U. professor faces revocation of Polish Order of Merit over controversial comments
Marcia BrownUniversity history professor Jan Tomasz Gross may lose his Order of Merit medal awarded by the Republic of Poland for claiming Polish complicity in Nazi war crimes, according to Ma?gorzata Sadurska, a member of the Polish presidential staff. The Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, created in 1974, is a Polish honor awarded to those who have rendered great service to the Polish nation. Gross received the award in 1996 for his books on Poland under the German and Soviet occupations and his contribution to the struggle for democracy in Poland, according to historian Dariusz Stola, director of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Gross’ Order of Merit was brought into question after he wrote an op-ed piece for the German newspaper Die Welt in September 2015 claiming that Poles killed more Jews than the Poles killed Germans during World War II.




