Yitzhak Arad ( he, יצחק ארד; né Icchak Rudnicki; November 11, 1926 – May 6, 2021) was an Israeli historian, author,
IDF
IDF or idf may refer to:
Defence forces
* Irish Defence Forces
* Israel Defense Forces
*Iceland Defense Force, of the US Armed Forces, 1951-2006
* Indian Defence Force, a part-time force, 1917
Organizations
* Israeli Diving Federation
* Interac ...
brigadier general
Brigadier general or Brigade general is a military rank used in many countries. It is the lowest ranking general officer in some countries. The rank is usually above a colonel, and below a major general or divisional general. When appointed ...
and
Soviet partisan
Soviet partisans were members of resistance movements that fought a guerrilla war against Axis forces during World War II in the Soviet Union, the previously Soviet-occupied territories of interwar Poland in 1941–45 and eastern Finland. The ...
. He also served as
Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...
's director from 1972 to 1993, and specialised in the history of
the Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
.
Names
He was born Icchak Rudnicki, later adopting the Hebrew surname Arad ( he, ארד). During World War II, he was known as Tolya (Russian diminutive for
Anatoly
Anatoly (russian: Анато́лий, Anatólij , uk, Анато́лій, Anatólij ) is a common Russian and Ukrainian male given name, derived from the Greek name ''Anatolios'', meaning "sunrise." Other common Russian transliterations are Ana ...
Arad was born Icchak Rudnicki on November 11, 1926, in what was then Święciany in the
Second Polish Republic
The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central Europe, Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 1918 and 1939. The state was established on 6 November 1918, before the end of ...
(now
Švenčionys
Švenčionys (, known also by several alternative names) is a town located north of Vilnius in Lithuania. It is the capital of the Švenčionys district municipality. , it had population of 4,065 of which about 17% is part of the Polish minority ...
,
Lithuania
Lithuania (; lt, Lietuva ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublika, links=no ), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania ...
). In his youth, he belonged to the
Zionist youth movement
A Zionist youth movement ( he, תנועות הנוער היהודיות הציוניות ''tnuot hanoar hayehudiot hatsioniot'') is an organization formed for Jewish children and adolescents for educational, social, and ideological development, in ...
''Ha-No'ar ha-Tsiyyoni''.
World War II
According to Arad's 1993 interview with
Harry J. Cargas
Harry James Cargas (June 18, 1932 – August 18, 1998) was an American scholar and author best known for his writing and research on the Holocaust, Jewish–Catholic relations, and American literature. He was a professor at Webster University f ...
, he was active in the ghetto underground movement from 1942 to 1944.Interview with Yitzhak Arad
''Voices from the Holocaust'', Harry J. Cargas, University Press of Kentucky, 1993.
In February 1943, he joined the
Soviet partisan
Soviet partisans were members of resistance movements that fought a guerrilla war against Axis forces during World War II in the Soviet Union, the previously Soviet-occupied territories of interwar Poland in 1941–45 and eastern Finland. The ...
Markov Brigade, a mostly non-Jewish unit in which he suffered from
antisemitism
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
. Apart from a foray infiltrating the
Vilna Ghetto
The Vilna Ghetto was a World War II Jewish ghetto established and operated by Nazi Germany in the city of Vilnius in the modern country of Lithuania, at the time part of the Nazi-administered Reichskommissariat Ostland.
During the approximatel ...
in April 1943 to meet with underground leader
Abba Kovner
Abba Kovner ( he, אבא קובנר; 14 March 1918 – 25 September 1987) was a Polish Israeli poet, writer and partisan leader. In the Vilna Ghetto, his manifesto was the first time that a target of the Holocaust identified the German plan to ...
, he stayed with the Soviet partisans until the end of the war, fighting the Germans, partaking in the mining of trains and ambushes around the
Naroch Forest
Lake Narach ( be, На́рач, ''Narač'' ; russian: На́рочь, ''Naročj''; lt, Narutis, pl, Narocz) is a lake in north-western Belarus (Myadzyel District, Minsk Region), located in the basin of the Viliya river. It is the largest lake ...
