David Bankier
David Bankier was a Holocaust historian and head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem.Biography
David Bankier was born on January 19, 1947,
in the Zeckendorf DP camp in the Bamberg district, Oberfranken,
Germany, in the then American Occupation Zone. His parents were
Holocaust survivors from Ukraine and Poland. From there his family
migrated first to Israel and then to Argentina. Bankier grew up in Argentina; he
studied at a public school and at a Jewish school where he consolidated
his knowledge of the Hebrew language. In his youth he participated
in Zionist activity and in 1967 immigrated to Israel. He
began to study Jewish history at the Hebrew University and in 1983
he completed his doctoral dissertation, “German Society and National
Socialist Antisemitism, 1933–1938.”1Academic career
Bankier's most influential work covered the role of public opinion in Nazi Germany, specifically opinion relevant to Nazi anti-Semitism and to the Nazi Holocaust. His work on this topic involved extensive original research into Sopade reports as well as the internal documentation of the Sicherheitsdienst regarding German public opinion.
