October 16, 2006  

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Anti-Semitism in Poland After WWII to be Subject of Talk

(Mahwah) - Historian Jan T. Gross, author of Fear:  Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz, will speak at Ramapo College of New Jersey Monday, December 4, 1 to 2 p.m. in the Alumni Lounge (SC-136), located on campus in the Robert A. Scott Student Center.  The presentation is free and open to the public.

Sponsored by Ramapo College’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the History Club, Gross’s talk will be based on his book and will address a perplexing question:  How was anti-Semitism possible in Poland after the war?  At the center of his investigation is a detailed reconstruction of the Kielce pogrom and the reactions it evoked in various milieus of Polish society.  The presentation will explore how the Polish Catholic Church, Communist Party workers and intellectuals responded to Jews being murdered by their fellow citizens in a country that had just been liberated from a five-year Nazi occupation.

Jan Tomasz Gross is the Norman B. Tomlinson ‘16 and ‘48 Professor of War and Society at Princeton University.  He grew up in a Jewish family in Poland and attended Warsaw University.  He emigrated to the United States in 1969 after being imprisoned during the March 1968 events.  He later earned a Ph.D. in sociology from Yale University and has also has taught at Yale, NYU and Paris. 

He is known for his work on the Jedwabne massacre, Neighbors (2001), which argued that the massacre was conducted by Poles, not German occupiers, as previously believed.  The results were the subject of a vigorous debate that will take on further scrutiny in Poland onceGross’s new book, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz,appears in Polish translation.

For more information or to reserve a seat, please call (201) 684 - 7409.

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