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Raphael Cohen-Almagor
Author of Just, Reasonable Multiculturalism (2021)

In Memory: Yehuda Bauer (6 April 1926-18 October 2024)

I was saddened to hear about the death of Yehuda Bauer, one of Israel’s foremost historians who dedicated his life to the study of the Holocaust.

Yehuda Bauer was born in Prague in 1926 and in 1939 immigrated with his parents to Palestine. In 1960, Bauer received a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the Hebrew University for his dissertation on the Haganah and the Palmach. He began his academic career a year later at the Institute of Contemporary Judaism at the Hebrew University. Between the years 1973-1975 and 1979-1977 he served as the head of the Institute for Contemporary Judaism and in the years. Bauer also founded and headed the Vidal Sasson International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism at the Hebrew University. Between 1996-2000, Professor Bauer was the head of the International Institute for the Study of the Holocaust at Yad Vashem. He also served on the Yad Vashem Council and was an academic advisor to the International Task Force for Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research (IHRA).

Professor Bauer had academic affiliations at Stockton College in New Jersey, the JTS Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, and at Brandeis, Yale, UCLA and Honolulu universities.

In 1998, Professor Bauer won the Israel Prize for the History of the People of Israel. In 2000, he was elected a member of the Israeli National Academy of Sciences. During his long career, Professor Bauer published more than 40 books on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, including From Diplomacy to Resistance (1970), They Chose Life: Jewish Resistance in the Holocaust (1973); My Brother’s Keeper (1974), Flight and Rescue (1975), The Holocaust in Historical Perspective (1978), The Jewish Emergence from Powerlessness (1979), American Jewry and the Holocaust (1982), Antisemitism Today (1985), Out of the Ashes: Impact of American Jews on Post Holocaust European Jewry (1989), Jews for Sale? (1995), Rethinking the Holocaust (2001), The Death of the Shtetl (2010), The Jews: A Contrary People (2015), Could the US Government Have Rescued European Jewry? (2018) and The World and the Jews (2021).

I met Yehuda for the first time during the 1980s, when I served as Secretary General and afterwards Chairperson of “The Second Generation to the Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance” Organization in Israel. Yehuda supported our organisations and delivered talks at a few of them. We participated in conferences relating to antisemitism and I used to consult him on questions that troubled my mind. Most recently, Yehuda had kindly commented on articles that I have written on antisemitism, racism and Holocaust denial. Yehuda was a tower of knowledge and wisdom. His scholarship and legacy will last for many years to come.

About the Author
Raphael Cohen-Almagor received his doctorate from Oxford University. He taught and conducted research at the faculties of law of the Hebrew University, the University of Haifa, UCLA, University of Hull, Nirma University (India) and University College London. He is President of The Association for Israel Studies (AIS). Raphael is now writing Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Critical Study of Peace Mediation, Facilitation and Negotiations between Israel and the PLO (Cambridge University Press, 2025). X: @almagor35
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