John Bierman (1929-2006)

John David Bierman, journalist and author, was born in London on January 26 1929. According to an article in The Guardian, “Newspaper reporter, editor, radio correspondent, television "fireman", documentary maker and, finally, acclaimed historian, Bierman excelled at each, in a working life that reached back to the days of plate cameras and reporters in trilbies. “

Bierman’s BBC TV reporting included a 13-minute report from Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972 (which won a Cannes TV Festival award), the Indo-Pakistan war of 1971 and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. The military historian Sir John Keegan wrote of Alamein: War Without Hate (2002), which Bierman co-authored with fellow journalist Colin Smith: "Few historians write as fluently as they do; few journalists achieve their standards of accuracy and inclusiveness."

Bierman's breakthrough book was Righteous Gentile: The Story of Raoul Wallenberg (1981), which brought to international attention the then largely neglected story of the Swedish diplomat who rescued Hungarian Jews from the Nazis. Bierman's words are inscribed on Wallenberg's statue in central London: "The 20th century spawned two of history's vilest tyrannies. Raoul Wallenberg outwitted the first but was swallowed up by the second. His triumph over Nazi genocide reminds us that the courageous and committed individual can prevail against even the cruellest state machine. The fate of the six million Jews he was unable to rescue reminds us of the evil to which racist ideas can drive whole nations. Finally, his imprisonment reminds us not only of Soviet brutality but also of the ignorance and indifference which led the free world to abandon him. We must never forget these lessons."

In all, Bierman published eight books , continuing to work after a kidney transplant in 2002 and subsequent heart bypass. He is quoted as saying: "Working, in the sense of writing books, I shall do until I drop because it is my life." He died on January 4, 2006.

Excerpted and paraphrased from The Guardian.