The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Richard Schifter, Holocaust survivor and U.S. human rights official, dies at 97

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October 9, 2020 at 9:12 p.m. EDT
President Ronald Reagan meets with Richard Schifter, then the U.S. representative to the U.N. Human Rights Committee, in 1984. (White House photo by Mary Anne Fackelman/AP)

Richard Schifter, a lawyer turned diplomat who served in three presidential administrations, including as the State Department’s point person on international human rights issues from 1985 to 1992, died Oct. 3 at a hospital in Bethesda, Md. He was 97.

The cause was cardiac arrest, said his son, Rick Schifter.

The fundamental right of human beings to live without facing discrimination had been a personal issue for Mr. Schifter, who lost his parents in the genocide of European Jews during World War II.