Mordecai Paldiel
Mordecai Paldiel born Markus Wajsfeld (March 10, 1937, Antwerp, Belgium) is a lecturer at Stern College (Yeshiva University) and Queens College in New York. He received a B.A. from Hebrew University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Religion and Holocaust Studies from Temple University in Philadelphia. Paldiel is the former Director (1984-2007) of the Department of the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. He has written several books devoted to the subject including "The Path of the Righteous: Gentile Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust" published in 1993 by the KTAV Publishing House. Paldiel  was born into a Hassidic family of Szlomo Wajsfeld, a diamond trader originally from Miechów near Kraków and Hinde "née" Labin from Uhnow (now Ukraine) as one of their five children before World War II. Thanks to a Catholic Priest who was able to smuggle them across the border, the family fled from Nazi occupied Belgium via France to Switzerland in 1940 when he was 3 years old. Later after the war the family emigrated to New York.