Felix Zandman — businessman with roots in the Russian Empire
Felix Zandman was a Polish-American physicist and entrepreneur born in Grodno (then Russian Empire, now Belarus) who survived the Holocaust by hiding in a cramped underground dugout for 17 months alongside six other people. He emerged, studied physics in Paris, and founded Vishay Intertechnology — one of the world's largest manufacturers of electronic components, used in virtually every electronic device on earth.
Tracing the roots — Grodno (Belarus)
Born in Grodno (a city that passed from the Russian Empire to Poland to Soviet occupation) in 1927, Zandman lost most of his family in the Holocaust. His survival in a pit — barely large enough to stand in, in temperatures of both extreme heat and cold — is one of the most extraordinary Holocaust survival stories. His transformation from that pit to building a global electronics empire embodies the immigrant will to rebuild.
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Grodno (Belarus). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.
A career defined by ambition
"I survived to build, not just to remember."