Professor David Cesarani, OBE, from Royal Holloway, University of London died last month after a short illness.

Professor Cesarani was widely acknowledged to be one of the world’s foremost authorities on Jewish history and particularly the Holocaust. He was a member of the Home Office Holocaust Memorial Day Strategic Group, Director of the AHRC Parkes Centre, part of the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations and a regular media contributor. His research included several seminal works; Eichmann: His Life and Crimes (2006), Major Farran’s Hat: Murder, Scandal and Britain’s War Against Jewish Terrorism (2009) and Justice Delayed: How Britain became a Refuge for Nazi War Criminals (1992).

In 2005 he was awarded an OBE for services to Holocaust Education and advising the government with regard to the establishment of Holocaust Memorial Day.

David was a brilliant scholar and an inspirational teacher, supervisor and public lecturer; he was also a man of the highest academic integrity. Those who knew him speak of his warmth and intellectual generosity. He will be enormously missed by all those who loved him, worked with him, studied with or were taught by him.