Samuel Pisar - Biography

Samuel Pisar (born March 18, 1929) is a Polish-born American-Jewish lawyer, author, and Holocaust survivor.

Biography

Samuel Pisar was born to David and Helena Pisar in Białystok, Poland. His father established the region's first taxi service.His parents and younger sister Frieda were murdered by the Nazis. Pisar was sent to Majdanek, Auschwitz and Dachau. At the end of the war, he escaped during a death march.

After the liberation, Pisar spent a year and a half in the American occupation zone of Germany, engaging in black marketeering with fellow survivors. He was rescued by an aunt living in Paris. His uncle sent him to Melbourne, Australia, where he resumed his studies. He attained a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Melbourne in 1953. After recovering from a bout of tuberculosis, he traveled to the United States and earned a doctorate in law from Harvard University. He also holds a doctorate from the Sorbonne.

Pisar has been married twice. He has two daughters from his first wife, and one from his second wife, Judith, with whom he lives in Paris.

He was the founder of Yad Vashem France, manager of the Foundation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah and trustee of the Brookings Institution Washington.

Legal career

In 1950, Pisar worked for the United Nations in New York and Paris. He returned to Washington in 1960 to become a member of John Fitzgerald Kennedy's economic and foreign policy task force. He was also an advisor to the State Department, the Senate and House committees.

As a lawyer, Pisar's clients included many Fortune 500 companies and many known business leaders of the 20th century. He is considered one of the most influential trade lawyers of our time. His legal books have been translated into many languages.

Literary career

Pisar's memoir, Of Blood and Hope, in which he tells the story of how he survived the Holocaust, received the Present Tense literary award in 1981. He has also written a narration based on his experiences and his anger at God, for Leonard Bernstein's Symphony No. 3 ("Kaddish"). He says that the idea came from Bernstein, who felt Pisar could bring a more authentic voice to the symphony than he could, not having gone through the Holocaust himself. After Bernstein's death and the attacks on the World Trade Center, Pisar wrote Dialogue with God, in which he expresses his concern for the future of mankind. In June 2009, the poem was recited by Pisar at a performance of Kaddish at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, Israel.

Honours

Among distinctions, he is a Commander of the French Legion of Honour and a Commander of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland. In March 1995 Pisar was appointed an Honorary Officer of the Order of Australia, "for service to international relations and human rights".

External links

• Harvard Law Bulletin Profile