On Saturday, Dr. Ekstrom and I had the pleasure of dining once again with Professor George Schwab in New York City. Professor Schwab, a Latvian Holocaust survivor and author of Odyssey of a Child Survivor: From Latvia Through the Camps to the United States (we strongly encourage anyone with a love of history to read this book, available on Amazon), is one of the most pleasant, kind, and thoughtful human beings we know. His love for chocolate adds a sweet touch to his remarkable personality.
George D. Schwab, born on November 25, 1931, in Liepāja, Latvia, is a distinguished American political scientist, editor, and academic. A survivor of the Holocaust, his early life was marked by immense hardship in a series of concentration camps in Latvia and Germany. He immigrated to the United States, where he pursued higher education, earning a B.A. from the City College of New York and both an M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University.
Professor Schwab began his illustrious teaching career at Columbia in 1959. He later joined The City College of New York and the Graduate Center, CUNY, where he served in various capacities until his retirement in 2000. As a co-founder of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy in 1974, Schwab significantly impacted American foreign policy discussions. His leadership as president of the committee from 1993 to 2015 was pivotal, including efforts to bring together the IRA, Unionists, and the UK to end violence in Ireland.
