[6] The book describes the Judenjagd (German for "Jew hunt") that began in 1942 and focuses on Dąbrowa, a former rural county in southeastern Poland (till 1939; later part of a German-administered Kreishauptmannschaft Tarnów).

[16][17] Glenn R. Sharfman, a professor at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, wrote that Grabowski's book complemented recent works by Jan T. Gross about murders of Jews away from the primary killing centers, providing evidence of the important role of Poles in aiding the Nazis.

[18] Przemysław Różański, a professor of history at the University of Gdańsk, reviewed the 2011 edition of the book and had a number of reservations, including Grabowski's presentation of forced participation of peasants as "cooperation", and his disregard, in relation to the paid rescue of Jews, of the dire economic conditions faced by Poles.

While agreeing on the nature of prewar antisemitism in Poland, he disagreed with Grabowski's suggestion of a causal relation between that and the events described in the book, instead explaining it as a result of Nazi propaganda.

[22] Sociologist Larry Ray's [23] review of Grabowski's book called it "a highly systematic and scholarly study of atrocities and collaboration", and "an essential contribution to knowledge of the Holocaust and Polish-Jewish relations".

[24] Following the book's publication in Israel in 2016, Grzegorz Berendt, professor of history at the University of Gdańsk and historian for the Polish government's Institute of National Remembrance, wrote in Haaretz, in February 2017, that, in contrast to several other European countries, Poland's elite groups, in the underground or in exile, opposed Germany's policies toward the Jews, and expressed and acted on this opposition repeatedly.

Anyone holding an official position inside occupied Poland, including the police, was obliged to follow German orders or face harsh punishment, which might be a beating or public execution.

German-induced poverty in Poland—rationing of 400–700 calories per person, leading to black-market food at exorbitant prices—meant that "thousands of people discarded moral constraints and decided to assist the Germans in rounding up Jews for economic reasons".

Arguing that these tales of heroism are common in Europe, he wrote that Grabowski's book is part of a "growing body of corrective scholarship" that discusses the indifference or complicity of European populations.

Fleming warned readers and reviewers not to "reinforce orientalist narratives about 'Eastern' Europe" or the idea that only populations close to the genocide could stop it, which he calls "fetishiz[ing] spatial proximity".

[6] Historian Jack Fischel in a Jewish Book Council review, wrote that "One concludes from Grabowski’s important study that without the often unforced, and sometimes enthusiastic support of non-German volunteers and helpers, the Germans would not have succeeded as completely as they did during the Holocaust.

"[29] Historian Samuel Kassow, in a review essay in Yad Vashem Studies, wrote, of Grabowski's book and those of three other scholars (Alina Skibinska, Barbara Engelking, and Dariusz Libionka), that they "are a historical achievement of the first order."

According to Lehmann, the book illuminates the struggle of survival and circumstances of death of the some 10 percent of the 2.5 million Polish-Jews who attempted to seek refuge on the "Aryan" side among hostile peasant gentiles.

[31] Historian Joshua D. Zimmerman's review in The Journal of Modern History found Grabowski's work to be a "weighty, superbly researched study" that punctuated the myth of Polish innocence during the Holocaust.

[32] Historian John-Paul Himka's review in the East European Jewish Affairs journal, found "Grabowski's exploration of how the moral climate in rural Poland became fatally skewed during the Nazi occupation" to be innovative and enlightening.

According to Hagen as with the "pre-Holocaust explanations for the incontrovertible existence of aggressive, violent, and criminal antisemites in Poland", historians who promote a view of "fundamental national innocence" portray Polish collaborators as "scum", unconnected to mainstream society.

[35] Dariusz Stola commented on Grabowski's choice of subject: "Reading the book, I realized just how little we know about the Polish countryside, the rural social organization and its role in hunting down Jews."

[38] Krystyna Samsonowska of the Jagiellonian University wrote in her review that the book provides "a serious basis for more detailed research", and that its descriptions of the "Judenjagd" phenomena are "extensive, interesting and quite insightful."

[40] Tomasz Szarota, former director of the Department of Research into the History of Post-1945 Poland, at the Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences, contrasted Grabowski's narrow focus with that of German historian Daniel Brewing: “While these authors [i.e., Jan Grabowski and Barbara Engelking] blame anti-Semitism and greed for lucre for causing Poles to join in the hunt for Jews, Brewing attributes a causative role to the occupation authorities' efforts to use Polish peasants to fight all forms of resistance.

He criticized poor standards in source referencing, noting that the work often "lacks a footnote with the page number where the quotation in question can be found" and "bibliographic details are missing in many other instances".

He concludes that the books aim is to "tarnish the image of the Catholic Church and peasants" which according to Gontarczyk "fits in with the stereotypical prejudices that are quite frequent in the English-speaking world", that "the history of Dąbrowa Tarnowska County, as presented in Judenjagd, has little in common with its actual history"; finally closing his review by writing that "the treatment of all fundamental aspects of a scholarly publication such as archival research, the selection and analysis of sources, and especially the widespread use of completely unacceptable methods of constructing a narrative and treating his-torical sources, excludes Judenjagd from any serious form of scholarly discourse".

[43] Jagiellonian University associate professor Piotr Weiser reviewed Hunt for the Jews by Grabowski, It Was Such a Beautiful Sunny Day by Barbara Engelking, and Golden Harvest by Jan T. Gross.

According to Loose, Grabowski's pars pro toto study illustrates a theme whose tragic significance was pointed out by Emanuel Ringelblum and emphasizes the effectiveness of the Germans' use of menace and rewards to persuade Poles to give up hidden Jews.

[45] Historian Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, writing in H-Soz-Kult, reviewed three books: Judenjagd by Grabowski, It Was Such a Beautiful Sunny Day by Barbara Engelking, and Golden Harvest by Jan T. Gross.

But Rossoliński-Liebe wrote that he did not think these 2011 works would trigger a new Holocaust debate, as had occurred following Gross's Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, a decade prior.