Holocaust historian Israel Gutman - member of the Advisory Board of the Museum of the Second World War dies in Jerusalem

It is with great sorrow that we bid farewell to Professor Israel Gutman, a member of the   Advisory Board of the Museum of the Second World War, who died on 1 October 2013 in Jerusalem. Professor Gutman was not only an eminent specialist in the history of the Jews and of the Holocaust, who invariably extended his generosity to us. He was also an unchallenged moral authority. A witness to the genocide of the Jewish nation, a fighter in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and a prisoner of German concentration camps, he understood perfectly the vital importance of fostering knowledge about the Second World War. He devoted a major part of his life to this goal. He taught the history of the Holocaust at Israeli and American universities, served in the leadership of the International Institute for Holocaust Research of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and in 2000-12 served as the vice-chairman of the International Auschwitz Council. He published numerous scholarly works about the Holocaust and the history of the Polish Jews. He was the editor in chief of the monumental Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, volumes I-IV, which twenty years after its publication remains a crucial compendium of knowledge about the tragic history of the Jews during the Second World War. His intellectual work contributed vastly to our understanding of the causes and mechanisms of the Shoah. Above all, however, he was a witness to truth.

We are honoured to have had a chance to work with him.