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wenty years after World War II ended, the shadow of atrocity still shrouded the young life of Michael Bazyler. The son of Polish and Russian Holocaust survivors who as teenagers fled the Nazis to Uzbekistan, Bazyler was 11 when his family immigrated to the United States as political refugees. For a spirited youngster starting over in a foreign land, the grip of history squeezed a bit too tightly. The Holocaust was “something I tried to stay away from when I was growing up,” Bazyler says. “It was like the air you breathe. When I saw someone with a tattoo on their arm, it was like everyone had one.” Over time, however, Bazyler came to embrace his connections to family and community. He found that the more he sought to apply his talents for persuasion, research and scholarship, the more he was drawn to international human rights law. As he saw new examples of genocide and mass theft in places like Rwanda, Syria and Iraq, how could he not take up the challenge of so much unfinished work?
In the 1990s, Bazyler began researching and writing about the mass theft of Jewish property in Nazi-occupied Europe. He also became vice president of The 1939 Society, an organization of Holocaust survivors, their children and supporters that promotes Holocaust education in partnership with the Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education at Chapman. These days, Bazyler, JD, is a professor at Chapman’s Fowler School of Law who has testified before Congress on Holocaust restitution and has had his work cited by the U.S. Supreme Court. His book “Holocaust, Genocide, and the Law” won the National Jewish Book Award, and his new work, “Searching for Justice After the Holocaust,” chronicles a comprehensive research project he led, examining legislation passed by the 47 endorsing states of the 2009 Terezin Declaration on Holocaust Era Assets and Related Issues. The research project was commissioned by the European Shoah Legacy Institute and was presented in 2018 to the European Union.
BY DENNIS ARP PHOTOS BY JUSTIN SWINDLE
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CHAPMAN FORWARD
