Blog

November 6, 2024

Vale Yehuda Bauer

Written by Emeritus Professor Konrad Kwiet, Resident Historian at the Sydney Jewish Museum

An array of obituaries, published across the globe, pay homage to Yehuda Bauer. The pioneering doyen of Holocaust and genocide scholarship, as well as antisemitism, passed away on Friday 18 October 2024 in his Jerusalem home. He was 98 years old. Two days later he was laid to rest alongside his second wife Ilana at the cemetery within Kibbutz Shoval in the northern Negev desert. The kibbutz had been founded in 1946 by Holocaust survivors and members of Hashomer Hatzair (The Young Guard) – a Marxist Zionist Youth movement.

When Yehuda Bauer moved to Shoval, herding and milking cows amongst other things, he became a member of Hashomer Hatzair. In the early 1950s he abandoned his Marxist convictions, but he remained throughout his life a confirmed disbeliever, holding firmly to his atheistic views. Rather, he embraced democratic views and values, regarding himself as a humanist and Weltbürger – a citizen of the world. This outlook never precluded his abiding love of Israel. Yehuda was a fierce and vocal advocate of social justice and peace, endorsing Martin Buber’s idea of a bi-national Jewish-Arab state. Living among pioneers and survivors, he did not consider himself as a Holocaust survivor, arguing that he had never lived under Nazi rule.

Born in Prague in 1926, at the time the capital of the Republic of Czechoslovakia and a metropolis of vibrant Jewish life, Bauer escaped with his family on 14 March 1939, on the eve of the German invasion. They found sanctuary and a new and permanent homeland in Israel, at the time the British Mandate for Palestine. He joined, the Palmach, the elite striking force of the Haganah, fighting for the establishment of the Jewish state. After he finished high school, a fellowship granted in 1946 by the British government enabled him to study history at the University of Cardiff in Wales. Two years later, in 1948, he returned home to fight in the Arab-Israeli War. Once the war was over, he continued his studies in Cardiff. They were completed in 1960 at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem with a doctoral dissertation which explored aspects of British politics in Palestine.
Photographs of Professor Yehuda Bauer at Sydney Jewish Museum over the years.

Abba Kovner, the legendary Jewish partisan leader and Israeli poet, encouraged Yehuda to relinquish his position as a history high school teacher and to study the Holocaust, which up to that point in time had largely escaped scholarly attention, both in Israel and elsewhere. Kovner also urged his friend to retrieve and to use testimonies of survivors to explore the history of the Holocaust and Jewish responses and resistance. Two institutions offered Yehuda Bauer lifelong positions, which enabled him to embark on an illustrious career as researcher and educator: The Hebrew University and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

Over the next seven decades, Yehuda Bauer published some forty books, dozens of book chapters, and hundreds of articles on the Holocaust, genocide and antisemitism. He played a pivotal role in pursuing numerous academic and educational initiatives and establishing international networks. In 1988 he received the coveted Israel Prize, the state’s highest cultural honour. Many foreign governments and institutions, both Jewish and non-Jewish, also bestowed him with prestigious awards. Wherever it is stored, his Nachlass – the collection of his writings, notes, speeches, interviews, correspondence and reports – will serve as a veritable treasure trove for anyone wishing to explore his life story and work.

Dani Dayan, Chairman of Yad Vashem, has summarised Yehuda Bauer’s achievements:

“Prof. Bauer not only enriched our knowledge of the Holocaust but also deepened our understanding of this unprecedent event in Jewish and human history. Bauer never confined himself to the ivory tower of academia, he was always an “engaged” intellectual. He expressed his views decisively, yet always with respect for those who disagree with him. For decades, and up until his final days, Yad Vashem and the entire world benefited from his knowledge, insights, and research through his role at Yad Vashem’s International Institute for Holocaust Research and various organisations. With his passing, we have lost the foremost Holocaust scholar of our time.”

Yehuda Bauer was a charismatic and mesmerising orator. He never read from texts or notes. If he brought notes with him to a lecture, he immediately discarded them, preferring to rely on his prodigious memory. Bauer gave hundreds of keynote addresses across the globe in all the languages in which he was fluent: Hebrew, Yiddish, German, English, Czech and Slovak. He was also competent in Polish, French and retained a smattering of the Celtic language of Wales.

One speech in particular attracted international headlines. It was given to the German Bundestag on the 27 of January 1988, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

His concluding remarks, repeated later in other keynote addresses, spelled out the core lesson Bauer had learnt from the study of the Holocaust and genocide:

“In the book of my ancestors there are the ten commandments. Maybe we should add three additional ones:

“You, your children and children’s children shall never be perpetrators;

“You, your children and children’s children shall never, never allow yourselves to be become victims; and

“You, your children and children’s children shall never, never be passive onlookers to mass murder, genocide or may it never be repeated a Holocaust-like tragedy.”

I met Yehuda Bauer half a century ago, in 1972 while carrying out archival studies at Yad Vashem for my research project on the resistance of Germany Jews. I was keen to seek his advice. He encouraged me to adopt his concept of Amidah – the Hebrew word for ‘standing up’ – to define and explore Jewish strategies of defence, resistance and survival. Our dialogue continued, not only in correspondences but also in joyous reunions in Israel, the United States and Germany and, in later years, in Australia. As he was for so many other historians, he became my mentor, supporting unwaveringly my career path. I owe him a good deal. In 2009 I asked him whether he was considering writing his memoirs. He replied: “Never!” adding with a smile and his characteristic good humour: “When historians have nothing to say any more, they start talking about themselves.”

