Samuel Pisar was granted American citizenship by a special Act of Congress in 1961. Apart from his professional activities at the American, French and British bars, Samuel Pisar was a board member of various public interest organizations, a trustee of Washington’s Brookings Institution, and a member of the board of directors of the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah and of Israel’s Institute of Technology.

Samuel Pisar reflected on his commitment to the idea that “the Holocaust, attacked by incendiary demagogues as a ‘myth’, is an all too real warning for mankind of possible horrors yet to come. For it has revealed, as have more recent genocides and ethnic cleansings, that humans are still capable of the worst as well as of the best, of hatred as well as of love, of madness as well as of genius, and that the unthinkable remains possible. Unless we espouse, through remembrance and education, the core universal values embedded in all great creeds – spiritual and secular – the forces of darkness may return with a vengeance to haunt us again”.

Samuel Pisar passed away on July 27, 2015 in New York. He was a UNESCO Honorary Ambassador and Special Envoy for Holocaust Education.