About
Speaker: Dr. Kostek Gebert
Location: Warsaw, Poland / Appalachian State University, Boone, NC
Date: September 10, 2020
Description: Dr. Kostek Gebert presents Poland's capital. Prof. Gebert's presentation is entitled "The Shoah and Polish-Jewish Relations: History and Politics of Memory in Present-Day Poland." Dr. Gebert combines, as an Italian colleague pointed out, the “role of a public intellectual of the highest class” with numerous scholarly and non-scholarly undertakings, including that of one of the leading journalists in Poland and Europe. Gebert taught psychology at the Medical Academy, Warsaw, under Communist rule in the early 1970s, but soon came into conflict with the regime. He co-founded the famed (unofficial) Jewish Flying University, also in response to the growing anti-Semitism in Communist Poland. After writing for underground publications during the 1980s, he joined the newly-founded Gazeta Wyborcza, now the leading Polish daily, in 1989 and continues to contribute to many Polish and international media outlets, including the BBC. Gebert also established Midrasz magazine, which remains Poland’s most influential Jewish publication. He is the author of sixteen books, including 54 Commentaries to the Torah (2005) and Living in the Land of Ashes (2008). He has taught at UC Berkeley, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and the Center for Social Studies in Warsaw. Finally, Gebert is involved in (re)building the Jewish community in Poland and has long become one of its most prominent voices.