Disciplines
Jewish Studies
Abstract
Miriam Flisser was born in Europe right after World War II to Jewish partisan parents. They fled danger and arrived in New York as refugees, settling in the Bronx. She grew up in safe, lively neighborhoods like Mott Haven and Pelham Parkway, speaking Yiddish at home until she learned English from kids on the street. Her dad was a skilled kosher butcher who later bought apartment buildings; the family kept a warm, traditional Jewish home.
Miriam excelled in Bronx schools, went to Bronx Science, then NYU’s Bronx campus and Albert Einstein Medical School (graduating a year early). She became a pediatrician, ran a huge kids’ ER, opened her own practice, and still volunteers at Montefiore.
In the 1970s, as crime rose and “the Bronx was burning,” the family moved to Scarsdale for safety and better schools. Out of gratitude to America, Miriam later became mayor of Scarsdale. She never really left the Bronx in her heart — she still volunteers there and remembers it fondly as a vibrant, hardworking, diverse community full of rock ‘n’ roll and hope.
Keywords: World War Two, resistance, partisan, Poland, displaced persons camp, Mott Haven, PS 65, Lithuania, Yiddish, kosher, butcher, Tarbut School, zionism, food, PS 96, piano, education, Bronx High School of Science, JHS 135, NYU, science, Teachers Strike 1967-68, medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Scarsdale, politics, safety, crime, immigration, American Dream
Recommended Citation
Chan, Philip, "Flisser, Miriam" (2026). Bronx Jewish History Project. 111.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/bjhp/111
