Simon Dubnow (1860–1941)

Simon Dubnow was born to a Jewish family in Mstislavl (Mstsislaw), Russia, present-day Belarus, the son of a timber merchant and the grandson of a rabbinic scholar. After a traditional religious education, he persuaded his parents to allow him to attend a government school for young Jews in order to learn Russian and obtain a modern education. He became a dedicated secularist, much to the chagrin of his family. He was largely self-educated after that and became a journalist. He wrote book reviews and articles for various Russian Jewish journals in which he called for the legal emancipation of the Jews and their rights to self-administration, language, and education. By 1905, Dubnow had married and settled with his wife and children in St. Petersburg, where he taught at the Institute of Jewish Studies. Dubnow was the first modern historian to create a comprehensive World History of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, a 10-volume work initially published in German. He had already translated Heinrich Graetz’s Volkstümliche Geschichte der Juden (English title: History of the Jews) into Russian in 1881. He later wrote an autobiography in which he reported, sometimes as an eyewitness, on key events in Jewish and general history. In 1922, Dubnow emigrated to Germany and settled in Berlin amid a prominent group of East European Jewish intellectuals. There he completed his magnum opus and his two-volume Geschichte des Chassidismus (History of Chassidism). After the founding in 1925 of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, in large part the creation of his ex-students and disciples, Dubnow became a loyal supporter. He also witnessed the rise of the Nazi regime to power in 1933, and felt forced to emigrate again. He decided to move to Riga, Latvia, a decision that would prove fatal following Nazi Germany's invasion in World War II. He was murdered in the Riga Ghetto by the Nazis and their accomplices.