Hanna Yablonka

Hanna Yablonka was born in 1950 in Tel Aviv

Hanna Yablonka was born in Tel Aviv on September 9, 1950, to parents born in Czechoslovakia. Her mother, Viola Turk, was a physician who survived Auschwitz, and the couple immigrated to Israel in 1949. In 1959 the family moved to Beersheba, where her father founded the orthopedic department at Soroka hospital.

She studied international relations and contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and earned a master's degree there in 1986. She also completed a master's degree in behavioral sciences at Ben-Gurion University. Her doctorate, supervised by Yehuda Bauer, dealt with the absorption of Holocaust survivors in Israeli society.

She became a professor of Jewish history at Ben-Gurion University and chief historian of the Ghetto Fighters' House. She wrote books on Holocaust survivors in Israel, the Eichmann trial, and Mizrahi Jews and the Holocaust. In 2002 Yad Vashem gave her the Buchman Prize for her book on Eichmann.

From 2007 to 2017 she sat on an appeals committee on the property of Holocaust victims. In 2010 the Ministry of Education ended her role as chair of its history committee after she criticized history teaching in schools. She was married to actor Yossi Yablonka, and they had 3 children.