Israel Gutman

Israel Gutman (Hebrew: ישראל גוטמן) (b. 1923, Warsaw -) is a Polish-born Israeli historian of the Holocaust. [ [http://www1.yadvashem.org/exhibitions/Ringelblum/Ringelblum_Gutman.htm “Let The World Read And Know” The Oneg Shabbat Archives ] ]

Biography

Israel Gutman was born in Warsaw, Poland. After playing an important role in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, he was deported to the Majdanek, Auschwitz and Mauthausen camps. http://wiez.free.ngo.pl/jedwabne/contributors.html] His older sister died in the ghetto. [http://www1.yadvashem.org/remembrance/rememberance_day/remembrance_day_2008/exhibition/gutman.html "To Build and To Be Built" The Contribution of Holocaust Survivors to the State of Israel ] ] After two years in the camps, he was hospitalized in Austria. He managed to escape and join the Jewish Brigade in Italy. In 1946, he immigrated to Mandate Palestine and joined Kibbutz Lehavot Habashan, where he raised a family. He was a member of the kibbutz for 25 years. In 1961, he testified at the trial of Adolf Eichmann.

Academic career

He was a professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, chairman of the Scientific Council of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and deputy chairman of the International Auschwitz Council. Gutman was the editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. He is an advisor to the Polish government on Jewish affairs, Judaism and Holocaust commemoration.

Awards

Gutman won the Salonika Prize for Literature, the Yitzhak Sadeh prize for Military Studies, and the Polish Unification Prize.

Controversies

Speaking about the 2008 German memorial for homosexuals persecuted and murdered during the Holocaust, Gutman questioned the relevance of the memorial and criticized its location near the Jewish Holocaust Memorial. "The location was particularly poorly chosen for this monument," Gutman told Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita. "If visitors have the impression that there was not a great difference between the suffering of Jews and those of homosexuals, it's a scandal." He further claimed that the German people "understood the immense scope of the crime of the Holocaust which they had committed, but this time, they made an error." [ [http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3368183,00.html Holocaust Academic Pans Monument to Nazis' Gay Victims | Germany | Deutsche Welle | 29.05.2008 ] ]

Published work

*"Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising" [ [http://www.ushmm.org/research/center/publications/details.php?content=1994-01 Academic Publications ] ]
*"Anatomy of Auschwitz Death Camp" [ [http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/025320884X Amazon.co.uk: Anatomy of Auschwitz Death Camp: Yisrael Gutman: Books ] ]
*"The Jews of Poland Between Two World Wars" [ [http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0874514460 Amazon.co.uk: The Jews of Poland Between Two World Wars (Tauber Institute): Yisrael Gutman, Ezra Mendelsohn, Jehuda Reinharz, Chone Shmeruk: Books ] ]
* "Emanuel Ringelblum – The Man and the Historian" [ [http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_yad/magazine/magazine_41/data_41/New_Publications.html Yad Vashem Jerusalem - Quarterly Magazine ] ]

References