At William & Mary on Sunday, Nov. 1, George Rishfeld spoke about why he continues to tell his story: to represent those murdered in the Holocaust who can no longer speak. The 87-year-old survivor also recounted the childhood rescue that shaped his life: his parents sent him through a barbed-wire fence into the arms of a Polish family who hid him from the Nazis and raised him as their own.
Chabad Williamsburg Virginia invited Rishfeld to campus, where students and community members heard him recount a childhood marked by hiding, fear and eventual reunion. The Virginian-Pilot reported that Chabad Williamsburg supports Jewish students and the broader Jewish community in the area, and that Rabbi Mendy Heber, the organization's co-director, introduced Rishfeld.
Rishfeld was born Jureck in Warsaw in 1939. In his William & Mary talk, he discussed his early childhood, life in the ghetto and rescue, Flat Hat News reported. His family fled to Vilna after the Nazis began bombing Warsaw; Vilna became a ghetto in 1941, the same year Germany turned on Russia, according to the Pilot.
A Childhood Saved by Others
Rishfeld’s parents entrusted him to gentile friends, the Fronckvics, sending him over a barbed-wire fence into the care of Halinka Fronckvic, the Pilot reported. She took him to the family’s home in Warsaw, where they raised him as their own son. During Nazi searches, Rishfeld hid beneath his bed.
Rishfeld was reunited with both parents after the war, according to the Pilot. The family later moved to Belgium after a family friend found them in a displaced persons camp, then arrived in New York City on New Year's Day, 1949. Rishfeld's website confirms the arrival date and says he was born Jureck in Warsaw on April 26, 1939. He was 10 when the family settled in New York.
After high school, Rishfeld joined the Army and later studied at City College, the Pilot reported. He married Pamela; they have two daughters and grandchildren. Rishfeld now lives in Atlanta and has spent decades sharing his story with audiences, the Atlanta Jewish Times has reported.
Why Testimony Matters
At William & Mary, Rishfeld addressed Holocaust denial and skepticism, presenting his testimony as a way to counter them, Flat Hat News reported. He said he came to see sharing his story and combating hate speech as his purpose. The Pilot reported that he told the audience other people’s cruel and courageous choices—not his own—determined whether he lived.
What FBI Data Show About Anti-Jewish Hate Crimes
The FBI’s 2024 national data show that 69.1% of victims of reported anti-religious hate crimes were victims of crimes motivated by anti-Jewish bias, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program. That national statistic does not establish how many anti-Jewish hate-crime incidents were reported in Virginia.
Rabbi Heber told the crowd that the Holocaust reflected a failure of conscience as well as policy. Its perpetrators included educated and cultured people, among them scientists, doctors, musicians and writers, the Pilot reported. He urged attendees to bring morality and soul into their own lives. Sam Nossen, Chabad's student president, said that as survivors become fewer, people have a responsibility to listen, remember and pass their experiences to future generations, according to the Pilot.
The stakes behind that message are measurable. Poland was home to more than 3 million Jewish people before the war, and by its end, the Pilot reported, 91 percent of Polish Jews had been murdered while 9 percent survived. An estimated 6 million Jews died at the hands of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis overall, according to United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Those still alive to recount it are a shrinking population: the Claims Conference estimated roughly 196,600 Jewish Holocaust survivors remained alive globally as of January 2026, down from 220,000 the year before, with a median survivor age of 87 and nearly all of them — 97 percent — child survivors born in 1928 or later.
A Story Rishfeld Keeps Carrying Forward
William & Mary was far from the first stop on Rishfeld's speaking circuit. The Tennessee Holocaust Commission invited him to speak at Middle Tennessee State University's Ned McWherter Learning Resources Center for Holocaust Remembrance Day in April, an appearance that drew 155 attendees according to faculty organizer Ashley Valanzola, as reported by MTSU Sidelines. He regularly speaks at schools, universities, temples and other events, the Pilot reported, continuing to urge audiences to stand up for what is right and remember their shared humanity.
