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Lynn Amowitz

b. 1964

by JWA Staff
Our work to expand the Encyclopedia is ongoing. We are providing this brief biography for Lynn Amowitz until we are able to commission a full entry.

Lynn Amowitz, July 2001.

After years of offering medical help to refugees, Lynn Amowitz decided she needed to solve the problems at their source: the human rights violations driving refugees from their homes. Amowitz was deeply influenced by anti-Semitism she faced in the small North Carolina community where she grew up, as well as her grandparents’ stories of their suffering in Eastern Europe. She began her career in medicine and public health offering humanitarian aid to refugees in Rwanda and Zaire. But after a trip to Albania, Amowitz realized that providing aid to refugees did not fix the underlying reasons for the refugee problem. She joined Physicians for Human Rights as a Fireman Fellow in Health and Human Rights, investigating human rights issues and violence against women in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. Refusing to choose between her work and her family, Amowitz brought her still-nursing daughter with her to Afghanistan, pointing out that the refugees she worked with lived under far harsher conditions. She continues her efforts to investigate human rights violations around the world.

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How to cite this page

Jewish Women's Archive. "Lynn Amowitz." (Viewed on March 28, 2024) <http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/amowitz-lynn>.