Returning to the Source of Human Morality

Yehuda Bauer was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1926 to secular parents. After receiving his first schooling in Prague, he emigrated with his family to Palestine in 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II. After the end of the Holocaust, he left Israel to study at the University of Wales in Cardiff from 1946 to 1950. After receiving his B.A., he returned to Israel and continued his studies at Hebrew University, receiving his Ph.D. from that institution in 1960. After completing his studies, he joined the faculty of the Institute for Contemporary Jewry at Hebrew University. In 1977, he was appointed to the chair in Holocaust studies and also served as the academic chairman of the Institute for Contemporary Jewry between 1978 and 1995. He has held many additional distinguished academic positions, including serving as a visiting professor at the University of Honolulu in 1992, at Yale in 1993, and at Clark University in 2000. In 1998, he addressed the German Bundestag on Holocaust Memorial Day and in that same year received Israel’s highest public academic honor, the Israel Prize. In addition, he served for many years as chair of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem, Israel’s national institute for remembrance and research relating to the Holocaust. He has published eleven English–language books related to the Holocaust and many additional studies on the Shoah in Hebrew.