Sheppie Abramowitz, a brilliant political insider and powerful ally to refugees around the world, died on April 7 in Washington. She is 88 years old.
Her death was confirmed by her son, Michael Abramowitz, who said his mother died at Sibley Memorial Hospital from an infection and an aortic aneurysm.
For more than fifty years, Ms. Abramowitz was active in campaigns to resolve the refugee crises in Vietnam, Thailand, Turkey and Kosovo. Determined, cajoling, and unusually effective, she used her deep knowledge of government officials, logistics, and the struggles of people fleeing war and oppressive governments to secure real relief.
She was the wife of a diplomat—her husband, Morton Abramowitz, was a U.S. ambassador—and became his humanitarian assistant, bringing her knowledge to the table when they returned to Washington from abroad Bring it into it.
She established the Washington office for the International Rescue Committee, one of the world’s leading refugee aid organizations, and became vice president. Even before that, she had long been a passionate advocate for refugees, volunteering for the IRC in the 1960s when her husband was posted to Hong Kong.
“Sheppie Abramowitz inspired generations,” IRC chairman and chief executive David Miliband said on social media.
In 1979, she traveled to the border of Thailand and Cambodia to visit a refugee camp for Khmer Rouge victims, an experience that former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who accompanied her to college at the time, wrote about in a recent article Described as “painful and shocking”. Email her son. Her husband played a key role in convincing the Thai government to accept Cambodian refugees while serving as ambassador from 1978 to 1981.
Over the next decade, Ms. Abramowitz became the NGO coordinator for the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Refugee Programs, a position in which she became a “tireless cheerleader” for refugees (Jean, the bureau’s former assistant secretary of state) Dewey, the head of the Department of Population, Refugees and Immigration, wrote in an email to her son.
She joined the IRC in 1991.By 1999 Migration World magazine describe her in the title As a “refugee crusade”. In an interview with the magazine, she spoke about the needs of Albanian refugees in Kosovo, emphasizing the importance of security, housing, sanitation and water projects, as well as community medical assistance.
The publication called her “one of the few officials who truly understands refugee issues on the ground and is able to use that knowledge to help implement policy.”
The statement added that Ms. Abramowitz used “a rolodex of contact numbers for diplomats, administrators, senior officials and aid organizations” to help refugees and navigate the hassles of government red tape.
Ms. Abramowitz told the magazine that the plight of refugees “is a passion we both share,” referring to her husband.
“Her decisive role was in trying to get the U.S. political system to adopt a more ethical, humanitarian approach to refugee issues,” Geithner said in an interview.
Ms. Abramowitz is unapologetic about using her insider status to represent refugees, Tell The New York Times in 1999: “I shamelessly exploited people I knew in government.”
Sheppie (Glass) Abramowitz was born in Baltimore on December 17, 1935, to Benjamin and Ida (Gouline) Glass. daughter. Her father ran a record store downtown, and her mother was a librarian at Baltimore City College High School. She was also a volunteer helping resettle refugees from World War II, a passion that inspired her daughter.
Sheppie attended The Park School of Baltimore and graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1957 with a degree in history. Maine Rep. Frank Coffina liberal democrat who Married to Mr. Abramowitzin 1959 while he was working in the State Department. Soon after, Abramowitz was sent to Taipei, Taiwan, where they lived until 1963.
She later worked for Maine Democratic Sen. Edmund Muskie during his 1972 presidential campaign, a fact that Republicans later opposed and successfully blocked Ronald Reagan. (Ronald Reagan) President’s attempt to appoint him Ambassador to Indonesia in 1982.
While working at the State Department’s Office of Refugees in the 1980s, she played a key role in ensuring that the federal government accepted a controversial report on Mozambique’s murderous right-wing guerrilla group RENAMO, which the author of the report “would never have happened.” Robert Gersoni said in a letter to his son that there was no interference from her.
In 1994, when Mr. Gersoni wrote a report accusing Rwandan President Paul Kagame of massacring thousands of Hutus in the wake of the anti-Tutsi genocide, “Sheppi was the only one standing by me,” Mr Gerson said. wrote.
Ms. Abramowitz retired from the IRC in 2009.
In addition to her husband and son, Ms. Abramowitz leaves behind a daughter, Rachel. her brother Philip Glass, the composer; and three grandchildren.
In a eulogy for her, her son recalled Ms Abramowitz’s strength and influence. The IRC received reports that a wedding in Afghanistan was strafed by U.S. aircraft. A colleague suggested submitting a report to the Pentagon.
“But Sheppy knew nothing about it,” he said. “She gave Mark the deputy secretary of defense’s cellphone number that she had seen at a party the night before” — a colleague from the IRC — “and said, ‘Report to him.'”
