Alex Danzig: Fears grow for much-loved historian kidnapped by Hamas

The killing of at least 1,400 people in Israel by Palestinian Hamas militants from Gaza and the taking of more than 100 hostages have reverberated around the world, notably in central and eastern Europe, with its strong Jewish connections and memories of the Holocaust.

There, the taking of one man has caused particular distress and sorrow.

Alex Danzig, a 75-year-old scholar and historian of the Holocaust, has spent the last 30 years working for Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust remembrance centre, educating Jews and Poles about what happened in the later years of World War Two.

But he lives in…