Scienceלאוניד סמילוביצקי

Leonid Smilovitski

Leonid Smilovitski is a Soviet-born Israeli historian who studies the history of the Jews of Belarus.

born 1955History of the Jews of BelarusResearch on the Holocaust in BelarusInterviews with Holocaust survivors

Born: 15 August 1955, Rechytsa
Occupation: journalist, historian, university teacher
Education: Maxim Tank Belarusian State Pedagogical University

Leonid Smilovitski was born in 1955 in Rechytsa

Leonid Smilovitski was born on August 15, 1955, in Rechytsa, in Soviet Belarus. His father, Lev Smilovitski, fought in World War II and later taught history in Minsk. His mother, Galina Chechik, worked in Minsk as a sanitation doctor.

He went to school in Minsk from 1962 to 1972. In 1977 he finished the Minsk State Pedagogical Institute, where he studied history, social studies and English. In 1984 he completed a doctoral degree in history on Communist Party work in rebuilding schools in Belarus.

After serving in the Soviet army, he worked at a Belarusian war history museum. From 1984 to 1992 he was an associate professor at the Belarusian University of Culture in Minsk.

In 1992 he moved to Israel with his wife and son. From 1993 he worked at the Yad Vashem archive in Jerusalem and held about 100 interviews with Holocaust survivors for the Spielberg foundation. Since 1995 he has been a research fellow at the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center at Tel Aviv University.

He has written 450 papers and 10 monographs, many in Russian. His books cover the Holocaust in Belarus, Jewish life under Stalin and Soviet censorship.