The distinguished Israeli historian, Professor Otto Dov Kulka, professor emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who has died aged 87, had an astonishing range of interests; they included antisemitism and Jewish thought in Europe from the early modern period to the Holocaust, Jewish-Christian relations in modern Europe, the history of the Jews in Germany and the study of the Holocaust.
Kulka was born Otto Deutelbaum in Nový Hrozenkov, a small town in Czechoslovakia. He was born to Erich Schön and Elly Deutelbaumová (née Kulková) but at the time his mother was married to Rudolf Deutelbaum, Erich’s uncle. In 1938, Rudolf and Elly divorced and Erich sued to be recognised as Otto’s legitimate father.
Following the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939 Schön was arrested by the Nazis and in 1942 was deported to Auschwitz. In September, 1942 Deutelbaum, his second wife Ilona and daughter Eva (Otto’s half-sister), were deported to Theresienstadt (Terezin)and then to Treblinka where they were all murdered. Otto and his mother were also deported there and then to Auschwitz. Otto survived but his mother died at Stutthof in January, 1945. After the war Otto and his father returned to Czechoslovakia. To commemorate Otto’s mother they changed their family name to Kulka in 1946.
In 1949 Kulka emigrated to Israel. He added the Hebrew name Dov to his original name. From 1958 he lived in Jerusalem. He married Chaia Braun and they had a daughter, Eliora Kulka-Soroka.
