David Wyman

David Sword Wyman (6 March 1929 – 14 March 2018) was the Josiah DuBois professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Early life and education

Wyman was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts, the son of Ruth (Sword) and Hollis Judson Wyman, a teacher, of American descent. His grandparents were Protestant ministers; Wyman was a Protestant himself. He earned an A.B. in history from Boston University and a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University.

Career

From 1966 until his retirement in 1991, Wyman taught history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he twice chaired the Judaic studies program. He held honorary doctoral degrees from Hebrew Union College and Yeshiva University, both in New York City. He was chairman of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Washington, D.C.

Deborah Lipstadt characterizes Wyman's book Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis as having stood for many years as "one of the most important books" on American immigration policy in the Nazi years. In Paper Walls, Wyman discusses the combination of antisemitism, nativistic nationalism, economic crisis and isolationism that made rescue inconceivable.

In his later work, Wyman contended that the attitude of American Jews during the Nazi era was to be faulted, and that the approach of the Bergson Group was the correct one. If American Jews had taken a more forceful approach, government policy could have been changed.