Elizabeth Holtzman was born on August 11, 1941 in New York, NY, United States. Her father, Sidney, was an attorney and her mother was a college professor. Elizabeth graduated from Brooklyn’s Abraham Lincoln High School in 1958 and Radcliffe College in 1962. During the summer of 1963, after her first year of law school at Harvard, Elizabeth travelled to Albany, GA, to assist civil rights lawyer C.B. King in fighting for justice. She graduated from Harvard Law School in 1965 and entered public service.

In 1972, at the age of 31, Elizabeth was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. She was then, and continues to be, the youngest woman ever to serve in the U.S. Congress. She worked there for 19 years and gained a reputation for asking tough questions. Notably, Elizabeth helped pass legislation to deport Nazi war criminals who were living in the United States. She won national attention for her role on the House Judiciary Committee during Watergate. She also sat on the subcommittee hearing President Ford’s testimony about the Nixon pardon. After leaving Washington, Elizabeth served as the District Attorney for New York City as well as City Comptroller. She also set up her own law practice and published a memoir in 1996 entitled Who Said It Would Be Easy: One Woman’s Life in the Political Arena. Together with Cynthia Cooper, she co-authored Cheating Justice: How Bush and Cheney Attacked the Rule of Law and Plotted to Avoid Prosecution-and What We Can Do about It (Beacon Press, 2012).

The interview was conducted on August 23, 2000 in New York, NY, United States; interviewer: Nancy Fisher; videographer: Yitzhak Gol.