Yitzhak Arad (; né Icchak Rudnicki; November 11, 1926 – May 6, 2021) was an Israeli historian, author, IDF brigadier general and Soviet partisan. He also served as Yad Vashem's director from 1972 to 1993, and specialised in the history of the Holocaust. Names He was born Icchak Rudnicki, later adopting the Hebrew surname Arad (). During World War II, he was known as Tolya (Russian diminutive for Anatoly) in the underground and among the partisans. Early life Arad was born Icchak 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. World War II 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 partisan Markov Brigade, a mostly non-Jewish unit in which he suffered from 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, partaking in the mining of trains and ambushes around the Naroch Forest (now Belarus). "The official attitude of the Soviet partisan movement was that there was no place for Jewish units" acting independently, said Arad. In his autobiography, The Partisan, published in 1979, Arad describes among others his participation in a punitive attack on the Girdan village () (on page 158): "The last operation I participated in that winter was a punitive action against Girdan, a large Lithuanian village on the road between Hoduciszki and Swienciany", and against Lithuanian partisans (on page 182): I participated in this mopping-up operation. We thoroughly combed the forests of the region. The deep snow made walking difficult, but it also revealed the footsteps of the Lithuanian bands. After a few days of searching we discovered their encampment. Their forest camp was fenced in and had underground bunkers. We fought with them for a whole day, but by evening none of them remained alive. The next day we counted over 250 Lithuanian dead. Some were in a field near a lake to which they had tried to escape. Israeli Army In December 1945, Arad illegally migrated to Mandate Palestine, on the Ha'apala boat named after Hannah Szenes. In Arad's military career in the IDF, he reached