Yehuda Bauer

He is a Professor of Holocaust Studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem . Born and grew up in Prague , Czechoslovakia , young Yehuda Bauer acquired fluency in Czech , Slovak and German languages. Later in life he learned Hebrew , Yiddish , English , French and Polish . His father had strong Zionist convictions and during 1930s tried to raise money to get his family to the Land of Israel , then British Mandate of Palestine . On March 15 , 1939 the family made the aliyah . Bauer attended high school in Haifa and at sixteen, inspired by his history teacher Rachel Krulik, he decided to dedicate himself to studying history. Upon completing high school, he joined the Palmach . After receiving a British scholarship he left to attend the Cardiff University , Wales . He interrupted his studies to fight in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and completed his university studies after the war ended. Bauer returned to Israel to join kibbutz Shoval and began his graduate work in history at Hebrew University. His doctoral thesis focused on the Palestine Mandate, and in 1960 he received his doctorate. The following year, Bauer began his teaching career with the Institute for Contemporary Jewry (Hebrew University, Jerusalem). He served on the central committee of Mapam , then the ruling political party in Israel , and was a visiting professor at Brandeis University , Yale University , Richard Stockton College , and Clark University . He was the founding editor for the Journal for Holocaust and Genocide Studies . Bauer is a respected authority on the subjects of the Holocaust, antisemitism (the word he insists to be spelled un hyphenated [1] ), and Jewish resistance movement during the Holocaust, and has argued for a wider definition of the term. 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 most humiliating and inhumane conditions. Furthermore, Bauer has disputed the popular view that most Jews went to their deaths passively. He has presented a case that given the conditions in which the Jews of Eastern Europe had to live under and endure, surprising is not how little resistance there was, but rather how much. In recent years Bauer has received numerous recognitions for his research and writing in the field of Holocaust Studies and prevention of genocide . In 1998 , he was the recipient of the Israel Prize , the highest civilian award in Israel. In 2001 , he was elected a Member of the Israeli Academy of Science . Currently, he serves as academic adviser to Yad Vashem , academic adviser to the International Task Force for Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research , and senior adviser to the Swedish Government on the International Forum on Genocide Prevention .¹