Abraham Foxman, 47, has been appointed national director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, succeeding the late Nathan Perlmutter, ADL national chairman Burton Levinson announced Monday.
Foxman served as associate national director and head of the ADL’s International Affairs Division since 1978. He and Perlmutter were a “remarkable team,” Levinson said. “Thanks to the unusually close relationship, both personal and professional, ADL is assured the continuity of leadership essential to continued progress in meeting the many challenges which confront the world Jewish community.”
Foxman received a law degree from New York University Law School. He is also a graduate of City University of New York and did graduate work in advanced Judaic studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and in international economics at the New School for Social Research.
He is a member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, the advisory council to the New York City Holocaust Memorial Commission and the New Jersey Advisory Council on Holocaust Education.
Born in Poland in 1940, he was saved from the Holocaust by a Polish Christian nursemaid who claimed him as her own child after his parents were imprisoned by the Nazis. He was baptized and raised as a Catholic in early childhood, until reunited with his parents, Helen and the late Joseph Foxman, in 1946. Sixteen family members died in the Holocaust.
The Foxmans arrived in the U.S. in 1950. Abraham Foxman was educated at the Yeshiva of Flatbush (NY). In addition to English, he is fluent in Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish and Russian.
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