- Janusz Korczak
Janusz Korczak, the pen name of Henryk Goldszmit (July 22, 1878 or 1879 - August, 1942) was a Polish-Jewish children's author, pediatrician, and child pedagogist, known as "Old Doctor" ("Stary Doktor"). - Menachem Begin
"'"' (August 16, 1913 – March 9, 1992) was a Polish-Jewish head of the Zionist underground group the Irgun, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and the first Likud Prime Minister of Israel. Though revered by many Israelis, Begin’s legacy remains highly controversial and divisive. As the leader of Irgun, Begin played a central role in Jewish military resistance to the British Mandate of Palestine, but was strongly deplored and consequently sidelined by mainstream Zionist leadership. - Emanuel Ringelblum
Emanuel Ringelblum was a Polish-Jewish historian, politician and social worker, known for his "Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto", "Notes on the Refugees in Zbąszyn" chronicling the deportation of Jews from the town of Zbąszyn, and the so-called Ringelblum's Archives of the Warsaw Ghetto. - Jan Brzechwa
Jan Brzechwa, real name Jan Wiktor Lesman (August 15, 1898 - July 2, 1966) was a Polish poet and author, mostly known for his contribution to children's literature. He was also a famous translator of Russian literature, translating mostly works by Aleksandr Pushkin, Sergey Yesienin and Vladimir Mayakovskiy. He was married twice and had a daughter, Krystyna, from his first marriage. "Brzechwa" is the writer's pseudonym; it is a name for the flight, … - Maurice Sendak
Maurice Bernard Sendak (born June 10, 1928) is an American writer and illustrator of children's literature who is best known for his book "Where the Wild Things Are," published in 1963. An elementary school (from kindergarten to grade five) in North Hollywood, California is named in his honor. Sendak was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Polish-Jewish immigrant parents, … - Marcel Reich-Ranicki
Marcel Reich-Ranicki (born 2 June, 1920) is a famous German literary critic, and a member of the literary group Gruppe 47 of German and Polish-Jewish origin. He is regarded as one of the most influential literary critics of the German literature in the 20th century. - Adam Czerniaków
Adam Czerniaków was a Polish-Jewish engineer and senator, born in Warsaw, Poland. He committed suicide in the Warsaw Ghetto on July 23, 1942. He studied engineering and taught in the Jewish community's vocational school in Warsaw. From 1927 to 1934 he served as a member of the Warsaw Municipal Council, and in 1931 he was elected to the Polish Senate. On October 4, 1939, a few days after the city's surrender to the Nazis, Czerniakow was made head of the 24 member Judenrat, … - Eli Wallach
Eli Herschel Wallach (born December 7, 1915) is an American film, TV and stage actor. - Lisa Appignanesi
Lisa Appignanesi is a writer and novelist of Polish-Jewish origin. She was raised in Paris, France and in Montreal, Canada. She graduated from McGill University with a B.A. degree in 1966 and her M.A. the following year. During 1970-71 she was a staff writer for the Centre for Community Research in New York City and is a former University of Essex lecturer in European Studies. - Isaac Erter
Isaac Erter ("Yitzhak Erter") was a Polish-Jewish satirist; born 1792 at Janischok, Galicia; died 1851 at Brody. The first part of his life was full of struggles and hardships. After having associated for many years with the Hasidim, he settled at Lemberg; and through the efforts of some of his friends, such as Rapoport, Krochmal, and others, he obtained pupils whom he instructed in Hebrew language and other subjects. - Uri Orlev
Uri Orlev (born Jerzy Henryk Orlowski in 1931) is an award-winning Israeli children's author and translator of Polish-Jewish origin. Born in Warsaw, Poland, he survived the war years in the Warsaw Ghetto and the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (where he was sent after his mother was shot by the Nazis). After the war he moved to Israel. He began writing children's literature in 1976 and has since published over 30 books, which are often biographical. - André Schwarz-Bart
André Schwarz-Bart was a French novelist of Polish-Jewish origins. Schwarz-Bart was author of what is regarded as one of the greatest literary works of the post-World War II period, "The Last of the Just" (originally published as "Le Dernier des justes"). The book, which traces the story of a Jewish family from the time of the Crusades to the gates of Auschwitz, earned Schwarz-Bart the Prix Goncourt in 1959. He won the Jerusalem Prize in 1967. - Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski
Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski , Polish-Jewish industrialist and Zionist activist, functioned as the Nazi-nominated head of the "Judenrat", or Jewish authorities in the Łódź Ghetto. Some remember him for his haunting and controversial speech, "Give Me Your Children". Before the Nazi German invasion of Poland, Rumkowski, a Russian Jew by origin, had had a career as an unsuccessful businessman and director of an orphanage. - Stanisław Saks
Stanisław Saks was a Polish mathematician and university tutor, known primarily for his membership in the Scottish Café circle, an extensive monograph on the Theory of Integrals, his works on measure theory and the Vitali-Hahn-Saks theorem. Stanisław Saks was born December 30, 1897 in Kalisz, then part of the German Empire, to an assimilated Polish-Jewish family. In 1915 he graduated from a local gymnasium and joined the newly-recreated Warsaw University. - Simhah Pinsker
