David Bankier, renowned Holocaust scholar, dies of cancer at 63

Prof. David Bankier, one of the world's most renowned Holocaust scholars who also served as the head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem, died at the age of 63 on Friday after a four-year battle with cancer.

Bankier, whose area of expertise was the German view of the Holocaust, is one of the most oft quoted researchers in the study of Nazi Germany. His work on the German public's opinion of Jews between 1933 and 1939 is considered a breakthrough study in the field.

"He showed that it was not only exclusive circles, the party leadership, or Hitler himself that were steeped in murderous anti-Semitism but that it was absorbed by wider swaths of German society," Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev said.

Bankier's study paved the way for other researchers to delve into what is considered today to be one of the most important topics of the period.

"There were issues that my teachers did not want to deal with," Bankier told Haaretz in an interview two years ago. "Like the attitude of the German population toward Hitler's policy, or the public's gut feeling. This was a very charged issue. Everything was buried under the trauma of World War II, and the mindset was that there is no need to examine if there indeed were Germans who did not act this way. I, on the other hand, think that anything that falls within the confines of human activity needs to be dealt with."

The son of Holocaust survivors, Bankier was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany in 1947. His family moved to Argentina when he was 5. He then immigrated to Israel with a group of youths following the Six-Day War.

He studied at the Hebrew University and taught there until his death.