Icchak Arad – świadek, żołnierz, historyk

Abstract

The article is devoted to Yitzhak Arad – a General in the Israel Defense Forces, a professor at the University of Tel Aviv, researching the history of the Holocaust, and the director of Yad Vashem, bound from an early age with the Zionist idea . The author of the article cites biographical information about Arad, who, born in the Vilnius region under the name Rudnicki, survived the war as a member of Soviet guerrilla troops, and then got to Palestine. The author draws attention to the numerous achievements of Yitzhak Arad in the field of the history of the Holocaust: he is the author of the most important study devoted to the Vilnius ghetto (Ghetto in flames), and a study on the death camps in Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor. Moreover, he helped to popularize in the West Dziennik (The Diary) of Kazimierz Sakowicz by the means of an English edition. The author also mentions in this article the controversies associated with the historian – including the initiation of an investigation in 2006 by the Lithuanian authorities, concerning the participation of Arad as an employee of the Soviet secret police in actions against the Lithuanian partisans and in atrocities against the civilian population, which was, however, closed for the lack of evidence.