BAUER, YEHUDA

BAUER, YEHUDA (1926– ), historian of the Holocaust. Bauer was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic). He immigrated with his family to Palestine on March 15, 1939; the day German troops marched into Prague and Germany took control of Bohemia and Moravia. He later joined the Palmaḥ and fought in Israel's War of Independence. He completed his B.A. and M.A. at the University of Cardiff in Wales (1946–48; 1949–50) and then became a founding member of Kibbutz Shoval in the Negev, in Israel, in 1952. He completed his Ph.D. at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1960 with a dissertation that focused on the Mandate period in Palestine. In 1961, Bauer joined the faculty of the Institute of Contemporary Jewry, where he began teaching about the Holocaust several years later and until his retirement in 1995. Bauer held many additional important positions in academia and research, among them: academic chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Jewry (1978–95); founding chair of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University (1982–95); chairman of the Study Circle at the Home of the President of Israel on the Jewish People in the Diaspora and the State of Israel (1980–95); founding editor of the Journal of Holocaust and Genocide Studies (1985–95); head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem (1995–2000); academic advisor at Yad Vashem (from 2000). In 1998 he was awarded the Israel Prize for his life's work in teaching and heightening awareness about the Holocaust, and in 2000 he was elected a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences.

Bauer's vast knowledge, sharp analytical capabilities, keen ability to synthesize many sources and much research into coherent observations, along with his written and spoken articulation and his dynamic teaching ability helped him reach broad audiences in Israel and around the world. He is considered to be one of the major scholars of the Holocaust, as well as one of the most important and influential voices to raise consciousness of the event and of its ongoing major impact on the world.

Bauer's approach to understanding the Holocaust is multifaceted. He believes that the Holocaust was an unprecedented event when it happened, but as an event that was part of human history, it is both accessible to human understanding and is an event that can be repeated once the precedent has been set.

Bauer has advocated and promoted meticulous empirical research in all relevant languages, both of official German and other documents, and of Jewish documents from the period and later, including oral history. Bauer argues that official government documents, and certainly Nazi documents, cannot automatically be taken as objective reflections of reality, or as being entirely true. He has cited numerous examples of German Nazi era documents that were sanitized or carefully edited (e.g., the Protocol of the Wannsee Conference, January 20, 1942) in order to create a particular impression at the time. Although oral testimony needs to be read critically and cross-referenced, in the same way as other documentation, such source material remains for Bauer an integral and necessary part of Holocaust research. Fundamentally, without a thorough examination of the story of the Jews in the Holocaust, our understanding of the event can be only partial.

Bauer has been influential in introducing a number of fundamental concepts to our understanding of the Holocaust, such as the distinction between information and knowledge of the event around the world as it unfolded. He has also advocated against mystification or glorification of the Holocaust or of those who played a role in it. He has kept his observations on the event grounded in human history, examining the participants in the event as human beings. In looking at the Jews, he has promoted the examination of their daily lives and struggles to get through to another day. He has always sought to keep the individual in perspective when discussing the mass of details and data. He frequently resorts to individual stories in his writing and speaking as a way to personalize the Holocaust and retain the humanity of its victims.

Bauer has also stood out in his willingness to engage in comparative analyses of the Holocaust with other genocides (e.g., of the Armenians by the Turks and of the Sinti and Roma by the Nazis), highlighting both their commonalities and their differences. Although he sees a number of basic common characteristics in all these events, the Holocaust remains for him a singular event, particularly in its totality and universality – attempting to murder all Jews everywhere – and in the central role played by race theory. It is fundamental in Bauer's understanding of the Holocaust that the Nazis saw in the Jews both a threat of cosmic proportions to human existence and the embodiment of the enlightened Western values that the Nazis despised. The Nazi attack on the Jews was an attack on the very foundations of Western civilization.

Bauer has published numerous books and articles. His research topics have included American Jewish responses to the Holocaust; the responses of the victims; the decision-making process in Nazi Germany; the events in Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia; Jewish attempts to rescue Jews via negotiations with the Nazis; events and Jewish life in the small and medium-sized towns of Eastern Europe, and more. A number of his articles have become basic introductory reading for students regarding a number of central subjects in the Holocaust (e.g., Jewish responses, rescue, Jewish leadership). Among his major books are Flight and Rescue: Brichah (1970), on the clandestine movement by survivors to Palestine; My Brother's Keeper (1974), on the Joint Distribution Committee through the 1930s; The Holocaust in Historical Perspective (1978), lectures delivered at the University of Washington; American Jewry and the Holocaust (1981); A History of the Holocaust (1982), a textbook (2001²); Jewish Reactions to the Holocaust (1989); Jews for Sale?: Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933–1945 (1994); and Rethinking the Holocaust (2001), which is a collection and reworking of some of his major essays on the Holocaust and Holocaust historiography over the past decades.

bibliography:

"Yehuda Bauer, Historian of the Holocaust," in Dimensions: A Journal of Holocaust Studies, vol. 18, no. 1 (2004, online); biography of Yehuda Bauer in Israel Prize (1998), 4–11.

[David Silberklang (2^nd ed.)]