George G. Grabowicz: A Biographical Sketch

George Gregory Grabowicz was born in Krakow on Oct 12, 1943. According to family history his parents then lived on Bernardynska Street, right next to Wawel Castle (a grand location, but with no evident impact on later events). Grabowicz's earliest memories are not from Krakow, however, but from a displaced persons' (DP) camp in Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, where the family arrived in the summer of 1945, and which he still remembers fondly. High school, Notre Dame in West Haven, Connecticut, taught by the Christian Brothers (Jesuits lite, as Grabowicz calls them) was somewhat better, but the general ethos more traditionally Catholic than intellectual. He quickly learned how to get good grades without exerting himself too much. Strongest memory -- encountering T. S. Eliot. By his own account Grabowicz begins his intellectual biography proper with Yale College, which he entered in 1961 with a scholarship occasionally given to New Haven residents deemed worthy and needy.