David Bankier (Hebrew: דוד בנקיר; 19 January 1947 – 27 February 2010) was a Holocaust historian and head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem.
[2] David Bankier was born on January 19, 1947 (27 Tevet, 5707), in the Zeckendorf DP camp in the Bamberg district, Oberfranken, Germany, in the then American Occupation Zone.
In his youth he participated in Zionist activity and in 1967 immigrated to Israel.
He began to study Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and in 1983 he completed his doctoral dissertation, “German Society and National Socialist Antisemitism, 1933–1938.” In 1986, David Bankier became lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
[4] His work on this topic involved extensive original research into Sopade reports as well as the internal documentation of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) regarding German public opinion.