(now
Belarus
Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by R ...
). "The official attitude of the Soviet partisan movement was that there was no place for Jewish units" acting independently, said Arad.Yitzhak Arad interview for Martyrdom & Resistance, September/October 2010. Tishri/Cheshvan, 5771
In his
autobiography
An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life.
It is a form of biography.
Definition
The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...
, ''The Partisan'', published in 1979, Arad describes among others his participation in a punitive attack on the Girdan
village
A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to ...
() (on page 158): "The last operation I participated in that winter was a punitive action against Girdan, a large Lithuanian village on the road between Hoduciszki and Swienciany", and against
Lithuanian partisans
The Lithuanian partisans () were partisans who waged a guerrilla warfare in Lithuania against the Soviet Union in 1944–1953. Similar anti-Soviet resistance groups, also known as Forest Brothers and cursed soldiers, fought against Soviet rule ...
(on page 182):
I participated in this mopping-up operation. We thoroughly combed the forests of the region. The deep snow made walking difficult, but it also revealed the footsteps of the Lithuanian bands. After a few days of searching we discovered their encampment. Their forest camp was fenced in and had underground bunkers. We fought with them for a whole day, but by evening none of them remained alive. The next day we counted over 250 Lithuanian dead. Some were in a field near a lake to which they had tried to escape.
Mandate Palestine
Mandatory Palestine ( ar, فلسطين الانتدابية '; he, פָּלֶשְׂתִּינָה (א״י) ', where "E.Y." indicates ''’Eretz Yiśrā’ēl'', the Land of Israel) was a geopolitical entity established between 1920 and 1948 i ...
, on the ''
Ha'apala
''Aliyah Bet'' ( he, עלייה ב', "Aliyah 'B'" – bet being the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet) was the code name given to illegal immigration by Jews, most of whom were refugees escaping from Nazi Germany, and later Holocaust sur ...
'' boat named after
Hannah Szenes
Hannah Szenes (often anglicized as Hannah Senesh or Chanah Senesh; he, חנה סנש; hu, Szenes Anna; 17 July 19217 November 1944) was a poet and a Special Operations Executive (SOE) member. She was one of 37 Jewish SOE recruits from Mandate ...
. In Arad's military career in the IDF, he reached the rank of brigadier general and was appointed to the post of Chief Education Officer. He retired from the military in 1972.
Academic career
In his academic career as a lecturer on Jewish history at
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University (TAU) ( he, אוּנִיבֶרְסִיטַת תֵּל אָבִיב, ''Universitat Tel Aviv'') is a public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Locate ...
, he has researched
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
and the Holocaust, and has published extensively as author and editor, primarily in Hebrew. His later research deals with the Holocaust in the
USSR
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
. Dr. Yitzhak Arad served as the director (Chairman of the Directorate) of
Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...
, Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Authority, for 21 years (1972–1993). He remained associated with Yad Vashem in an advisor's capacity. Arad was awarded Doctor ''
honoris causa
An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hono ...
'' degree by Poland's
Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń
Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń or NCU ( pl, Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu, UMK) is located in Toruń, Poland. It is named after Nicolaus Copernicus, who was born in Toruń in 1473.Respublika'' newspaper that called Arad a "war criminal" for his alleged role in the
Koniuchy massacre
The Koniuchy (Kaniūkai) massacre was a World War II massacre of civilians, mostly women and children, carried out in the village of Koniuchy (now Kaniūkai, Lithuania) on 29 January 1944 by a Soviet partisan unit together with a contingent o ...
perpetrated by anti-Nazi Soviet partisans, the Lithuanian state prosecutor initiated an investigation of Arad. Following an international outcry, the investigation was dropped in the fall of 2008.
