Yitzhak Arad
| Yitzhak Arad | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Itzhak Rudnicki November 11, 1926 Święciany, Second Polish Republic |
| Nationality | Israeli |
| Occupation | Historian, retired IDF brigadier |
Yitzhak Arad (Hebrew: יצחק ארד) (né Itzhak Rudnicki) (born November 11, 1926), is an Israeli historian, retired IDF brigadier general and a former Soviet partisan who has served as director of Yad Vashem from 1972 to 1993.
Arad was born Itzhak Rudnicki on November 11, 1926, in what was then Święciany in the Second Polish Republic (now Švenčionys, Lithuania). In his youth, he belonged to the Zionist youth movement Ha-No'ar ha-Tsiyyoni. During the war – according to Arad's 1993 interview with Harry J. Cargas – he was active in the ghetto underground movement from 1942 to 1944. In February 1943, he joined the Soviet partisans of the Markov Brigade, a primarily non-Jewish unit in which he had to contend with antisemitism. Apart from a foray infiltrating the Vilna Ghetto in April 1943 to meet with underground leader Abba Kovner, he stayed with the Soviet partisans until the end of the war, fighting the Germans, taking part in mining trains and in ambushes around the Naroch Forest of Belarus. "The official attitude of the Soviet partisan movement was that there was no place for Jewish units" acting independently, said Arad.
Historian Mark Paul explains that Arad (then Rudnicki, aged 18), belonged to a partisan unit which was part of the Voroshilov Brigade based in the Narocz forest, involved in punitive missions against other partisan groups whom they considered as enemies. The Voroshilov brigade partisans were representing Soviet interests in the region and followed the NKVD directives in numerous actions. Noah Shneidman estimates that there were at least 300 Jewish partisans in it, one-fifth of its numerical strength. Piotr Zychowicz (Rzeczpospolita), claims that Arad joined the NKVD at the end of 1944, and became active in combating Lithuanian Liberation Army. In his interview Arad insisted that he was not associated with NKVD, thus contradicting claims of Rytas Narvydas from the Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania. He was allegedly dismissed from the NKVD ranks for his undisciplined behaviour.
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