Professor George D. Schwab, a co-founder of the Open public foundation “Liepājas ebreju mantojums”, an American historian, political scientist and public figure was born on November 25, 1931 in Liepaja (Libau), Latvia.
After the German occupation in 1941, his father, a prominent doctor in the city, Arkady Schwab, was arrested and then shot at the Nazi lighthouse massacre. His elder brother was shot at the end of the war in Riga. George Schwab, together with his mother, managed to survive in the Liepaja ghetto, in the Kaiserwald concentration camp, and later in concentration camps in Germany. In 1947, he and his mother emigrated to the United States.
In 1974, he co-founded the US National Foreign Policy Committee and was its president from 1993 to 2015.
Professor Schwab began his teaching career at Columbia in New York City in 1959. Since then he has lectured around the world. He has also lectured widely on his concept of The Open-Society Bloc, and among other institutions, at the universities in Germany. He has actively participated in international gatherings in Tokyo; Paris (the Nobel Laureate conference at the Elysée Palace , 1988); Jerusalem; Washington, D.C. and New York.
He retired from teaching in 2000 and is currently Professor Emeritus of City College and the Graduate Center, as well as of the National Committee.
He actively maintains close ties with Latvia. He is one of the initiators and organizers of Reunions of Liepāja Jewish Survivors and their descendants, the last of which took place in 2019 in Liepāja.
George Schwab is the vice-president of the American organization “Jewish Survivors of Latvia”.
His awards include:
- Order of the Three Stars (Latvia) (2002)
- Ellis Island Medal of Honor (May 1998)
- Elie Wiesel Award (2018) bestowed by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The Holocaust Comes to Libau” lecture from the University of Oxford