OPINION: A force of nature – remembering Holocaust scholar Yehuda Bauer
A longstanding advisor to Yad Vashem and one of the key authors of the 2000 Stockholm Declaration: in memory of the eminent professor who lived his long life in defence of truth about the Shoah
Yehuda Bauer was one of the greatest Holocaust scholars of our time. His pursuit of truth and pioneering work led to the publication of more than 40 books and riveting, brilliantly crafted and unapologetically laconic lectures that would draw in the crowds. He was awarded the Israel Prize in 1998 – the highest accolade of achievement, yet he had humility, and a tongue-in-cheek sense of humour that would make him approachable, down to earth, unaffected by any sort of flattery.
He welcomed up-and-coming historians who were brave enough to take on the great Yehuda Bauer, on some point of historical detail. I witnessed it a few times with bated breath at IHRA plenary meetings, and yet, with a degree of fascination, I found Yehuda would gladly reassess and refine his thinking if their argument made logical sense and was grounded in extensive new research.
There are not many scholars of that level of standing who would go as far as writing a book about rethinking their earlier works, but Yehuda did just that. His book Rethinking the Holocaust published in 2002 became the essential textbook for every student of the Holocaust.
Yet those who were privileged enough to work with him, like myself, also knew that he would fiercely and resolutely challenge unfounded assumptions with passion and hard evidence from archives and testimonies of survivors. Yehuda was one of the first historians to treat the testimonies of survivors as sources of empirical evidence. I remember when, at a time when there was public debate questioning the reliability of such sources so many years after the Holocaust, Yehuda telling me that he saw more errors in historians’ work, than he had seen in survivor’s eye-witness accounts.
Yehuda characterised the Holocaust as an unprecedented crime due to the totality and universality of the Nazi’s irrational drive to murder every Jew, everywhere. He taught that any other interpretation was a distortion of truth. Whilst ‘unprecedented’, Yehuda argued that the Holocaust is explicable and must be subjected to comparison with other genocides and mass atrocities on historical grounds but not on the basis victim suffering. He taught us well, that there is ‘no gradation of suffering’.
He would take a brutal yet intellectually brilliant swipe at those looking to skew or revise Holocaust history in favour of a false collective narrative, or with the intention to avoid facing facts about culpability or collaboration.
In more recent times he focused his work on antisemitism’s long history and its contemporary manifestations. Ever the master of irony, he once remarked that events to commemorate dead Jews seemed more palatable to some, than concern for the fate of living Jews.
He was a force of nature. As a child, he escaped on the last train out of Czechoslovakia as the Nazis approached; became a pioneer of the new state of Israel; and lived his long life in defence of truth about the Holocaust. He travelled the world in the 80s and 90s to find those who would support Holocaust research and educational institutions and never stopped researching, teaching and learning along the way.
He was a friend of survivor, poet and Ghetto fighter Abba Kovner, renowned Holocaust scholars Raul Hilberg, and Yisrael Gutman and debated with other great figures in Holocaust studies. Yehuda was a longstanding advisor to Yad Vashem, founding member of IHRA, and one of the key authors of the 2000 Stockholm Declaration, which in a few months’ time, during the UK Presidency of IHRA, under the Chair of Lord Eric Pickles, will mark its 25th anniversary.
I was fortunate enough to have a slightly closer insight into the man behind the eminent professor, having married his nephew, Eden, 35 yrs ago, and his relationship with Yehuda and his Aunt Shula was a particularly close one. When people occasionally asked about our connection, I used to joke that Yehuda came as part of the wedding dowry – a little witty remark that Yehuda and I both repeated to patient, kind souls who had heard us say the same line plenty times before.
What I saw during those years staying with the family on Kibbutz Shoval and visiting him at his home in Jerusalem was a man who adored his daughters Danit and Anat, sons in law, grandchildren and great grandchildren. Given a suitable opportunity he would delight us on Shabbat afternoon by singing old English sea shanties and Welsh folk songs which he would bellow out with perfect pitch in a well-honed Welsh lilt. He had studied at Cardiff University on a British scholarship, interrupting his studies to fight in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, before returning to complete his degree, and still cherished his memories of Wales. Hours would go by as the family joined in the chorus of these joyful renditions, attempting feebly to harmonise with our extraordinary lead singer. Yehuda also wrote amusing poetry to mark family weddings and others important landmarks, which he recited with Yehuda-esque, panache.
Interested in work that I and others do to educate and empower teachers to teach about the Holocaust in universities and schools, Yehuda would share with me how it was his old history teacher who inspired his curiosity and thirst for knowledge, and which ultimately shaped his future to become a historian.
Arguing for the importance of case studies, testimonies and personal stories in historiography, he would state that ‘…a historian must also be a teacher, and teachers have to remember that their pupils and indeed themselves are just like the people they talk about in their telling of history’.
In his speech to the German Bundestag, 1998, quoted in his own speech to the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust, 26 July 2000, Yehuda delivered one of his most timeless, enduring and universal teachings. He states:
I come from a people who gave the Ten Commandments to the world. Time has come to strengthen them by three additional ones, which we ought to adopt and commit ourselves to: thou shalt not be a perpetrator; though shalt not be a victim; and thou shalt never, but never be a bystander.
May his memory be a blessing and his teachings continue to inspire.
- Associate Professor Ruth-Anne Lenga, deputy head, the UK Delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)
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