Yitzhak Arad | |
|---|---|
יצחק ארד | |
 Arad in 2016 | |
| Born | Icchak Rudnicki (1926-11-11)November 11, 1926[1] |
| Died | May 6, 2021(2021-05-06) (aged 94)[2] |
| Occupations | Historian, retiredIDFbrigadier general |
Yitzhak Arad (Hebrew:יצחק ארד; néIcchak Rudnicki; November 11, 1926 – May 6, 2021) was an Israeli historian, author,IDFbrigadier general andSoviet partisan. He also served asYad Vashem's director from 1972 to 1993, and specialised in the history ofthe Holocaust.
He was bornIcchak Rudnicki, later adopting the Hebrew surnameArad (Hebrew:ארד). During World War II, he was known asTolya (Russian diminutive forAnatoly) in the underground and among the partisans.[3]
Arad was born Icchak Rudnicki on November 11, 1926, in what was then Święciany in theSecond Polish Republic (nowŠvenčionys,Lithuania). In his youth, he belonged to theZionist youth movementHa-No'ar ha-Tsiyyoni.
According to Arad's 1993 interview withHarry J. Cargas, he was active in the ghetto underground movement from 1942 to 1944.[4]
In February 1943, he joined theSoviet partisan Markov Brigade, a mostly non-Jewish unit in which he suffered fromantisemitism. Apart from a foray infiltrating theVilna Ghetto in April 1943 to meet with underground leaderAbba Kovner, he stayed with the Soviet partisans until the end of the war, fighting the Germans, partaking in the mining of trains and ambushes around theNaroch Forest (nowBelarus). "The official attitude of the Soviet partisan movement was that there was no place for Jewish units" acting independently, said Arad.[5]
In hisautobiography,The Partisan, published in 1979, Arad describes among others his participation in a punitive attack on the Girdanvillage (Lithuanian:Girdėnai) (on page 158): "The last operation I participated in that winter was a punitive action against Girdan, a large Lithuanian village on the road betweenHoduciszki and Swienciany",[6] and againstLithuanian partisans (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.[6]
In December 1945, Aradillegally migrated toMandate Palestine, on theHa'apala boat named afterHannah Szenes. 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.[7] He retired from the military in 1972.[8]
During his academic career as a lecturer in Jewish history atTel Aviv University, he Arad researchedWorld War II and the Holocaust, and published extensively as an author and editor, primarily in Hebrew. His later research dealt with the Holocaust in theUSSR. Arad also served as the director (Chairman of the Directorate) ofYad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Authority, for 21 years (1972–1993). He remained associated with Yad Vashem in an advisory capacity. Arad was awarded a Doctoralhonoris causa degree by Poland'sNicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń on June 7, 1993.[9]
In 2006, following a story in the LithuanianRespublika newspaper that called Arad a "war criminal" for his alleged role in theKoniuchy massacre 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.[10]
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"[11] 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."[12] 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.[13]
British historianMartin Gilbert said he was "deeply shocked" by the "perverse" investigation.Efraim Zuroff pointed out that the Lithuanian government had never prosecuted a single war criminal, despite the evidence thatSimon Wiesenthal Center had collected and shared.[13] 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."[14] Some 200,000 Jews were murdered in Lithuania during the Holocaust, mainly by Lithuanian collaborators.[14]
Lithuania's record of prosecuting war criminals has been spotty, leadingThe Economist to write that the investigation against Jews was selective and even vindictive. According toDovid Katz, this isHolocaust obfuscation 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."[15]
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