What are the Polish roots of Paul Wolfowitz?

[Jaga]

who knows?

[Jaga]

anybody want to try?

[pieter]

Paul Wolfowitz personal history

The second child of Warsaw native Jacob "Jack" Wolfowitz (1910–1981) and Lillian Dundes, Paul Wolfowitz "was born in Brooklyn, New York, into a Polish Jewish immigrant family, and grew up mainly in the university town of Ithaca, New York, where his father was a professor of statistical theory at Cornell University." "In addition to being prolific in research" and "very well read," his father's friend and colleague Shelemyahu Zacks writes in a tribute, Jacob Wolfowitz "fought at the time for the liberation of Soviet Jewry. He was a friend and strong supporter of the state of Israel and had many friends and admirers there." Strongly influenced by his father, according to Eric Schmitt, Paul Wolfowitz became "A soft-spoken former aspiring-mathematician-turned-policymaker … [whose] world views … were forged by family history and in the halls of academia rather than in the jungles of Vietnam or the corridors of Congress … [His father] … escaped Poland after World War I. The rest of his father's family perished in the Holocaust." Such family trauma led, David Dudley observes, to Jack Wolfowitz "liv[ing] in a world haunted by atrocities" and deeply affecting his son's personal and intellectual development. Speaking directly of the influence of the Holocaust on his own later views, Wolfowitz has said:

That sense of what happened in Europe in World War II has shaped a lot of my views … It's a very bad thing when people exterminate other people, and people persecute minorities. It doesn't mean you can prevent every such incident in the world, but it's also a mistake to dismiss that sort of concern as merely humanitarian and not related to real interest.

[Jaga]

Pieter,

thanks so much for finding this important information. Yes, his father was born in Poland, he became a known matematician in the US. Paul was also studying math but he decided that math is not that important that he does not want to sacrify his whole life there.

Thanks so much!