The book describes the perpetration of the massacre by Polish civilians (a fact first noted by Szymon Datner in 1966), refuting a common notion that the perpetrators were the German occupation forces. Arnold was unhappy about the effects of the book on the Jedwabne people. With her approval, he used her transcriptions of interviews, in addition to other materials, and her second film title for the title of his book. Gross has said that watching Arnold's films inspired him to write his book.

The second one, Sąsiedzi (2001, “Neighbors”), was aired by the Polish TVP II Channel. Gdzie mój starszy syn Kain (1999, “Where Is My Older Son Cain”) was inspired by an ongoing debate in the Polish print media. In 1988 Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Arnold went to Jedwabne with a film-crew and produced two documentaries based on interviews with the local villagers. An English translation was published in 2001. Neighbors: The History of Destruction of a Jewish Town). The book was first published in Polish as Sąsiedzi: Historia zagłady żydowskiego miasteczka (lit. Gross exploring the July 1941 Jedwabne massacre committed against Polish Jews by their non-Jewish neighbors in the village of Jedwabne in Nazi-occupied Poland. Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland is a book published in 2000 written by Princeton University historian Jan T.

The Jewish Neighbor by A.M. Khalifa