Simhah Pinsker (Hebrew: שמחה פינסקר) was a Polish-Jewish scholar and archeologist born at Tarnopol, Galicia. He received his early Hebrew education in the cheider and from his father, Shebaḥ ha-Levi, a noted preacher, who instructed him in mathematics and German language also. - Tobias Cohn
Tobias Cohn or Tobias Kohn (in Hebrew, Toviyyah ben Moshe ha-Kohen; in Polish, Tobiasz Kohn) (also referred to as Toviyah Kats) (1652-1729) was a Polish-Jewish physician of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He was born at Metz, 1652. - Sara Sommerfeld
Sara Anita Sommerfeld (born October 28, 1977) is a Swedish actress. Sara Sommerfeld was born in Sollentuna north of Stockholm as the daughter of Polish-Jewish parents who came to Sweden in 1968. She started as a child actress at the age of ten. Since she graduated from the Swedish National Theatre Academy in Gothenburg in 2001, she have starred in several feature films, TV series, radio shows and voice overs, and performed at different theatres around Sweden. - Michael Klinger
Michael Klinger (1920-1989) was an English-born film producer of Polish-Jewish descent. During the 1960s and 1970s he produced a number of horror and sex-comedy movies and some soft porn. - Jan T. Gross
Jan Tomasz Gross (born December 8, 1947 in Warsaw)- an American historian of Polish Jewish origin. He is the Norman B. Tomlinson '16 and '48 Professor of War and Society at Princeton University. He was raised in Poland, and attended Warsaw University. He emigrated to the United States in 1969 after being imprisoned during the March 1968 events. He later earned a Ph.D. in sociology from Yale University, and has taught at Yale, NYU, and Paris, in addition to Princeton. - Yelena Khanga
Yelena Khanga (aka Elena Khanga) was born (1962) and raised in Moscow, Russia, USSR, and came to the United States in 1990 to write (with Susan Jacoby) "Soul to Soul: The Story of a Black Russian American Family: 1865 - 1992". Khanga divides her time between New York City and Moscow. The daughter of Abdullah Kassim (onetime vice president of Zanzibar) and Lily (a historian and educator; maiden name, Golden) Khanga (pronounced Han ga), … - Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski (born August 18, 1933) is a film director, writer, actor and producer. After beginning his career in Poland, he became a celebrated arthouse filmmaker, and Hollywood director of such films as "Rosemary's Baby" (1968) and "Chinatown" (1974). He is also known for his tumultuous personal life. In 1969, his wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered by the Manson Family. - Leonard Cohen
Leonard Norman Cohen, CC (born September 21, 1934 in Westmount, Montreal, Quebec) is a Canadian singer-songwriter, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. Cohen's earliest songs (many of which appeared on the 1968 album "Songs of Leonard Cohen") were rooted in European folk music melodies and instrumentation, sung in a high baritone. - Shimon Peres
"' (born Szymon Perski"' on August 2, 1923 in eastern Poland) is the 9th President of the State of Israel. He is a senior Israeli statesman with a political career spanning more than 65 years. He joined the Knesset in November 1959 and, except for a three-month-long hiatus in early 2006, served continuously until June 13, 2007, the day he was elected President of Israel. - Ehud Barak
Ehud Barak is an Israeli politician, former Prime Minster, and current Minister of Defense, deputy prime minister and leader of Israel's Labor Party. Barak served as the 10th Prime Minister of Israel from 1999 to 2001. After losing the 2001 election, Barak embarked on a business career. On June 12, 2007, he completed a political comeback by winning election to the Labor Party leadership. He was appointed as Israeli Minister of Defence, … - Simon Wiesenthal
Simon Wiesenthal, KBE, (Buczacz, December 31, 1908 - Vienna, September 20, 2005) was an Austrian-Jewish architectural engineer who became a Nazi hunter after surviving the Holocaust. Following four and a half years in the concentration camps of Janowska, Plaszow, and Mauthausen during World War II, … - Max Weber
Max Weber was an American painter who worked in the style of cubism before migrating to Jewish themes towards the end of his life. Born in Białystok, part of Poland belonging to Russia at that time, he immigrated to America with his parents at the age of 10. He studied art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn under Arthur Wesley Dow. - Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg was a Jewish Polish-born Marxist political theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary. She was a theorist of the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland, later becoming involved in the German SPD, followed by the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany. She started the journal "Die Rote Fahne" (The Red Flag). - Daniel Libeskind
Daniel Libsekind's architectural designs are endless juxtapositions. They honor the historical yet are unapologetically modern. Some view his work, such as the spiral addition to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, as controversial - while others view it as a brilliant representation of modern-day architecture in all its glory. His work harmoniously combines materials, shapes, and structure in a way most thought impossible, improbable, and many would even say, questionable. - Helena Rubinstein
