WASHINGTON (JTA) — Top U.S. officials who deal with the Holocaust will represent the United States at the 70th anniversary commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
President Obama appointed the delegation, which will be led by Stephen Mull, the U.S. ambassador to Poland, on Tuesday for the commemoration to be held three days later.
The delegation includes Douglas Davidson, the State Department’s special envoy for Holocaust issues; Lesley Weiss, the chairwoman of the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, the body that deals with buildings and cemeteries that belonged to U.S. citizens who fled Holocaust-era Europe; Joseph Gutman, a member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council; and Estelle Laughlin, a survivor of the Jewish ghetto, where insurgents rose up against the Nazis 70 years ago.
Weiss also is the director of community services and cultural affairs for the NCSJ, the body that deals with Jews in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
Gutman, a Chicago-based director of a hedge fund firm who is the child of a survivor, also has been involved in that city’s Jewish federation, Taglit-Birthright Israel and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Laughlin, who has published an account of her survival titled "Transcending Darkness," is a volunteer at the U.S. Holocaust museum.
