Dina Porat

Dina Porat was born in 1943 in Argentina

Dina Porat was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1943 and moved to Israel in 1950. Her father, Moshe Kostirinsky-Kitron, founded the Dror youth movement in South America and was a leader of Argentine Jewry. Her mother, Ruth Gold, was born in Lithuania.

She earned a master's degree in 1973 with a thesis on Jewish refugees in Vilna. In 1984 she received her doctorate from Tel Aviv University, writing on the Jewish Agency's efforts to rescue European Jews.

At Tel Aviv University she headed the Department of Jewish History, the School of Jewish Studies and the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Antisemitism and Racism. She led the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry from 2010 to 2021. She was chief historian of Yad Vashem from 2011 to 2022 and then became its academic advisor.

She wrote books on the Zionist leadership and the Holocaust, on Abba Kovner and on the Nakam revenge group. She was academic advisor to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance from 2005 to 2010. In 2025 she received the Presidential Medal of Honor.

She is married to Yehuda Porat, and they have 3 sons.