Yehuda Bauer (Hebrew: יהודה באואר; 6 April 1926 – 18 October 2024) was a Czech-born Israeli historian and scholar of the Holocaust.
His father had strong Zionist convictions and during the 1930s he tried to raise money to relocate his family to the British Mandate of Palestine.
Even shortly before, he upheld a regular lecture schedule, both in person and remotely, often addressing diverse global audiences in various languages on different days.
In Bauer's view, resistance to the Nazis comprised not only physical opposition but any activity that gave the Jewish people dignity and humanity in the most humiliating and inhumane conditions.
Bauer defended Rudolf Kasztner and the Aid and Rescue Committee, who have been criticized for allegedly not publicizing the Vrba-Wetzler report which documented the deportation of the Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz.
It forced Roosevelt to establish the War Refugee Board in January 1944, also due to pressure by Jewish Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr and his team.
[11][12] Bauer believed that Hitler was the key figure who caused the Holocaust, and that at some point in the later half of 1941, he gave a series of orders which called for the genocide of the entire Jewish population.
[13] Bauer believed that, at about the same time, Hitler gave further verbal orders for the Holocaust, but unfortunately for historians, nobody bothered to write them down.
[15] Another trend that Bauer denounced was the representation of the Holocaust as a mystical experience outside the normal range of human understanding.
In Bauer's view, those who seek to promote this line of thinking argue that God is just and good, while simultaneously bringing down the Holocaust on the Jewish people.
[citation needed] In January 2012, Bauer's article in the Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs entitled "The Holocaust, America and American Jewry"[16] precipitated a bitter debate between him, Rafael Medoff (Wyman Institute) and Alexander J. Groth (University of California, Davis), on what the US Government and the Jews of America could and could not have done to rescue the Jews of Europe.
[17][18] Bauer has criticized the American political scientist Daniel Goldhagen, who writes that the Holocaust was the result of the allegedly unique "eliminationist" antisemitic culture of the Germans.
[19] Bauer was known for his criticism of other historians but directed his sharpest rebukes at politicians whom he believed manipulated the Holocaust to serve their agendas, particularly singling out Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
When one of the visitors asked, "Am I to understand that you think Israel could commit genocide on the Palestinian people?," Bauer answered "Yes," and added, "Just two days ago, extremist settlers passed out flyers to rid Arabs from this land.