Esther Safran Foer (born 1946) is a writer and the former executive director of Sixth & I Synagogue in Washington, DC.

Early life

Esther Safran was born in Łódź, Poland to Louis and Ethel Safran,

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

survivors who met in 1945. She spent her early childhood in a

displaced persons camp A refugee camp is a temporary Human settlement, settlement built to receive refugees and people in refugee-like situations. Refugee camps usually accommodate displaced people who have fled their home country, but camps are also made for interna ...

before moving with her family to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

in 1949. The family later settled in Washington, DC. Esther's father committed suicide in 1954.

Family

Safran Foer is married to Albert Foer, a lawyer and president of the American Antitrust Institute. They have three sons; novelist

Jonathan Safran Foer Jonathan Safran Foer (; born February 21, 1977) is an American novelist. He is known for his novels ''Everything Is Illuminated'' (2002), '' Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close'' (2005), '' Here I Am'' (2016), and for his non-fiction works ''Eatin ...

, and journalists

Franklin Franklin may refer to: People * Franklin (given name) * Franklin (surname) * Franklin (class), a member of a historical English social class Places Australia * Franklin, Tasmania, a township * Division of Franklin, federal electoral d ...

and

Joshua Foer Joshua Foer (born September 23, 1982) is a freelance journalist and author living in Brookline, Massachusetts, with a primary focus on science. He was the 2006 USA Memory Champion, which was described in his 2011 book, '' Moonwalking with Ein ...

Career

Foer worked as press secretary for presidential candidate

George McGovern George Stanley McGovern (July 19, 1922 – October 21, 2012) was an American historian and South Dakota politician who was a U.S. representative and three-term U.S. senator, and the Democratic Party presidential nominee in the 1972 pres ...

. She founded public-relations firm FM Strategic Communications in 2002 and served as executive director of Sixth & I Synagogue from 2007 to 2016. In 2008,

The Forward ''The Forward'' ( yi, פֿאָרווערטס, Forverts), formerly known as ''The Jewish Daily Forward'', is an American news media organization for a Jewish American audience. Founded in 1897 as a Yiddish-language daily socialist newspaper, ' ...

recognized Foer as one of its Forward 50. The Washingtonian included Foer in their 2015 list of The Most Powerful Women in Washington. In 2020, Foer published her memoir ''I Want You To Know We’re Still Here''. In it she describes how she discovered and explored the existence of her father's first wife and daughter who were murdered in the Holocaust.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Safran Foer, Esther 1946 births Living people Writers from Washington, D.C. American people of Polish-Jewish descent 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American women