Eli Zborowski, 86, Leader in Holocaust Remembrance, Dies

Eli Zborowski, a survivor of the Holocaust who made it his mission to ensure that it would never be forgotten, founded an American organization to support Israel’s official Holocaust memorial and raised more than $100 million for it, died on Monday in Queens. He was 86.

The cause was cardiac arrest, said Rochel Berman, who, with her husband, George, published a biography of Mr. Zborowski last year.

Mr. Zborowski (pronounced zbor-AHV-skee) started the American and International Societies for Yad Vashem, the Israeli memorial, in 1953, a year after he arrived in the United States as a penniless Jewish immigrant from Poland with little knowledge of English. He was the founding and only chairman of what was — in fact, if not in name — a single organization. Under him, it grew to 50,000 members.

Mr. Zborowski served on the board of the memorial and helped come up with the idea, which it adopted, of remembering communities, not just individuals, lost in the Holocaust....