Galadinner zum Jubiläum 2025

Please join the Leo Baeck Institute at the Center for Jewish History for our Annual Dinner on Thursday, November 20, 2025. LBI President Dr. David G. Marwell will present Wolf Blitzer and Kati Marton with the Leo Baeck Medal, LBI’s highest award.

Reception at 6:00 PM, Award Ceremony and Dinner at 7:00 PM

Wolf Blitzer

Wolf Blitzer is co-anchor of The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown. Blitzer has been with CNN for 33 years.

During the 2020 election cycle, Blitzer moderated several Democratic presidential town halls, as well as CNN’s January debate in Iowa. During the 2008 presidential election, Blitzer spearheaded CNN’s Peabody Award-winning coverage of the presidential primary debates and campaigns.

In addition to politics, Blitzer is also known for his in-depth reporting on international news. Known for his Middle East expertise, Blitzer reported from Israel in the midst of the war between that country and Hezbollah during the summer of 2006.

As the child of Holocaust survivors, Blitzer has worked tirelessly to promote Holocaust education and combat antisemitism throughout his career. In 2022, Blitzer produced “Never Again: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, A Tour with Wolf Blitzer” for CNN which was awarded the prestigious Grand Prize Award from Germany’s RIAS Berlin Commission. The impactful and deeply personal report took viewers beyond the walls of the museum, interviewing a leading historian, a Holocaust survivor, and a young museum volunteer to look at how the Holocaust is remembered, and forgotten, in today’s America. Viewers followed Blitzer as he toured the museum and reflected on the history of the Holocaust, his family’s place in that history, and his role as the child of survivors to carry on their legacy of Holocaust education.

Throughout his career, Blitzer has interviewed some of history’s most notable figures, including U.S. Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. Blitzer has also interviewed many foreign leaders, the Dalai Lama, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, former South African President Nelson Mandela, among them.

Blitzer has authored two books, Between Washington and Jerusalem: A Reporter’s Notebook (Oxford University Press, 1985) and Territory of Lies (Harper and Row, 1989)-cited by The New York Times Book Review as one of the most notable books of 1989.

Blitzer earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a master of arts degree in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. In addition, Blitzer has numerous honorary degrees from educational institutions across the country.

Kati Marton

Best-selling author Kati Marton has combined a career as a writer with human rights advocacy. From 2003 to 2008 Marton chaired the International Women’s Health Coalition, a global leader in promoting and protecting the health and human rights of women and girls. From 2001 to July 2002 Kati Marton was Chief Advocate for the Office of the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict at the United Nations. From 2000 to 2011 she was a member of the board of Human Rights Watch. Marton is currently a director and formerly chair of the Committee to Protect Journalists. She also serves on the board of directors of the International Rescue Committee, the Council on Foreign Relations, P.E.N. International, the Author’s Guild, Refugees International, and is a trustee of the American Academy in Berlin.

Since 1980, Marton has published ten books and contributed as a reporter to ABC News, Public Broadcasting Services, National Public Radio, The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The Times of London, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Vanity Fair and The New Republic.

Her first book, Wallenberg, a biography of Raoul Wallenberg, was published by Random House in 1982. Her subsequent books include The Polk Conspiracy – Murder and Cover-up in the Case of CBS News Correspondent George Polk, a New York Times’ 100 Best Books of the Year selection, A Death in Jerusalem – the Assassination by Extremists of the First Middle East Peacemaker, published by Pantheon Books/Random House in the fall of 1994, Hidden Power: Presidential Marriages That Shaped Our History, a New York Times Best Seller, The Great Escape – Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World, a Simon and Schuster book, followed by Marton’s Cold War memoir, Enemies of the People - My Family’s Journey to America, a 2010 finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Prize. Her memoir, Paris—A Love Story, was published in August 2012 by Simon and Schuster, was a New York Times bestseller. In 2021, Simon and Schuster published Marton’s The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel to critical acclaim and over a dozen translations. The Chancellor was chosen as one of the New York Times’ Notable Books of 2021.

From 1995 until 1997, Marton hosted NPR’s America and the World, a weekly half-hour broadcast on international affairs. From December 1977 until December 1979, Marton was ABC Bureau Chief in Germany. While based in Germany, Marton reported from Poland, Hungary, Italy, Holland, Northern Ireland, East Germany, and the Middle East. Marton was a news writer/reporter at WCAU-TV, the CBS-owned-and-operated affiliate in Philadelphia from January 1973 until November 1977. From 1972 until 1973, Marton was a reporter for National Public Radio in Washington. In addition to diplomatic and political assignments, Marton was involved in the development of NPR’s program, All Things Considered.

Kati Marton has been honored for her writing, reporting, and human rights advocacy including a George Foster Peabody Award for a one-hour documentary on China. She was a Gannett Fellow at Columbia University’s School of Journalism in 1988 and she received a Philadelphia Press Association Award for Best Television Feature Story and a PBS Award for reporting from China. In 1997, she received the Marc H. Tannenbaum Foundation Award for the Advancement of Interreligious Understanding. In 2001, she was awarded the Re bekah Kohut Humanitarian Award by the National Council of Jewish Women. In 2002 she received a Matrix- Award for Women Who Change the World. In 2004 she was honored with the Citizen’s Committee of New York’s Marietta Tree Award for Public Service. In 2004 she also received the Edith Wharton Award for Journalism and the Woodhull Institute’s Changemakers Award for Ethical Leadership in the Arts. In 2007, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research honored her with their Special Cultural Award. In 2008 she was presented the Leadership Award for Media by the Merage Foundation for the American Dream. In 2011 Marton was awarded the United Nations Association Leo Nevas Human Rights Award. In 2011 she was also named a Rockefeller Foundation Creative Arts Fellow. In the Fall of 2017, Marton was Writer in Residence at the American Academy in Berlin. In February 2019, Marton was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship to the Bellagio Center.

Marton earned a B.A. in Romance Languages and a M.A. in International Relations from the George Washington University. She has also received an honorary doctorate from Roger Williams University in Rhode Island in 2000. She is the mother of a son, Christopher Jennings, and a daughter, Elizabeth Jennings.