Shelomo Alfassa oversees Special Projects for a national Jewish organization based at the Center for Jewish History in New York City. He has been involved with Track II Diplomacy for several years and from 2006-2009 he was U.S. Director of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC) where he successfully helped support House Resolution 185, an historic resolution recognizing rights of Jews displaced from Arab countries which was unanimously approved by the U.S. Congress on April 1, 2008.

In 2005, he successfully worked with the U.S. Congress to bring about greater representation for Sephardic victims of the Holocaust (specifically Jews from Arab countries) at the government operated U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington D.C. In 2003, Mr. Alfassa traveled to Poland representing Sephardic Jews in the United States as part of Judéo-Espagnol A Auschwitz, a successful multi-national campaign that sought recognition for Holocaust victims that perished at Auschwitz.

Mr. Alfassa was born in 1969 in what is today the NY 9th District and has since had an opportunity to live and observe other cities in the United States such as Los Angeles, Denver and Orlando. He is a fourth-generation New Yorker and is the grandson of Jewish immigrants from Europe and the Former Turkish Ottoman Empire.

Before working in education and cultural studies, he had a career in the Emergency Medical Services culminating with an Emergency Management executive leadership position in the federal government, where he trained and worked with the US Army and the US Marine Corps. He is a certified Hazardous Materials Incident Commander and Emergency Medical Technician (certified for over 20 years), and has been an educator on the effects of chemical and biological weapons on the body. He was a rescue worker at the WTC "Ground Zero," where he dug and fueled generators for a week, the site of the attacks on America in September of 2001. Mr. Alfassa comes from a family of patriots including his great-grandfather who served in WWI, his grandfather in WWII, his uncle who served in both the Marine Corps and the Army, and his brother who is a Gunnery Sergeant on active duty in the US Marines.

Mr. Alfassa's articles and papers on Jewish history and politics have appeared in numerous media outlets; his books include Shameful Behavior: Bulgaria and the Holocaust; Ethnic Sephardic Jews in the Medical Literature; Reference Guide to the Nazis and Arabs During the Holocaust; A Window Into Old Jerusalem; History, Politics & Loss; The Palm Tree of Deborah and The Sephardic Anousim.

 

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