John Klier, (13 December 1944 – 23 September 2007) was a British-American historian of Russian Jewry and a pivotal figure in academic Jewish studies and East European history in the UK and beyond.
At the end of his career and life, Klier was the Sidney and Elizabeth Corob Professor of Modern Jewish History at University College London.
Klier was born on 13 December 1944 in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, USA, and his family lived briefly in Washington before settling in Syracuse, New York.
Brought up as a Catholic, John attended Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana for his BA and MA in history.
[2] In 1991, he was one of the first foreign scholars to undertake in-depth research on the Jews in Soviet archives and mined resources in the coming years in Kyiv, Moscow, St Petersburg and Minsk.