Polish roots inspire Gross' excellence

Born to a family of scholars in Poland, Jan Gross knew from the start that he too would spend the bulk of his life in the academic world. Indeed, he claims, "I didn't know how to do anything else."

Gross, a professor of history at the University since 2003, is the Norman B. Tomlinson '16 and '48 Professor of War and Society. He has written a number of highly successful books, including "Neighbors," which has sparked enormous interest across the globe and particularly in his native Poland.

Gross specializes in the history of 20th century Europe, focusing broadly on totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, the Holocaust and the politics of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Many of his interests stem from his political experience as a Jewish youth in Soviet Poland. "[I was] very politically active — interested in political freedom," Gross said.

During the March Events of 1968, a student protest beginning at Warsaw University, Gross was arrested and briefly imprisoned. That experience, Gross explained, inspired an even deeper interest in political issues. It fostered a particular fascination with political persecution and the way totalitarian regimes operate, as well as the way their subjects emancipate themselves.

Jews were permitted to leave Poland in 1969, and Gross took advantage of the opportunity. After seeking out relatives in America, he found his way to Yale University for graduate school. "Institutionally [the transition] was easy," Gross said, "but existentially, no."

While conducting research in Poland, Gross came across a deposition from Szmul Wasersztejn among the records of the Jewish Historical Commission, an organization established just after World War II in part to collect the testimonies of survivors. Wasersztejn's unusual testimony told of a mass murder of Jews not by Nazis, but by Poles.

While at first skeptical of the story, some time afterward Gross came across a documentary in which the filmmaker went to Wasersztejn's hometown, where he was able to confirm the validity of Wasersztejn's testimony.

In 2001, Gross published "Neighbors," a study of Wasersztejn's hometown Jedwabne. Gross discovered that this town had not only seen half its population decimated on one bloody day in 1941, but had also seen all the killing done by acquaintances who lived side-by-side with the victims. Virtually every Jew in Jedwabne was killed that summer day, some 1,600 in all.

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In Poland, those who had previously viewed their countrymen only as victims of the horrors of World War II were faced with the fact that they may also have been victimizers. Soon after publication, a debate raged concerning the continuing anti-Semitism in Poland and the Poles' collective responsibility in the war.

In 2003, a collection of documents on the debate over "Neighbors" was published in the book "The Neighbors Respond."

At the same time, Gross was making some important changes in his own life. After bouncing from college to college early in his teaching career, Gross had finally settled in the political science department at New York University. There, Gross began to notice the political science department "becoming inimical and uninterested in the historical approach." Meanwhile, an opportunity was opening at Princeton.

"We had just lost Suzanne Marchand from among our senior faculty in [modern Europe] ... and had a longstanding need for someone with broad comparative interests in twentieth-century European history," former department chair Robert Tignor said.

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"Professor Gross," Tignor continued, "with his exciting work on Poland, caught between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia before and during World War II and with his obvious skills in comparative political history, was head and shoulders the top of this field."

Offered the Tomlinson chair and a chance to join the history faculty at Princeton, Gross eagerly accepted.

Gross' most recent book deals with anti-Semitism in Poland just after the war. He is now beginning a project dealing with the fall of communism in Eastern Europe.