‘Moral Provocateur’
Jan Gross’ views on Polish violence against Jews spark another controversy
Jan Gross’ views on Polish violence against Jews spark another controversy
When history professor Jan T. Gross spoke in April at the Davis Center Seminar, colleagues praised him as a moral beacon whose groundbreaking Holocaust scholarship had forced an entire nation — Poland, his native country — to reckon with its past.
“We’re glad he’s here and not in jail,” Davis Center Director Philip G. Nord said.
Although a ripple of laughter greeted Nord’s words, the remark wasn’t entirely a joke. Just two weeks earlier, Gross had been questioned by Polish prosecutors weighing whether to charge him with publicly insulting the Polish nation, an offense punishable by up to three years in prison. Poland’s 7-month-old right-wing government is also considering stripping Gross of the Polish Order of Merit, awarded to him in 1996 in recognition of his historical scholarship, his 1960s-era anti-Communist activism, and his later support for political reform in Poland.
Although the latest controversy stems from an opinion article Gross published in a German newspaper in September, his work on anti-Semitism in Poland has long made him a controversial figure there. Twice in the past eight years, prosecutors have opened similar inquiries into his work, but neither investigation led to charges, and the outcome this time remains uncertain.
“It’s up in the air,” Gross said in an interview after the seminar. “They never accused me of anything. They are thinking whether to accuse me.” (The Polish embassy in Washington said that no decision had been made in Gross’ case and that it did not know when a decision would be reached.)
As a student in 1960s Poland, Gross challenged the Communist regime, eventually spending five months in prison before emigrating to the United States. His early work dealt with Poland’s experiences under Nazi and Soviet occupation.
It was his 2001 book Neighbors, which chronicled the 1941 murder of the Jewish citizens of the town of Jedwabne at the hands of Polish civilians, that ignited a national debate. A Polish government-sponsored investigation confirmed many of Gross’ findings, though it disputed his claim that 1,600 Jews had died.
“You’re a moral provocateur,” history professor Sean Wilentz told Gross during the Davis Center Seminar, “and you’re forcing the issue in a way that very few historians have the ability to do.”
Gross’ latest provocation came in the September op-ed, in which he decried Eastern European countries’ resistance to admitting refugees fleeing war in the Middle East. He traced that resistance to the legacy of World War II, arguing that Poles “actually killed more Jews than [they did] Germans during the war.”
Six million Poles, half of them Jews, died in the war, and Poland’s heroic resistance to Nazism is a key element of the country’s national self-image. Polish prosecutors say they received more than 100 complaints about Gross’ allegation.
In Poland, historians have publicly opposed the investigation as a threat to freedom of inquiry, Gross told the seminar audience. But among ordinary citizens, widespread ignorance of the Holocaust has licensed the development of a counter-narrative stressing Polish, rather than Jewish, suffering, he said.
The latest response to his work is a distressing example of the new government’s approach, Gross added during the interview with PAW. “They are doing all kinds of frightening things to a lot of people,” he said. “It’s a very destructive regime.”
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3 Responses
Marek Blazejak
8 Years AgoFor most Poles Prof. Gross...
For most Poles Prof. Gross is not a moral provocateur, but rather an amoral manipulator; for professional historians he is just a pseudohistorian. In a situation, when there are contradictory viewpoints on publicistic activities of Gross, one could expect from the Princeton University that it invites the representatives of academia representing both pro and contra Gross views. As long as Princeton doesn’t do it, it cannot be regarded as a serious scientific institution. The effects of Princeton’s indifference can be seen in the video footage from a demonstration organized by a New York rabbi in front of the Polish Consulate few weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/wat...
Regards,
Gordon Black
8 Years AgoAs a visitor I respectfully...
As a visitor I respectfully greet the alumni and alumnae of Princeton.
In the matter of Prof. Jan T. Gross, it would be commendable for this “moral provocateur” to correct his persistent claim that 1600 (one thousand six hundred) persons were massacred in Jedwabne. That iconic figure is a cachet in the continuing publicity campaign for his bestseller “Neighbors” (Princeton University Press, 2001). Professor Gross knows that the correct figure is 340.
Whether or not the professor is insulting the nation of Poland, is this ongoing marketing exploitation not insulting the dead?
In the question of Nazi German management of the massacre, what is the truth? Upon discovery of German bullets among the corpses, the forensic investigation was terminated abruptly. At his Colin Miller Memorial Lecture at UC Berkeley in 2003, chaired by John Connelly, Prof. Gross conceded to me: “Had the forensic investigation not been prematurely terminated, then we would really know.”
Qualified discussion in this case cannot disregard the 2005 monograph by Marek Jan Chodakiewicz: http://www.iwp.edu/news_pub...
Professor Gross’s September 2015 assertion that “Poles killed more Jews than [they did] Germans” is what philosophers since Russell would call an indefinite description, impossible to count as true or false until the terms are settled. But the attitude of accusation is unambiguous. That is his point.
In an Author’s Note added to his Project Syndicate article, Gross accepts an estimate of 200,000-250,000 who tried to hide, with about 40,000 surviving. “The bulk ... perished either directly, killed by the Poles (or Ukrainians) among whom they were hiding, or by being betrayed and delivered to German police outposts by the local population.” He calls this brisk subtraction “rather straightforward.”
He appeals to authors of studies offering “rigorous documentation.” Are these studies unchallenged? Further, why not calculate how many Poles (or Ukrainians) assisted the 40,000 survivors?
If Prof. Gross wants confidence in his handling of numbers, he could begin by correcting his mythic figure of 1600 victims at Jedwabne.
It would be proper ask the dean of instruction to supervise academic debate in these wartime relations. The reputation of Princeton accompanies this celebrated author wherever he speaks, and is invoked as support for some of his questioned claims.
Anton Eegyel
8 Years AgoActually, Professor Gross is...
Actually, Professor Gross is not about freedom of speech himself, as he never allows to see the light of day, at Princeton or at any of his lectures elsewhere, questions, or the research of historians extremely critical of him, that suggest there are fundamental flaws in his research. Ironically, his very controversial book “Neighbors,” according to other historians, is based on statements extracted by the Communist Security Services under torture, and on hearsay expressed by a member of the same Communist Security Services. It is also based on the testimony of two others that were found to be not credible, even by the Communist court, as they made conflicting testimonies under oath at two separate trials, and claimed to be eyewitnesses, when in fact they weren’t (one was proven to be in Soviet custody during the events he alleged to have witnessed). Gross ignored (never even mentions it) testimony under oath that retracted the statements made under torture, and the promised cessation of torture only upon agreement with the statements prepared by the Communist interrogators. Gross also ignored other testimony and accounts by Polish and Jewish witnesses that conflict with the testimony of the person who never testified under oath, was not a witness, while having been a collaborator with the Soviets during the initial Soviet occupation of this territory, and later became a member of the Communist Security Services, the same services that were engaged in torture, and the suppression of basic freedoms such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, etc. The fact that these facts are unknown at Princeton, or at the Davis Center, is a discredit to those institutions. The author of this article has also has done a poor job at investigating the topic she wrote about. So much for freedom of speech and academic freedom at Princeton!