Jan T. Gross
Jan Tomasz Gross (born December 8, 1947 in Warsaw, Poland) is a controversial American sociologist/historian of Polish Jewish origin. He spent his youth in Poland, where he attended Warsaw University. Arrested and expelled from the university for his participation in Polish student and intellectual protest in 1968, he emigrated to the United States in 1969, following the anti-semitic campaign launched by Poland's ruling communist party. He later earned a Ph.D. in sociology from Yale University, and has taught at Yale, NYU, and Paris, in addition to Princeton. Gross is the Norman B. Tomlinson '16 and '48 Professor of War and Society at Princeton University.
He is most known for his work on the Jedwabne massacre, the controversial "Neighbors" book (2001), describing the pogrom of Polish Jews by gentile Poles in the village of Jedwabne in Nazi occupied Poland during Second World War. In the book he argued that the massacre was conducted by Poles and not by the German occupiers, as previously assumed. The results were the subject of vigorous debate in Poland, and were subsequently largely supported by the results of the investigation of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance. The investigation however resulted in the number of victims being about 380, while Gross earlier claimed 1600 in his book.
Gross has also written extensively on other aspects of post-War Polish life and totalitarianism. His other notable book is "Fear -Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz", in which he covers the Kielce pogrom and instances of violence against Jews in post-war Poland. The book (available in Polish since January 11, 2008) has caused uproar and provoked many conflicting opinions in Poland.
On January 10 2008, a spokesman for the Polish prosecutors office in the southern city of Kraków said it would decide within days whether to press charges against Gross for slandering the Polish nation. If convicted, Gross could face up to three years in jail.
In an interview with Polish daily Rzeczpospolita published on Friday, January 11 2008, Gross rejected charges that his book was directed against Poland.
Books
- 2005: "The Masacre In Jedwabne, July 10, 1941: Before, During, and After by Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, Columbia University Press, New York 2005, ISBN: 0-8803-554-8; Library of Congress Control Number: 2005935505
- 2001: Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, Princeton University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-14-200240-2.
- Jan Tomasz Gross (2003). Revolution from Abroad. The Soviet Conquest of Poland’s Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia. Princeton: Princeton University Press. p. 396. ISBN 0-691-09603-1.
- Gross, Jan Tomasz (2003). "Wokół Sąsiadów. Polemiki i wyjaśnienia" (in Polish). Sejny: Pogranicze. ISBN 8386872489.
- 2006: Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz, Random House, ISBN 0-375-50924-0.