Remembering Fred Lebow on Holocaust Remembrance Day

This month, as we observe International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, we look at the life of the late Fred Lebow, co-founder of the New York City Marathon, longtime president of NYRR, and Holocaust survivor.

Traumatic Beginnings

Lebow was born Fishel Lebowitz in Romania in 1932. During World War II, members of his Jewish family heard increasingly disturbing reports of mistreatment of Jews by the Nazis. Eventually the situation became dire as authorities prohibited Lebow’s father from running the family business and detained some family members. 

When orders came for the town’s Jews to wear the yellow Star of David and report to a nearby military barracks, the family split up and went into hiding. They later learned that their extended family in Hungary and Czechoslovakia—grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins—had all been murdered by the Nazis. 

A Post-War Refugee

Lebow’s immediate family briefly reunited after the Nazi surrender, then splintered again, with Lebow and a brother joining a convoy of Jewish orphans headed to Czechoslovakia. For several years the brothers, both teenagers, traveled around post-war Europe as refugees. Lebow later became a smuggler, moved to Ireland, and eventually came to the United States to study at a yeshiva. 

Lebow didn’t reunite with his family until many years later when some of them moved to Brooklyn. By then he’d changed his name, given up his scholarly pursuits, and worked in comedy theater and the garment business. He took up running in 1969 to improve his tennis game and loved it so much he joined NYRR and within a year was co-directing the first New York City Marathon. 

Discovering a Calling

Lebow's early experiences of surviving the Holocaust and dislocation from his family and homeland made him fearless, stubborn, and an independent thinker—traits that served him well as a leader of the modern running movement. They also helped him understand runners at their core: their determination and willingness to face seemingly insurmountable challenges. 

Lebow was diagnosed with brain cancer in 1990 and died in 1994 at age 62. In 1992, while in remission, he ran the New York City Marathon, crossing the finish line in an emotional moment that captured the spirit of the race as an embodiment of what is possible.  

Holocaust Remembrance Day

January 27 is designated by the United Nations General Assembly as International Holocaust Remembrance Day (IHRD). Since 2005, the UN and its member states have held commemoration ceremonies to mark the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and to honor the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and millions of other victims of Nazism. 

Some material for this blog post was drawn from the book Inside the World of Big-Time Marathoning by Fred Lebow and Richard Woodley (1984) and the documentary film “Run for Your Life” (2014) directed by Judd Ehrlich. The book is out of print but used copies can often be found; the film is available on streaming platforms. Both offer fascinating details into Lebow’s extraordinary life.