Helena Rubinstein (December 25, 1872 Krakau, Austria-Hungary (now Poland) - April 1, 1965 New York, USA) was a Polish-American cosmetics industrialist. She was the founder and eponym of Helena Rubinstein, Incorporated, which made her one of the world's richest women. At the age of 18, she moved to Australia, where she mixed medical formulas and ointments. In 1902, she opened the world's first beauty salon in Melbourne. In 1908, she opened a beauty salon in London, … - Russ Feingold
Russell Dana "Russ" Feingold (born March 2, 1953) is an American politician from the U.S. state of Wisconsin. He has served as a Democratic member of the U.S. Senate and the junior Senator from Wisconsin since 1993. A recipient of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award, Feingold is best known for his maverick voting and cosponsorship of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act ("McCain-Feingold Bill"), a major piece of campaign finance reform legislation, … - Daniel Pipes
Daniel Pipes (born September 9, 1949) is an American historian and counter-terrori sm analyst who specializes in the Middle East. He has written or co-written 18 books, maintains a blog, and lectures around the world presenting his analysis of world trends. His work has attracted both admiration and criticism as a result of his view that Islamism is incompatible with democracy, freedom, multiculturalis m, and human rights. - Bruno Schulz
Bruno Schulz (July 12, 1892 - November 19, 1942) was a Polish novelist and painter, widely considered to be one of the greatest Polish prose stylists of the 20th century. Schulz was born in Drohobycz, at the time when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in the province of Galicia (now Drohobych is in Ukraine) to assimiliated Jewish parents. - Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder was an Austrian-born, Jewish-American journalist, screenwriter, film director, and producer whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age. Many of Wilder's films achieved both critical and public acclaim. - David Ben-Gurion
"'"' (October 16, 1886 – December 1, 1973;) was the first Prime Minister of Israel. Ben-Gurion's passion for Zionism, which began early in life, culminated in his instrumental role in the founding of the state of Israel. After leading Israel to victory in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Ben-Gurion helped build the state institutions and oversaw the absorption of vast numbers of Jews from all over the world. Upon retiring from political life in 1970, he moved to Sde Boker, … - Francis de Sales
Francis de Sales (Solomon) Lewental was a Polish Jewish publisher; born at Wloclawek, Russian Poland, 1839; died at Wiesbaden on September 24, 1902. In 1862 Lewental, the son of poor Jewish parents, bought with his accumulated savings the press of the Warsaw publisher John Glücksberg (d. 1859), and began his career with the "Kalendarz Ludowy," a popular almanac, which he continued until 1866. In 1865, in conjunction with others, he founded "Kłosy," an illustrated weekly, … - Adam Michnik
Adam Michnik is the editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza a major Polish newspaper, where he sometimes writes under the pen-names of Andrzej Zagozda or Andrzej Jagodziński. In 1968-1989 he was one of the leading organizers of the illegal, democratic opposition in Poland. Historian, essayist, political publicist. The laureate of many awards, for example: a Knight of the Legion of Honour. - Bronisław Geremek
Professor Bronisław Geremek (IPA: ,(born Berele Lewartow March 6, 1932 in Warsaw, Poland) is a Polish social historian and politician. He is of Jewish origin, the son of a rabbi. Geremek was a member of the communist Polish United Workers' Party from 1950 until 1968, but later became an advisor to Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa. - Marek Edelman
Marek Edelman is a Jewish-Polish political and social activist, cardiologist, and the last living leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Born in 1922 in Homel (now Belarus), he soon moved with his parents to Warsaw. In 1942, as a youth leader in the Bund, Edelman was among the founders of the underground Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa (Jewish Fighting Organization). In the Warsaw ghetto uprising of April-May 1943, led by head-commander Mordechai Anielewicz, … - Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet (born June 25 1924 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American film director, with over 50 films to his name, including the critically acclaimed "12 Angry Men" (1957), "Dog Day Afternoon" (1975), "Network" (1976) and "The Verdict" (1982), all of which earned him Academy Award nominations for Best Director. He won an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2005, for his "brilliant services to screenwriters, … - Isaac Bashevis Singer
Isaac Bashevis Singer (November 21, 1902 (see notes below) – July 24, 1991) was a Nobel Prize-winning Polish born American writer of both short stories and novels. He wrote in Yiddish.
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