Yehuda Bauer[a] (April 6, 1926 – October 18, 2024) was an Israelihistorian specializing in the Holocaust.
Life
Bauer was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Bauer was a professor of Holocaust Studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Yehuda Bauer at an event in Berlin, 2015.Professor Yehuda Bauer at the Commemoration of Holocaust Memorial Day event at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office in London, 25 January 2017.
Death
Bauer died on October 18, 2024 in Jerusalem, Israel at the age of 98.[1]
Bauer specialized in the Holocaust, antisemitism ‒ a word that should be written unhyphenated[2] ‒ and the Jewish resistance movement in the Holocaust. In Bauer's view, resistance to the Nazis comprised not only physical opposition but any activity that gave the Jewish people dignity and humanity in the most humiliating and inhumane conditions.
Furthermore, Bauer disputed the popular view that most Jews went to their deaths passively ‒ "like sheep to the slaughter".[3] He argued that, given the conditions in which the Eastern European Jews had to endure, what is surprising is not how little resistance there was, but rather how much.
Bauer disagreed with those who argue that the Holocaust was just another genocide. Though he agreed that there were other genocides in history, he argued that the Holocaust was the worst single case of genocide in history, where every member of a nation was selected for annihilation.
Holocaust memory preservation
Bauer believed that Holocaust memory had been preserved badly, with "misunderstandings, wrong conclusions and wrong analyses", by Israeli politicians.[4] He claimed that they had interpreted the Holocaust nationalistically and instrumentalized it.[4]
Out of the ashes: The impact of American Jews on post-Holocaust European Jewry. Oxford: Pergamon Press, c. 1989
ed., Present-day Antisemitism: Proceedings of the Eighth International Seminar of the Study Circle on World Jewry under the auspices of the President of Israel, Chaim Herzog, Jerusalem 29–31 December 1985. Jerusalem: The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, The Hebrew University, 1988
Antisemitism in Western Europe. 1988
Antisemitism today: Myth and reality. Jerusalem: Hebrew University. Institute of Contemporary Jewry, 1985
Jewish survivors in DP camps and She'erith Hapletah, Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1984
Jewish foreign policy during the Holocaust. New York: 1984
American Jewry and the Holocaust. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee,. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981 ISBN0-8143-1672-7
The Holocaust as historical experience: Essays and a discussion, New York: Holmes & Meier, 1981
1970s
Publications
List (year in descending order)
The Jewish emergence from powerlessness. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979
The Judenraete: some conclusions. [Jerusalem]: [Yad Vashem, 1979]
The Holocaust in historical perspective. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978
Trends in Holocaust research, Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1977
The Holocaust and the struggle of the Yishuv as factors in the establishment of the State of Israel. [Jerusalem]: [Yad Vashem 1976]
My brother's keeper: A history of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1974
Rescue operations through Vilna, Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1973
They chose life: Jewish resistance in the Holocaust. New York: The American Jewish Committee, 1973
Flight and rescue: Brichah. New York: Random House, 1970
From diplomacy to Resistance: A history of Jewish Palestine. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1970. Translated from Hebrew by Alton M. Winters.
The initial organization of the Holocaust survivors in Bavaria, Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1970
Yehuda Bauer (ed.), The danger of Antisemitism in Central and Eastern Europe in the wake of 1989–1990. Jerusalem: The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem: 1991. ISBN965-222-242-9 (Based on a conference held 28–29 October 1990, in Jerusalem)
1980s
Publications
List (year in descending order)
Menachem Z. Rosensaft and Yehuda Bauer (eds.), Antisemitism: threat to Western civilization. Jerusalem: Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1989. ISBN965-222-126-0. (Papers based on a conference held at the New York University School of Law, 27 October 1985).
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