Abraham Foxman

Abraham Henry Foxman (born May 1, 1940) is an American lawyer. He was National Director of the Anti-Defamation League from 1987 to 2015.

Early life

Foxman, an only son, was born in Baranovichi, just months after the Soviet Union took the town from Poland in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and incorporated it into the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. The town is now in Belarus. Foxman had Polish Jewish parents: Helen and Joseph Foxman.

Foxman's parents left him with his Polish Catholic nanny Bronislawa Kurpi in 1940 when they were ordered by Germans to enter a ghetto. Foxman was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church as Henryk Stanislaw Kurpi, and raised as a Catholic in Vilnius between 1940 and 1944 when (after several legal custody battles) he was returned to his parents.

Education and career

Foxman immigrated to the United States in 1950 with his parents. He graduated from the Yeshivah of Flatbush in Brooklyn, New York City. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the City College of New York and graduated with honors in history. Foxman also holds a law degree from the New York University School of Law. He did graduate work in Jewish studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and in international economics at The New School.