Jan T. Gross

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jan T. Gross, 2019

Jan Tomasz Gross (born August 1, 1947 in Warsaw ) is a Polish - American historian and sociologist .

Life

Gross grew up in a secular and politically left-wing Catholic - Jewish family. He is the son of Hanna Gross born. Szumańska (1919–1973), a former member of the Polish Home Army , and Zygmunt Gross (1903–1995), a former member of the Polish Socialist Party and survivor of the Holocaust , which was hidden by Poland and thus saved.

After graduating from high school, Gross first studied physics at the University of Warsaw and was expelled from the university as a result of the March 1968 unrest in Poland and imprisoned for five months. Meanwhile there was an anti-Semitic campaign motivated by the Polish United Workers' Party , especially in the course of the Six Day War . This led to the majority of the Jews still living in Poland leaving the country in the following years . Due to his Jewish descent on his father's side, Gross was also allowed to leave and in 1969 moved to the United States , which he later accepted as citizens.

1975 Gross received his PhD in sociology at Yale University in New Haven , where he subsequently as Assistant Professor until 1984 Social Studies and Soviet Studies taught. He then was Professor of Social Science at Emory University near Atlanta from 1984 to 1992 and Professor of Political Science and European Studies at New York University from 1992 to 2003 . Since 2003 he has been Professor of History at Princeton University , where he specialized in the history of the world wars. His official title is Norman B. Tomlinson '16 and '48 Professor of War and Society and Professor of History of Princeton University. He has been Professor Emeritus since 2017.

In addition, Gross was visiting professor at Harvard University , Stanford University , University of California at Berkeley and Columbia University as well as in Paris , Vienna , Krakow and Tel-Aviv .

From 1994 to 1998 Gross was editor-in-chief of East European Politics and Societies , later co-founder of the quarterly Aneks . His most important publications include primarily works on the history of Poland in World War II .

In 1996 he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland for services to the understanding between Poland and other nations . He was also a Senior Research Fellow in the Fulbright Program , a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation and recipient of the Courage in Public Scholarship Award from the New School of Social Research in New York. He also received the Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities from Princeton University and the Distinguished Achievement Award for Holocaust Studies and Research from the Holocaust Educational Foundation, National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee in USA (for neighbors). He was also a National Book Award nominee in USA. In Poland he was nominated for the NIKE Literature Prize for his work Neighbors.

Controversy

Gross became internationally known through his book Neighbors from 2001, in which he describes for the first time the murder of the Jewish residents of the city of Jedwabne by a pogrom of their Polish fellow citizens in 1941. In Poland in particular, the book sparked heated debates and led to a partial change in the widespread historical image that Poland were only victims during the German occupation in World War II .

The German-Polish historian Bogdan Musiał accused Gross of excessive numbers of victims, false or out of context quotes from Jewish eyewitnesses, selective and manipulative evaluation of sources, many serious shortcomings and errors, misinterpretations and ahistorical speculations.

Jan T. Gross dealt extensively with B. Musial's allegations in his essay "Critical Remarks Indeed". Gross has set out his high scientific standards and rejected Musial's criticism as irrelevant.

The book Neighbors led to an extensive investigation of the Jedwabne events by IPN (Instytut Pamieci Narodowej, Polish for Institute for National Remembrance) in which similar mass murders were documented in around 20 other villages in the Bialystok region. The investigations resulted in a two-volume edition of the studies (Volume 1) and documents (Volume 2) on the mass murder of Jews by their Polish-Catholic neighbors directly after the Wehrmacht attacked the Soviet Union at that time.

As a result of the investigation, the public prosecutor Radoslav J. Ignatiev established that at least 340 Jews were murdered in Jedwabne on July 10, 1941. The independent testimony of several witnesses shows the number of Jews murdered as between 1,000 and 1,500.

The work of Jan T. Gross motivated a number of well-known Polish historians (Barbara Engelking, Jan Grabowski, Jacek Leociak, Dariusz Libionka, Joanna Tokarska-Bakir and many others) to investigate the relations between Poles and Jews during the Second World War. The studies show that the murders of Jews by Polish neighbors took place in all German-occupied Polish areas, not just in the Bialystok region. In 2003, the research association established the Polish Center for Holocaust Research at the Polish Academy of Sciences. By 2020 the center has published 15 extensive annual journals (Zaglada Zydow) and many monographs on the topic.

