Benjamin Meed

Who was Benjamin Meed?

Benjamin Meed, a Polish Jew, fought in the Warsaw ghetto underground, planned the 1981 World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, and served on the Advisory Board of the President's Commission on the Holocaust.

Born Benyomin Miedzyrzecki in Warsaw, Poland, Meed was in a business high school when World War II erupted. Within a short time he was living in the Warsaw ghetto and working as a slave laborer. Recruited into the underground by his future wife Vladka, whom he met in the midst of the war, he was responsible for rescuing ghetto fighters and finding and building hiding places for them. Ben and Vladka were among those Jews on the "Aryan" side of the ghetto wall who distributed the April 23, 1943, appeal from the Jewish Fighting Organization.

The couple married shortly after the war, and in 1946 they immigrated to the United States to rebuild their lives. Mr. Meed eventually opened a successful import-export business and they raised two children, Steven and Anna, both of whom became physicians. Ben and Vladka formed an extraordinary, lifelong partnership that would endure for decades.

The Meeds helped plan the 1981 World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors held in Israel, the first event of its kind. That same year, the organizers established the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors to prepare for a 1983 gathering in Washington, D.C., which attracted 20,000 survivors and their families. Mr. Meed served as president of the American Gathering from its inception until his death.