Yehuda Bauer, one of Israel’s foremost Holocaust scholars who shaped the way people around the world study and learn about the Holocaust, has died in Jerusalem. He was 98.
Bauer published dozens of books and founded numerous international Holocaust education initiatives over a career that spanned more than six decades. He spoke Czech, Slovak, German, Hebrew, Yiddish, English, French, and Polish, and learned Welsh while studying at Cardiff University in Wales. His mastery of languages allowed him to study source material in its original form and connect directly with audiences across the globe.
Bauer was born in Prague in 1926. As a teenager, his family managed to flee Europe in 1939 and arrived in British Mandate Palestine via Romania. After returning from university in Wales, he joined Kibbutz Shoval in southern Israel and studied at the Hebrew University. He lived in Jerusalem for the last decades of his life.
Bauer launched his academic career in the 1960s, during a time when people in Israel were just starting to talk more openly about the Holocaust. In the immediate years after the Holocaust, as many survivors were shattered and trying to rebuild their lives, very few people spoke openly about what had happened.
Bauer’s research delved into different aspects of Jewish resistance and began to change the narrative of how victims of the Holocaust had found ways to resist the Nazis beyond just armed struggle, such as smuggling or continuing to observe religious or cultural traditions.
Some of his most well-known publications include “American Jewry and the Holocaust,” probing the American response to the Second World War; “Jews for Sale?” about negotiations to rescue Jews during the Holocaust; “Death of the Shtetl,” which discusses the decimation of the small Jewish communities in Europe; and “Rethinking the Holocaust,” examining fundamental questions about how to define and explain the Holocaust and whether it can be compared to other genocides. Bauer was known for directly engaging with non-academic audiences and spoke widely around the world.
With European heads of state, Bauer helped create the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in 1998, a coalition of more than 35 countries that requires its members to devote government funding to Holocaust education and commemoration. With IHRA, Bauer also helped to author the Working Definition of Antisemitism, which is used by many governments and organisations to help define hate crimes and discrimination against Jews.
Bauer was awarded the Israel Prize, one of the country’s highest honours, in 1998.
