Sheppie Abramowitz, a brilliant political insider who became a powerful ally to refugees around the world, died on April 7 in Washington. She is 88 years old.
Her death was confirmed by her son, Michael Abramowitz, who said his mother died at Sibley Memorial Hospital, from an infection and an aortic aneurysm.
For more than five decades, Ms. Abramowitz has been actively involved in movements to address refugee crises – in Vietnam, Thailand, Türkiye and Kosovo. With a sure hand, charisma, and unusual efficiency, she used her extensive knowledge of government officials, logistics, and the struggles of people fleeing war and governments. oppression, to secure real relief.
She was the wife of a diplomat – her husband, Morton I. Abramowitz, was the US ambassador – and became his humanitarian assistant, bringing her knowledge with her when they returned to Washington from abroad.
She established a Washington office for the International Rescue Committee, one of the world’s leading refugee aid organizations, and became vice president. Even before that, she had long been a passionate voice for refugees, volunteering for the IRC while her husband was posted to Hong Kong in the 1960s.
“Sheppie Abramowitz is an inspiration for generations,” David Miliband, president and CEO of IRC, said on social media.
In 1979, she traveled to the Thai-Cambodian border to visit refugee camps for victims of the Khmer Rouge, an experience that former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who accompanied her as a college student, described described as “painful and shocking” in a recent report. emailed her son. Her husband played an important role in persuading the Thai government to accept Cambodian refugees during his tenure as ambassador from 1978 to 1981.
The following decade, Ms. Abramowitz became the NGO coordinator for the Office of Refugee Programs at the U.S. Department of State, a role in which she became a “tireless advocate” for refugees. refugees, Gene Dewey, former assistant secretary of state for the Office of Population, Refugees and Migration, wrote in an email to her son.
She joined IRC in 1991. By 1999 Migration World magazine described her in the title as a “crusader for refugees.” In an interview with the magazine, she spoke about the needs of Albanian refugees in Kosovo, emphasizing the importance of security, shelter, sanitation and water projects as well as public health support.
The publication called her “among the few officials who truly understand refugee issues at the field level and who can use that knowledge to help implement policy.”
It added that Ms. Abramowitz used “a dense Rolodex with phone numbers of diplomats, administrative staff, senior officials and aid organization contacts” to help refugees. accidents and navigate the confusing maze of government bureaucracy.
The plight of refugees “is a passion for both of us,” Ms. Abramowitz told the magazine, referring to her husband.
“Her prominent role is to try to bend the American political system toward a more humane, ethical approach to refugee issues,” Mr. Geithner said in an interview.
Ms. Abramowitz is unapologetic about using her insider status on behalf of refugees, speak The New York Times in 1999: “I am blatantly forcing people I know in the Administration.”
Sheppie (Glass) Abramowitz was born in Baltimore, on December 17, 1935, the daughter of Benjamin and Ida (Gouline) Glass. Her father ran a record store downtown, and her mother was a librarian at a high school, Baltimore City College. She was also a volunteer helping resettle World War II refugees, a passion that inspired her daughter.
Sheppie attended The Park School of Baltimore and graduated from Bryn Mawr College with a degree in history in 1957. The following year, she went to work for Representative Frank Coffin of Mainea liberal Democrat, and she married Mr. Abramowitzwas working for the State Department in 1959. Soon after, Mr. Abramowitz was posted to Taipei, Taiwan, where they lived until 1963.
She later worked for Senator Edmund Muskie, Democrat of Maine, on his 1972 presidential campaign, a fact that was later turned against her husband by Republicans. , who successfully blocked President Ronald Reagan’s attempt to appoint him ambassador to Indonesia in 1982.
While working at the State Department’s refugee office in the 1980s, she played a key role in ensuring that the federal government accepted a controversial report on the murderous right-wing guerrilla group RENAMO in Mozambique, something that “will never happen” The author of the report, Robert Gersony, said in a text message to her son that without her intervention.
In 1994, when Mr. Gersony wrote a report criticizing President Paul Kagame of Rwanda for his regime’s massacre of thousands of Hutus after the genocide against the Tutsi, “Only Sheppie stood up for me,” Mr. Gersony wrote.
Ms. Abramowitz retired from IRC in 2009.
In addition to her husband and son, Mrs. Abramowitz is survived by her daughter Rachel; her brother, Philip Glass, composer; and three grandchildren.
In his eulogy, her son recalled both Abramowitz’s strength and influence. IRC received reports that a wedding party in Afghanistan was attacked by US aircraft. A colleague suggested submitting a report to the Pentagon.
“But Sheppie didn’t have that,” he said. “She gave Mark” — an IRC colleague — “the cell phone number of the Deputy Secretary of Defense she had just met at a party the night before and said, ‘Report him.’”
