Philanthropy
& Awards

Harley was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as a member of the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad and has been reappointed by every president since. In this role, Harley personally spearheaded efforts that uncovered over 20 mass graves across Poland of Jews massacred by Germans between September 1939 and March 1942, two years prior to the Holocaust. Harley was personally responsible for erecting 23 memorials in Polish, English, and Hebrew in which both Rabbis and Priests officiated at the memorial service, and school children adopted gravesites to maintain. This led Harley to be an executive-producer on an award-winning documentary that appeared on PBS entitled, ‘Safeguarding Memory: Commemorating Jewish Mass Graves in Poland’, on mass graves in Poland.

Harley’s tremendous efforts to keep alive the memory of Jews slaughtered in mass graves led Poland’s Minister of Culture and National Heritage in 2023 to award Harley with the medal called Medal Opoekin Miejsc Pamieci Narodowej – “Guardian of National Memorial Sites.”

Harley was honored in May 2019 in the US Senate at the annual US Congressional Tribute event marking May as Jewish American Heritage Month which began in 1980. The Congressional Tribute featured U.S. senators and members of the House of Representatives, government officials, diplomats, and national Jewish leaders. The Hon. David F. Eisner, Assistant Secretary of the US Department of the Treasury, represented and read the proclamation by President Trump issued in honor of Jewish American Heritage Month. Remarks were also delivered by HE Yousef Al Otaiba, ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to the United States of America who spoke about the importance of tolerance, praising Harley Lippman for his leadership. Speakers recognized Harley Lippman as a microcosm of Jewish achievement in the US with an array of charitable and humanitarian contributions benefiting millions of people across the United States and the world.