In the book Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz , Jan T. Gross also describes Polish anti-Semitism from 1945 to 1946. He focuses on the Kielce pogrom of July 4, 1946, in which 42 people were murdered but also those other places where Jews were killed in the turmoil of the immediate post-war period, for example the pogrom in Krakow .

In some cases, the titles and contents of the original English publications differ from the Polish translations. In the latter, Gross omitted content because he assumed that the Polish readership had a different level of knowledge. On May 8, 2008, Gross regretted this in a conversation with Deborah Lipstadt at the Yiddish Scientific Institute .

In 2006, the Sejm , the lower house of the Polish parliament, led at the time by the national-conservative Law and Justice party as the strongest parliamentary group, reacted by adopting the so-called Lex Gross . In the extended section 132a of the Criminal Code, anyone who “publicly accuses the Polish nation of participating, organizing or responsible for communist or National Socialist crimes” was threatened with a prison sentence of up to three years . However, on September 19, 2008, the Polish Constitutional Court declared the law incompatible with the Polish Constitution and repealed it.

His book Golden Harvest (Polish: Złote żniwa ), published in Poland in 2011 , again sparked fierce controversy. Using the example of the peasants who murdered Jews who had fled the German occupiers in order to rob them, or who ransacked the Treblinka area for gold teeth and jewelry after the war , he put forward the thesis that many Poles had benefited from the Holocaust. The Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw accused him of polemics and the manipulation of his readers through disproportionate representations on the basis of pure estimates.

The Polish ambassador to Germany, Jerzy Margański , accused Gross of creating negative moods after he made comparisons between the fear of refugees from the Middle East and a fear of refugees from the Middle East that he described in an article for Die Welt in September 2015 entitled The Eastern Europeans Have No Shame according to him, widespread anti-Semitism had drawn into east central Europe . As a result, the Warsaw District Prosecutor opened an investigation into suspected violations of Section 133 of the Polish Penal Code, which states that a prison sentence of up to three years can be expected for anyone who ... publicly disparages the Polish people or the Polish Republic / Kto publicznie znieważa Naród lub Rzeczpospolitą Polską, podlega karze pozbawienia wolności do lat 3 . The office of President Andrzej Duda sent a request to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to examine the possibility of withdrawing the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland. The Germany radio over said Gross in an interview on February 18, he was ready to return and a medal would be a prompt frame.

Works

  • Polish Society Under German Occupation - Generalgouvernement, 1939-1944 . Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ 1979, ISBN 0-691-09381-4 (English).
  • 'W czterdziestym nas matko na Sybir zesłali _': Polska a Rosja, 1939-42 . Aneks, London 1983, ISBN 0-906601-10-X (Polish, together with Irena Grudzińska-Gross).
  • Revolution from Abroad. The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia . Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ 1988, ISBN 0-691-09433-0 (English).
    • dt .: And woe betide you ...: The Sovietization of Eastern Poland after the Hitler-Stalin Pact; 1939-1941 . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1988, ISBN 3-451-08404-X .
  • Upiorna dekada, 1939-1948. Trzy eseje o stereotypach na temat Żydów, Polaków, Niemców i komunistów . Universitas, Kraków 1998, ISBN 83-7052-870-8 (Polish).
  • Study zniewolenia . Universitas, Kraków 1999 (Polish).
  • Lato 1941 w Jedwabnem. Przyczynek do badań nad udziałem społeczności local w eksterminacji narodu żydowskiego w latach II wojny światowej . In: Krzysztof Jasiewicz (ed.): Europa nie prowincjonalna: przemiany na ziemiach wschodnich dawnej Rzeczypospolitej (Białorus, Litwa, Łotwa, Ukraina, wschodnie pogranicze III Rzeczypospolitej 1999 Polskiej72) . Instytut Studiów Politycznych PAN, Warszawa / London 1999, ISBN 83-8675992-5 , p. 1097-1103 (Polish, English title: Non-provincial Europe ).
  • The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath . Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ 2000, ISBN 0-691-00953-8 (English).
  • Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland . Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ 2001, ISBN 0-691-08667-2 (English).
  • Wokół Sąsiadów. Polemiki i wyjaśnienia . Pogranicze, Sejny 2003, ISBN 83-8687248-9 (Polish).
  • Fear - anti-Semitism after Auschwitz in Poland . From the polish. by Friedrich Griese with collabor. by Ulrich Heiße. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-518-42303-5 .
    • engl .: Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz . Random House, New York 2006, ISBN 0-375-50924-0 (English).
    • Polish: Strach: Antysemityzm w Polsce tuż po wojnie. Historia moralnej zapaści . Wydawn, Kraków 2008, ISBN 978-83-240-0876-6 (Polish).
  • Golden Harvest . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2012, ISBN 978-0-19-973167-1 (English).
    • Polish: Złote żniwa: Rzecz o tym, co się działo na obrzeżach zagłady Żydów . Wydawn, Kraków 2011, ISBN 978-83-240-1523-8 (Polish).

