Yehuda Bauer

Yehuda Bauer
יהודה באואר
Bauer in 2008
Born	(1926-04-06)6 April 1926 Prague, Czechoslovakia
Died	18 October 2024(2024-10-18) (aged 98) Jerusalem, Israel
Academic background
Alma mater	Cardiff University Hebrew University
Thesis	British Mandate of Palestine
Academic work
Discipline	Holocaust studies
Institutions	Hebrew University

Yehuda Bauer (April 6, 1926 – October 18, 2024) was an Israeli historian 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.

Views

The Holocaust

Jewish resistance

Further information: Jewish Ghetto uprisings

Bauer specialized in the Holocaust, antisemitism ‒ a word that should be written unhyphenated ‒ 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". 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.

Holocaust uniqueness

Further information: Holocaust uniqueness debate

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. He claimed that they had interpreted the Holocaust nationalistically and instrumentalized it.

Bosnian genocide

Main article: Bosnian genocide

Bauer claimed that the Srebrenica massacre was an "act of mass murder, but not genocide". This caused some to accuse him of Bosnian genocide denial.

Works

Books

2010s

	Publications
List (year in descending order)	The Jews – A Contrary People. LIT Verlag, 2014, ISBN 978-3-643-90501-7

2000s

	Publications
List (year in descending order)	Rethinking the Holocaust. New Haven, Yale University, 2001 A history of the Holocaust. New York: Franklin Watts, 1982, 2001

1990s

	Publications
List (year in descending order)	The Impact of the Holocaust. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996 Jews for sale?: Nazi-Jewish negotiations,. New Haven: Yale University Press, October 1994 The significance of the Final Solution. 1994 Antisemitism in the 1990s. 1993 The Wannsee "Conference" and its significance for the "Final Solution". 1993 Antisemitism as a European and world problem. 1993 On the applicability of definitions — Anti-Semitism in present-day Europe. 1993 Vom christlichen Judenhass zum modernen Antisemitismus — Ein Erklaerungsversuch. 1992 The tragedy of the Slovak Jews within the framework of Nazi policy towards the Jews in general, 1992 Holocaust and genocide. Some comparisons. 1991 Who was responsible and when? Some well-known documents revisited. 1991 The Holocaust, religion and Jewish history. 1991 The Brichah: Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1990 La place d'Auschwitz dans la Shoah. 1990 Is the Holocaust explicable? 1990 World War II. 1990 Antisemitism and anti-Zionism — New and old. 1990

1980s

	Publications
List (year in descending order)	Out of the Ashes. Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1989 Résistance et passivité juive face à l'Holocauste. 1989 Jewish reactions to the Holocaust. Tel-Aviv: MOD Books, 1989 ed., Remembering for the future: Working papers and addenda. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1989 The mission of Joel Brand. 1989 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 ISBN 0-8143-1672-7 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

Book chapters

	Publications
List (year in descending order)	"Gypsies", in Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum, eds., Anatomy of the Auschwitz death camp, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. 1994. ISBN 0-253-32684-2

Edited conference papers

1990s

	Publications
List (year in descending order)	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. ISBN 965-222-242-9 (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. ISBN 965-222-126-0. (Papers based on a conference held at the New York University School of Law, 27 October 1985).