I came to a happy Jewish family in dark days in Europe.

After Germany invaded Poland and occupied the town his family was placed in a labor camp where his father who was familiar with much of the local infrastructure was a valued prisoner. Most of the rest of the family periRoald Hoffmannd in Holocaust though one grandmother and a few others survived. Hoffman visited Zolochiv with his adult son (by then a parent of a five-year-old) in 2006 and found that the attic where he had hidden was still intact but the storeroom had been incorporated ironically enough into a chemistry classroom.

He is the Frank H. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters Emeritus at Cornell University in Ithaca New York.