30.10.2024

We mourn the passing of Professor Yehuda Bauer Z’’L (1926–2024) and Professor Paul Mendes-Flohr Z”L (1941–2024)

 

Yehuda Bauer, who passed away on 18 October 2024 in Jerusalem, is remembered in the following obituary (excerpt), published by his long-standing place of work, the International Institute for Holocaust Research in Yad Vashem: 

Born in Prague in 1926, Prof. Bauer’s early life was marked by upheaval, as his family fled to Poland in 1939, eventually making their way to Eretz Israel (then Mandatory Palestine) via Romania. He completed his high school education in Haifa and later attended Cardiff University in Wales with the support of a British scholarship. Upon returning to Israel, he joined Kibbutz Shuvel and pursued a degree at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he earned his doctorate in 1960 with a thesis focused on Jewish settlement during British rule in the Land of Israel (British Mandate of Palestine).

Yehuda Bauer began his illustrious academic career at the Avraham Herman Institute of Contemporary Judaism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he served as Professor Emeritus of History and Holocaust studies for many years. A prolific scholar, he authored numerous seminal articles and books on the Holocaust and genocide, founded and edited the journal “Holocaust and Genocide Studies”, and was awarded the Israel Prize in 1998 for his significant contributions to Holocaust research. 

 

Paul Mendes-Flohr passed away on 24 October 2024 in Jerusalem. He was Director of the Franz Rosenzweig Center for German-Jewish Literature and Culture at the Hebrew University for many years. The following obituary was sent by Professor Benjamin Pollock, who now heads the Rosenzweig Center:

Paul Mendes-Flohr, long-time director of the Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center and the preeminent historian of German-Jewish thought for nearly half a century, died on Thursday. Born in Brooklyn in 1941, Prof. Mendes-Flohr pursued his graduate studies at Brandeis University under the likes of Alexander Altmann and Nahum Glatzer, from whom he learned to approach scholarship, he would often say, as craft, as calling, and as service. He completed his dissertation on Martin Buber’s social thought in 1972. By the early 1970s, Prof. Mendes-Flohr had moved to Jerusalem and was teaching at the Hebrew University. […] 

Through his countless monographs, his broad-minded anthologies of Jewish Thought and edited volumes, the magisterial collection of Buber’s writings he edited, and the scores of up-and-coming scholars he advised, Prof. Mendes-Flohr shaped the field of Modern Jewish Thought in incomparable fashion. He also invested his heart and soul in stamping the field with his ethos. Prof. Mendes-Flohr committed himself to engaging in the very kind of dialogue with others that was described and analyzed by the German-Jewish thinkers about whom he wrote. He believed such dialogue could nourish the values of equality, justice, and compassion which the world so sorely needs.

 

Picture credit: Tzahy Lerner