For many Downunder, meeting Yehuda Bauer, listening to his captivating lectures and talking with him left an indelible mark on their memory. In 1986, Professor Colin Tatz attended a three-week seminar at Yad Vashem. In his memoirs he recalls the “membrane-breaker”. He writes: “Most of the key-note lectures were given by Yehuda Bauer in his fullest flow, the best flow I have heard… He is a man of immense breath and Olympian overviews. He uses history as a weapon of appreciation and understanding. To be taught by him is to be educated in every sense and he remains my mentor and inspiration.” Colin set up a Centre for Comparative Genocide Studies at Macquarie University, where I took up the position of Deputy Director. Whenever Bauer visited Sydney, he presented a series of lectures, participated in workshops, and discussed with Colin’s team of postgraduate students and young scholars’ current concerns of Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Yehuda Bauer taught hundreds of Australian high school teachers. Selected by the Melbourne-based Gandel Foundation, they attended until most recently a four-week Holocaust course at Yad Vashem. Bauer’s lecture was the last one offered; for many of the teachers it was the highlight of their challenging Israel program.

Unforgettable were his presentations in Sydney, be it at Macquarie University, Jewish day schools, synagogues, the University of New South Wales, the Shalom Institute, Sydney University, Mandelbaum House, the Sydney Jewish Museum or other venues. Yehuda participated in the Jewish studies and Holocaust programs offered at the University of Sydney where I taught at the end of my academic career. Our students, above all postgraduate students, reaped immense benefit from their discussions with him about their Arts Honours theses and doctoral dissertations. As Resident Historian at the Sydney Jewish Museum, I invited Yehuda to give guest lectures and to run workshops. They attracted large audiences and ignited lively debates. Staff members and guides, volunteers and visitors as well as survivors of the Holocaust and their descendants marvelled at and still vividly recall the scope and depth of Yehuda’s breathtaking knowledge and wisdom, his insights and often provocative statements. On more than one such occasion, Yehuda’s presentation concluded with his wife Ilana delighting the audience with her recorder playing.

Several members of the Museum’s Education Department were taught by Yehuda at Yad Vashem. They introduced his book “A History of the Holocaust” (1982, 2002) as compulsory reading for their guide courses. Offering a comprehensive educational program for high school and university students, these educators teach the findings of Yehuda’s extensive research and emphasise his efforts in combatting antisemitism and other hate ideologies, Holocaust denial and distortion.

In 1988 Yehuda Bauer helped to create the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), an intergovernmental organisation with 35 member countries and 8 observer countries, mandated to focus on research, education, and remembrance and “to build a world without genocide in the future”. He drafted IHRA’s non-legally binding working definition of antisemitism, which garnered some controversy. The Sydney Jewish Museum has since adopted this definition. Two renowned academics, closely related to the Sydney Jewish Museum, are members of the Australian delegation at IHRA: Emerita Professor Dr Suzanne Rutland and Associate Professor Dr Avril Alba.

Whenever he was in Sydney, Yehuda met with Ian Bersten. What brought them together were shared views and values of Jewish Secular Humanism, a movement that defines Judaism as a cultural and historical experience rather than a religion.

There was yet another reason why Yehuda Bauer, accompanied by his wife, was in later years a frequent visitor to Australia. Ilana’s son Eyal Mayroz and his family live in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. Yehuda enjoyed the family reunions and was deeply impressed by the breathtaking scenery the Blue Mountains offered. He found the time to foster the professional career of his step-son, a Senior Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney, specialising in genocide studies and the Middle East conflict. In his Blue Mountains retreat Yehuda was also able to write his last full book “The Jews. A Contrary People”, published in 2014. Written for a non-academic readership, it discusses the Jewish and Israeli experiences against the background of the Holocaust and genocide.

The gradual deterioration of Yehuda’s health put an end to his visits to Australia. Responding to my New Year’s greetings in December 2018, he emailed me – first in German than in English: “Wie es mir geht? (How am I feeling?) Ich sehe schlecht, höre schlecht, bin bald 93, nicht 39 (I don’t see or hear well, am almost 93, not 39), aber ansonsten geht es mir wunderbar (but other than that I feel great). I can’t wish you a better New Year because there will be no better New Year. Keep your chin up”.

In the last years of his life, Yehuda became a fierce opponent of Israel’s right-wing government and was especially critical of what he described as misuse of the memory of the Holocaust by different politicians to advance narrow interests and agenda. He protested the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, signing in 2011 a declaration that called for the establishment of a Palestinian State. He even dared to predict that the hatred between Jews and Arabs could result in a bloody war.

Not long before his death, when asked by a journalist what his plans were, he replied wryly: “To die”. He also penned his own eulogy which one of his daughters read out at his funeral, resulting in some laughter and smiles amongst the mourners. Laurence Weinbaum, Director General of the World Jewish Congress in Israel, attended the burial at Kibbutz Shoval. In his obituary he recalls some of Yehuda’s final words:

“He described his life with characteristic good humour. In his parting message, he stressed his love for Israel and the Jewish people, emphasising that he had no other country. Towards the end, he apologised that the speech was so long but promised that it would not happen again.”

Weinbaum concludes:

“Sadly the voice of that noble man has been stilled but the vast scholarship he left behind will last far longer than even the sturdiest and most important marble monument. His memory will surely be both a blessing and an unremitting source of inspiration for years to come”.