Andrew Schapiro highlighted his family’s ties to the Czech Republic as he took over as the U.S. ambassador there.

Schapiro, 51, a Chicago lawyer, handed his credentials to the Czech president on Tuesday.

His late mother, Raya, was born in Prague in 1934 and fled to the United States in 1939 after the country then known as Czechoslovakia was occupied by Nazi Germany.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

“It is very fulfilling to serve at the embassy which gave my mother a visa and saved her life,” said Schapiro, who is Jewish. Raya Czerner Schapiro became a psychiatrist, author and educator, a choice influenced by her Holocaust experiences.

In her 2006 book, “Letters from Prague: 1939–1941,” she compiled correspondence from her grandmother and uncle who stayed in Prague and died under the Nazi occupation. Czerner Schapiro died in 2007.

Schapiro, a Harvard Law School classmate of President Obama, raised an estimated $1.26 million for Obama’s presidential campaigns.

He succeeds Norman Eisen, who served in Prague from 2011 to this year.

Eisen’s mother, a native of Sobrance in today’s Slovakia, survived the Holocaust and settled in Prague after the war. She fled to the United States after the 1948 communist takeover of Czechoslovakia.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount