25 October 2006
Benjamin Meed, a key figure in spreading awareness of the Holocaust in the United States, has died in New York aged 88. Born in Warsaw as Benjamin Miedzyrzecki, Meed survived the ghetto and slave labor during World War II. He set up the World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors in 1981 in Israel, established the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors in 1983 and led it until his death; served on the advisory board of the President's Commission on the Holocaust, which recommended establishing the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, and served on the memorial's governing council from 1980 to 2004. Meed also helped to establish a registry of Jewish Holocaust victims that united survivors and their families. Meed "left an enormous legacy to the world - not just to survivors, but to the entire world," said Arthur Berger, a senior adviser to the Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Because of what he did, you have these commemorations not only in the Capitol Rotunda on Yom Hashoah but also in every state in the United States. He was really a great man." The funeral service is to be held Friday at the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan.
