Gary Ackerman
(1942 - )
Gary Ackerman is a former Jewish American Congressman who served for twenty years in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Ackerman (born November 19, 1942) was born in Brooklyn, New York into a Jewish family who had immigrated to the United States from Russia and Poland a generation earlier. He graduated from Queens College in 1965 and became a New York City schoolteacher in Queens.
His first major "political" appearance came in 1969 when he successfully sued the New York City Board of Education in a landmark case to establish the right of either parent to receive unpaid leave to care for a newborn child.
Ackerman was first elected to public office in 1978 as a
member of the New York State Senate. State Senator Ackerman was then
elected to Congress in 1983 in a special election. Ackerman represented the
central Queens area until 1992, when redistricting moved his district to
the current configuration in Northeast Queens and Northern Long Island. From 1993 to 2013, Ackerman representaed the 5th District of New York.
Ackerman was a senior member of the House
International Relations Committee and he played major
roles in
national security, nuclear proliferation and terrorism issues in areas such
as Israel and the Middle East, Northern Ireland, Asia and Latin America. He also served on the Banking and Financial
Services Committee and was Co-Chair of the Congressional Caucus on India
and Indian Americans.
Ackerman is well known for his efforts to feed the
starving people of Ethiopia and for playing a leading role in the rescue of
Ethiopian Jews and their emigration to Israel. In January 1996, Ackerman
ventured to India, enduring sub-freezing temperatures in an attempt to
secure the release of four western hostages. Ackerman also convinced the German
government to establish a $110 million fund to compensate 18,000 Holocaust
survivors and to investigate whether 3300 former Nazi soldiers collecting
German pensions in the U.S. are war criminals.
Sources: Congressman Gary Ackerman's Office; Wikipedia |