16 Facts About Richard Schifter

Richard Schifter was an Austrian-American attorney and diplomat who served as Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs from 1985 to 1992.

Richard Schifter was born in Vienna, Austria, on July 31,1923, into a Jewish family from Poland.

Richard Schifter's parents, who had been born in Poland, were in the Polish quota, and placed on a long waiting list.

Richard Schifter immigrated to the United States without his family in December 1938, at the age of 15.

Richard Schifter joined the United States Army in 1943, becoming one of the Ritchie Boys, a unit of, among others, young Jewish-German refugees who the US Army trained in psychological warfare.

Richard Schifter was present for the Normandy landings and did intelligence work in the field.

Richard Schifter searched for his family after the war, but they had all been killed in the Holocaust.

Richard Schifter was discharged from the Army in 1946, but stayed in Allied-occupied Germany working for the US military government as a civilian until 1948.

Richard Schifter practiced law at Fried, Frank until the 1980s, as one of the foremost practitioners of federal Indian law in the country.

Richard Schifter served on the President's Task Force on American Indians from 1966 to 1967.

From 1981 to 1982, Richard Schifter was US representative to the UNESCO Committee on Conventions and Recommendations.

Richard Schifter was an alternate US representative to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights 1981 to 1982.

Richard Schifter was Deputy United States Representative to the United Nations Security Council with the rank of Ambassador from 1984 to 1985.

In 1985, President of the United States Ronald Reagan nominated Richard Schifter to be Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs.

Since leaving government in 2001, Richard Schifter headed the American Jewish International Relations Institute and the Center for Democracy and Reconciliation in Southeastern Europe.

Richard Schifter was a trustee of the Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies.