David R. Semmel
- President and Treasurer
Mr. Semmel is a retired software entrepreneur and Venture Capitalist.
He is the creator of the site JewishPrzemysl.com -
An Inventory of the Przemysl Cemetery - as well as
the proprietor of The Jewish Przemyśl Blog
- Sons and daughters of Jewish Przemyśl, researching and remembering 700 years of Jewish
life in our town. He is the author of The 11th of Av,
a novel of love, death, and dreams set in Przemyśl at the dawn of The Great War.
Dr. John J. Hartman
- Founder and Director
Dr. Hartman is a Clinical Associate Professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at the
University of South Florida in Tampa. He was formerly Clinical Associate Professor of Psychology in
the department of Psychiatry and Research Associate at the Center for Russian and European
Studies at the University of Michigan. Dr. Hartman received his undergraduate degree from Harvard
College summa cum laude in Social Relations and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
Dr. Hartman has taught an undergraduate course at U of M on the psychology of ethnic conflict in
Eastern Europe, an outgrowth of his published work on group psychology, anti-Semitism, and
terrorism. He is the author of I Remember Every Day... the fates of the Jews of Przemyśl during World Two.
Marla Raucher Osborn
- Director
Marla Raucher Osborn is a founder and program manager for Rohatyn Jewish Heritage,
which leads heritage preservation and education projects that re-connect the history of Rohatyn’s now-lost Jewish community with the modern Ukrainian town.
Recently, Ms Osborn was awarded a Fulbright scholarship grant for the 2019-2020 academic year to support a heritage project at the old Jewish
cemetery in Rohatyn.
Previously, she has served on the Boards of Gesher Galicia and Living Stones Association, and worked in Warsaw at the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland (FODZ). Marla and her husband have been based in Lviv, Ukraine since 2017.
Robert Hartman - Director
Our Honorary Directors
- Dr. Thaddeus C. Radzilowski (Of Blessed Memory) was an award-winning Polish-American historian, scholar, author, professor and co-founder of the Piast Institute, a national institute for Polish and Polish-American affairs. Dr. Radzilowski's work focused on Poland and other Central and Eastern European nations, including Russia. He wrote extensively on the histories of these regions as well as the migration of peoples from Central and Eastern Europe, with special emphasis on social history and historiography. He lectured widely in Europe and North America and published more than 100 monographs, edited collections, journal articles, book chapters and scholarly papers. In 1999, the President of Poland presented Dr. Radzilowski with the country’s high civil honor of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland for distinguished contributions to the dissemination of Polish culture in the world.
- Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski (Of Blessed Memory), former National Security Advisor to President Carter and now the Director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
- Henry S. Landau (Of Blessed Memory) was a survivor of the Shoah from Western Poland. He came to the United States after the war and became one of the leading residential builders in Southeast Michigan. He died in 2003.
- Dr. Nancy Blackmun , a psychoanalyst from Framingham, Massachusetts.
- Dr. Jan Karski (Of Blessed Memory) Courier of the Polish underground who first reported the death camps to the West. Former Professor of International Studies, Georgetown University.
- Dr. Jacek Krochmal , historian at the Polish National Archives in Warsaw and author of two books on Jews in Poland.
- Gershon Meister (Of Blessed Memory) Native of Poland, Holocaust survivor, and President of the Przemyśl Landsmannschaften in the United States.
- Rabbi Michael Schudrich, Rabbi for the Jewish community of Poland.