It is with great sadness that we heard of the passing of esteemed historian Sir Martin Gilbert.
Karen Pollock MBE, Chief Executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said:
"Martin Gilbert was one of the most respected historians of his generation, as well as a close friend and supporter of the Holocaust Educational Trust. His seminal works on the Holocaust and related topics have provided a priceless contribution to our knowledge and understanding of what happened during that dark period of our history. His great humility and the incredible warmth with which he engaged with Holocaust survivors truly set him apart. We will miss him dearly and our thoughts are very much with his family."
Biography
Sir Martin Gilbert was Winston Churchill's official biographer, and a leading historian of the modern world, with particular expertise on both World Wars, on the 20th Century, and on the Holocaust.
Sir Martin Gilbert was the author of eighty-eight books, among them The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust, the story of non-Jews who risked their lives to hide Jews during the Holocaust, the single-volume Churchill: A Life, his twin histories First World War and Second World War, a comprehensive History of Israel, and his three-volume work, A History of the Twentieth Century (also published in a single, condensed volume).
His book, The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy (published in the United States as The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War) is a classic work on the subject.
In 1990, Sir Martin was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). In 1995, he was awarded a Knighthood 'for services to British history and international relations'. In 1999 he was awarded a Doctorate by Oxford University, 'for the totality of his published work'.
Sir Martin was a long-standing supporter of the Trust's work. In 1998, the Trust published the fifth edition of his book, The Holocaust, Maps and Photographs. Before the Trust received Government funding for their Lessons from Auschwitz Project in 2005, he kindly donated copies of his books to student participants of the Project. To this day, the Trust continues to include examples of his seminal maps of the Holocaust in all their work.
You can find out more about Sir Martin's work here.