Alex Hershaft

Alex Hershaft (born 1 July 1934) is an American Holocaust survivor, and co-founder and president of the Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM), the United States' oldest (1976) organization devoted exclusively to promoting the rights of animals not to be raised for food. Previously, he has had a 30-year career in materials science and environmental consulting and a role in movements for religious freedom and environmental quality.

Hershaft was born in Warsaw, Poland, on July 1, 1934, to fairly assimilated Jewish parents Jozef and Sabina Herszaft. Sabina was a mathematician. Jozef was a chemist researching the properties of heavy water (used as a coolant for nuclear reactors) at University of Warsaw with his colleague Jozef Rotblat.

Their research was in great demand, as Western scientists began to recognize the potential of harnessing nuclear energy, and both received visas to continue their work in the U.K. and the U.S. Rotblat left for the U.K just before Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 and eventually received the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize for his subsequent opposition to nuclear weapons. Herszaft insisted on visas for his wife and young son, but those came too late.

During the war, the family was forced to move into the Warsaw Ghetto, with Sabina's parents, across the street from the infamous Pawiak prison. As the Nazis began exterminating the Ghetto in late 1942, sending inmates to the Treblinka death camp, all three were able to escape to the Christian side and remain in hiding. Sabina and Alex were liberated by the allies in the spring of 1945. After the war and five years in an Italian refugee camp, Sabina emigrated to Israel, while 16-year-old Alexander arrived in the U.S. in January 1951. Sabina died in Israel in 1996.

Hershaft received his B.A. in 1955 from the University of Connecticut, where he was active in the student senate, the school newspaper, and the soccer team. He went on to study polymer chemistry at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. He gained his Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry in 1961 from Iowa State University, where he was employed by the Ames Laboratory of the Atomic Energy Commission.

Hershaft began his science career at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, where he taught graduate classes in X-ray crystallography. He then spent a year running the chemistry department at the Israel Institute for Scientific Translations in Jerusalem. Upon returning to the United States in 1963, Hershaft analyzed naval operations for the Center for Naval Analyses in Arlington, Virginia.

In 1967, Hershaft joined the Grumman Aerospace Corporation in Bethpage, New York, to review potential areas of new business in air and water pollution control, and solid waste management. In 1969, one year before the first Earth Day, he launched, then managed the Environmental Technology Seminar, a regional forum for study and discussion of tri-state (New York–New Jersey–Delaware) environmental issues.

In 1972, Hershaft moved to the Washington, D.C., area. He joined the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton in Bethesda, Maryland, to evaluate water management alternatives, impacts of electric power plants and transmission lines, and costs and benefit of data from the Earth Resources Technology Satellite.