Robert S. Wistrich (1945–2015)

Robert Wistrich was born to a Polish Jewish family in Lenger, Kazakhstan (then the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic). His parents Sabina (Silbiger) and Jakob Wistreich, a doctor, had fled east in 1939 to escape the German invasion in World War II; however, they found Soviet rule to be little better. In 1942, Wistrich's father was imprisoned twice by the Soviet secret police. After the war ended, Robert and his parents were sent back to Poland. They soon fled to France and then to the UK. At age 17, Wistrich won a scholarship to study history at Cambridge University. He graduated in 1966 with a BA (Hons), which was raised to a MA degree in 1969. At Cambridge, he founded and co-edited Circuit, a literary and arts magazine. He also studied at Stanford University in California and for 16 months in Israel. He received his Ph.D. from the University of London in 1974. That year, he was named Director of Research at the Institute of Contemporary History and the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide in London, at that time the largest research library of its kind in Europe. In 1982, he received tenure at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he held the Neuberger chair for modern European history. He was also appointed a Research Fellow at the British Academy. In his career, Prof. Wistrich published 29 books, including Socialism and the Jews (1985), which won the joint award of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at Hebrew University and the American Jewish Committee. His 1989 book The Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph received the Austrian State Prize in History. His monumental study Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred (1991) won the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize in the UK and was the basis for "The Longest Hatred," a three-hour British-American TV documentary mini-series shown on public television in the USA. In 1993, he also scripted Good Morning, Mr. Hitler, an award-winning documentary commissioned by the UK's Channel 4 on Nazi art. In 1991, Prof. Wistrich became the first holder of the Chair of Jewish Studies at University College London. He also wrote dramas for BBC Radio and Kol Israel on the lives of historical figures ranging from Leon Trotsky to Theodor Herzl. In 2003, he acted as chief historical consultant for the BBC documentary, "Blaming the Jews," and in 2006 he was the academic advisor for the film Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West.