Samuel Pisar, a Holocaust survivor who went on to become a lawyer and writer, as well as an adviser to President John F. Kennedy, has died.
Pisar, 86, died July 27 in New York.
A native of Poland, Pisar spent time in several Nazi camps, including Majdanek, Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen and Dachau. He escaped during a death march at the end of World War II.
After the war he earned a doctorate in law from Harvard University. He also was awarded a doctorate from the Sorbonne in France.
Pisar was the founder of Yad Vashem France. He also wrote an award-winning memoir, “Of Blood and Hope,” about how he survived the Holocaust.
Pisar became a member of Kennedy’s economic and foreign policy task force in 1960, and served as an adviser to the State Department.
Secretary of State John Kerry in a statement called Pisar “a man of enormous resilience and inspiring courage.” — jta