FELIKS GROSS (1906-2006)

Helen Fein (Institute for the Study of Genocide)

Feliks Gross died in his hundredth year, recognized by fellow-sociologists that year

as the oldest living member of the American Sociological Association (ASA), a “sociological humanist” as Jerome Krase put it in Footnotes (a newsletter of the ASA) in November 2006. I knew him as a student of sociology at Brooklyn College in the 1950’s—he taught there and at the City University from 1946 to 1977—and in the 1990s as a member of the advisory board of the Institute for the Study of Genocide and an active supporter of the ISG.

He was educated in Poland and the United Kingdom but “despite all his ample credentials…he was denied the opportunity for a university appointment as he once put it ‘…because of my religion, origin, and political views” (Krase 2006). He and his wife fled Poland in 1939, settling in New York City.

Gross wrote more than 20 books and uncounted articles published in many languages, including Chinese. He was honored by several associations he helped create and sustain, including the City University’s Academy of Humanities and Sciences and the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America, and by many colleagues.

We might remember him best by continuing work on the questions he raised. Krase noted that “for Feliks Gross the answer to the question of what makes it possible for people who are different from each other to live in peace has been a perennial quest,” discussed in his last book, Citizenship and Ethnicity (1999). I recall him (from my student days) as a man who repudiated dogma, all forms of totalitarianism, and who was always intrigued by the unexpected decisions people might make to protect or betray potential victims. He was concerned about the uses and misuses of collective memory by groups in conflict. Looking backward, I see how he raised several questions implicitly before they were on any sociologist’s agenda.