Our Firm

More than 72 years ago, Jerry G. H. Lissner, Esq., established a law firm assisted by his wife, Liese Shomberg Lissner. In 1982, Michael D. Lissner, Esq., joined his parents, and the Firm was renamed Lissner & Lissner. After the death of Jerry G. H. Lissner in 1987, the Firm became Lissner & Lissner LLP when Michael’s wife, Barbara H. Urbach Lissner, Esq., became his partner.

The Firm’s original clients were refugees who had fled Europe prior to the Holocaust. Within a few years, however, the practice expanded to provide legal services to many Survivors of the Shoa. The Firm has continued to grow, generally by word of mouth, both within and outside of the Survivor community. The backgrounds of both the Lissner and Urbach families inspire Michael and Barbara’s ongoing dedication to the refugee and Survivor populations.

Born in Berlin in 1925, Jerry Lissner was evacuated from Germany on a Kindertransport in 1939, shortly after Kristallnacht. In England, he lived in a Quaker home for refugee children and emigrated to the United States in late 1940. He returned to Europe during the war as an American GI in the Counter-Intelligence Corps, where he served behind enemy lines. His accounts of his escape from Germany and his wartime experiences made a lasting impression on his children.

Michael’s maternal family, the Shombergs, sailed for the United States in August 1939 on one of the last ships to leave Germany. Settling in Washington Heights, in northern Manhattan, Michael’s grandfather, Dr. Ernst Shomberg, devoted his medical practice to refugees who were able to leave Germany before the war, and later, he cared for Survivors of the Holocaust whose health had suffered ruinously.

Barbara’s family was less fortunate. Her father, Sol Urbach, was born in 1925 in Krakow, Poland. After his family was forced into the Krakow ghetto, the SS removed Sol from the Ghetto and delivered him to Oskar Schindler to work at Schindler’s