Understanding Blinken Through His Stepfather, Holocaust Survivor Samuel Pisar

Secretary of State-elect Antony Blinken was reared for his job. His father, Donald Blinken, was an American Ambassador to Hungary in the post-Communist years of 1994-1998. His stepfather, Samuel Pisar, with whom Antony began to live with at age nine, was an international lawyer in Paris and New York, with PhDs from both the Sorbonne and Harvard.

Blinken’s home with Pisar was a gathering place of artists and musicians, presidents and prime ministers, philosophers and writers from the East and West. Blinken grew up watching his stepfather attempt to bridge the gap between the then Soviet Union and the West at a time when divisions were deep and discourse strained.

But what stuck with Blinken the most, as evidenced by his speech accepting his nomination, was how far his stepfather had come. Pisar, as Blinken mentioned, “was one of 900 children in his school in Białystok, Poland, but the only one to survive the Holocaust after four years in concentration camps.”

Blinken’s invocation of his stepfather in his acceptance speech prompted me to reread Samuel Pisar’s memoir, “Of Blood and Hope,” which he wrote in the late 1970s at the peak of his distinguished career. Like many survivors’ memoirs, Pisar’s work is divided into a Before, During and After. Unusually, however, Pisar gives more attention to his hopes as a man of prominence — a man who is comfortable in the corridors of power but deeply uncomfortable with the direction that government and industry leaders were taking to the world.

The Before

Pisar was born to an affluent family in Bialystok, Poland, where Jews constituted almost half of the city’s 91,000 residents. His early life was comfortable; his father established the first taxicab company in the region and his family were well-integrated into the Jewish and general community. But war shattered the tranquility of a ten-year old Sam’s life.

The During

On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland from the West, and 16 days later, the Soviet Union invaded from the East, dividing Poland. Bialystok was under the control of the Soviets, who did formally end anti-Semitism but were hostile to all religions and punished individual capitalists and bourgeois. Polish citizens were offered Soviet citizenship in 1940. Those who declined faced deportation to the East, where they would likely face starvation, disease, extreme temperatures and malnutrition — but not systematic murder, so most survived. The Pisars accepted Soviet citizenship and stayed in Bialystok.

When the Germans attacked Soviet forces in June 1941, the Jewish of Bialystok, the Pisars among them, were ghettoized. Samuel’s father David was taken away one morning and shot, leaving 12-year-old Samuel with his mother, Helania, and younger sister, Freida.

Polish ghettos were a place of hunger and squalor. For the Jews, ghettos constituted a way of life. For their captors, ghettos were a place to contain the Jews until the infrastructure for their destruction — industrialized killing centers with gassing facilities — was set in place. Death camps were opened in the winter of 1942, and within 15 months, 80% of the Jews murdered in the Holocaust were already dead.

In 1942, Samuel was deported with his mother and sister, both of whom were killed upon arrival. The 13-year-old Samuel avoided immediate death by declaring himself 18. His three years in captivity took him to the slave labor camps of Majdanek and Blizyn, the death camp of Auschwitz, the German concentration camps of Sachsenhausen, Oranienburg, Dachau and finally to the slave labor complex of the Engelberg Tunnel.

With the help of two friends, Ben and Niko, Pisar resisted the isolation and loneliness, desperation and despair as he went from camp to camp, and he made it to liberation.

With the help of two friends, Pisar resisted the despair as he went from camp to camp, and he made it to liberation.

Blinken repeated the story his stepfather told of liberation in his confirmation speech:

The tank resumed its advance [toward the barn], lumbering cautiously toward me. I looked for the hateful swastika, but there wasn’t one…Instead, I made out an unfamiliar emblem. It was the five-pointed white star…I was in front of the tank, waving my arms. The hatch opened. A big Black man climbed out, swearing unintelligibly at me…I fell at the Black man’s feet, threw my arms around his legs and yelled at the top of my lungs: “God bless America.”

