Background
Nir, Yehuda was born on March 31, 1930 in Stanislawow, Poland. Son of Samuel and Sidia (Hager) Grunfeld. came to the United States, 1959.
Nir, Yehuda was born on March 31, 1930 in Stanislawow, Poland. Son of Samuel and Sidia (Hager) Grunfeld. came to the United States, 1959.
Doctor of Medicine, Hebrew U., Jerusalem, 1958.
Nir posed as a Roman Catholic and learned Latin to escape Nazi persecution in Poland during World War II. Nir's ordeal led him to a career as a psychiatrist, specializing in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder and severely ill children. He immigrated to the United in 1959 to complete medical residencies in New York City and Philadelphia. He served as the chief of child psychiatry of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center from 1979 until 1986.
Nir was born Juliusz Gruenfeld in Lvov, Poland, (present-day Ukraine) on March 31, 1930. He later changed his name to "Nir" after World War II since "Gruenfeld" has German origins. Nir means 'plowed fields' in Hebrew.
Nir released a memoir of his experience during the Holocaust, "The Lost Childhood", in 1989. A second edition was reprinted by Scholastic Press in 2002. The Lost Childhood is now used as part of the high school curriculum throughout the United States.
He also published four self-help books focusing on relationships, including "Not Quite Paradise: Making Marriage Work" and "Loving Men for All the Right Reasons."
Yehuda Nir died at his home in Manhattan, New York City, on July 19, 2014, at the age of 84. His funeral was held at Riverside Memorial Chapel on the Upper West Side, with burial on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.
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Board of directors American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. Member American Psychiatric Association (human rights committee 1988).
Married Eva Roos, June 3, 1957. Children: Daniel, Aaron. Married Bonnie Maslin, November 4, 1973.
Children: David, Sarah.