Pierre Shostal
Quote: “One day my father received a letter from the consulate, inviting him in for an interview. And the interview was with Harry Bingham, who told him he’d received instructions to issue just my dad a visitor’s visa, not an immigrant visa […] he said that he couldn’t accept it, because he wasn’t going to abandon his family there in these circumstances. Bingham then said, ‘what if I offered an immigrant visa, not a visitor’s visa, but an immigrant visa for your complete family.’ So that’s how he saved us, along with many others, hundreds of other people.”
Pierre Shostal is a Career Foreign Service Officer. He was the U.S. Consul General in Hamburg and Frankfurt and served as Director of the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Central European Affairs. He was also posted as a Foreign Service Officer to Moscow, Brussels, Rwanda, Malawi and Congo.