18 Facts About Isaac Schneersohn

Isaac Schneersohn was a French rabbi, industrialist, and the founder of the first Holocaust Archives and Memorial.

Isaac Schneersohn emigrated from Ukraine to France after the First World War.

In 1943 while under Italian wartime occupation, Schneersohn founded a documentation center at his home in Grenoble with representatives from 40 Jewish organizations.

Isaac Schneersohn remained President of the CDJC and editor of its Revue until his death in 1969.

Isaac Schneersohn was born in Kamenetz-Podolsk, currently in Ukraine, in 1879 or 1881.

Isaac Schneersohn served as a crown rabbi in Horodnia and Chernihiv in northern Ukraine.

Originally from the Russian Empire, Isaac Schneersohn emigrated to France in 1920 after the Bolshevik revolution.

Isaac Schneersohn was naturalized as a French citizen during the inter-wars years.

Isaac Schneersohn had a brother, Dr Fishel Schneerson and three sons: Boris, Arnold, and Michel, who were mobilized as reserve officers in the French Army.

Isaac Schneersohn then took part in the fight as a member of the Dordogne Maquis.

Isaac Schneersohn founded the documentation center CDJC in 1943 while in Grenoble, moved it to Paris, and remained director until his death.

Isaac Schneersohn was active in the Union generale des israelites de France.

Isaac Schneersohn died in Paris on June 25,1969 at the age of 88 or 90.

On January 27,2005, the occasion of the 60th anniversary commemoration of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, Isaac Schneersohn was remembered by Eric de Rothschild, President of the Memorial de la Shoah, by the Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, and by President of the French Republic, Jacques Chirac.

In 1946, Isaac Schneersohn became President of the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation and editor of the Revue published by the center, until 1969.

Isaac Schneersohn personified the institution, which continues to have an important influence worldwide.

Isaac Schneersohn hosted a meeting April 28,1943, at his residence in Grenoble which was then under Italian occupation to create a Jewish "documentation center" to collect documents and testimony on the situation of Jews during the war.

Isaac Schneersohn invited forty delegates of Jewish organizations including Jacob Gordin to the founding meeting.