Israel Gutman in Memoriam

It is with deep sorrow that we learned of the passing of Prof. Israel Gutman Z”L, a Survivor, scholar of the Holocaust, and Friend of the Museum.

Prof. Gutman was born in Warsaw in 1923. His entire family perished in the Warsaw Ghetto. He took part in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and was a prisoner of the Majdanek, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Mauthausen-Gusen German concentration camps. After the war, he was a co-founder of the Aviv kibbutz in Italy, and in 1947-1971, a member of the Lehavot HaBashan kibbutz in Upper Galilee.

In 1961 he testified in the Eichmann trial. He taught at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Between 1983-1985, he headed the Hebrew University’s Department for the Study of Contemporary Jewry, and in 1993-1996 the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem. Up until 2000, he was Yad Vashem’s Chief Historian, and in 2000-2012, Deputy Chairman of the International Auschwitz Council.

Prof. Gutman was the author of some of the most fundamental publications on the Holocaust, including Resistance. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, The Jews of Poland between Two World Wars.

Prof. Gutman was a friend of the Museum, closely following work on the Holocaust gallery, which also reflected his experience. He was a member of the International Honorary Committee of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews from 2009 until 2013.

We bid farewell to an extraordinary man.