committed by semiliterate Polish farmers,
craftsmen, and day laborers bel