Pisar was born in Białystok, Poland, to David and Helaina Pisar. His father established the region's first taxi service. His parents and younger sister Frieda were murdered by German Nazis. Pisar was sent to Majdanek, Bliżyn, Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, Oranienburg, Dachau and ultimately to the Engelberg Tunnel near Leonberg. At the end of the war, he escaped during a death march. 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. An uncle sent him to Melbourne, Australia, where he resumed his studies. He attended George Taylor and Staff School and went on to attain a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Melbourne in 1953. After recovering from a bout of tuberculosis, he traveled to the United States and earned a Juris Doctor from Harvard University. He also held a doctorate from the Sorbonne.
Marriages
Pisar was married twice. He had two daughters from his first wife, Norma Pisar, and one from his second wife, Judith, with whom he lived in Paris and New York City. His stepson, Judith's son, Anthony Blinken is a former Deputy Secretary of State.
Other
Pisar co-founded Yad Vashem-France, is a Director of the Foundation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, and a Trustee of the Brookings Institution Washington.
In 1950, Pisar worked for the United Nations in New York and Paris. He returned to Washington in 1960 to become a member of John Fitzgerald Kennedy's economic and foreign policy task force. He was also an advisor to the State Department, the Senate and House committees. As a lawyer, Pisar's clients included many Fortune 500 companies and many known business leaders of the 20th and 21st century. 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. He 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 Bernstein's death and the attacks on the World Trade Center, Pisar wrote Dialogue with God, in which he expressed his concern for the future of mankind. In June 2009, the poem was recited by Pisar at a performance of Kaddish at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, Israel.
