Zeev Sternhell

Zeev Sternhell was born in 1935 in Przemyśl

Sternhell was born in Przemyśl, Poland, in 1935 to a well-off Jewish family. During World War II his mother and sister were killed by the Nazis, and he survived in Lwów with an aunt and uncle under false papers. After the war he went to France on a Red Cross children's train and studied at a school in Avignon.

In 1951 he moved to Israel alone and was placed at the Youth Aliyah school in Magdiel. He studied history and political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, earning a BA in 1960. He received a PhD in Paris in 1969 with a thesis on Maurice Barrès.

He served as a platoon commander in the Golani Brigade and later fought in several wars as a reservist. At the Hebrew University he headed the Department of Political Science and later held the Léon Blum Chair. He studied fascism and argued that its ideas took shape in late 19th century France.

Sternhell wrote for Haaretz and criticized Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. In 2008 he was lightly hurt by a pipe bomb at his Jerusalem home, and Yaakov Teitel was convicted in 2013. He was married to Ziva, and they had 2 daughters. He died in 2020.