Samuel Pisar

Samuel Pisar (March 18, 1929 – July 27, 2015) was a Polish-American lawyer, author, and Holocaust survivor.

Early life Pisar was born in Białystok, Poland, to Jewish parents David and Helaina (née Suchowolska) Pisar. His father established the region's first taxi service.

His parents and younger sister Frieda were murdered in the Holocaust. Pisar was sent to the Majdanek, Bliżyn, Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, Oranienburg, and Dachau death camps and ultimately to the Engelberg Tunnel near Leonberg. At the end of the war, he escaped during a death march; after making a break into the forest, he found refuge in a US tank. He is the only Holocaust survivor of the 900 children of his Polish school.

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. After recovering from a bout of tuberculosis, he traveled to the United States and earned a juris doctor from Harvard University. His 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 wrote a narration, based on his experiences and his anger at God, for Leonard Bernstein's Symphony No. 3 ("Kaddish"). Pisar stated 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 Maxwell's death in a yachting accident, Pisar became Jeffrey Epstein's advisor.

Private life and honors Pisar married twice. He had two daughters by his first wife, Norma Pisar, and one, Leah Pisar (who worked in the White House for Bill Clinton),

Among distinctions, he was a Grand Officer of the French Legion of Honour by then President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2012 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 by Queen Elizabeth, "for service to international relations and human rights".

Death Pisar died from pneumonia on July 27, 2015, in Manhattan, aged 86.