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Jan T. Gross Jan Tomasz Gross From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jan Tomasz Gross (born December 8, 1947) is a Polish American historian and sociologist. His recent works (e.g. "Neighbors" and "Fear") are highly controversial, particularly in Poland He was born in Warsaw, Poland, to a Polish mother, who was a member of the Polish resistance (Armia Krajowa)[1] and a Polish-Jewish father, former PPS member. His mother risking her own life, helped his father to survive the Nazi occupation in Poland. They married after the war. Jan Tomasz Gross studied physics at Warsaw University. Arrested for five months and expelled from the university for his participation in Polish student and intellectual protests in 1968, he emigrated with his parents to the United States in 1969, following the anti-semitic campaign launched by Poland's ruling communist party. In 1975 he earned a Ph.D. in sociology from Yale University, and has taught at Yale, NYU, and Paris. He gained US citizenship and currently teaches history at Princeton University. Gross was also awarded Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, [2] an award granted to foreigners for their exceptional role in cooperation between Poland and other nations. He was also a Senior Fulbright Research, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial, and Rockefeller Humanities Fellow. Controversy He is best known for his 2001 book on the Jedwabne massacre, "Neighbors", which examined a pogrom against the Polish Jews in His most recent book "Fear - Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz", which deals with anti-Semitism and violence against Jews in post-war Poland was published in the United States in 2006. Its Polish version, published in 2008, got mixed media reception and began a debate about anti-Semitism in post war Poland.[4] It has been welcomed by some historians[citation needed] and media, e.g. "Gazeta Wyborcza" but at the same time was sharply criticized in other papers, and by historians accusing Gross of coming up with conclusions before completing full research, ignoring sources which did not confirm his own views, neglecting the wider context of the event, misinterpreting data (for example counting a traffic accident death as an anti-Semitic attack) to reach his conclusion, using inflammatory language and labeling all of postwar Polish society as anti-Semitic. [6][7] Very few in Poland argue however with the facts Gross presented in his book, but many dispute his interpretation - even some Polish Jews who lived through the trauma of the war and postwar years such as Marek Edelman, one of the last living leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising who said in an interview with the Gazeta Wyborcza daily "Postwar violence against Jews was mostly not about anti-Semitism, murdering Jews was pure banditry"[8Publications Books * Gross, Jan Tomasz (1979). Polish Society Under German Occupation - Generalgouvernement, 1939-1944. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Other * "Lato 1941 w Jedwabnem. Przyczynek do badan nad udzialem spolecznosci lokalnych w eksterminacji narodu zydowskiego w latach II wojny swiatowej," in Non-provincial Europe, Krzysztof Jasiewicz ed., Warszawa - London: Rytm, ISP PAN, 1999, pp. 1097-1103 Notes 1. ^ Piotr Zychowicz, Oko w oko z t³uszcz±, Rzeczpospolita, January 26, 2008 (Polish) External links * Profile at History Department, Princeton University Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_T._Gross" |
