Shamai Davidson: what Wikipedia removed
Shamai Davidson was an Israeli psychiatrist who spent thirty years working with Holocaust survivors. Through October 2023 the opening stated that “Davidson witnessed the Nazi terror and the death of his aunts and cousins in the ghettos of Warsaw, Lodz, and the gas chambers of Treblinka.” Today the word and the fact are gone from the article entirely. A reader today learns that Davidson studied Holocaust survivors professionally and not that he personally witnessed Nazi terror and lost family members in the Holocaust.
The word “terror” appeared 1 times in this article’s opening at its peak, in 2010. Today it appears nowhere in the article at all, references included. Checked against the full current article on 2026-08-01.
The tracked words, snapshot by snapshot
Section titled “The tracked words, snapshot by snapshot”| word | 2010 | 2015 | 2020 | 6 October 2023 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| terror | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| genocide | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
Counts are of the opening paragraph only, the part most readers, search engines and AI training sets ever quote.
What was taken out
Section titled “What was taken out”- The fact that Davidson personally witnessed Nazi terror and lost aunts and cousins in the Holocaust is dropped from the article entirely.
- His role co-founding the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide is dropped from the article.
How it opened then, and now
Section titled “How it opened then, and now”2010 (revision 348426876):
Shamai Davidson (1926, Dublin - 1986, Jerusalem ) was an Israeli professor, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, who spent 30 years working with Holocaust survivors , trying to understand the nature of their experience. He was Medical Director of Shalvata Mental Health Centre and served as Head of the Elie Wiesel Chair for the Study of the Psycho-Social Trauma of the Holocaust. Davidson witnessed the Nazi terror and the death of his aunts and cousins in the ghettos of Warsaw , Lodz , and the gas chambers of Treblinka . He studied medicine at the University of Glasgow and in Oxford University Medical School. In 1979 he became the co-founder of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide along with…
2025 (revision 1277432077):
Israeli professor, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst (1926–1986) Shamai Davidson ( Hebrew : שמאי דוידסון ; 1926–1986) was an Israeli professor, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, who spent 30 years working with Holocaust survivors , trying to understand the nature of their experience. He was Medical Director of Shalvata Mental Health Center and served as Head of the Elie Wiesel Chair for the Study of the Psycho-Social Trauma of the Holocaust. ^ “Obituary: Samai Isaac Davidson” (PDF) . Bulletin of the Royal College of Psychiatrists . pp. 73– 74. Archived from the original (PDF) on July 17, 2011.
Related
Section titled “Related”- The drift report: what changed across all 61,944 watched articles
- The case file for this article, with every snapshot and every marked removal
- Who made the cuts: removals grouped by the account that made them
- The live article on Wikipedia
Wikipedia text is quoted under CC BY-SA 4.0. This page is not affiliated with Wikipedia.