Even with his freedom, Pisar could not go home. There was no one waiting for him. Pisar stayed with Niko and Ben in the immediate post war years, and the trio put their survival skills to hustle, profit and prosper — all the while living on the edge. Pisar tells the story with verve and pride, knowing how he later learned to use his survival skills creatively, legally, brilliantly.

Pisar’s maternal uncles invited him to Australia, where he was tamed, began his education and tried to adapt to the norms of society. With a caring family and the protections of democracy and order, Pisar discovered that not only could he survive, but also that he was gifted. Ben joined him, furthering their deep and enduring friendship.

Pisar excelled in school and was admitted to Harvard for a PhD in Law, where he met other gifted refugee boys, among them Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski. At his graduation, Senator John F. Kennedy was awarded an honorary doctorate, together with Cardinal Cushing of Boston and future Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon. At the ceremony. Kennedy joked, “four doctorates were awarded today; only one of them earned.”

Pisar chose to begin his career a working as a U.N. diplomat in Paris. Like many of his generation, he was roped into the Kennedy Administration. After a time in government, Pisar began his work as an international lawyer in Paris and New York, becoming an advocate of globalization through legal work and through his well-received book, “Coexistence and Commerce.” Having lived under Soviet rule and been less-than-impressed with Soviet power, Pisar saw commerce as the key to coexistence. He also despaired over the burgeoning arms race, calling it madness.

Secretary Blinken

Given Blinken’s acknowledgment of Pisar in his speech, one can’t help but wonder what additional impact Pisar might have on Blinken as secretary of state. Several suggestions come to mind:

He is a natural diplomat. Blinken has been around diplomats and world leaders since the age of nine. Before he studied the craft, Blinken saw it around his family’s table. He will need no learning curve.

He understands evil. No one who grew up in a survivor’s home cannot understand human cruelty and the dangers of authoritarianism. No one needs a reminder of the importance of human rights, human dignity and human decency. Blinken lived with people who knew what it was like to be enslaved, who yearned for freedom, who never took freedom for granted and who cherished its blessings.

He will take Holocaust denial personally. When the leaders of Iran, other radical Islamic regimes, white supramacists and neo-Nazi proclaim that the Holocaust is a hoax, Blinken will remember the numbers on Pisar’s arm. To Blinken, Auschwitz is not an abstraction, Majdanek more than a place on a map. Holocaust denial will end the conversation.

He will cherish Europe, even as the United States turns its attention to the Pacific Rim. Blinken lived in Europe as a child, and he is at home in French.

He will be a globalist. Blinken’s parents and stepparents saw the United States as indispensable to a stable world — but not if it chose isolation. Blinken understands soft power and not just military power. Pisar believed profoundly in economic cooperation, human dialogue, sharing knowledge, innovation, a need for mutuality, cooperation and collaboration — even with one’s adversaries.

He will be creative. His stepfather was constantly, yet willingly and creatively at odds with prevailing geopolitical views of his generation. Pisar thought differently, more imaginatively, and one might presume that he trained Blinken to be the same

He understands the importance of American ideals. Blinken’s stepfather and his stepmother were immigrants; his grandparents also came to the United States as part of the Ellis Island immigrant generation to enjoy its freedom.

He has a connection to Israel. Blinken visited Israel as a child with his family in the company of Israeli relatives. Pisar wrote with evident pride of Antony climbing Masada as a kid while the family rode the cable car. Blinken’s stepfather, like most survivors, saw Israel as a haven and viewed its establishment with gratitude and sometimes with the guilt of having gone elsewhere. Israeli leaders were guests in Pisar’s home and friends of the family.

Blinken’s story is familiar to many of us, and his history and values will be a welcome addition to the State Department. As Blinken takes the premiere seat of foreign policy decision-making, we should hope that he will not forget his roots, roots he was proud to embrace as he was introduced to the country.

Michael Berenbaum is director of the Sigi Ziering Institute and a professor of Jewish Studies at American Jewish University.