Funeral services were held here today for Alexander Donat, whose memoir, “The Holocaust Kingdom,” is considered a preeminent work in the field of Holocaust literature. He died here Thursday of pulmonary illness at the Mount Sinai Medical Center. He was 78 years old. Born in Warsaw where he had published a daily newspaper before World War II, Donat’s newspaper was confiscated by the Nazis and he and his wife, Leona, were imprisoned in concentration camps. He was liberated from Dachau by American troops and returned to Warsaw where he found his wife and their son, whom friends had placed in a Catholic orphanage. They came to the United States and started a printing business. He established in 1977 the nonprofit publishing program, the Holocaust Library Publications that brought many books on the experience of Jews in Europe during World War II. He was chairman of the advisory board of the Holocaust Library at the time of his death.
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