A meeting with Prof. Irena Grudzińska-Gross, author of the book “Wielka karuzela. Życie Aleksandra Weissberga-Cybulskiego” (“The Great Carousel. The Life of Aleksander Weissberg-Cybulski”)

Led by: Dr. Jacek Stawiski

A physicist, a Communist, a gambler, and a spy who fell victim to NKVD persecution whom Albert Einstein was trying to release from Stalin-era prisons. Handed over by the NKVD to the Gestapo, he was imprisoned in the Krakow Ghetto, from which he escaped and hid in Warsaw. This was Aleksander Weissberg-Cubulski, the author of the most important book on Communism, which few remember.

Weissberg-Cybulski’s biography by Irena Grudzińska-Gross is the first such rich story of a man who, over two decades before Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago”, exposed the terror of Stalinist Russia. On the pages of his “Wielka czystka” (“The Accused”), he described the origins and mechanism of the Soviet system of violence, but also the psychological attitudes of those imprisoned in Communist prisons. Grudzińska-Gross also describes his friendships with prominent artists and activists: Bertolt Brecht, Józef Czapski, Arthur Koestler, and Jerzy Giedroyć, as well as the work of his first wife, a ceramics artist, Eva Zeisel. The cafes of pre-war Berlin filled with discussions, the bloodily suppressed dream of utopian Moscow, and the uncertainty of living in post-war Paris – these are the landscapes of this unusual story.

The strength, the persistence and practicality, undaunted by obstacles, the concreteness, and tireless energy – this is Aleksander Weissberg-Cybulski, a passenger in the carousel of history, who in his biography amassed the greatest tragedies of the 20th century, and he emerged victorious.

Prof. Irena Grudzińska-Gross – historian of ideas, essayist and journalist. Since 2008, she has been a Research Scholar at the Slavic Languages and Literatures Department of Princeton University and a professor at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences. She studied in Warsaw, Rome, and New York, where she defended her PhD in Romance Studies at Columbia University. Her books include: “The Stigma of Revolution” (1995, 2000), “Miłosz and Brodsky” (2007), and “Golden Harvest” (2011, together with Jan Tomasz Gross).

This event is organized in cooperation with Wydawnictwo Znak.

In Polish. Free admission.

This event is part of the “Galicia. Here You Read” series.
The Galicia Jewish Museum Bookshop is a beneficiary of the “Small Bookshop Certificate, 2025-2026 Edition” program led by the Polish Book Institute.