{"id":92540,"date":"2026-05-13T05:31:29","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T10:31:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/?p=92540"},"modified":"2026-05-14T06:37:49","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T11:37:49","slug":"at-abraham-foxmans-funeral-an-elegy-for-the-last-generation-with-direct-ties-to-the-holocaust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/at-abraham-foxmans-funeral-an-elegy-for-the-last-generation-with-direct-ties-to-the-holocaust\/","title":{"rendered":"At Abraham Foxman\u2019s funeral, an elegy for the last generation with direct ties to the Holocaust"},"content":{"rendered":"

By ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL<\/p>\n

(JTA) \u2014 As mourners gathered Tuesday for the funeral of Abraham Foxman, they were saying goodbye not only to one of the most influential Jewish leaders of the last half-century, but to one of the dwindling number whose moral authority was forged in the Holocaust itself.<\/p>\n

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Pallbearers escort the casket at the funeral of Abraham Foxman at Park Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan, May 12, 2026. (JTA)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Foxman, who died Sunday at 86, spent decades as one of the world\u2019s most recognizable Jewish advocates, serving for nearly 30 years as the ADL\u2019s top professional and another two decades before that in its leadership ranks. Presidents sought his counsel. Antisemites sought his absolution. Popes welcomed him. Prime ministers argued with him.<\/p>\n

Many of the speakers at Park Avenue Synagogue credited his accomplishments to his outsized personality, his sense of humor and his intuitive leadership skills. And yet his past hung heavy over the funeral, which also served as an elegy for the last generation of survivors and how, like Foxman, they shaped Jewish communal life in the years after World War II and the founding of Israel. Born in Poland, Foxman survived the war in the care of his Catholic nanny.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis life story of rising from the ashes is our story,\u201d said Israel\u2019s president, Isaac Herzog, in a video tribute. \u201cIt is the story of our people born in the world at war. The Holocaust shaped Abe\u2019s character and defined his mission to combat antisemitism and hypocrisy, to call up racism and bias, to speak up for the Jewish people and a Jewish democratic state of Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others recalled that beyond fighting antisemitism, Foxman\u2019s past inspired him to build a communal juggernaut that championed pluralism, democracy and civil rights.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe knew exactly what the absence of those things looked like,\u201d said Stacy Burdett, a former ADL colleague, referring to the Holocaust. \u201cAbe lived in our world as a moral witness, not just to what human beings can survive, but to what they\u2019re obligated to defend.\u201d<\/p>\n

Packing the sanctuary were Jewish communal leaders, former ADL colleagues and bold-face Jewish activists such as the lawyer Alan Dershowitz and the New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. (Not able to attend was Jonathan Greenblatt, Foxman\u2019s successor at ADL, whose mother died in Florida on Saturday.)<\/p>\n

When they weren\u2019t recalling Foxman\u2019s early trauma and subsequent accomplishments, eulogists painted a portrait of a Jewish communal warrior as a consummate hugger.<\/p>\n

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Abe Foxman delivering remarks on April 23, 2025, during the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Annual Days of Remembrance ceremony held at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. Inset, Foxman with the nanny who hid him during the Holocaust, Bronislawa Kurpi. (Getty Images; Inset: The Heschel School)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Thomas Friedman sent a video tribute, recalling how they met when the future New York Times columnist was a camper and Foxman was a counselor at Herzl Camp in Webster, Wisconsin. (That\u2019s also where Foxman met his wife, Golda, who survives him, as do his two children and four grandchildren.) Friedman said that no matter how often or angrily they disagreed over something Friedman had written, usually about Israel, Foxman would sign off with affection.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s true, if Abe really disagreed with you, you always knew because his text would end \u2018love you, hugs,\u2019\u201d said Burdett. \u201cThe more strongly he disagreed, the more hugs and the more emojis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Former White House domestic policy adviser Susan Rice, in a video tribute, recalled shouting matches with Foxman during the Biden administration that left aides outside her office terrified.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd when Abe and I emerged laughing and hugging,\u201d she said, \u201cwe both had to reassure my team that all was fine, that we loved each other and not to worry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rice credited Foxman with helping shape the Biden administration\u2019s national strategy to combat antisemitism, and thanked him for defending her when others attacked her personally for administration positions on Iran and Israel.<\/p>\n

But even as his children and grandchildren recalled Foxman as a family man, the shadow of the Holocaust fell across the synagogue\u2019s ornate, Moorish-style sanctuary.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou were a hidden child,\u201d his daughter Michelle said, \u201cand at the same time, you sought to hide the trauma from your children.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said she learned much of her father\u2019s Holocaust story not from conversations at home but from his speeches, interviews and articles.<\/p>\n

Foxman, who became ADL\u2019s national director emeritus when he stepped down in 2015, was certainly among the last survivors to lead a major Jewish organization.<\/p>\n

Fewer and fewer of those witnesses remain; according to the Claims Conference, as of January 2026, an estimated 196,600 Jewish Holocaust survivors are still alive. Nearly all are \u201cchild survivors\u201d who were born after 1928.<\/p>\n

In discussing how Foxman\u2019s childhood shaped his activism, Sarah Bloomfield, director of the United State Holocaust Memorial Museum, recalled his traumatic childhood. His Polish Jewish parents fled to present-day Vilnius after the Nazi invasion of Poland; when Vilnius too came under Nazi control, his parents left him in the care of his nanny, who baptized him as a Catholic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is what he said: \u2018I\u2019m only here because one Polish woman made a choice to save a Jewish child,\u2019\u201d Bloomfield recalled Foxman telling her. \u201cShe risked her life to protect the life of another human being, a Jewish child in Hitler\u2019s Europe. Her name was Bronislawa Kurpi.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, senior rabbi of Park Avenue Synagogue, said Foxman was less interested in the \u201clogistics\u201d behind his survival (he and his parents were only reunited after several bitter lawsuits) than in the \u201csingular moral act\u201d of his rescuer. \u201cIn a world consumed by fire,\u201d Cosgrove said, \u201cone human being chose courage, one person chose decency, one person chose light.\u201d<\/p>\n

His grandson Gideon recalled asking Foxman how his history shaped his life\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said that he felt obligated to make something of himself so that all the other Jewish children who perished in the Holocaust didn\u2019t die in vain,\u201d Gideon said.<\/p>\n

And up until the end, said Burdett, Foxman was still feeling that obligation, shaped by a cataclysm that for many is becoming a distant memory, when recalled at all.<\/p>\n

She recited his remarks last year during Yom Hashoah ceremonies at the U.S. Capitol.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a [Holocaust] survivor, my antenna quivers when I see books being banned, when I see people being abducted in the streets, when I see government trying to dictate what universities should teach and whom they should teach,\u201d Foxman said at the time. \u201cAs a survivor who came to this country as an immigrant, I\u2019m troubled when I hear immigrants and immigration being demonized.\u201d<\/p>\n

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