Arad said "I have never killed a civilian. It could have happened during battle, but I have never killed a civilian or a prisoner of war in cold blood" and that he was "proud" that he "fought the Nazi Germans and their Lithuanian collaborators ... the murderers of my family, the murderers of my people."Double Genocide Daniel Brook, Slate, 2015 Arad has said he believes the investigation was motivated by revenge for expert evidence he gave in a United States trial of a Lithuanian Nazi collaborator.Reopening Lithuania's old wounds BBC, July 21, 2008
British historian
Martin Gilbert
Sir Martin John Gilbert (25 October 1936 – 3 February 2015) was a British historian and honorary Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. He was the author of eighty-eight books, including works on Winston Churchill, the 20th century, and Jewish h ...
said he was "deeply shocked" by the "perverse" investigation.
Efraim Zuroff
Efraim Zuroff ( he, אפרים זורוף; born August 5, 1948) is an American-born Israeli historian and Nazi hunter who has played a key role in bringing indicted Nazi and fascist war criminals to trial. Zuroff, the director of the Simon Wiesen ...
pointed out that the Lithuanian government had never prosecuted a single war criminal, despite the evidence that
Simon Wiesenthal Center
The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) is a Jewish human rights organization established in 1977 by Rabbi Marvin Hier. The center is known for Holocaust research and remembrance, hunting Nazi war criminals, combating anti-Semitism, tolerance educat ...
had collected and shared. According to Zuroff, "What is common to all these cases is that they're all Jews. Instead of punishing Lithuanian criminals who collaborated with the Nazis and murdered Jews, they're harassing the partisans, Jewish heroes.""Nazi Hunter: Lithuania Hunts Ex-partisans, Lets War Criminals Roam Free" ''Haaretz'', August 7, 2008 Some 200,000 Jews were murdered in Lithuania during the Holocaust, mainly by Lithuanian collaborators.
Lithuania's record of prosecuting war criminals has been spotty, leading ''
The Economist
''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Econo ...
'' to write that the investigation against Jews was selective and even vindictive. According to
Dovid Katz
Dovid Katz (Yiddish: , also , Hirshe-Dovid Kats, , born 9 May 1956) is an American-born, Vilnius-based scholar, author and educator, specializing in Yiddish language and literature, Lithuanian Jewish culture, and the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. ...
, this is
Holocaust obfuscation
The double genocide theory is the idea that two genocides of equal severity occurred in Eastern Europe, that of the Holocaust against Jews perpetrated by the Nazis and a second genocide that the Soviet Union committed against the local population. ...
that "involves a series of false moral equivalences: Jews were disloyal citizens of pre-war Lithuania, helped the Soviet occupiers in 1940, and were therefore partly to blame for their fate. And the genocide that really matters was the one that Lithuanian people suffered at Soviet hands after 1944."
Bibliography in English
As author
* ''The partisan: From the Valley of Death to Mount Zion'' (1979)
* ''Ghetto in flames: The Struggle and Destruction of the Jews in Vilna in the Holocaust'' (1980)
* '' Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard death camps'' (1987)
* ''The Holocaust in the Soviet Union'' (2009), University of Nebraska Press.
* ''In the Shadow of the Red Banner'' (2010), Gefen Publishing House.
*
As editor
* ''Documents on the Holocaust: selected sources on the destruction of the Jews of Germany and Austria, Poland, and the Soviet Union'' (1982, rev. 1989, 1999) with Israel Gutman and Abraham Margaliot
* ''The
Einsatzgruppen
(, ; also ' task forces') were (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe. The had an integral role in the im ...
reports: selections from the dispatches of the Nazi Death Squads' campaign against the Jews July 1941 – January 1943'' (1989) with Shmuel Krakowski and Shmuel Spector
* ''Pictorial History of the Holocaust'' (1990)
* ''Ponary diary, 1941–1943: a bystander's account of a mass murder'', by Kazimierz Sakowicz (2005, from the Polish; the title refers to the
Ponary massacre
, location = Paneriai (Ponary), Vilnius (Wilno), Reichskommissariat Ostland
, coordinates =
, date = July 1941 – August 1944
, incident_type = Shootings by automatic and semi-automatic weapons,
genocide
, perpetrators ...
.)
Awards
* 2009: National Jewish Books Award in the Writing Based on Archive Material category for ''The Holocaust in the Soviet Union''