Jan T. Gross

Jan Tomasz Gross (born 1947) is a Poland-born American historian and sociologist. He is the Norman B. Tomlinson Professor of War and Society, and Professor of History at Princeton University, on leave in 2015–16.

Biography

Gross was born in Warsaw to Hanna Szumańska, who was a member of the Polish resistance (Armia Krajowa) in World War II, and Zygmunt Gross, who was a PPS member before the war broke out. His father was Jewish and his mother was Christian. His mother, risking her own life, helped his father survive the German Nazi occupation of Poland. They married after the war. Gross studied physics at the University of Warsaw.

He was among the young dissidents called Komandosi, and consequently among the university students involved in the protest movement known as the "March Events" – the Polish student and intellectual protests of 1968. Gross was expelled from the university, arrested and jailed for five months. As a consequence, and because the Polish government permitted the emigration of "people of Jewish origin" at that time, he emigrated with his parents to the United States in 1969. In 1975 he earned a Ph.D. in sociology from Yale University; and has taught at Yale, New York University, and in Paris. He acquired U.S. citizenship and currently employed as Norman B. Tomlinson '16 and '48 Professor of War and Society (Norman B. Tomlinson '16 and '48 Professorship in War and Society was established by Norman B. Tomlinson '48 in memory of his father, Norman B. Tomlinson '16 for a professorship in the Department of History. Gross has held it since 2003); Professor of History history at Princeton University.

Gross and his wife Irena Grudzińska-Gross were awarded the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland by President Aleksander Kwaśniewski on 6 September 1996, for "outstanding achievement in scholarship". As Professor at the Department of Politics, New York University, Gross was a beneficiary of the Fulbright Program, for research on "Social and Political History of the Polish Jewry 1944-49" at the Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw, Poland (January 2001- April 2001). In 1982 Jan T. Gross was awarded a fellowship in the field of sociology by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial. Also in 1982, as an assistant professor of sociology at Yale University, he was among thirty three Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship competition entrants awarded, his project titled "Soviet Rule in Poland, 1939-1941."

Work

Gross came to public attention on the occasion of his several works. He was at the center of a controversy regarding the publication of his 2001 book about the Jedwabne massacre, titled Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, which examined the wartime killing of Polish Jews in Jedwabne village in German-occupied Poland. In his book Gross wrote that the massacre was perpetrated by Poles and not by the German occupiers. The claims were the subject of vigorous debate in Poland and abroad. Norman Finkelstein accused Gross of exploiting the Holocaust. Norman Davies describes Neighbors as "deeply unfair to Poles". A subsequent investigation conducted by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance did not support Gross' thesis on issues such as the number of people murdered, and the extent of Nazi German involvement in the massacre.

Gross' book, Fear - Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz, which deals with antisemitism and violence against Jews in post-war Poland was published in the United States in 2006 and had received praise in the United States; its Polish version, published in 2008, got mixed media reception restarting a nationwide debate about antisemitism in Poland during and after World War II. The book has been welcomed by some Polish historians and criticized by others who do not deny the facts Jan Gross presented in his book, but dispute his interpretation. Marek Edelman, one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising said in an interview with the Gazeta Wyborcza daily, "Postwar violence against Jews in Poland was mostly not about anti-Semitism, murdering Jews was pure banditry."

Gross' Neighbors and Fear were subjected to scholarly criticism by e.g. historian Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, whose interpretations directly challenged Gross.

Gross' latest book, Złote żniwa (pl) (Golden Harvest), co-written with his wife Irena Grudzińska-Gross and published in March 2011, about Poles enriching themselves at the expense of Jews murdered in the Holocaust, has attracted criticism that it only shows one side of a complex issue.

The Chief Rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich, commented: "Gross writes in a way to provoke, not to educate, and Poles don't react well to it. Because of the style, too many people reject what he has to say."

The head of Znak, the book's publisher, stated: "It does not purport to provide a comprehensive overview of Polish rural communities' actions... The authors focus on the most horrid events, on robberies and killings. Those who say the book is anti-Polish make no sense."

Gross's critics have argued that Golden Harvest is based on a one-sided interpretation of its sources, the vast majority of them secondary ones. Further, they have taken issue with what they consider a grossly unfair portrayal of marginal wartime social pathologies as an all-national Polish norm. They also see his interpretation of Polish history as "neo-Stalinist" due to its resemblance to postwar Stalinist propaganda alleging mass Polish collaboration and collusion with Nazi Germany, a claim used to justify the Soviet occupation of Poland.

Neighbors and its surrounding controversy served as inspiration for Władysław Pasikowski's 2012 film Aftermath (Pokłosie), which he wrote and directed. Pasikowski said, "The film isn't an adaptation of the book, which is documented and factual, but the film did grow out of it, since it was the source of my knowledge and shame."

Controversies

In an interview, published in the German Die Welt, Gross said that during World War 2 "Poles killed more Jews than Germans". Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Marcin Wojciechowski described it as "historically untrue, harmful and insulting to Poland". He added that Poland's Ambassador to Germany addressed a letter of protest to the editors of Die Welt. President of the Warsaw-based Stefan Batory Foundation, Aleksander Smolar, called the article "primitive, disgusting and irresponsible".

On 15 October 2015, Polish Prosecution opened a libel probe against Gross. The office was acting under a paragraph of the criminal code that "provides that any person who publicly insults the Polish nation is punishable by up to three years in prison".

Publications

Books

• Gross, Jan Tomasz (1979). Polish Society Under German Occupation - Generalgouvernement, 1939-1944. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 
• Irena Grudzińska-Gross, Jan Tomasz Gross: War through children’s eyes : the Soviet occupation of Poland and the deportations, 1939-1941,
• Gross, Jan Tomasz; Irena Grudzińska-Gross (1984). W czterdziestym nas matko na Sybir zesłali ... London: Aneks. 
• Gross, Jan Tomasz (1998). Upiorna dekada, 1939-1948. Trzy eseje o stereotypach na temat Żydów, Polaków, Niemców i komunistów. Kraków: Universitas. 
• Gross, Jan Tomasz (1999). Studium zniewolenia. Kraków: Universitas. 
• Gross, Jan Tomasz (2000). Istvan Deak and Tony Judt, ed. The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 
• Gross, Jan Tomasz (2001). Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-14-200240-2. 
• Gross, Jan Tomasz (2003). Revolution from Abroad. The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-09603-1. 
• Gross, Jan Tomasz (2003). Wokół Sąsiadów. Polemiki i wyjaśnienia (in Polish). Sejny: Pogranicze. ISBN 83-86872-48-9. 
• Gross, Jan Tomasz (2006). Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz. Random House. ISBN 0-375-50924-0. 
• Gross, Jan Tomasz; Irena Grudzińska-Gross (2012). Golden Harvest. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-973167-1. 

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