Gideon Greif

Gideon Greif (; born 16 March 1951) is an Israeli historian who specializes in the history of the Holocaust, especially the history of the Auschwitz concentration camp and particularly the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz. He served as a visiting lecturer for Jewish and Israeli History at the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Texas at Austin during the academic year 2011–2012. He headed a commission that issued a controversial report in July 2021 that denied that the killing of Bosnian Muslims at and around Srebrenica in July 1995 constituted genocide. Education From 1965 until 1969 Gideon Greif attended Municipal High School (Gymnasium) in Tel Aviv. Later, from 1974 to 1976 he attended Tel Aviv University where he received his bachelor's degree in Jewish history, studying the history of the land of Israel. Between 1976 and 1982 he did his master's degree in Jewish History at Tel Aviv University. From 1996 until 2001 he studied at the University of Vienna from which he was awarded his PhD. Exhibitions Greif was the scientific advisor and historical consultant for the exhibition "With Me Here Are Six Million Accusers" which marked the 50th anniversary of Adolf Eichmann's trial in 1961, inaugurated April 11, 2011, at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem. The exhibition described Eichmann's career at the SS, his personal responsibility for the deportation of millions of Jews to the ghettos and extermination camps, his attempts to hide after the war and the operation of his discovery and seizure in Argentina in 1960. The exhibition aimed to prove that Eichmann was not the "murderer behind the desk", but a fanatic foe of the Jews, determined to send them to their deaths. Special projects In 2006 Greif initiated the "Authentic Box Car" project, which stands on the ramp of Birkenau, not far from the main entrance to the camp, as a permanent memorial to the hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews murdered by the Germans in the gas chambers of Birkenau in 1944, and dedicated to the memory of Hugo Lowy.