Jack Eisner (1925 - 2003) was a Holocaust survivor, educator, author, and accomplished businessman. As a teenager in Poland under Nazi occupation, he smuggled food to Jewish families and fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising before he was imprisoned in a series of concentration camps, including Majdanek, Budzyn, Flossenburg, and Dachau. One of two survivors in a family that lost more than 100 members, he helped the U.S. government track war criminals in the aftermath of WWII and served as a witness at the trial of Nazis at Dachau. He immigrated to New York City in 1949 and went on to build his import-export company, Stafford Industries, into a $50-million business, often using the acumen gleaned from his black-market experiences in the Warsaw ghetto. He then spent the last 25 years of his life bearing witness to the horrors of the Holocaust. He founded the Holocaust Survivors Memorial Foundation, established first Institute of Holocaust Studies at the Graduate Center at CUNY, worked with other survivors to found the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance Foundation, and created a permanent monument in the Warsaw Jewish Cemetery dedicated to the memory of the Jewish children murdered during the Holocaust. His bestselling autobiography, The Survivor of the Holocaust, was adapted into a Broadway play as well as a full-length film released in 1985 as ""War and Love."" A leader in promoting Jewish-Christian relations via dialogue, he was the driving force behind the first ever Holocaust Commemoration at the Vatican with Pope John Paul II. He was survived by his wife and three children.
Praise for Jack Eisner’s The Survivor of the Holocaust: ""Searingly unforgettable...His experiences are so astonishing that often we forget we are reading about a teenager."" —Publishers Weekly ""We are fortunate in having the recollections, the courage, and the poetry of a man who survived and remembers it as it was."" —Abby, Mann, author of Judgement at Nuremberg ""There is something overwhelming, indeed terrifying, in trying to respond to the experience of this Jewish boy, Jack Eisner, characterized by the insuppressible will to live."" —Irving Howe, author of World of Our Fathers ""A powerful, devastating, yet ultimately uplifting memoir about the strength and courage of the human spirit against incredible odds. It is a brave and extraordinary book."" —Susan Strasberg, actress and author of Bittersweet ""An extraordinary account of the will to live and incredible human courage."" —Harold M. Proshansky, President, The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York