Jean Ancel

Jean Ancel was born in 1940 in Iași

Jean Ancel was born in 1940 to a Jewish family in Iași, Romania. As a baby he was hidden in a basement during the Iași pogrom. His father was put on one of the death trains but survived.

He studied history at the university in Iași but was expelled before finishing because he had registered to immigrate to Israel. In Israel he studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, earning bachelor's degrees in 1967 and 1970 and master's degrees in 1972 and 1974. He received a doctorate in modern Jewish history there in 1977.

Ancel was a principal researcher at Yad Vashem and wrote several history books, some translated into Romanian. He edited 12 volumes of original documents, mostly on the Holocaust in Romania. His research argued that Romania did not simply follow Nazi Germany but initiated crimes against Jews on its own.

He was a member of the Wiesel Commission, the historians' committee headed by Elie Wiesel and convened by the President of Romania in 2004. He also worked as a news anchor on Israeli radio. He died in Jerusalem in 2008.