Yehuda Bauer

**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.

## Death

Bauer died on October 18, 2024 in Jerusalem, Israel at the age of 98.

#### Jewish resistance

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

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

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.

#### 2010s

||Publications|
| --- | --- |
|* _The Jews – A Contrary People._ LIT Verlag, 2014,||

#### 2000s

||Publications|
| --- | --- |
|* _Rethinking the Holocaust. New Haven, Yale University_, 2001 * _A history of the Holocaust_. New York: Franklin Watts, 1982, 2001||

#### 1990s

||Publications|
| --- | --- |
|* _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|
| --- | --- |
|* _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 * _The Holocaust as historical experience: Essays and a discussion_, New York: Holmes & Meier, 1981||

#### 1970s

||Publications|
| --- | --- |
|* _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|
| --- | --- |
|* "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.||

#### 1990s

||Publications|
| --- | --- |
|* 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.  (Based on a conference held 28–29 October 1990, in Jerusalem)||

#### 1980s

||Publications|
| --- | --- |
|* 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. . (Papers based on a conference held at the New York University School of Law, 27 October 1985).||

## Infobox (academic)

- **name**: Yehuda Bauer
- **image**: Yehuda Bauer 1.jpg
- **caption**: Bauer in 2008
- **birth place**: Prague, First Czechoslovak Republic, Czechoslovakia
- **death place**: Jerusalem, Israel
- **discipline**: Holocaust studies
- **alma mater**: Cardiff University
Hebrew University
- **thesis title**: Mandatory Palestine, British Mandate of Palestine
- **workplaces**: Hebrew University