Robert A. Potash, beloved husband, father, and grandfather, Robert A. Potash, Emeritus Professor of Latin American History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, passed away on December 30, 2016 at age 95. Funeral services will be at the Jewish Community of Amherst on Monday January 2 at 10:30.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 2, 1921, the son of Philip and Sarah (Simes) Potash, Robert was educated in Boston’s elementary schools and graduated from the Boston Latin School. He graduated first in his class in June 1938, and entered Harvard College where he majored in history, with Latin America as his special area of interest.  Elected to Phi Beta Kappa, he graduated magna cum laude in June 1942. A summons from the Cambridge Draft Board led to his withdrawal from Harvard graduate school and to his induction into the Army at Fort Devens, Mass. on October 17, 1942.

            After basic training in the medical corps at Camp Pickett, Virginia, he was accepted into the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) in May 1943. In May 1944, he was assigned to the Military Intelligence Training Center at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, and in January, 1945 he was activated for overseas service with the 41st Japanese Order of Battle Team, a unit that was scheduled to join the Headquarters of the Tenth Army in Oahu that was preparing for the invasion of Okinawa. However, their troopship arrived after the main battle was over. As part of the force preparing now for the assault on the Japanese mainland, Potash was saved from harm when the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki helped persuade the Japanese emperor to ask for peace. After the Japanese surrender, Potash remained on Okinawa as a member of the Tenth Army Intelligence section, helping to secure the surrender of the small Japanese garrison on the island of Kume Shima and the repatriation of Japanese prisoners from the Ryukyu Islands. He was discharged from the Army at Fort Devens on February 18, 1946, with the rank of Master Sergeant.

            Rob met the love of his life, Jeanne Feinstein of St. Louis, Missouri, in November 1943 when she was a sophomore at the University of Illinois. They began their remarkable 70 year marriage on June 9, 1946. They settled in Cambridge in September 1946, where he resumed his graduate studies in history at Harvard. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on a nineteenth-century industrial development bank known as the “Banco de Avio de Mexico”. Published in Mexico in 1959 by the Fondo de Cultura Económica, the book came to be viewed by later generations of Mexican economic historians as a classic work in their field.

            He spent most of his academic career at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, beginning as an instructor in 1950 and retiring in 1986 as the Haring Professor of Latin American History. Over the years he had served as head of the History Department, chair of the Committee on Latin American Studies, and director of the University Argentine Program. From 1955 to 1957 he worked in the U.S. State Department’s Latin American Research and Intelligence Division where he served as Argentine analyst in the unstable period that followed the military coup that ousted Juan Perón. After resuming his academic post, he embarked on a scholarly study of the role of the military in Argentine politics that established his reputation as an international authority on that country’s military. The three volumes of his Army and Politics in Argentina, although intended for academic readers, became best sellers in that country in their Spanish translation.

            An active participant in both the Conference on Latin American History (CLAH) and the New England Council of Latin American Studies (NECLAS), he also served on the editorial boards of the American Historical Review and the Hispanic American Historical Review. In the 1980’s, he developed a collaborative project with Mexican historians at El Colegio de Mexico to create a useful computerized guide to the documents in the Notarial Archive of Mexico City. Initiated at the University of Massachusetts Computing Center, the project was taken over and continued by El Colegio de Mexico; it is still serving the needs of researchers.

In the late 1990’s, he was appointed by the Foreign Minister of Argentina to the Commission of Enquiry into Nazi Activities in Argentina in the decade after WWII.  Known as CEANA, it sponsored a series of studies including one that he prepared on the employment of German technicians by the Argentine Army. He was elected as a Corresponding Member by both the Mexican Academy of History and the National Academy of History of Argentina.

            In 1997, he and his wife, Jeanne, moved from their Amherst home of almost 40 years to the Applewood Retirement Community on whose board of directors she had served during its planning phase. In 2002, he was invited to join the Board of Directors of Loomis Communities, the non-profit operator of Applewood, where he served for the next eight years. 

At Applewood, he continued to keep a close watch on developments in Argentina by reading the Buenos Aires newspapers, in part to be able to handle many requests for comment from Argentine journalists. He happily remained a resource for many graduate students from the U.S. and other countries on their Argentine-related projects.

In his retirement, with the encouragement of his younger daughter, he composed a more personal memoir for the benefit of his grandchildren. Looking Back at My First Eighty Years: A Mostly Professional Memoir was published in 2008. An Argentine edition in Spanish translation is forthcoming.

            Robert Potash was predeceased by his devoted daughter Ellen Potash Arrick in 2005.  He is survived by his loving wife of 70 years and by his devoted daughter Janet Potash of Alexandria, Virginia and Applewood; by son-in-law Martin Arrick and his wife, Linda Arrick of Oakland, California, and five grandchildren:  Daniel, Graham and Alexander Arrick and Emma and Remy Bernstein.

Gifts in his memory may be made to the Department of History of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the Jewish Community of Amherst, the Applewood Retirement Community Reserve Fund or the Amherst Survival Center.  No flowers, please.