Menachem Z. Rosensaft

Menachem Z. Rosensaft
Born (1948-05-01) May 1, 1948 (age 76)
Bergen-Belsen, Germany
NationalityAmerican
OccupationLawyer
SpouseJean Bloch Rosensaft

Menachem Z. Rosensaft (born 1948) is an attorney in New York and the founding chairman of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors.[1] He has been described on the front page of The New York Times as one of the most prominent of the survivors' sons and daughters.[2] He has served as national president of the Labor Zionist Alliance, and was active in the early stages of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. As psychologist Eva Fogelman has written: "Menachem Rosensaft's moral voice has gone beyond the responsibility he felt as a child of survivors to remember and educate. He felt the need to promote peace and a tolerant State of Israel as well. He wanted to bring to justice Nazi war criminals, to fight racism and bigotry, and to work toward the continuity of the Jewish people".[3]

Menachem Rosensaft is general counsel emeritus of the World Jewish Congress, the umbrella organization of Jewish communities around the world based in New York.[4] In September 2023, he stepped down as the WJC’s general counsel and associate executive vice president after serving in these positions since, respectively, 2009 and 2019.[5]

Since 2008, Menachem Rosensaft has been adjunct professor of law at Cornell Law School,[6][7] and was formerly a Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at Syracuse University College of Law.[8] In 2011, he was appointed lecturer in law at Columbia University Law School where he teaches a course on the law of genocide.[9] In May 2022, he was elected chairman of the Advisory Board of the Lower Saxony Memorials Foundation which oversees World War II memorial sites throughout the German state of Lower Saxony, including the site of the Nazi concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen.[10] He is the editor of God, Faith & Identity from the Ashes: Reflections of Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors,[11] and The World Jewish Congress: 1936-2016.[12] In April 2021, a volume of his poetry, Poems Born in Bergen-Belsen, was published by Kelsay Books.[13]

In July 2023, he was awarded an honorary PhD by the University of Tuzla in Bosnia and Herzegovina in recognition of his "contribution to raising awareness of the genocide against Bosnians in Srebrenica and the Holocaust, through the fight against the denial of crimes and the falsification of historical facts, and for contributing to peace building and the development of a culture of remembrance."[14]

  1. ^ Joseph Berger, "Displaced Persons", in Encyclopedia Judaica, 2nd ed. (2007), Vol. 5, p. 685.
  2. ^ William K. Stevens, "Reagan Cemetery Visit Criticized at Holocaust Survivors Ceremony", The New York Times, April 22, 1985, page A1.
  3. ^ Eva Fogelman, "Adult Offspring as Moral Voices", in Second Generations Voices, Reflections by Children of Holocaust Survivors and Perpetrators, Alan L. Berger & Naomi Berger [edd], Syracuse University Press, 2001, p. 214.
  4. ^ [Menachem Rosensaft, General Counsel Emeritus, World Jewish Congress website https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/bio/menachem-rosensaft]
  5. ^ “Judy Maltz, “‘At Some Point U.S. Jews Are Just Going to Tune Out’: Retiring WJC Executive’s Warning to Israel,” Haaretz, September 21, 2023, "World Jewish Congress".
  6. ^ Cornell University Law School, Faculty Bios
  7. ^ Cornell University Law School, Spotlight
  8. ^ Syracuse University College of Law, Faculty Members Archived 2010-06-09 at the Wayback Machine
  9. ^ Richard Perez-Pena, "The Lessons of Genocide, Taught by the Son of Parents Who Survived It," The New York Times, November 5, 2011, page A16
  10. ^ News release, Stiftung niedersächsische Gedenkstätten, "New appointees to the Advisory Board that supports the work of the Lower Saxony memorials," https://www.stiftung-ng.de/en/news/news-detailseite/news/detail/News/new-appointees-to-the-advisory-board-that-supports-the-work-of-the-lower-saxony-memorials/
  11. ^ God, Faith & Identity from the Ashes: Reflections of Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors (2014)
  12. ^ The World Jewish Congress: 1936-2016 (2017)
  13. ^ Rosensaft, Menachem Z. (27 February 2021). Poems Born in Bergen-Belsen. Kelsay Books. ISBN 978-1952326547.
  14. ^ "Honorary doctorate degrees".