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Oko w oko z tłuszczą , Rzeczpospolita , (Polish)
  2. ^ Page on Jan T. Gross at Princeton University ( Memento from December 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Andrzej Kaczyński: “ Jan Tomasz Gross ( Memento of the original from September 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. “, Culture.pl @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.culture.pl
  4. ↑ Bucerius Institute for Research of Contemporary German History and Society, University of Haifa, Israel ( Memento of the original from October 1, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / bucerius.haifa.ac.il
  5. ^ Bogdan Musiał: Theses on the pogrom in Jedwabne. Critical comments on the depiction of "Neighbors" by Jan Tomasz Gross. In: Yearbooks for the History of Eastern Europe, 50/2002, pp. 381–411
  6. ^ The Neighbors Respond, the Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland, edited by Antony Polonsky and Joanna B. Michlic, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford 2004, pp. 344-370, ISBN 0-691-11306-8 )
  7. ↑ Wokół Jedwabnego. Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Warszawa 2002, editors Paweł Machcewicz i Krzysztof Persak, ISBN 83-89078-08-2 (tom.1-2)
  8. ^ [Decision of the Public Prosecutor - Radoslaw J. Ignatiew https://ipn.gov.pl/ftp/pdf/jedwabne_postanowienie.pdf ]
  9. ↑ Volume 2 of "Wokół Jedwabnego" contains several testimonies about the number of Jews murdered in Jedwabne: "approx. 1000 Jews ”- page 461 (Stanisław Zejer)“ approx. one and a half thousand "- page 463 (Julia Sokołowska)" more than a thousand "- page 480 (Jerzy Laudański)" approx. A thousand five Hundret "- page 481 (Zygmunt Laudański)" approx. one and a half thousand "- page 502 (Stanisław Kozłowski)" approx. one and a half thousand "- page 504 (Stanisław Sielawa)" approx. 1200 people "- page 557 (charges by the public prosecutor)" approx. 1500 people "- page 590 (trial judgment)
  10. ↑ webpage of the center [ http://www.holocaustresearch.pl ]
  11. ↑ Marta Kijowska : Shock therapy instead of convalescence . In Neue Zürcher Zeitung of January 26, 2008
  12. ↑ Collaboration through doing nothing. St. Galler Tagblatt , Jan. 25, 2008
  13. ↑ Alice Bota : Without any shame. One book accuses Poland of having killed 1,500 Jews after the end of the war. , in: Die Zeit , issue No. 5 of January 24, 2008, p. 9
  14. Jump up ↑ Poland: Punishment for accusing the people of crimes unconstitutional.
  15. ^ Gerhard Gnauck: Second World War: Bargain hunt in the ruins of Treblinka . WORLD ONLINE. February 25, 2011. Retrieved March 20, 2012.
  16. ↑ August Grabski: Jednostronność Grossa. Retrieved September 16, 2015 .
  17. ↑ The Eastern Europeans Have No Shame , Die Welt, September 13, 2015, accessed on February 18, 2016
  18. ^ Letter from Ambassador Jerzy Margański to the editor-in-chief of "Welt". In: www.berlin.msz.gov.pl. Retrieved September 17, 2015 .
  19. ↑ Jest śledztwo ws. słów Jana T. Grossa , onet.pl from October 15, 2015, accessed on February 18, 2016
  20. ↑ Gross straci państwowe odznaczenie? Prezydent poprosił MSZ o opini , Wprost from February 9, 2016, accessed on February 18, 2016
  21. Jump up ↑ The Poles and their history - "It goes towards authoritarianism" , Deutschlandfunk, February 18, 2016, accessed on February 18, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Gross, Jan T.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gross, Jan Tomasz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish-American sociologist and historian
DATE OF BIRTH August 1, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Warsaw