The firm now called Lissner & Lissner LLP, whose partners are Michael D. Lissner and Barbara H. Urbach Lissner, Esqs., was founded in 1950 by Michael's father, Jerry G.H. Lissner, Esq. and mother, Liese. Michael joined his father in practice in 1982, and Barbara joined her husband in 1987 following the death of Jerry Lissner.

The firm's original clients were, in large measure, refugees who had escaped from Europe prior to the Holocaust. Within a few years, however, the practice had expanded to include survivors of the Shoa. The Lissners' ongoing commitment to the refugee and Survivor Population stems from the histories of both the Lissner and Urbach families.

Jerry Lissner was born in Berlin in 1925. In 1939, shortly after Kristallnacht, he left Germany on the Kindertransport to England. He lived in a Quaker home for refugee children there until the fall of 1940, when he came to the United States. In 1943, he returned to Europe as an American GI in the Counter-Intelligence Corps where his native German stood him in good stead behind enemy lines. His stories of his escape from Germany and the war years made a lasting impression on his children.

Michael's mother, Liese, and her family, the Shombergs, sailed for the US in August, 1939, on one of the last ships leaving Germany. They settled in Washington Heights, where Liese's father, Dr. Ernst Shomberg, increasingly devoted his medical practice to assisting refugees who had managed to leave Germany before the war, and later to caring for Survivors of the Holocaust whose health had suffered ruinously.

Barbara's family was less fortunate. Her father, Sol Urbach, was born in 1925 in Cracow. By a stroke of luck, Sol was delivered from the Cracow Ghetto to the Enamel Works Factory run by Oskar Schindler. He remained with Schindler throughout the war, except for periods of imprisonment in the concentration camps of Krakow-Plasców (run by Amon Goeth) and Gross-Rosen (run by the Ukrainian SS).

Following his liberation by the Russian Army in 1945 from Brunlitz, Czechoslovakia, Sol began a desperate search for his family that took him from Cracow throughout Poland, Czechoslovakia and Germany, before finally realizing that he alone of his family - mother, father, three brothers, two sisters and extended family - had survived.

Barbara's mother, Ada Birnbaum, escaped Cracow in 1941 with her family and spent much of the war in a Siberian labor camp before her liberation led her to Germany where she and Sol met.

In 1996, recognizing that as the Survivor population aged so, too, did their needs, the firm developed a unique asset protection plan called the Victims of Nazi Persecution Compensation Trusts® by which eligible persons could preserve a significant portion of their assets in the event that long-term health care was required . So important and unique is this instrument that information about it was requested by the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and Survivors and their families throughout the United States have benefitted from it.

Both Michael and Barbara Lissner are active in the Jewish community. Michael is presently Chairman of the Board of The Blue Card, Inc., a national Holocaust victims' aid organization, and serves on the Board of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of 1933. Barbara serves on the Board of the JCC on the Palisades, Tenafly, NJ, where she was instrumental in the development of a Holocaust Memorial project consisting of a Sculpture Garden and an Education Institute, and chaired the Senior Adult Advisory Committee. Together with the Charles Friedman family, the Lissners were instrumental in establishing the B'nai B'rith-Leo Baeck Unit Friedman/Lissner Scholarship Fund, which provides financial support for Jewish High School students to participate in the annual "March of the Living."

Over the half century since the firm was established, the client base has grown and the needs of our many of our clients have changed. For all of our clients, our primary concern is their peace of mind; for our special clients from the emigré and Survivor population, we are doing our best to help them with the difficult issues surrounding aging and prolonged illness, so that they can live with dignity in the twilight of their lives. We can assume many responsibilities which free our client to fully devote his or her time and energy to the pursuit of their careers, the attainment of their goals, and the enjoyment of their later years with the confidence of working with sensitive and experienced counsel.

We look forward to the opportunity of meeting to discuss your specific concerns.