[1] Felix Zandman was born to a Jewish family in Grodno in the Second Polish Republic (now Belarus) and lived in Kresy until the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland.
[2][3] Following German Operation Barbarossa, in October 1941, at the age of 14 he arrived at the Grodno Ghetto (liquidated by the Nazis at the end of 1942) with parents, sisters, grandparents and many other relatives.
He survived the Holocaust thanks to a family of Polish Righteous Jan and Anna Puchalski who hid him and his uncle for 17 months.
One of them, his uncle Sender Freydowicz, taught him trigonometry and advanced mathematics in the long hours of darkness.
Zandman worked initially for two years as a lecturer at the École de l'air, the French Academy of Aeronautics.
In spite of the problems encountered, and working with many collaborators, it was possible to develop this resistor which had high precision and, above all, stability in the presence of extreme temperature changes such as those found in the aeronautical and space industry.
Vishay Intertechnology (NYSE: VSH[6]) is a publicly traded company with a market capitalization of over a billion dollars.
[9] In April 2008, Felix Zandman attended the March of the Living, where he shared the story of how he was rescued by Catholic Polish Righteous Among the Nations, Jan and Anna Puchalski, who hid him and his uncle for 17 months.