Scienceשמעון רדליך

Shimon Redlich

Shimon Redlich is an Israeli historian and Holocaust survivor who studies the history of the Jews of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and is professor emeritus at Ben Gurion University.

born 1935History of Soviet JewryResearch on the Jewish Antifascist CommitteeStudy of Jewish-Ukrainian relations

Born: 2 April 1935, Lviv
Occupation: historian, writer, university teacher
Education: Harvard University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, New York University

Shimon Redlich was born in 1935 in Lviv

Redlich was born in Lviv in 1935, the only child of a merchant family, and grew up in Brzezany. He lived in the Brzezany ghetto until it was destroyed in June 1943. His father was killed that month, and he and his mother were hidden by a Polish family and a Ukrainian family.

After the war he lived in Łódź, where he acted in the Yiddish film Unzere kinder. In 1950 he immigrated to Israel and studied at Kibbutz Merhavia and at a high school in Afula. He served in the IDF from 1954 to 1956.

He earned a BA in general history and Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University and an MA in Soviet studies at Harvard University. He received his PhD from New York University in 1968. He then worked for about a year as an expert on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the Prime Minister's Office.

He joined the history department of Ben Gurion University and became a full professor in 1991. He headed the history department and the Center for the Study of Russian and East European Jewry, and directed a Holocaust research center. His research covers the Jewish Antifascist Committee and relations between Jews, Ukrainians and Poles.

He retired in 2003. He is married to Yehudit and lives in Modiin-Maccabim-Reut.