Abraham Foxman

Abraham Foxman was born Avraham Chanoch Hanach Fuksman on 1 May 1940 in Baranovichi, a town that had just been taken from Poland by the Soviet Union under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and is now in Belarus. He was the only son of Polish Jews Yelena and Iosif Fuksman.

His parents fled to Vilnius after the Nazi invasion of Poland. When Vilnius too came under Nazi control in 1941, they left the boy with his Polish Catholic nanny, Bronisława Kurpi. She had him baptised into the Catholic Church, gave him the name Henryk Stanisław Kurpi and raised him as a Catholic in Vilnius.

His parents survived the war and he was returned to them in 1944, but Kurpi sought to keep him, and the family was reunited only after bitter court battles. Fourteen members of his family were killed in the Holocaust. Foxman said throughout his life that he could never hate his rescuer: "She risked her life. She saved my life." After time in displaced persons camps, the family emigrated to the United States in 1950.

In New York, Foxman attended the Yeshivah of Flatbush in Brooklyn. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in political science from the City College of New York, graduating with honours in history, and a law degree (J.D.) from New York University School of Law. He also did graduate work in Jewish studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and in international economics at The New School.

Foxman joined the Anti-Defamation League in 1965, straight out of law school, on its legal staff. He rose through the organisation, heading its Middle Eastern affairs and then its international affairs work, before the board chose him as national director in 1987 to succeed Nathan Perlmutter.

Over the next 28 years he transformed the ADL from a division of B'nai B'rith into a powerful independent watchdog with regional offices across the United States. It ran anti-bias education and training programmes for schools and police, built a research arm tracking extremists and white supremacists, published annual audits of antisemitic incidents, conducted global polls on antisemitic attitudes, and campaigned for anti-discrimination and hate crime legislation.

Foxman became the go-to voice whenever antisemitism surfaced, from synagogue attacks to a celebrity's bigoted remark. Presidents sought his counsel, popes welcomed him and prime ministers argued with him. He also became known as a granter of absolution, accepting apologies from public figures such as Jimmy Carter, Glenn Beck and John Galliano.

In 1987 President Ronald Reagan appointed him to the council of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and he was reappointed by later presidents including George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden. He retired in 2015 and was succeeded by Jonathan Greenblatt, remaining national director emeritus. From 2016 to 2021 he served as vice chair of the board of trustees of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, leading its work against antisemitism.

Foxman met his wife, Golda (née Bauman), at Herzl Camp in Webster, Wisconsin, where he worked as a counsellor. They had two children, Michelle and Ariel, and four grandchildren, Cielo, Leila, Gideon and Amirit. At his funeral his daughter Michelle said that he had been a hidden child who sought to hide his trauma from his own children, and that she learned much of his story from his speeches and interviews rather than at home.

Colleagues remembered him as gregarious and affectionate. He often ended official meetings with a hug and signed off even angry disagreements with "love you, hugs".

Foxman believed that hatred begins with words ("words have the power to kill", he said in 1987) and made education and anti-bias training a cornerstone of the ADL's work. He believed people could change: "If you don't believe you can change people's hearts and minds, why bother?"

He supported gay rights, condemning the Supreme Court's 2000 ruling in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, and championed immigrant rights, positions that put him at odds with some Orthodox groups. He was a passionate supporter of Israel while also, in retirement, criticising its government at times. In 2020 he publicly endorsed a presidential candidate for the first time, backing Joe Biden.

Foxman's outspokenness drew criticism from many directions. In 2003 and 2004 he attacked Mel Gibson and The Passion of the Christ, saying the film could legitimise antisemitism, and critics accused him of overreacting. In 2007 he opposed a congressional resolution recognising the Armenian genocide, prompting several Massachusetts towns to leave the ADL's No Place for Hate programme. He then acknowledged that the events were "tantamount to genocide" while still opposing the resolution, and later told JTA he anguished over the decision.

In 2010 the ADL under Foxman opposed the Park51 Islamic community centre near the World Trade Center site; journalist Fareed Zakaria returned an ADL award in protest. Foxman also admitted mistakes, including an attack on a 60 Minutes report about the 1990 Temple Mount clashes, for which he apologised to Mike Wallace and Don Hewitt. Others criticised him for putting resources into non-Jewish causes, or for forgiving too easily.

Foxman was among the last Holocaust survivors to lead a major Jewish organisation. His successor Jonathan Greenblatt said that "America and the Jewish people have lost a moral voice", and ADL board chair Nicole Mutchnik remembered him as "a warm friend, advisor, spirited antagonist and hugger". Israeli President Isaac Herzog called him "a legendary leader of the Jewish people". Former White House adviser Susan Rice credited him with helping shape the Biden administration's national strategy to combat antisemitism. The research, education and monitoring infrastructure he built at the ADL remains central to how antisemitism and extremism are tracked in the United States.

1998: Interfaith Committee of Remembrance Lifetime Achievement Award. 2002: Raoul Wallenberg Humanitarian Leadership Award, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Ramapo College. 2006: Knight of the Legion of Honour, awarded by French President Jacques Chirac. 2008: Honorary doctorate from Yeshiva University. 2008: Member of the US presidential delegation for Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations in Jerusalem.

Books: Never Again? The Threat of the New Anti-Semitism (HarperCollins, 2003); The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), a response to Mearsheimer and Walt; Jews and Money: The Story of a Stereotype (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Viral Hate: Containing Its Spread on the Internet, with Christopher Wolf (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). He also edited an edition of John F. Kennedy's A Nation of Immigrants.

Film: Yoav Shamir's 2009 documentary Defamation profiles Foxman and the ADL.

Abraham Foxman died on Sunday, 10 May 2026, in a hospital in Manhattan, aged 86. His death was confirmed by his son, Ariel. The cause was not made public. His funeral took place on 12 May 2026 at Park Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan. Mourners included Alan Dershowitz and Robert Kraft, with video tributes from Isaac Herzog, Thomas Friedman and Susan Rice, and a eulogy by Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove. The place of burial was not made public.