David Cesarani, who has died aged 58 following surgery to remove a tumour on the spine, was the leading British-based historian of his generation on the modern history of the Jews. He was also a notable commentator and broadcaster on the Jewish past and present, and took a prominent role in Holocaust education in Britain and abroad.
In the mid-1980s he led research by the All-Party Parliamentary War Crimes Group into Nazi war criminals and collaborators who had come to live in Britain after the second world war, the result of which was an official report that evoked considerable public concern when published in 1987 and ultimately led to the creation of the 1991 War Crimes Act, which controversially extended British legal jurisdiction to cover war crimes committed elsewhere.
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