Israel Gutman (born 1923, Warsaw

Warsaw

Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...

) is a Polish-born

History of the Jews in Poland

The history of the Jews in Poland dates back over a millennium. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Jewish community in the world. Poland was the centre of Jewish culture thanks to a long period of statutory religious tolerance and social autonomy. This ended with the...

 Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i historian of the Holocaust.

Israel Gutman was born in Warsaw, Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

. After playing an important role in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the Jewish resistance that arose within the Warsaw Ghetto in German occupied Poland during World War II, and which opposed Nazi Germany's effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to Treblinka extermination camp....

, he was deported to the Majdanek

Majdanek

Majdanek was a German Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland, established during the German Nazi occupation of Poland. The camp operated from October 1, 1941 until July 22, 1944, when it was captured nearly intact by the advancing Soviet Red Army...

, Auschwitz and Mauthausen

Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp

Mauthausen Concentration Camp grew to become a large group of Nazi concentration camps that was built around the villages of Mauthausen and Gusen in Upper Austria, roughly east of the city of Linz.Initially a single camp at Mauthausen, it expanded over time and by the summer of 1940, the...

 concentration camps. His older sister died in the ghetto. After two years in the camps, he was hospitalized in Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

. He managed to escape and join the Jewish Brigade

Jewish Brigade

The Jewish Infantry Brigade Group was a military formation of the British Army that served in Europe during the Second World War. The brigade was formed in late 1944, and its personnel fought the Germans in Italy...

 in Italy. In 1946, he immigrated to Mandate Palestine and joined Kibbutz

Kibbutz

A kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism...

 Lehavot HaBashan

Lehavot HaBashan

Lehavot HaBashan is a kibbutz in northern Israel. Located in the Hula Valley around ten kilometres south-east of Kiryat Shmona, it falls under the jurisdiction of Upper Galilee Regional Council...

, 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

Adolf Eichmann

Adolf Otto Eichmann was a German Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust...

.

Academic career

Gutman was a professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...

, as well as the chairman of the Scientific Council of Yad Vashem

Yad Vashem

Yad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, established in 1953 through the Yad Vashem Law passed by the Knesset, Israel's parliament....

 in Jerusalem, and deputy chairman of the International Auschwitz Council. He was the editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. Israel Gutman 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

Yitzhak Sadeh Prize

The Yitzhak Sadeh Prize for Military Literature is an annual award literary award given in Israel for the finest book on a military topic. It is named in honor of Yitzhak Sadeh.-Winners:...

 for Military Studies, and the Polish Unification Prize.

Controversies

Speaking about the 2008 German Memorial to Homosexuals persecuted under Nazism

Memorial to Homosexuals persecuted under Nazism

The Memorial to Homosexuals persecuted under Nazism in Berlin was opened on 27 May 2008.- Design of memorial :The Memorial was designed by artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset....

, Gutman questioned its location near the Jewish Holocaust Memorial in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

. "The location was particularly poorly chosen for this monument," Gutman told Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita

Rzeczpospolita (newspaper)

Rzeczpospolita is a Polish national daily newspaper, with a circulation around of 160,000. Issued every day except Sunday. Rzeczpospolita was printed in broadsheet format, then switched to compact at October 16, 2007...

. "If visitors have the impression that there was not a great difference between the suffering of Jews and those of homosexuals – exclusively German – it's a scandal." He explained 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," because "a sense of proportion must be maintained." – Designed by artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, the Pillbox

Bunker

A military bunker is a hardened shelter, often buried partly or fully underground, designed to protect the inhabitants from falling bombs or other attacks...

monument to homosexuals contains a loophole that invites the visitor to look inside and see a film of a gay couple kissing.

Published work

• Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
• Anatomy of Auschwitz Death Camp
• The Jews of Poland Between Two World Wars
• Emanuel Ringelblum – The Man and the Historian
• Unequal Victims-Poles and Jews in World War Two

External links

• Israel Gutman - in the online exhibition "To Build and To Be Built" - The Contribution of Holocaust Survivors to the State of Israel - Yad Vashem