GEORGE SZABAD, who died on 30 March 2002 at his home in Haverford, Pennsylvania, at the age of 85, was one of the most committed and effective of the supporters both of the American Association of Polish–Jewish Studies and of our yearbook. Born on 21 February 1917 in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, of a Polish Jewish family which had been evacuated to central Russia during the war, he was raised in Warsaw. He was related to the prominent Jewish activist in Vilna, Tsemakh Shabad (Szabad), who was elected to the Polish senate in 1928, and he often referred to his distinguished lineage. In 1934 he emigrated with his mother and his sister, Ina, to America and studied law at Columbia. While a student there, he married Shirley Meyers, to whom he was devoted and whom he nursed lovingly in her final years until her death in 1992.

At Columbia Law School, George was an editor of the Law Review, and after graduation worked for the Department of Labor and the Office of Strategic Services. After the war he held the post of section head of Russian Manpower in the State Department. In 1947 he joined the New York law firm of Blum & Jolles, where he was made a partner in 1949. He had a distinguished career as a litigator, arguing cases before the Federal Appelate Division and the US Supreme Court. While working as a lawyer, he retained his links with Poland, working with the Polish Mission for Relief and Reconstruction in America and travelling in Poland on behalf of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency.

From the early 1960s he became active in the American Jewish Committee (AJC), becoming a member of its board of governors and Honorary Vice-President. In 1999 the AJC awarded him its National Distinguished Leadership Award. Through the AJC he joined the National Taskforce on Polish–Jewish Relations, a dialogue group which it sponsored with the the Polish–American Congress and which led to the creation of the still-functioning National Jewish–American Polish–American Council. Szabad served as co-chairman of this body, with Harold Gales between 1979 and 1985 and with the Revd John Pawlikowski between 1993 and 1997.