Risa Schwartz

Risa Schwartz Whiting, born Fanny Englander on November 25, 1939, in Antwerp, Belgium, was an American actress who appeared on Broadway in 1959. She died on June 20, 2017, in New Milford, Connecticut, at the age of 77.

Schwartz was born to Abraham Jozef Englander, a native of Podgórze, and Chawe Frank, originally from Nowy Sącz, a Jewish family that had migrated from Poland to Belgium. During World War II, her parents were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were murdered. Schwartz and her brother Marvin, born Mozes Englander, were placed in a children's home called Meisjeshuis in Antwerp. On September 21, 1942, twenty-five Jewish children residing in that home alongside Schwartz were arrested and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were all killed. Schwartz was subsequently rescued and transferred to Sint-Erasmus hospital in Borgerhout, Antwerp, where she and several other Jewish children went into hiding. She was later taken in by the non-Jewish Vander Voordt family, with whom she remained until the end of the war.

Following the war, Schwartz and her brother lived in a Jewish orphanage in Wezembeek-Oppem. In 1947, the two siblings were adopted by Maurice Schwartz and his wife Anna. Maurice Schwartz was a stage and film actor who had founded the Yiddish Art Theatre and its associated school in New York City in 1918, serving as its theatrical producer and director. Growing up in that environment, Schwartz was immersed in theatre from an early age.

Her Broadway credit was the 1959 production of The Tenth Man, Paddy Chayefsky's play, in which she portrayed the role of Evelyn Foreman. Later in her career, she performed as a theatrical performer in Maui, Hawaii. In 2004, the Hawaii chapter of B'nai B'rith and Hillel at the University of Hawaii at Manoa honored her for her contributions to theatre in Hawaii.