Story by Dawn Kan, Greensboro News and Record

GREENSBORO — More than 50 years ago, Karl A. Schleunes authored a book that became what one expert later called “a landmark in Holocaust historiography.”

Schleunes would focus much of his career on the topic, as a longtime history professor at UNCG and scholar on the Holocaust.

Schleunes, 84, died Saturday May 15, 2021 in Charlotte from prostate and bladder cancer, his wife, Brenda Schleunes said.

They had moved to Charlotte this year to be closer to their daughter, Anna, and her family.

“He was a kind, gentle man who was a beloved teacher and friend to many, many people,” Brenda Schleunes said Monday.

A service will be held at 4 p.m. June 10 at Congregational United Church of Christ, 400 W. Radiance Drive in Greensboro.

A Wisconsin native, Karl Schleunes had taught history at UNCG from 1971 to 2010, when he retired.

In 1999, he was guest lecturer at the Kaplan Centre of the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

Before arriving at UNCG, he had taught from 1965 to 1971 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The year 1970 brought the publication of his book, “The Twisted Road to Auschwitz: Nazi Policy Toward German Jews, 1933-1939.”

Auschwitz was a complex of concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered six million Jews across German-occupied Europe.

At UNCG, he taught courses on German history and on the Holocaust.

“My ‘wrestling with the Holocaust’ has taken me through more than 20 years of teaching a course on the subject and many more as a scholar attempting to understand how it could have happened,” Schleunes wrote in an essay abstract that appears on the Springer.com publishing company website.

He went on to publish two more books.

At Greensboro College, an annual lecture — which bears his name — focuses on the Holocaust and genocide.

Rabbi Fred Guttman of Temple Emanuel expressed the sorrow of the temple and the Jewish community and condolences to Brenda Schleunes on her Facebook page.

“He was a great man, a wonderful scholar and a man who dedicated his life to the premise that the most horrible events in history should be understood and never forgotten,” Guttman wrote. … “May the memory of this incredibly righteous man be a blessing, now and always.”

Brenda Schleunes shared her husband’s love for history. She founded Greensboro-based Touring Theater of North Carolina, creating plays from historical documents, literature and people within its community.

She expressed heartbreak for the loss of her husband of nearly 57 years.

“The love of my life is gone,” she wrote on her Facebook page. “May he rest in peace.”