KRUG, Mark M. 1915-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born June 13, 1915, in Vienna, Austria; died of kidney failure December 28, 2004, in Walnut Creek, CA. Historian, educator, and author. Krug was a former history professor at the University of Chicago who specialized in the U.S. Civil War and Jewish history. A Zionist, he left his homeland at age twenty to move to Palestine. After graduating from a university in Jerusalem, he immigrated to the United States. Teaching himself English, he became the principal of a Jewish school in Chicago and was later superintendent of the Board of Jewish Education there. He next completed a master's degree at Roosevelt University, followed by a doctorate from the University of Chicago. He joined the faculty at Chicago in 1961, becoming a professor of education in history in 1964 and director of the Weekend University in 1979. During the late 1960s, Krug became well known for his many public debates with his friend Cherif Bassiouni. Bassiouni was an Egyptian, and the two amicably debated issues about relations between Israel and the surrounding Arab nations. One of the main points of their debates was to prove that the two sides of the issue could be argued peacefully. Related to Krug's interest in Jewish history was his passion for the American Civil War and his admiration of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln; he felt that Lincoln's freeing of the slaves had many parallels to Jewish history dating back to ancient Egypt. Krug retired from the University of Chicago in 1985. He was the author of such books as Aneurin Bevan (1961) and The Melting of the Ethnics: Education of the Immigrants, 1880-1914 (1976). He was also an editor of and contributor to other scholarly texts.

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Chicago Tribune, December 31, 2004, section 1, p. 10.