Anti-Semitism scholar mourned
JEWISH community leaders have paid tribute to renowned Israeli academic Robert Wistrich, who died this month, aged 71.
Wistrich, a professor of European and Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and head of the university’s Vidal Sassoon International Centre for the Study of Anti-Semitism, was one of the world’s most prominent scholars on the history of what he called “the longest hatred”.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry president Robert Goot called Wistrich “an intellectual giant who was a profound influence in educating people about the nature and history of anti-Semitism in its various mutated forms.
“His death is a terrible loss for humanity, especially in these times when Western civilisation is increasingly losing touch with the Enlightenment values that have made it great.”
Describing him as a “kind, gentle man,” Jeremy Jones, director of international and community affairs at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, said Wistrich was “an outstanding scholar in his studies of anti-Semitism … trying to analyse prejudice and bigotry in general”.
Jones recalled receiving support from Wistrich after he had been unsuccessfully sued by British Holocaust denier David Irving. Wistrich “was aware of research being done in Australia … it wasn’t just with me, but with everyone he’d meet who had played any public role in dealing with anti-Semitism”.
Hailing Wistrich as “the world’s pre-eminent scholar on anti-Semitism,” B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission chair Dr Dvir Abramovich said his “powerful legacy, courage, and dauntless commitment to bearing witness and to educating the public about the dangers of bigotry and prejudice, will live on forever in our hearts and minds”.
Writing in Quadrant Online, Australian author and commentator Daryl McCann recalled a landmark meeting between Wistrich and a group of Australian educators at Yad Vashem in 2012 when the Israeli scholar lectured on future prospects for teaching about the Holocaust. “Wistrich had a much more confronting story to tell about European anti-Semitism – namely, it was back with a vengeance.”
Born in Kazakhstan in 1945 to parents who had fled Poland during World War II, Wistrich grew up in England, studying at Cambridge.
His books include Hitler and the Holocaust, Anti-Semitism, the Longest Hatred and Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism in the Contemporary World. In 2006, he was the academic adviser on the film, Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.
PETER KOHN
Robert Wistrich has passed away at the age of 71.
comments