The Destiny Foundation

Professor Yehuda Bauer, Professor Emeritus of History and Holocaust Studies at the Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and academic adviser to the Yad Vashem Foundation. Yehuda Bauer is fluent in the Czech, Slovak and German languages, Hebrew, Yiddish, English, French and Polish. He has been a visiting professor at Brandeis University, Yale University, Richard Stockton College, and Clark University. He was the founding editor of the Journal for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and served on the editorial board of the Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust, published by Yad Vashem in 1990. Professor Bauer has received the Israel Prize, the highest civilian award in Israel. In 2001, he was elected a Member of the Israeli Academy of Science. He serves as academic adviser to Yad Vashem, academic adviser to the International Task Force for Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research, and senior adviser to the Swedish Government on the International Forum on Genocide Prevention.

Professor Dan Michman, Professor of Modern Jewish History at Bar-Ilan University. He came to Israel from Holland as a child in 1957, when his father, Joseph Michman (Melkman) was appointed Chairman of Yad Vashem. After his military service, he studied Jewish history and Hebrew language at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he earned his doctorate in 1978 by writing a dissertation on Jewish refugees from Germany in Holland in 1933–1940. In 1976, he received an appointment from Bar-Ilan University to teach the Holocaust-related subjects, and since 1983 he has headed the university’s Finkler Institute of Holocaust Research. During that time, he devised a comprehensive academic course on Holocaust history for the Open University of Israel.

Prof. Michman has published numerous books and articles in different languages on the history of Dutch Jewry, Israeli society, and various aspects of Holocaust research — historiography, problems of Jewish refugees and migration, religious life, Judenrat and leadership, resistance, Western Europe, the survivors, etc.

Prof. Michman has been involved with Yad Vashem’s scholarly and educational activities since the early 1980s, and for several years has been a member of the board of the International Institute for Holocaust Research.

He is on the editorial board of Yad Vashem Studies and a member of the advisory committee of the International School for Holocaust Studies.

Dr. Deborah Esther Lipstadt, Ph.D.,Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University, Atlanta. Her book History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving” (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2005) is the story of her libel trial in London against David Irving, who sued her for calling him a Holocaust denier and right wing extremist. (It won the National Jewish Book Award and was a finalist for the Koret Book Award.) The Daily Telegraph (London) declared that Lipstadt’s trial had “done for the new century what the Nuremberg tribunals or the Eichmann trial did for earlier generations”. Dr. Lipstadt has also written Denying the Holocaust (Free Press/Macmillan, 1993) and Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust (Free Press/Macmillan, 1986, 1993). President Bush appointed her White House representative at the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and also to the American delegation at the OSCE (the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) conference on combating intolerance and antisemitism. President Clinton appointed her to two consecutive terms on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. She has received Honorary Doctorates from Yeshiva University, Bar Ilan University, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and Hebrew Union College.

Deborah E. Lipstadt is currently Resnick Invitational Scholar at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Dr. Kiril Feferman PhD, Head of projects on The Holocaust in the Occupied Soviet Territories, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem. Post-doctoral fellow, research topic To Stay or Flee: Soviet Jews in the Northern Caucasus Facing the German Invasion 1941 – 1942. Research Scholar: The Mapping of Extermination Sites, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, The Righteous Among the Gentiles. Institute for Holocaust Research Yad Vashem. Lecturer on The Holocaust, The History of Anti-Semitism, History of Jews in Russia and the USSR. Jewish Agency Educational Program. Member of the Editorial Board The Holocaust & Modernity Ukranian Center for Holocaust Studies.