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Dan Mikhman

Dan Michman is an Israeli historian of the Holocaust who heads the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem.

born 1947Holocaust researchLeading Yad Vashem's research instituteStudy of Dutch Jewry

Born: 28 June 1947, Amsterdam
Occupation: historian of Modern Age, university teacher, historian
Education: Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Dan Mikhman was born in 1947 in Amsterdam

Dan Michman was born in Amsterdam in 1947 to parents who survived the Holocaust. His father, Dr. Jozeph Michman, was a Zionist leader in the Netherlands and later headed Yad Vashem. The family moved to Israel in May 1957, and he finished school in Jerusalem.

He served in the Artillery Corps. In 1967 he began studying Hebrew and Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He earned his doctorate in 1978 with a study of German Jewish refugees in the Netherlands from 1933 to 1940.

He began teaching at Bar-Ilan University in 1976 and became a full professor in 1998. From 1983 he headed the Finkler Institute for Holocaust Research there, and he led the team that built a Holocaust course for the Open University. His research covers Holocaust historiography, Nazi ghetto policy, the Judenrat, Jewish religious life and the Jews of the Netherlands and Belgium.

In 2000 he became Chief Historian of Yad Vashem, and in 2011 he became head of its International Institute for Holocaust Research. He retired from Bar-Ilan in 2015. He is married to Bruria and they have 6 children.