Irena Grudzińska-Gross, Author at Public Seminar

“The Symbolic Equivalent of a Pogrom” in Poland

The attack on historian Jan Grabowski broke the psychological barrier limiting public anti-Semitic actions

June 13, 2023 • by Irena Grudzińska-Gross

Since there are no longer any groupings of recognizable Jews in Poland, the assault on Jan Grabowski is the symbolic equivalent of a pogrom. The otherwise inexplicable destruction of property forms part of the pogrom repertoire. ...

“The Symbolic Equivalent of a Pogrom” in Poland

The Right

The Return of the Repressed

Poland has effectively abandoned antifascism

April 5, 2022 • by Irena Grudzińska-Gross

Was it only my generation—people born shortly after World War II—that believed fascism had been defeated? We were convinced that lessons had been learned and linear progress was ahead of us; it was unimaginable that anyone would defend such an ideology any longer. All European regimes (but for Franco’s) were ...

Uncategorized

For Want of Wild Beasts

For many in Eastern Europe, prison was the hallmark of Communism. Today, the United States is experiencing its own carceral society. What can be learnt from this comparison and can we redefine the term “political prisoner”?

February 1, 2022 • by Reginald Dwayne Betts, Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, Irena Grudzińska-Gross and Marci Shore

How do we understand both the uses and disadvantages of thinking across time and space? How do we negotiate the fact that in any biography or historical event, there are both elements that are unique, and elements that are universal? For me, these questions belonged to a larger question: namely, ...

Migration

On the Uses and Disadvantages of Historical Comparisons for Life

A conversation between Irena Grudzińska-Gross and Dwayne Betts

April 22, 2021 • by Reginald Dwayne Betts, Irena Grudzińska-Gross, Jeffrey C. Goldfarb and Marci Shore

Marci: As you know, the original impetus for this forum was horror of the children being taken away from their parents at the American border, and my saying to Stephen Naron that we should use material from the Fortunoff archive to prepare a film about parent-child separation during the Holocaust. ...

On the Uses and Disadvantages of Historical Comparisons for Life

Europe & Central Asia

How Poland Ruined its 1989

A liberal democratic dream too good to be true

October 24, 2019 • by Irena Grudzińska-Gross

The first half of 1989 in Poland was amazing -- delivering early and decisive blows to the Berlin wall, which fell later that year. From February to April 4th, the representatives of the Polish government negotiated with the Solidarity oppositional groups; in June, in partially free elections, the communist government ...