Lionel Alexander Rosenblatt

Long time advocate for refugees and former President of Refugees International, Lionel Alexander Rosenblatt passed away on April 11, 2026 after a lengthy fight against cancer. Born December 10, 1943 to David B. and Carol Blumenthal Rosenblatt, a nuclear scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, Lionel became a champion for refugees in Southeast Asia and later around the world after he witnessed the fall of Saigon in April 1975 and the efforts of thousands of Indochinese to flee the expected horror of radical governments in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

Working as a special assistant to Deputy Secretary of State Robert S. Ingersoll in March 1975, Rosenblatt sensed that South Vietnam’s days were numbered and helped organize a group of like-minded mid-level American diplomats to meet daily to discuss the latest developments and push to ensure there would be an evacuation plan not only for Americans, but also for the thousands of Vietnamese who had worked with the US over the years. When he determined that the State Department was not working at the speed he thought necessary, he along with a colleague, flew surreptitiously to Vietnam to locate many former associates and smuggle them out from the center of Saigon to Tan Son Nhat International Airport for flights out of the country. The US Ambassador Graham Martin and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were furious that two officers who were supposedly working on Vietnamese affairs in Washington had taken upon themselves to organize their own evacuation program. Having transported some 100 or Vietnamese through the departure maze without being caught, they departed Vietnam a few days before the final collapse.

Returning to Washington, Rosenblatt met with Kissinger for a supposed reprimand, but was not disciplined. He returned to his job with the Task Force. In the following weeks, using some of the knowledge he had learned during his sojourn, the group organized a transit camps in Guam, reception centers for Indochinese at US military bases in California, Arkansas, and Florida, stimulated the NGO community to develop refugee support programs, and pushed legislation through Congress to create the Indochina Refugee and Migration Act of 1975, which permitted the resettlement of the first 130,000 refugees to the United States. Rosenblatt was not alone in this effort, but he was the persistent driving energy in pushing the program ahead. Once the program was established and most of his colleagues had returned to their jobs in the State Department, Rosenblatt continued to work on refugees under Julia Vadelia Taft, the new task force director from the Department of Health and Human Services. When it became necessary for him to take an overseas assignment, Rosenblatt learned Thai and went to Bangkok where he served as refugee coordinator from 1976 to 1981, visiting the many Indochinese camps in the border areas and cajoling, persuading and pushing the Thai government for greater protection of refugees and the US for the additional admissions, including tireless and relentless work to promote the passage of the Refugee and Migration Act of 1980.

After the State Department declined to create a special category of refugee officers, Rosenblatt left the State Department and in 1990 became the President of Refugees International, the Washington based advocacy group, which he headed until health issues forced him to step down in 2001. His working style as head of Refugees International was to visit areas where conflict was creating refugees and publicize the plight of these individuals not only in Southeast Asia, but the former Yugoslavia, Russia, and Africa, often to the irritation of authorities in the host country and in the United States. His advocacy more than once produced news coverage of events that otherwise might have been overlooked. “Harassing“ governments was the term Dick Holbrook used in his book To End A War about Rosenblatt’s style. After he had stepped down from Refugees International and though unable to expend total energy on worldwide refugee issues, he became a supporter, frequent visitor, and advocate for one group of Laotian Refugees in Thailand, the Mlabri, a small group which had been given land to settle in Thailand.

Rosenblatt graduated from Bellport High School in Long Island in 1961, Harvard College in 1965, and attended Stanford Law School for one year before entering the Foreign Service in 1966. His first post was Colombo. Sri Lanka where he met his future wife Ann Grosvenor, whom he married in 1971. After six months in Sri Lanka, he volunteered to take an assignment in Vietnam. After two years in Vietnam, he began working with the Vietnam Special Studies Group at the State Department which permitted him several return visits to Vietnam. Deciding that the Foreign Service might not be the right life for him, he took leave of absence for two years in the early 1970s to work as a reporter at the Bangor Daily News in Maine, but returned to the State Department to work in the Deputy Secretary’s office.

Rosenblatt received many awards over the years: the American Foreign Service Association Rivkin Award for his work rescuing Vietnamese refugees (1975), the Government of Thailand Most Exalted Order of the White Elephant for his work on refugees in Thailand (1981), the Julia Taft Award for outstanding contributions to the humanitarian and development community (2009), and an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Concordia University for his work with indigenous people of Southeast Asia, especially the Hmong (2010). He was the model for the fictional character Larry Rose in the made-for-television movie “Last Flight Out” in 1990, which dramatized Rosenblatt’s visit to Saigon in 1975.

Rosenblatt is survived by his beloved wife of 55 years, Ann Grosvenor Rosenblatt of Washington DC; his sister Sarah Rosenblatt; and his brothers Josiah and Nathaniel Rosenblatt.

A celebration of Lionel’s life will be held in the future. In lieu of flowers, please provide contributions in Lionel’s honor to Refugees International or the UN Refugee Agency (USA for UNHCR)