Dan Michman

Dan Michman (born 28 June 1947) is a Jewish historian. He is the head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and incumbent of the John Najmann Chair of Holocaust studies.

Michman was born in Amsterdam in 1947 as a child of Holocaust survivors, who emigrated to Israel in 1957. His father, Dr. Jozeph Michman (Jozeph Melkman) became head of the commemoration centre Yad Vashem, founded four years earlier. After completing the compulsory military service Dan Michman studied Hebrew and Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He received his Ph.D. in history at this university in 1978 with a dissertation on the German Jewish refugees in the Netherlands 1933-1940. Archival research for this dissertation was done in the Netherlands in the years 1972-1976. After this he taught Modern Jewish history and Holocaust history at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, at first as a lecturer, later as a full professor. Since 1983 he also headed the Arnold and Leona Finkler Institute for Holocaust Research at Bar-Ilan University. In addition, he developed a comprehensive course on Holocaust history for the Open University of Israel. In 2000 he was appointed Chief Historian at the International Institute for Holocaust Research of Yad Vashem and in 2011 he became the Head of this institute. In these positions he co-organized various international scholarly conferences and edited and co-authored volumes with conference papers and proceedings. His research focuses on Holocaust historiography, the Nazi ghettoization policy, imposed Jewish governing bodies under Nazi rule ('Judenräte' or Jewish Councils), Jewish religious life during the Holocaust and Dutch and Belgian Jewry during the Holocaust. In his research and publications he stresses the non-violent ways that Jews took to resist genocide. In 2015 he retired as professor of Modern Jewish History at Bar-Ilan University, but he remains actively involved in his function as Head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem.