Ruth Shamir Popkin was born in Poland, saved by a miracle, from the Second World War. Her maternal family was destroyed by the Nazis as well as her grandparents on her father’s side. Ruth and her family returned to Poland in 1948 and faced the terrible destruction of Polish Jewry and the city of Warsaw after her father was appointed as a consul in the first Israeli Embassy in Poland. She grew up in Israel and served in the military.
Ruth Shamir became one of the early members of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and won recognition in handling a variety of immigration cases, particularly earning accolades for handling cases of Filipino veterans who were entitled to U.S. citizenship but had been denied by the U. S. government. Thousands of Filipino veterans won their U.S. citizenship on account of these court decisions.
